Idioms, slang, memes, and weird turns of phrase

@Emma
Builder's bum!

 

Some family memes/language/whathaveyou:

• Twirler - TV remote control.
  
• Ipsquitch - a mischievous, uppity child.
• Rowbasil - a thing you say when you're just waking up and someone tries to make you think or act.
• Giddygapper - a thingamajig.
• Matrem/patrem - mom/dad. Comes from when I was taking Latin in high school and for some reason that particular way of referring to them stuck.

Some regional sayings/terms from various places I've lived:

• Off-island/on-island (WA, San Juan County, probably most islands) - the two halves of the world for people who live on islands (I lived on an island for ten years).
• Duff (general NW WA) - the layer of organic material that accumulates in evergreen forests.
  
• Spendy (general NW WA) - expensive.
• Udub (WA, probably has spread a bit) - University of Washington.
• Spitting (NW WA, I think) - Infrequent spatterings of raindrops. Not enough rain to be raining or sprinkling, but there's still precipitation. Similar but different: misting, when it's a very fine, light rain.
• Cascadia (NW WA) - A vague way of describing pretty much anything on the coastal/western/northwestern side of the state.
  
• Going downcellar (NY, Oswego County) - going down to the basement. Basements are just "downcellar".
• Pockabook (NY, Oswego County) - a pocketbook, a wallet.
• Be in for [time] (NY, Oswego County) - "When do you have to be in for?" "I have to be in for 10:00." Means you have to be at a place by a certain time. (Before living in NY, I would have said "What time you gotta be there by?")
  
• The Jewel (IL, Cook County) - Refers to the supermarket chain Jewel-Osco. Commonly overheard at the store: "I'm at The Jewel, want anything?" "I'm just checking out at The Jewel, whatdya want?"

 

it's mostly called plumber's crack here.

 

oh, also my brother and his friends call walmart "wally world".

 

I say that too, and McDonald's is often Mickey D's.

 

More southy than you but we definitely use "misting," "duff," and "Cascadia." Spitting is one I always hear about and ??? at because literally no one says it here. (Udub is so obvious to me that I didn't even think that it WOULDN'T be used elsewhere.)

You hear that around here from rural folks occasionally!

 

out of curiosity, which do you guys think is bigger: a chub, or a smidgebit?

((this has been the source of many many many arguments in my family. I'm pretty sure someone made up both words but idk))

 

I've never heard either of those, but my inclination is to say a chub would be bigger. Probably because I say "just a smidge" to mean a very tiny amount a lot.

 

yeah. a smidgebit sounds smaller than a smidge, and a smidge sounds smaller than a chub.

 

*flashbacks to the discussion in the beginning of the Discworld cookbook about the difficulty of translating the unit "some" into metric*

 

@Starcrossedsky Various sources attribute it to WA, but my parents might have got it from other places before we moved there (they have lived in OR, CA, NY, HI, and AK, so lots of places it could have come from!)

 

So does "I'm over it" now mean something besides "I have calmed down about something that frustrated me and am approaching ready to try again or drop it depending on the circumstance" because I've been seeing it used in a way more like "I'm so mad I could spit, if I do any more I'm gonna lose it. Dont talk to me about thing"? Or are both my interpretations wrong?

TL,DR what does it mean when someone says "I'm over it, I'm so over it!"?

 

In the second sense: I have used "I'm so over it" with it referring to the situation that's made me mad - that I am not putting up with those people/that situation anymore. I am done trying. I am done caring? like that.

 

one thing i stumbled across while talking to an american friend -- in the german mmo scene, a secondary character is called "twink". an "Edeltwink" (which is hard to translate, 'edel' translates to precious, noble, upscale) is a secondary character with basically the best gear a char of that level can have, because it was collected/crafted with the main char. a "Lagertwink" ('lager' - storage) is only there to store items in their bags. "twinken gehen" ('to go twinking') is playing one of those.

 

That makes something claptrap says in borderlands 2 make sense. There's a storage locker in the game and he breaks the fourth wall by saying "look, it's for twinking items between your characters" and I understood through context what he meant but had never heard the word before.

 

A lot of times when I use it or hear it used it means "im above that shit," or like it's too petty to bother you anymore. Mostly we use it when referring to friendgroup drama.

 

It's finally sunk in today that when OAP's (namely my great-aunt, but a few others I am aware of) say, "Oh, that's clever!" they mean "I very much admire this thing and I think it's really cool but I have no idea how you've done it."

Spergy me used to take it literally and find it pretty patronizing, but I've finally internalised that it's meant as a genuine compliment XD

 

In Bavaria, and I think other heavily catholic regions of Germany, "Maria" is a common second name for a man, at least in the grandparent generation.

 

My SO's (Indian) family refers to ground beef as mince, which confuses me every time, since my Canadian brain hears "mince" and automatically thinks "mincemeat".

 

I call Cú Chulainn Choo Choo Lane at times. Because of the best friends.