I am a big fan of words. I love to read, I love to write, and I love discovering where words and phrases come from how different people in different places use different words to describe the same thing.
This post was inspired by a question in my Friday Fill-In. If I were a condiment, what would I be… I knew a lot of people would say ketchup or salt or pepper, so I reached back inside my brain to think of the weirdest, most off-the-wall thing I could answer and got “cheese doodle”. What’s cheese doodle? It’s that canned cheese people buy to spray on their crackers.
Now, I’m probably the only person to call it “cheese doodle”. I googled “cheese doodle” and the majority of people seem to think this 
is a “cheese doodle”. But I call that a cheesy poof, as in “Eric, you want some CHEESY POOFS?
But that got me thinking, what other words to I use to call things that are completely weird and different?
I’m very unusual were I live in that I call this 
soda. Most people around here call it “coke” or “pop”. Only 13% of the people in Indiana call it “soda. Click here to see what people call it where you live (US).
Also, I have several terms that were part of my family-language such as:
cat shit 
, and must turd 
which I always put on my weener 
, and for breakfast I like to eat dog nuts 
.
Sometimes I like to eat baloney, or boney for short, and sometimes I eat buh-log-nah, but all three taste the same. And if I really want to get fancy, I eat baloney salad. Marsh deli calls it “Sandwich Spread”.
Some oddities of language I picked up from friends, such as Ponda-gross-a 
and Taco Hell 
.
Moving to a small town, what I once called “Wal-mart”, has suddenly become THE Wal-mart, like it is the pinnacle of the retail world. Others around here call it Wally World, as if shopping there is a day of fun and adventure. I’m sorry, but navigating a wobbly cart through too-narrow aisles to pick over picked-over stuff, getting my heal ran over by some unruly brat whose mom can only say one phrase, “No! Stop that!” and getting stuck behind some 105 year old with a posture that causes question marks to turn green with envy is not my idea of FUN! and ADVENTURE! God forbid you go in on the 3rd of the month! That’s when the crazy money comes from the Social Security and the group homes and the looney bin have their field trips to Wally World. Oh! what FUN! what ADVENTURE! those days are.
Other quirks of language people often chuckle about are:
If something honks me off, I’ll say, “That just burns my biscuits!” I’m forever “lawning my mow”, cooking soup in a bucket 
, and my computer is on my table 
(not my actual computer table) My kids get an extra chuckle out of my “bucket” and “table” mistakes.
Being a Hoosier and being naturally weird anyway, there’s lots more bizarre phraseology in my repertoire, but it’s late and I’m tired. I think I’ll hit the hay, but before I do I’m gonna go get a glass of Kool-Aid.
By the way, this is my Kool-Aid: 
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: cheese, cheese whiz, coke, idions, ketchup, kool-aid, mustard, phrases, pop, soda, weird, words |
In the Shadow of Mt. TBR 
Ha ha, great post!
I’m from Michigan, so of course I call it pop. When I moved to Philadelphia I had to switch to soda, a very difficult transition. What a relief it was to move back to MI where I could call it pop again.
What a fun post! In St. Louis, where my husband is from, a “hoosier” is someone who is low-class or trashy. I don’t think this developed because of a dislike of Indiana natives (what do you call them, anyway, Indiana-ers?), but no one seems to know where it did come from.
In my house, we call Chipotle “Chi-poh-tull;” Jack in the Box is “Jack in the Crack,” and the burgers from White Castle are “belly bombers” or “sliders” depending on how graphic you’d like to be about their effects on your GI tract. When my husband is going to take a quick shower, he’s going to “walk through the shower” (I’d never heard that one before), and when my mother-in-law wants to know how someone I’ve talked to recently is doing, she asks, “So, what did he know?”
This one has me thinking…I may have to post on it soon as well.
I’ve always called a quick shower as “a run through the sprinkler”, as in lawn sprinkler. “Jack in the Crack” is HILARIOUS!
And what Indiana-ers are called is “HOOSIERS”, as in Indiana University’s team the Hoosiers. Indiana lore has a few explanations for how that term came about. One story says it’s from when Indiana was still wild and unsettled, people physically fought often and over nothing (probably the Scot-Irish immigrants, of whom I am a descendant). One day when a traveller walked in to a saloon (or whatever they were called here at the time) right after a particularly bloody brawl, he spied a human ear on the floor. He cried out in horror and disgust, “Who’s ear is on the floor?!” The residents were so proud about getting that reaction from a city-slicker, that they repeated it when calling to one another until “Who’s ear!” became “Hoosier”.
I love urban lore!
White Castle “belly bombers” made me remember another one. The red meat on the stick at the Chinese buffet, I call that “kitten-on-a-stick” and meow when anyone takes a bite of it. >:-}~
Here’s one that’s slightly inappropriate…when my nephew as little, he couldn’t pronounce Costco, so he called it “cockshow.” Now, whenever we need something in bulk, the hubby and I head out to the cockshow.
Haha! This was fun! It’s always interesting the different names people have for things.
It’s not mine, but a friend of mine always calls Q-Tips, “ear debungers”!
That is too too funny! By the way, most people around here (AZ) call it soda!
Whenever we see that “cheese in a can” (Cheez Wiz), my husband wants to know, “How much wiz is in that cheese?”
Your post was funny, like something you’d see on SNL’s “Weekend Update” in the good ol’ days! It must have taken a while to track down all those pics.
We like to go to The Old Spaghetti Factory restaurant and order their spinach tortellini, but we prefer to call it Turtle Weenie.
That was great!
My husband calls the big Canadian hardware store Canadian Tire, Crappy Tire. I’ve also heard it called Canadian Trash. Canadian Tire actually tried to legally trademark Canadian Trash. I don’t know what the thinking there was or if they were successful.
My husband has nicknames for many stores: Rotten Ronnies (McDonalds) and Walllllllsmart, like you’ve been forcibly brainwashed to love shopping there.
Also in Canada we have the coffee/donut franchise Tim Hortons. Most people call it Timmy’s and order Double-Doubles (2 cream, 2 sugar).
Oh yeah, and it’s pop here.
Love this post! We also call it soda (Wisconsin) and call a water fountain a bubbler. Too funny:)
What a fun post! In Dhaka, where my wife is from, a “hoosier” is someone who is low-class or trashy. I don’t think this developed because of a dislike of Indiana natives (what do you call them, anyway, Indiana-ers?), but no one seems to know where it did come from.
This is such a nice blogs