household phrases

[42itous]

Do you have a word or phrase that your family or friends understand but a stranger wouldn't?

I came across this quotation: "I had a friend who used to say 'I’m on the rollerskates' to mean her period, as a reference to those daft Tampax ads where the actress skated around in white jeans."

In my family, we refer to the "as-you," which is the place you put things when they're on their way somewhere but you're not going to bother bringing them there now. I.e. Dad puts newspaper clippings at the bottom of the stairs, and the next time someone goes up, they bring the newspaper clippings up to his desk. Or we put mail in the as-you by the front door.

majordomo and I were given a Santoku knife for our wedding. We got married at the height of the Sudoku puzzle craze. We call it the Sudoku knife.

I use "triffid" in place of "trivet." I actually have trouble saying the proper word. Luckily, it's easy for people not of my immediate family to tell what I mean from context.

Comments

[zzbottom.livejournal.com]

My step-mother had a cute word for a highway on-ramp. See, when you get off the highway, you use the "exit", so when you get on the highway, you obviously use the "onzit".

family words & phrases

[happyfunpaul.livejournal.com]

The only "family words" I can think of were merely foreign words-- Russian, Polish, German, or Yiddish (the first three from my mother, the last from my dad). However, we did sometimes modify and expand usage of the foreign words. For example, any cat's name could have the prefix "Ooshki-" (Russian for "little ears", IIRC) or the suffix "-katze" (German "cat") attached ("Tabby-katze!"), or the cat's actual name could be deleted altogether and "Ooshki-katze" used instead. Particularly when skritching the cat behind the ears.

Oh, and some of the foreign words we used were weirdly dialectical. For example, when growing up I thought "itza-krema" was the actual Polish word for ice cream, but actually the only people who used it were immigrants to Hamtramck, Detroit, Michigan, where my mom's family lived for several months after coming to the U.S. in 1952. The Hamtramck denizens also used other "English words modified to sound Polish", like "kor-nedz-eh" for corner, but that one didn't get adopted into our family usage.

Our family had phrases we used, though. For example, anytime we'd take a different driving route than usual (on purpose, out of boredom, or because we missed a turn), we'd say "avoiding kidnappers" as the catch-all explanation. It's originally taken from some article my dad read in the 1970s, about varying one's route so as not to be predictable. Since my dad often liked taking different routes to experiment (e.g. "maybe this new route is more efficient at certain times of day"), the phrase provided him with a Mom-proof excuse. Since I also like taking different routes, I adopted it. In fact, I just used "avoiding kidnappers" twice in the past week.

Re: family words & phrases

[42itous.livejournal.com]

That reminds me, when I was a kid we pronounced ice cream "itchy crayum," based on a [possibly apocryphal] immigrant ancestor's mispronunciation.

I love how language eddies within small communities when multiple languages come into contact.

[530nm330hz.livejournal.com]

Growing up, we called a power strip an "octopus"

[42itous.livejournal.com]

so close! (http://www.powersquid.com/)

[jbsegal.livejournal.com]

And these days, there's The Power Squid (http://www.powersquid.com/the_powersquid.html)

[nosrednayduj]

Small things that are in some kind of food, e.g. a salad or pizza, which you don't care for, are "oh-nos". This comes from the kids, when finding something they didn't want in their food, picking it out and saying "oh no". So, green peppers are "oh-nos" for me, and tomatoes are "oh-nos" for Ken, and almost anything good for you is an "oh-no" for the kids. A friend doesn't like raisins in cookies, so when I make oatmeal cookies I sometimes make "oh-no free" cookies for her. It can be amusing. "I'm sorry, I didn't realize those were oh-nos."

[hammercock.livejournal.com]

I call answering machine messages "snausages." When D and I were married, if we'd been out for a while, one of us would go check the machine and the other would ask, "Any snausages?"

My family also mispronounces "suave" like "swayve" when we are snarkily referring to someone who has just acted anything but.

[dougo.livejournal.com]

So why is that called the "as-you"?

[42itous.livejournal.com]

You pick up the mail as you leave for work.

[woodwardiocom.livejournal.com]

"As-you" is one of my words too. It appeared in an issue of Games Magazine back in the 1980s.

buxom_bey and I have a phrase for when we're leaving the house. She'll say, "I'm risking the lava," meaning, "I'm not bringing my keys." This originated when I told her that, if she didn't bring her keys, and I fell in some lava (with my keys), she was going to be really inconvenienced.

[42itous.livejournal.com]

Wow -- I wonder where Games Magazine got it. As far as I know, my mom has been saying "as-you" since she was a kid (in the 50s).

[audesapere.livejournal.com]

yeah, i got nothin'. i have never really lived with anyone who was exceptional at communicating without flipping out; the ones who were calm & friendly weren't great communicators.

[cazique.livejournal.com]

With the kids, we've called a kitchen stepstool a "be tall." Our parents call them that too becaue that's what Cliff calls it. Your post is funny to me because I always imagined a scene, 5 or 10 years in the future, where Cliff's at a friend's house and says "where's your be-tall" or something like that and the friend or the friend's mom is like "what the hell are you talking about?"

see you in CO?

[42itous.livejournal.com]

That future friend might think Cliff is asking for the "beat-all" and hand him a baseball bat.

Nope, we're not gonna make it to Con this year, unfortunately. Fortunately, there are homemade sausages and homemade ice cream as condolence prizes. :)

[miraclaire.livejournal.com]

"Nobody's looking" _____ (fill in activity, normally a game of some sort) developed with the Spoffords when Sarah, Andrew, and I were young. There is no such thing as nobody's looking pick-up sticks. Often used for monopoly, bocce, sorry, and other games.

"Maple Slurp" (for Maple Syrup). This originated one year (from Sarah I think) while on vacation with Spoffords at the beach in Rhode Island.

"Bayoot" (Bathing Suit). Same origin as Maple Slurp.

"Arumbeetum" I think Anne and my mom are the only ones who regularly still use this. From when Sarah and I couldn't say Arboretum properly.

"I'll/you do/did it all by my/your elf". Also mostly still used by my mom and Anne... a favorite phrase of mine from childhood when I wanted to/did something independently ("I'll do it by my self"). James particularly likes it because now I can do things *with* my elf :)

That's all I can think of for now.

[42itous.livejournal.com]

How does "nobody's looking" change the rules of the game? I'd guess it means everyone has permission to cheat a little in the interests of keeping the game fun?

That reminds me of Calvinball. :)

[miraclaire.livejournal.com]

It originated I think because we were really little and couldn't deal with all the rules a game encompassed, so some of them were bent. It basically means that people are being lax about rule following for the purpose of a more fun, less competitive game.

[maedbh7.livejournal.com]

From childhood:

"grunts" = underwear (yours truly could not say the word as a small child. Much teasing trhoughout childhood about it, so now I refer to all such garments by their specific cut, ie boxers, briefs, thongs, bikinis)

From parenthood:

"weed rat" = cornish game hen, which look startlingly like the spit-roasted weed rat in Shrek, if rats had no tails

"Vera" = any of my sons large Nerf guns, his favorite sword, and his defender lacross stick (See also: Firefly, 'Our Mrs Reynolds', scene 3)

There's more, but those are the one's that spring to mind first. -H...

[42itous.livejournal.com]

I thought of two more:

When we were kids, we used to eat "extra grapes" (gooseberries) and "bald eagle food" (salmon). I believe these were both hoopdiver's fault. :)

Blue EIT

[baronet.livejournal.com]

I've picked up the word EIT which means "the universe won't rearrange itself for you" roughly. We've been using it a lot recently when vorpalkitten wants something impossible, like for us to change what happened 5 minutes ago. We actually say "My people have a word for this. That word is EIT." We got it our friends from TEP, where it meant either "ha, ha, I thwart you" or "learn to live with disappointment" (which is the version we usually use). I'm told that its origins come from the Engineer In Training Test, abbreviated EITT, but I don't know that story.

We also use the phrase "I'm blue" to refer to the state where I'm mostly ready to go, but it looks like other people aren't, so I'm going to continue what I'm doing. That way we can avoid the problem where two people are both waiting for the other to finish what they are doing. It comes from a story that dpolicar told where he wished that people could indict the hanging-out-while-waiting-for-everyone-to-be-ready state casually and continuously, say by glowing blue.

Re: Blue EIT

[ceo]

EIT is in widespread use in our crowd and other circles with a strong MIT influence. Etymology here.

Re: Blue EIT

[42itous.livejournal.com]

Thank you! I've been wanting to use that word but was hesitant because I wanted to make sure I'd be using it appropriately. The etymology (or EITymology, in this case) is bonus.

Re: Blue EIT

[lunacow]

We also use the phrase "I'm blue" to refer to the state where I'm mostly ready to go, but it looks like other people aren't, so I'm going to continue what I'm doing.

My family calls that "lestering". "I'm just lestering" has the same usage you descrie for "I'm blue". We got it from bearsir, who I believe invented it but couldn't remember why that was the word chosen.

I have often wished people had indicator lights for a whole lot of things.

[ceo]

My family had a lot of these, but the only one that comes to mind offhand is "garbage grinder" for garbage disposal. Took me the longest time to figure out that nobody else called it that.

Of course, that one's meaning is reasonably obvious, as is "way-in-the-back" for the rear-facing third seat in our old green station wagon.

[truthspeaker.livejournal.com]

The next time you have people over for testsolving puzzles, warn me of the triffids in the kitchen. :-)

[hachiemachie.livejournal.com]

Oh man, my family has a whole bunch of words and phrases like that. The least embarrassing being "cookies" which is the code word for any feminine hygiene product. That usage has been confusing young boys in the family for years now. We also have as plethora of intentionally mispronounced words like "skissors" and "ka-nife" and that's all I'm going to say about that lest the maternal half of my family comes off as completely nuts. Oddly enough, my dad's side of the family isn't really into the wordplay at all which might explain why, even though they're all very nice people, they're not as fun. Hmmm...

[theloriest.livejournal.com]

The only thing I can think of is "Tina-Time."

Tina-Time is that sense of time that runs parallel to ours that causes the person who runs on Tina-Time to be habitually late.

So named after my older sister, Tina. Procrastinator extraordinaire.

My sister can be told to be somewhere at a particular time, and be guaranteed to arrive 2 to 3 hours later than the agreed upon time.