A Septic's nose at the Companion--#1 in a series

[davec]

Here are my musings on Chris' mighty tome. I've been accumulating these for a while now...

Baltic (for 'cold') - I've seen a reference that you lot got this term from us Yanks. News to me--I never heard it before. May be local East Coast useage, or very old (19th century) useage?

Peanut Gallery -- from the definition of 'beavering'. Do you use this phrase in England? We had a 50's children's TV show called Howdy Doody. Howdy was a marionette who talked to host Buffalo Bob between sketches, cartoons, and the like. Occasionally, the camera flashed to a theater balcony full of gray silhouettes of giant peanuts, who basically heckled Buffalo Bob. Even today, Americans who never saw or heard of Howdy Doody fend off anticipated cheeky retorts with 'no comments from the Peanut Gallery'.
Of course, maybe we got it from that guy who invented cat's eyes.

Biro -- pronounced 'bih-ro' or 'bye-ro'?

Hole in the wall--used in America to refer to any crappy little shop, bar, apartment, or house. British useage too?

Knickers -- not much used here anymore, except occasionally by some of us older farts who may say 'well, don't get your knickers in a twist!', meaning 'here now, steady on!'.

Knob--yeah, Knob Lick Missouri is a good one. (Cbrzychcy--is that where your grandmum is?) Don't forget French Lick Indiana! Just dripping with suggestiveness, at least from a British perspective. We Americans would have no clue. I mean, just because 19th century saloons sported signs saying 'Liquor in front, poker in the rear' doesn't mean anything. I'm quite sure no double entendre was intended.

[Cap'n Jack]

davec,
I have never heard the term ' Peanut Gallery'.

I've heard of the term 'Baltic' but never heard it used.
What about 'Parky ' for cold? I haven't reda the exhaustive list.
Its a term used mostly up north as in 'ts's a bit park out tonight'. Also taters, for being cold, as in 'christ, its taters out there'

Biro is Bye row.

There is a pub called the Whippet Inn. I suppowe their specialty would be cider.
(Whippet Inn Cider)

be well.

[davec]

Whippet Inn Cider!

[SepticTone]

I've never heard 'Baltic' for cold either. 'Parky', as the Cap'n notes, is in frequent use meaning 'slightly cold, but not unbearably so'.

Neither have I ever heard 'Peanut Gallery'.

A 'Hole in the Wall' in the UK is usually used for what you yanks call an 'ATM'. Generally also called a 'cash machine' here. We never call them ATMs, as we never used the term 'teller' in bank terms: they are bank clerks.

However, as an aside & possible cross reference, there's a poky little pub down a steep sidestreet in Colne near where I live called the 'Hole i'th Wall', which may have originated from its illicit selling of beer out of a hole in the house wall to passing millworkers in the 19th C.

'Knickers' is still used in the UK to denote female underpants. The US term 'panties' is just too twee for anyone here to use with a straight face, except by knicker manufacturers.

The sign 'liquor in front, etc' sounds apocryphal to me, but at least with a (fairly) common first language, we can both snigger at the innuendo therein. It'd leave English-as-Second-Language types cold.

[davec]

I have seen the sign myself, in a couple of bars out west (Arizona). Both were obviously old ones remounted in newer bars, not recently manufactured. Stuff lasts a long time out west as it's desert, so many places are chock full of old signs, mule harness, and the like. The old Wild West days saw a more lax attitude toward humor than back east.

Shopkeepers and such were plenty sharp, but this level of innuendo was at about the limits of the average cowboy's mentality. They used to entertain themselves around campfires with a little pastime known as 'readin' can'--just exactly that. If they were fortunate enough to have a cowboy who could read at all, he would sit and read out every word on the cans (tins) they had opened for dinner. You get the idea.

[cbrzychcy]

Just an addendum to Dave's hole in the wall info. When I talk about a hole in the wall or hear it referenced, I think of a seedy little place that is off of the beaten track but is astoundingly good. It doesn't usually mean just another crappy little place, but a crappy little place with excellent food or drinks or atmosphere.

[davec]

I think I've heard the term used that way elsewhere, now that you mention it, but in the Midwest it's generally just derogatory. We would call the surprisingly good places 'a gem' or 'a great little place'. How prosaic. Bleah.

[SepticTone]

When I think of a Hole in the Wall, I either think of a hole in a wall, which needs fixing, or a Cash Machine.

& also, now I think about it, I understand now how Americans would actually say the word 'Panties', as they would (forgive me for the phonetics & generalisation) pronounce it 'pann-eez', eliding the n and the final 'e' whereas we would pronounce the 't', thus: 'pann-teez', which sounds much worse, so that's why we don't use it for ladies' knickers.

Don't ask me why nobody pronounces the 'k'. Must be something to do with the French not having a 'k' in their alphabet.

[davec]

Most of us soften the 't' a bit by saying 'pant-ease' instead of 'pan-tease'. Very few Americans fully elide the 't' in any word. However, I used to annoy the hell out of a friend by pronouncing his last name 'Weathert'n' instead of 'Weather-tun'. Accent conflicts right in my own town! Maybe my family kept some Yorkshire pronunciation habits across seven generations! He was probably descended from southern toffs.

And yes, actually, 'panties' does sound awful, especially in my old nasal Indiana twang, the 'a' sounding like we've wrinkled our noses up past our eyebrows. Many years in Illinois have softened it somewhat, but it's still awful, really. I guess I just never noticed because I was always thinking about nononononono....

[SepticTone]

Reminds me of the famous 1976 'Two Ronnies' sketch, where two supposed cockneys try to understand each other in a hardware store, most of which have been replaced by giant 'Homestore' style out of town places, so it's a bit of contemporary history too, except we do actually still have a place in our town which is a lot like this store:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cz2-ukrd2VQ

This is a part of British comedy history, btw. Everybody knows it. Except the Somalians.