Does your family use different words for things?

[Frozen Canuck]

Does your family have certain words or descriptors for things that nobody else uses? In our family, my daughter used to call Carl's Jr. "Happy Star" when she was really little. She is out of college and on her own now, but we still call Carl's Jr. "Happy Star."

We also have a card game called Jaipur, about trading wares and camels, which somehow has gotten renamed "Agrabah." by our family.

I'm sure we have others, if I were to think about it for a bit. Anybody else regularly use words for things that wouldn't generally be recognized by others?

 

[ramee]

My husband’s family referred to the hutch in the dining room as The Big Brown Thing.

 

[ZephyrHawk]

My grandparents had a bunch of terms for things which no one else uses. The best one was "fadoozler", which is an untrustworthy, lazy person. They had so many family-isms that I was in middle school before I realized that "facetious" (which was a word I'd only ever heard my family use before) was a real thing.

 

[Communicore1991]

We used to call the remote control (and sometimes still do) the clicker, but I know other people who call it that.

 

[ronandannette]

We used to call the remote control (and sometimes still do) the clicker, but I know other people who call it that.

We call our remotes the “Wand of Power” or just the “Wand” for short. We started it years ago when bickering over who would be the “Wielder of the Wand” and at that time we only had one universal remote. Now with all the components hooked up to our TV we have four so it’s a little more confusing to have to specify the TV Wand, the cable box Wand, the Firestick Wand and/or the sound bar Wand.

At my work (residential construction warranty) we have hundreds of open files so we always refer to our customers by the most memorable feature of their home or their weirdest complaint, such as “Green carpet guy” or “Unplugged fridge lady”.

 

[Pixie Dusted Snow]

We used to call Cracker Barrel "Crackle Barrel".

And Weeki Wachee Springs was "Witchy Wachee".

I used to say my Grandpa's birthday was on May 1th.

We all say we have to go "potty" even though there are no vey young kids in the family anymore. It may seem childish but when you do have small kids you just get used to saying it to the point that its natural.

I hope this last one does not get me in trouble but my niece started calling her private area her "p.p. cheeks".
Any time we play Mad Libs when there's a part of the body plural it does not matter who's turn it is we must use it.

 

[starvenger]

We have Cantonese nicknames for a lot of things. But the one that really sticks out was "trivet", as I did not know that items English name until I was 30.

 

[Micca]

I have no idea where it came from but my DGDs call this a "Handy Dandy"

 

[SirDuff]

Dish rags are schmattes
Bath robes are schlafrocks

Which would probably be less weird if we were either Jewish or German.

Like a PP, we also call the TV remote control the "clicker"

 

[ronandannette]

I have no idea where it came from but my DGDs call this a "Handy Dandy"

View attachment 552029View attachment 552029

Well, that thing really would be handy to have in certain circumstances!

 

[ksanftleben]

Two quickly come to mind: "Channel Changer" for remote control and "Go Fasters" for tennis/running shoes.

 

[FlightlessDuck]

We have Cantonese nicknames for a lot of things. But the one that really sticks out was "trivet", as I did not know that items English name until I was 30.

But "trivet" is an English word...?

 

[jdb in AZ]

When our son was little he called hamburgers "hang-gubbers."

Mowing the lawn was "lawning the mower." Those terms stuck.

Fast forward several years, and one of the grand kids started calling us "gummy and guppy" and that's stuck too. The names don't describe my teeth or DH's size, but the names are a lot more entertaining than the old titles of grandma and grandpa.

 

[Tink-osophy]

Loads! Nice to know we're not alone!

 

[kymom99]

My mom called her duster her house coat.
She also called bell peppers mangos. The vacuum was the sweeper. Lunch was dinner and dinner was supper. I know others use these terms as well but as I got older I realized they had other names.

 

[disneychrista]

When I was young I called vinegar VIGAR and that same stuck for a long time.

My grandma called all margarine NUCOA. Kind of like cotton swaps are all Q-TIPS or tissues KLEENEX.

 

[SteveH]

FROG- Freaking Room Over the Garage aka the Dungeon
HPC/Harry Potter Closet - storage closet under the stairs
Vacuum is the Vacuuuum (from the Friskies Commercial)

 

[starvenger]

But "trivet" is an English word...?

Exactly. I would just refer to it by our Cantonese nickname. And I'd not encountered anyone who actually called it a "trivet".

 

[disney212]

My mom called her duster her house coat.
She also called bell peppers mangos. The vacuum was the sweeper. Lunch was dinner and dinner was supper. I know others use these terms as well but as I got older I realized they had other names.

Maybe it's a KY thing, my mom and grandma called them the exact same things.

 

[aprilchem]

My mom called her duster her house coat.

Maybe it's a KY thing, my mom and grandma called them the exact same things.

Is that not the name for it? I've never heard the term "duster," but I do have a house coat that I wear (and I'm 45).

I can only think of one thing we have a weird name for - we call crossing signals (the kind with the hand light and the person light that indicate whether you should walk across a crosswalk) a "bookabyebye". It's a made-up word that my children and their cousins used for it when they were small, and it just stuck.