2024, Family, home, Kids, Uncategorized, Words

What’s That ?

31 Comments

Last Monday I announced to my coworkers on the Youth and Family Team that Husband and I had worked like navvies all weekend getting the garden planted. They had no idea what I meant.

We picked up some handy words and phrases when we lived in Canada that most people here find odd or quaint. Our whole family calls Mail Carriers “Posties”. We phone one another instead of call one another. The sofa is sometimes a chesterfield. People we are annoyed with are jam tarts. Those trying hard to get ahead are keeners.

Just in our family, Spaghetti with olive oil and garlic will forever be called Pasta with Invisible Sauce. A massage at bedtime was always called a backrub scratchrub by our children. A bedtime breakfast was a bowl of cereal before bed.

l grew up with some odd family words for things. My maternal grandmother said that a bottle of soda that had lost its fizz was ausgespielt (all talked out). My mother said that someone who had too much to drink was a little gemutlich. Farts were “little noises from behind”, according to my mother.

What phrases or word usages are specific to your family or place? What words or phrases would you like to introduce into everyday speech or see back into everyday speech?

31 thoughts on “What’s That ?”

  3. My mom always called fresh air “frisk luf”. She also said uff da, ish da, takk skal du ha, and something that sounded like “ja skal du bli” that meant “you’re welcome”. That was the extent of her Norwegian–she claimed that the old folks wanted to be able to talk about things without the young ones understanding, so the children were never taught their ancestral language.

    I never hear anyone using the old immigrant Norwegian phrases anymore. I miss them.

    –Crow Girl

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  4. Mom referred to sugar cookies as “Mormor’s silta kaka” – though that more accurately translates to “Grandma’s sugar cake”. Mom’s oldest sister taught her nieces the Swedish words for our fingers, though I’m not sure how “Swedish” they really were. The third finger was “langaman” (sp?), and the fifth finger was little “vicka vinga” (sp?). When my sisters and I were much younger, we called spaghetti “bisghetti”.

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    1. I remember finger names like this:

      Tommeltott, slikkepott, langemann, gullebrann and lille Petter spillemann

      but I didn’t learn them from parents or grandparents and the pinky was “little peter jensen something something something”.

      In trying to find the version I remember and its proper spelling, I came across this rabbit hole.

      You’re welcome.

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      2. Thank you! I remember the thumb sounding like Tommy tut and the index finger as Slickaput. The ring finger was something like Jzerteman (again, sp??). I wish my aunt had written the names down for us.

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      3. I recognize the “Tommeltot, Slikkepot, Langemand, Guldbrand, og Lille Peter Spillemand” verse as one repeated to danish children when teaching them the names of their fingers.

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  6. Rise and Shine, Baboons, from JacAnon,

    I don’t remember any unique to our family. However, my dad pronounced the word WASH as WARSH. Or SQUARSH. You hear that weird pronounciation in southern Iowa and Missouri.

    There are several British words or phrases that I love because they express something well:

    Someone is a Gasbag. Yes. I have known gasbags who talk incessantly but never say much.

    Then, “I was Gobsmacked.” Gobsmacked. I love that word too.

    I like the word “Knickers” for underpants as well.

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    3. I grew up in a Warsh household. Warshing machine, warsh your hair, Warshtington DC. Even as a kid, this bothered me, so I deleted the “r” early on and got ridiculed for putting on airs. Snoots.

      Patio pronounced as “potty-o” also bugged me to no end. More ridicule when I quit that as well.

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  7. Children’s mispronunciations often catch on – when we lived briefly with another family, their toddler said “awfuls” for waffles, and “ongings” for onions, and to this day… I was just cutting up ognings, thinking of this.

    There is one my sister used to do, if I can just remember it some time today…

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  8. I’ve talked about zorries here before. Didn’t actually realize that Americans say flip flops until I was in college. Of course, they weren’t nearly as popular when I was growing up.

    The funniest phrase I grew up with was “pinkert style”. My mom grew up in a home where everything went onto a plate or into a bowl at mealtime, even condiments. She dragged this tradition along with her when she married my dad. But every now and then when things came to the table in their original bottles and jars, it was called “pinkert style”. I didn’t find out until I was in high school that the Pinkerts were a family that my grandmother looked down on because they always put the bottles/jars willy nilly on the table. Sigh.

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  13. My dad would say something had been around “Since Tieg was a pup”. He called a bread crust a “kinter”.
    We’ve got the Minnesota R in words like warsh. We say crick for creek. Our driveway goes through the woods. Kellys road is a lane.

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