6 Words That Died Out in Britain... But Not America
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- Опубликовано: 29 авг 2024
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Today we're looking at word meanings that are now deemed archaic in Britain, but that live on in American English.
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An older Christian hymn still sung in some churches is When The Roll is Called Up Yonder.
Top norks!
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So let me get this straight, your American wife is both more Viking and more English than you are despite hailing from an English town settled by Vikings.
I did my DNA I am 63% from the UK. My ancestor was regent of Scotland when Mary Queen of Scot’s was a child. I did write HRH King Charles III wishing him good health, he may be distant from me but he is still blood.
as an american, I always knew of the word homely as a slightly less rude word for ugly but with no associated gender.
Right. Men can be homely-looking too.
@@jilliemc They can be. But people aren't as inclined to be polite about it. This is a word so you can call a girl ugly to her face. No one tends to care if you call a boy ugly to his face. Or at least they didn't by old fashioned standards since girls are "sensitive" and boys are not supposed to be.
It's not even ugly, because if you're ugly, it's because you have one distinctive feature like a funny-looking nose or your eyes are spaced too far apart, or whatever. "Homely" is just neither so ugly nor beautiful, it's someone who can just blend into the wallpaper, and you never notice them. In some ways, it's more sad than ugly .@jenniferhanses
@@LindaC616 right, it means plain.
@@jenniferhanses I've never seen the word "homely" being used directly to someone's face. If someone is going to be that malicious, they usually just say "ugly." I have heard it used when one person is talking to a second person about a third person who isn't present or is out of earshot as a well to say that person number three is ugly without person one making themselves look like a d-bag to person number two (but generally fails to attain that goal unless person number one is a d-bag).
I like your new glasses, Laurence. The red ones were like, "HI! I'M WEARING GLASSES!" These ones are more like, "Yeah, I wear glasses. It's cool."
This video is a relief. On Taskmaster season 12, I could not figure out why guest Victoria Coren Mitchell had a pancake in her purse at all times. Now I know she meant granola bar when talking about her emergency 'flapjack' 😅
Lmfao
Yes, the "sit on a cake" task. I couldn't figure out why that was a pancake either.
Idk... I can think of many time where an emergency pancake would have come in handy...
Ofc you also have to have emergency syrup and bacon...
LOL. I love the thought of someone having an emergency pancake in their purse! 😂
My grandmother, who lived in Texas most of her life, would give directions by saying "yonder" to indicate a right turn, and "thataway" for a left turn.
That is awesome!
Her own personal port and starboard.
@@s.h.6858 Or her own personal gee and haw.
I am an Alabama boy, born and raised in the foothills of the Appalachian mountains and I have been saying yonder, catty corner and homely for most of my 57 years . I'm a pancake guy not flap jacks.
In Wisconsin, I've only ever heard people say "kitty-corner" when talking diagonals. I've heard people described as "catty," but the only "catty corner" we have up here is that one corner in the Wisconsin Dells that always has... "Ladies of the Night" 💃 😂
I think pancake is more Scottish, I can imagine flapjack being English
As someone who grew up in western Georgia and eastern Alabama, I say yonder and caddy-corner, but prefer a good griddle cake. 😊
Grew up in the Midwest, my family used the words catty corner, we never used the word flapjack, it was pancake. I use yonder nowadays because I have lived the the south longer than the Midwest and I heard the word alot and picked it up.
@@RUclips.Is.Run.By.Terrorists I've lived in Maryland, Kentucky, and Alabama. I've always heard it called "catty corner". As a kid, I used to think that it was called "catty corner" because our pet cats used to knock picture frames askew (aka catty corner) on the walls. As an adult, I know that is not where it came from, but our cats still do that. That was before I learned to use the word correctly. It is meant to be used directionally between two fixed objects, such as buildings at an angle to one another.
My wife's cousin was visiting from the Manchester area. I was talking to him as I was working in my garden. I asked him to hand me the pail which was sitting near him. He said "Pail? That's antiquated...don't you mean bucket?" He told me that the word "pail" was not in common use in Britain...only with Jack and Jill. He was amazed that it was still used over here.
I like the word pail better. One syllable.
I don’t think pail is that common in the US. At least not the part I live in. I always hear people say bucket, but I’d know what they were talking about if they said pail.
I've used "Kitty-Corner" frequently to refer to a place diagonally across an intersection. I've heard it in California and Illinois.
It was common where I grew up in Oklahoma, too. And hear it occasionally where I live in New England now, too.
So is "catty wampus"(south)
In PA, I have heard both kitty-corner and catty-corner.
I grew up with kitty corner. It's basically placing something in a corner but facing out into the room. I still use it.
in Canada too
"America either didn't get the memo or didn't care". As an American I can with 100% certainty tell you the answer is we didn't care.
We marked em all return to sender. Then we sent in our box tops and Declaration of Independence to the crown. We’ve been dodging the notes that say all is forgiven please come home. Signed HRM and PM.
as someone in the UK I can confidently say we seriously don't give a toss
Is that 100 percent or 100 per cent? 😉
"Fall" wasn't broken, so we opted not to fix it.
Don’t give a toss? Is that a British thing? 😊
My mother (born1932 in Massachusetts) would use the "cattywampus" when referring to something placed diagonally in a corner.
My grandmother (also born in 1932) also used that word, but she used it to refer to something that had been placed crookedly. For instance, my sister had a toy bear with a crooked nose, and she said it was "caddywumpus." We use the word today because of her. :)
Where I'm from, cattywampus means - An unexpected, flipped over object. As in "That book case is all cattywampus!" What happened?
I've always understood "cattywampus" to mean crooked.
Catawumpus in our family means askew.
I think you heard it wrong. MA people use kitty-corner.
"There's a Red House over yonder" - Jimi Hendrix
🎯🎯🎯
Way up on the hill?
That's where my baby stays
US Air Force's song with the line 'Off we go into the wild blue yonder'.
US has more uninterrupted dry land FAR AWAY than any of the British Isles, so maybe far more utility in North America.
One of the few American "Patriotic" songs that isn't just an English or German song with the paint changed and the VIN number filed off.
It's actually "wide blue yonder", not "wild"
@@PhyllisTausch No, it isn't. There's a movie called _Wide Blue Yonder,_ but the song lyric has "wild."
The original difference between "here," "there," and "yonder" is related to the first, second, and third persons. If something was near the speaker, it was "here." If it was near the listener, it was "there." if it wasn't near either, it was "yonder."
Over yonder makes me think of the Brits still using Reckon
My Mother, from Appalachia used sigogglin(sp) to mean catty-corner. My Father from the piedmont of North Carolina used slaunchwise to mean the same thing.
I'm from NC Piedmont and am not familiar with either of those, lol.
Maybe those terms have died out. I'm in my eighties and have lived in California for more than sixty years.
@@davedaley9093 Certainly possible. The people in the mountains do sound different and use different sayings than those of us in the Piedmont or coastal plain.
I’m from Texas and I say “over yonder”
Yup, I'm from Texas too, and I've always heard it used in the phrase "over yonder."
I was born and raised in Houston but only heard my family in Arkansas use it. That’s wild 😂
North Carolina. My mom and her mom always said "over yonder" or "down yonder". Means "over there".
Tennessee hicks over yonder over the hill. Colorado rural yonder up to a couple hundred miles. But never close, more like to hell an gone.
@@A13XLairceyOver yonder by the crick in the holler?
When my friend in Bristol made flapjacks, but in a pan with oatmeal and cut them into bars, I was quite confused.
Yep that's what a flapjack is.
Your amusement at your own puns never ceases to crack me up. I am a sucker for a bad pun as well.
Forry Ackerman, editor of "Famous Monsters of Filmland," referred to himself (on the mail page) as "Dr. Acula." Special features were labeled "You Axed for It." I miss him.
The only bad pun is the one you hold back.
@@SpamLamb1 You're all right!
@@dj-kq4fz Thanks!
I'm a 70 year old 4th generation Texan. We use kitty cornered and catty wompus all the time. I learned the good things from my grandmother because my mother was so stuck up she didn't want anyone knowing she was "country"
Funny how one state can be so different. My 80 year old mom is from Dallas. She says catty-cornered and was not familiar with the term catty wompus. She does say over yonder, and of course "fixin to."
I love both of these terms, but I’m especially fond of catty wompus! It seems as though many of my favorite people (and authors) use it…and in the most perfect of circumstances!
"Soccer" was a commonly-used alternative word for (association) football when I was a lad growing up in England in the 1970s and '80s, but now seems to have become a dirty word in the U.K., largely under the mistaken notion that it an Americanism.
Indeed, New Zealand, Australia, and Canada utilize it, as do Japan and parts of Ireland to varying degrees.
I respect British English, but if "soccer" was good enough for the Victorian upper classes, it's good enough for me (I'm a Yank).
@@Norvaal3 Soccer is opposed by Rugger - Association football and Rugby football. All rather public (i.e., private) school, of course.
@@BotoburstSoccer is used in South Africa as well.
I’d echo every word of this!
Yon is a contraction of yonder that's still used colloquially in the north of England and Scotland.
Also in Northern Ireland
Like "yonder", "yon" is an archaic word in the U.S. We used to say "hither and yon" to differentiate objections in the line of sight near and far.
@@GeraldM_inNC We say hither and thither meaning all over the place!
So the British meaning of "homely," which I never knew, finally clears something up that I've wondered since childhood - Tolkien describing Rivendell as "The Last Homely House," when obviously something built by elves would never be ugly.
Yes! As an American, I was confused while watching a British home decorating show in which they were trying to make the house look "homely." I thought, "Why would they want it to look ugly?"
well I am british and I always thought "homely" meant a plain girl and "homey" meant cozy"
But this is so weird, the British meaning is just so intuitive and obvious and sensible. I assumed for a very long time that that was what it meant, because that is immediately what anyone would obviously think of when hearing it, without even second-guessing. The American use is by far the weird one, it has no apparent connection at all to "home". It isn't even very commonly used, so this really stands out, but I feel nuts that no one else sees this? I'm an American
@@HuckleberryHim I think the point is that a plain girl would probably be expected to stay at home and not catch a husband and so remain with her parents looking after their home
@@ludovica8221 Also, an attractive girl was said to be "comely". So, yes, an unattractive girl would be stuck at home with no suitors. "Homely" would fit that situation.
I come from Oklahoma & have used 'yonder' all my life.
I've always used "catty-corner", no -ed at the end, and pronounced it more "caddy" than "catty".
Your "caddy" pronunciation is the standard neutralizing usage of the alveolar flap as an allophone of both alveolar stops in certain environments in American English. I wouldn't be surprised if Laurence has a video about it.
Same here, "caddy-corner".
Kitty-corner is what I heard growing up in Michigan.
yeah nobody uses the ed on the end...
We used kitty corner in Mchigan
"Ower Yonder" and "Katie cornered" still used by me, Yorkshire born.
Yonder is a very southern word.
And western like cowboys saying over yonder I reckon
Yonder is a very rural word. I've lived many places in the US and in every rural area yonder was regularly used but in the urban areas it was rarely used.
@@graywolfdracon The word predates America, it comes from old English and Dutch or thereabouts. Anyone with yankee ancestry understands it and may use it from time to time.
@@samanthab1923 Ha ha "reckon" is another interesting word - it sounds old-timey to most Americans but Australians seem to use it in the modern day.
@@farrahupson The do! I used to watch Mr Inbetween & he used it 👋
You can find in Austin and Trollope novels references to women as 'homely' meaning plain-looking, intending to insult the girl. Yonder still very common in Ulster. And also a phrase I came across in North of England - 'yonderly' - to describe someone whose wits were beginning to wander. As in 'he's a bit yonderly now, not as sharp as he used to be'.
Thanks. I'm a huge Trollope fan and consciously model my fiction on his style.
I say Kitty Corner (no "ed" on the end), usually when talking about crossing at an intersection and going from corner to corner to save time.
It means "diagonal". Which is funny. both have 4 syllables, so why make another word?
What state are you from?
@@Mick_Ts_Chick New England
Yonder - not yet dead but critically endangered in the UK
Used in rural Gloucestershire (occasionally), as well as in the hymn 'When the trumpet of the Lord' (a lot), and in the phrase 'the wild (or wide) blue yonder' ...
Yorkshireman here, Yonder is still in usage round our way as is the abbreviation 'over yon' as in over there, I also heard older people use Katy Corner when I was a kid but can't really remember the context.
I grew up in the East Riding and never came across Yonder, but on moving to West Yorkshire it was a common word
Yorkshire is hands down the best accent in England! I swear I could listen to someone reading from the dictionary just to hear it. Cheers from North Carolina, USA. 🍻
My father, born 1927 & from the Appalachian Mountains in north Georgia, usually said "over yonder".
In Appalachia, we will shorten yonder to yon. "Whar's John at?" "Oh, he's over yon." (Said while waving a hand toward the direction John is.)
in new england you will sometimes here "yon" but you were more likely to go hither and yon than to go over yonder.
kitty-corner
My Grandfather, born in 1901, told us about life on the range in western Colorado. They often had palm sized flap-jacks for breakfast. They were more manageable when you had no tables to eat at.
How 'funny' that my families have been in the Americas since the late 1600's, early 1700's and my ancestry test still shows 90% Irish-English.
Yeah. My ancestors were mostly Colonialists between the 1600's and mid-1700's and we show higher percentages of England, Scottish, and Irish ancestry, too. I'm guessing that they had an influx of central Europeans settle there since that time with which they mixed.
In Washington state we sat kitty-corner . meaning a diagonally opposite corner. Like an intersection, or a room.
also in WA 90% people I know and me just use diagonal
@@stevenwagner983 Been in Washington my whole life and ive never heard of kitty-cornered or catty-cornered, its just "diagonal from/to."
@tristenparish2783 I've heard of kitty corner so I know it, but know no one that uses it personally
Midwest's girl, married a Brit who lived in many parts of Britain. Fast Forward to sitting up our first apartment, when I suggested putting some piece of furniture "catty cornered" watching his flummoxed expression as he properly pronouce each T asking,"caTTy cornered?"😂 😂 I laughed and laughed as I slid my back against the wall to the floor! After explaining my intent he surmised Brits say, "Diagonally, or possibly slanted"
Did he call it an apartment or a flat? From what I hear apartment is becoming more accepted in the UK, whereas it used to always be "flat."
@@Wowzersdude-k5c Flat
over yonder is still said in NE, same meaning as "up the road a piece"
I used My Heritage to do a DNA test. Surprisingly, they said I'm less than 3% English, Irish, Scottish or Welsh. My Grandfather immigrated from Scotland. It made me question my lineage, but a DNA match showed up who is a direct relative of my grandfather, so I am assured no one was stepping out and my family members are likely still my family members.
My DNA test came back as overwhelmingly English despite 3/8 great grandparents immigrating directly from German areas, 1/8 directly from Ireland, 1/4 mixed 2nd or 3rd generation Scots-Irish reprobates, and 1/4 who the hell knows? but likely the descendant of more Scots-Irish jailbirds on the run. (Grandma was knocked up at 15 yo by a fellow known only as "Shorty") So where does my 90%+ English DNA come from? (And I want to thank Shorty for my 5'4" stature).
I'm team Kitty Corner since I'm from Chicago.
6:53 What a "HOMELY" sounding voice you used to say "HOMEY". Also our family was more of a fan of "RUSTIC" or "QUAINT" for a "HOMEY" synonym.
Here I was thinking this would be a Susie Dent masterclass. Instead it’s all Shakespeare in disguise.
When I was growing up they were called pancakes in our house but being of French Canadian heritage, they were really crepes. Nowadays I make pancakes and crepes depending on my mood, but never flapjacks.
Johnny Cakes in New England
Also, French Canadian buckwheat flour pancakes are called Ployes.
@@samanthab1923Seem to recall they need cornmeal, to be called that.
except that crepes are normally quite thin... Pancakes are usually at least a 1/4 inch thickness, unlike crepes which aim for more like 1/16th.
Joke is on you... you are making not only pancakes but flapjacks and hotcakes.
As the kid of a Canadian farmer its SKIMMED milk because
After milking the milk was put in containers to let the cream rise to the top. Then the cream was SKIMMED from the milk... Also from western Canada ...its Kitty Corner....😊😉
Same in my Michigan, non farm childhood, 50 years ago
No, it isn't "skimmed milk", it's "watery swill".
@@lauralake7430I’m from Michigan, and my grandparents and great grandparents had dairy cows and I remember them saying “skimmed milk”
Indeed. I was raised on a dairy in South Texas and it's "skimmed milk". As pointed out, it's still watery swill :). The closest I've found to real Jersey cow milk today is called "Half and Half" (and you have to be careful which brand of that you buy).
@@tiffanypatton9293 yeah people saying 'skim milk' annoys me because it makes no linguistic sense. It's like if somebody said 'mow grass' instead of 'mown grass'. The thing had some process done TO it. And yeah skimmed milk is milk with most of the milk removed Xd
"Over yonder" is still used in the villages in the more remote Yorkshire Dales so isn't necessarily used for amusement. "Yon" is also used (look it up).
I'm from Missouri and I've always said yonder. A coworker told me only hillbillies say that, and I affected an accent and told him "Mah fav'rit hillbilly is ol' Willie-boy Shakespeare. 'Whut lah'-ght thru yonder windah breaks?"'
Hilarious!
Hahaha! I heard that in my head perfectly!
Back when Tony Curtis was a leading man in Hollywood, they miscast him in an historical movie. To this very day people mock him for the infamous line: "Yonda is the castle of my faddah" pronounced in Brooklynese.
@@GeraldM_inNC The Black Shield Of Falworth. You beat me to it! Ol Bernie Schwartz, er, um, Tony Curtis, could really deliver a line, right from Thoity-Thoid and Thoid Avenah.
@@markloveless1001 Eternally infamous!
My cats are currently sleeping kitty-cornered from each other.
According to his map, I'm right on the border of that, but I'm almost 50 and I've never heard "kitty-corner" in my entire life. It's catty-corner[ed]. Weird!
I' m Scottish, 49, and to me a flapjack is a small cake made from oats, dried fruit, seeds etc with lots of butter. Yes, homely can be used to describe a woman's looks here but probably not very common any more. The big question is ' are your pancakes actually crumpets or even drop scones?'😅 Yes, there's a pancake division between different parts of the UK😆
O my goodness, visiting Americans would have no idea about these distinctions!
@@karenk2409 I'm an American who lived in Scotland for about a year and a half (for university). One of the best things there were the amazing flapjacks. They were so good. Thicker, chewier, and more seeds than in an American granola bar. Probably made with golden syrup; they were very sweet. And because I come from a part of the US that doesn't use the word "flapjack," I adopted that word pretty easily. Yum. But there were definitely some words that I had never encountered before. ("Cagoule" is one that comes to mind. I'm guessing most Americans have never heard that word! I certainly hadn't).
What a fun episode!
Yorkshire Brit here. Yes yonder or even over yon for over there is used, not often but used.
And ive heard kitty-corner and cater-corner more often but also catty-corner.
Homely was the word i heard as a child from (female) adults trying to nicely say a girl or woman was plain bordering on ugly. But ive also heard the other meaning too.
Well, that explains "The Autumn of Rome."
The Fall of the Roman Empire. A bunch of guys in centurion armor, raking leaves.
I listened to Frank Sinatra just yesterday singing 'It Was a Very Good Year' which contains;
'But now the days are short
I'm in the autumn of the year'
We say yonder in Texas and Oklahoma. We went on a vacation. We were in New York. My husband asked if a certain down was down yonder to the toll booth attendant. He said, “What?!!”. We were both embarrassed and felt like laughing. Later, we were driving in DC. My husband changed lanes too closely. The young men drove around us and gave us the finger. My husband smiled and waved at them. They threw their heads back and laughed. We realized our license plate was from Oklahoma!!
Actually, "Yonder" is in the US Air Force Anthem. It starts with "Off we go, into the wild blue yonder!"
That's the REAL Air Force anthem. It's been replace with some insipid tune ... evidently the "flames from under" and "give 'em the gun" was too warlike for a ... military force. (sigh)
When I was a kid I thought that 'yonder' was a noun in that context. Later I realized it meant 'to yonder wild blue' or 'the wild blue out that way.' Dummmbbbb...
Look, over yonder, catty corner to the last falling flap jack, where we skimmed milk & played soccer in England while Willie the Shake wrote "over yonder"....
In the quote from A Midsummer Night's Dream, "skim" in "skim milk" is used as a verb, not an adjective. The full quote is, "Are not you he
That frights the maidens of the villagery,
Skim milk, and sometimes labor in the quern
And bootless make the breathless housewife churn,
And sometime make the drink to bear no barm,
Mislead night-wanderers, laughing at their harm?"
I'm afraid we Yanks can't use it as a defense for our usage.
By that context, i would have interpreted "skim" to mean "steal".
You have to skim the fat off the milk to churn it into butter!
@@s.h.6858 Yes, I think it means to steal the cream off the milk.
I just saw your comment after posting my own on this passage. Yes! You're absolutely right! :) It can be a bit tricky to catch that this is a verb phrase because the syntax is different from modern English. "Are you not he that frights... skim[s]...labor[s]...make[s]...make[s]...mislead[s]..."
@@s.h.6858 The word itself doesn't mean "steal," though what Puck is being accused of is removing the cream (the valuable stuff) from the milk. The meaning can be traced back at least to the 1400s. Here's the etymology from Etymology Online: "early 15c. skimmen, "lift the scum from by a sliding motion, clear (a liquid) from matter floating on the surface" (the agent noun skimmer, for the utensil used, is attested from late 14c.), from Old French escumer "remove scum," from escume (Modern French écume) "scum," from a Germanic source (compare Old High German scum "scum," German Schaum; see scum)."
I'm from northern Illinois, and I always heard "kitty-corner."
Another use of "yonder" is in the song "There is a Time" by the bluegrass group The Dillards:
There is a time for us to wander
When time is young and so are we
The woods are greener over yonder
The path is new, the world is free
Yonder is also in the Air Force song and in a gospel song called Goin’ Up Yonder.
There after 8:21 where it was derived from the notion of flipping the cake, the "theatre of my mind" sees an elderly gal going, _"Well, well, now doesn't that just flip the cake."_ 👵
I grew up in Atlanta, my grandparents were from a bit north of the city originally. Whenever my grandma wanted me to get something from the other room she'd always tell me to "Go in yonder and fetch the ". Over yonder still sounds normal to me. Grandma used to use the third person a lot too .... "Go in yonder and fetch grandma the ".
Don't you have the cicada's yet? There everywhere here in the far western Chicago suburbs. The first one I saw landed on my glasses. I guess it was an announcement of their arrival.
East coast U.S.A. here (Delaware). Yonder is usually associated with country talk (like Appalachian Mountains) but also the south. Catty-corner usually either country talk or older folk, but never heard kitty corner or any other variation. Everybody says Spring and Fall, Autumn usually is formal or poetic. Homely is negative, but Lord of the Rings fans, Live Action Role Players and the like definitely say otherwise! Pancakes are the norm here, flapjacks are either rural or intentional slang. No surprise to me that Shakespeare is the source of confusion, as it was to high schoolers trying to learn the plays, and me as an adult wishing to forego his works altogether whenever possible. Molasses is used in both delicious cookies and pictographic jokes.
Catty cornered not that I've used it recently but would describe how i go to the wrong cupboard
I was born an raised in Cicero, IL (an industrial "suburb" adjacent to Chicago). It was "kitty corner" there.
I had family in rural northeast Missouri. To them it was "catty corner."
Hope this help!
A fun episode, here in Canada the use of 'Kitty-corner' is quite common, at least amongst us older folk, but 'catty' or 'cater' versions are virtually extinct. And 'homely' is still occasionally used to describe a person's looks, although the inference is not so much 'ugly', more like 'plain'...
In the USA homely can be either plain or ugly. I remember reading Anne of Green Gables as a child, and she was described as homely aka plain.
more surprised to hear you say "older folk" than "kitty corner"
A'reyt Laurence. Here in Yorkshire we have a Richmond o'er yonder. I have also visited Richmond o'er yonder in Virginia.
At university I pointed out to someone doing a Shakespeare play that it was easier for Yorkshire folk to follow, if allowed to just speak dialect than fancy theatre pronunciation. Strangely, soon after a theatre company did start up to do his plays in my dialect. Did you spot Patrick Stewart talking in it on a Conan O'Brian video not long sin'.
From mid-south, I use yonder, kitty-cornered, fall, pancakes. Word history is so interesting!
The south still is mostly UK derived, which explains why those old words still exist.
I called it both Fall and Autumn, but I grew up on the corner of Summer and Autumn St and between Spring and Winter St in Laconia, New Hampshire.
Ditto. Also kitty-corner and yonder. Another NH person.
@@tamarlindsay8382 Where in NH?
I’m more English than he is too. Lived in North Carolina since the late 1900’s also. Yonder used to be very common, but not so much anymore
I've been living in Charlotte and then east of Raleigh the last ten years and I've never heard "yonder" even once.
I am a Southern American (Texas). I grew up with my great grandmother as my next door neighbor for the first 14 years of my life (and she lived another 13 years to the ripe old age of 90 after I moved). Her family was of Appalachian heritage and I recall her using "yonder" and "flapjack" very often. Heck, even I use the word "yonder" quite a bit myself. She also used words like "purse" to refer to to a man's wallet, which had long fallen out of that usage before I was born.
It's always nice to hear about the origins of words and how they survive long after being transplanted from their original lands (a very well-known and documented phenomenon).
That’s an interesting semantic development as only women would be described as having purses in Britain, not men.
Growing up in the 60s and 70s in NE US, we said both skim milk and skimmed milk. But the label read skim milk and prevailed.
I can remember when "yogurt" used to be spelled "yoghurt" on the package. I can also remember when "ketchup" was spelled "catsup."
Skimmed milk is actually better grammar. The milk has been skimmed (fat removed). However, it’s easier to say skim milk, so that’s likely why we changed it to that instead.
Yonder is a word I first heard used when I moved to Arkansas. Love it.
Catty-corner. No -ed. I live in Pennsylvania; my parents originated around the border between Kansas and Missouri and around the border between West Virginia and PA. They met when my mother was moved to the Kansas/Missouri region for 3.5 years as a teenager due to her stepfather’s work moving his job.
I picked up at the very end of your video you said "learned", where in the UK it is generally "learnt". Coming from NZ we use both, but now living in the UK and working with a US team we debated the "lessons Learned" vs "Lessons Learnt" meeting that we were planning after the project. I had never realised there was a difference till then!
And talking about milk, I have heard in cafes that they use the term "skinny" milk, just to throw another term in there....
I discovered that juice with pulp, as used in America, is juice with bits in Britain.
It's often difficult to find words with a British equivalent in SoCal because so many of ours have Spanish roots.
I gotta say I prefer 'with bits'. Pulp sounds vaguely unpleasant.
Catty-corner is something we often use in our house. Yonder is also used, and in my region, it was always instead of "over yonder" to refer to something a couple miles off. I've also heard the word homely used to describe both someone who is ugly, and a cozy spot.
I live in Pennsylvania. We always said "catty-corner" as in, "They lived in the house catty-corner to us." I always thought it had something to do with cats!
Incidentally, skim milk is _disgusting._
In Pennsylvania describes nothing, given how very, very different accents are. Eastern PA sounds entirely different than Western (the better part) PA. It's kitty-corner, by the way.
@@clvrswineAgreed but I’m not PA born & raised. Only here in Bucks Co. 30 years. NY/NJ transplant. Catty cornered for me
My son had a great observation about skim milk: it's a bucket of water over which a cow has been waved. I agree--the stuff borders on nasty.
@@clvrswine catty corner in York.
@@clvrswine I live in York and when it's used it's "katty", pronounced "kaddy".
Very interesting! My mother, who lives in East Tennessee, uses the word “yonder” more than any other person alive. And we do say, “fall” more often than “autumn”. Glad to know its origin.
I'm a 41yo from Boise. I probably use yonder once a month or so? Kitty corner, homely, yes. Flapjack is not really a thing outside writers trying too hard?
"Slow as molasses" is very common in my familial lexicon - the substance itself, however, while readily available, is mostly for gingerbread cookies and BBQ sauce, so otherwise not a common thing in my parts.
So what I'm getting is that you don't make nearly enough gingerbread cookies
@@woodfur00 correct!
Grew up in Chicago.
We used kitty-corner to describe the diagonal corners at an intersection.
Kitty-cornered here in Wisconsin. 😁
The shoe store is catty corner to the coffee shop at the intersection.
The shoe store is located diagonally across the intersection from the coffee shop.
Re "yonder" it is worthy of note that both Spanish and Portuguese (and perhaps other related languages with which i am less familiar) feature an equivalent: aquel/aquele and variants. It's useful to be able to say "there" whilst clarifying that the "there" is not where the listener is. I.e. if one says, "There's an apple there," the listener may intepret this to mean that there is an apple beside the listener, whereas if one says "There is an apple yonder" it is clear that the apple is near neither the speaker nor the listener. The aquel- terms achieve the same goal.
As an English speaker, if the apple was right next to me I'd say 'there's an apple here'. 'There' already implies it's some way away from me, 'over there' means it's quite a long way away.
@@diarmuidkuhle8181 I think you may not be seeing the distinction. Pkease re-read.
I had a friend from Yorkshire who used "yonder" all the time. He also used "while" for "" since".
IIRC from my time in linguistics, yonder was like the third-person version of first, second, and third person pronouns. Instead of I/you/he, she, or it you had this/that/yonder. So "this" was used for "this thing I've got," "that" for "that thing near you," and "yonder" for "that thing way over there nowhere near either of us."
Ponderers! What a great word! This was the first time I heard it referring to fans of the channel. Brilliant!
Funnily, the minute "Cattycornered" was up on the screen, my mind automatically corrected it to "kitty-cornered". And sure enough, I grew up in California. But my parents grew up in Texas and Georgia, but they referred to it as kitty cornered as well. Of course my grams were Irish and English, so I have really mixed up vocabulary!
Funnily enough, I'm from California, with a grandparent from Oklahoma and I've always said catty-corner lol
Skimmed milk was and is used in the Southern United States at least in Georgia. I still use the term today.
Love that half your evidence was just Shakespeare plays!
Not sure if you've ever covered it but would love to see you explaining burgularized, I watch enough American cop shows to have heard it a lot but it always confuses me how Americans have a word twice the length of burgled!
Kind of reminds me of _Fiddler on the Roof._ Every time Tevye tries to ascribe a quote to a different prophet, someone corrects him and says, "No, no--that's Moses!"
I can explain “burglarized”. We like extra syllables. Using them makes us posh and sophisticated. Sometimes, we even pronounce words with more syllables than they actually contain. (Southern USA catches the most flack over this, but as far as I can tell, it’s pretty much universal among speakers of English.) So naturally, if the word comes ready-made with the superfluous growth already in place, we are going to use it. There is a valid argument that it makes the language richer. However, this propensity to favor complex words over simple words also leads us to substitute a longer, incorrect or awkward word in place of a correct, shorter word. So, “utilize” takes the place of “use”; “myself” is sometimes selected where “me” or “I” would be grammatically correct; and even the word “simple” is tossed aside in favor of the egregiously wrong and insulting “simplistic”. (To be clear, if you mean that something is not complicated, then “simplistic” is egregiously wrong. If you mean to say that an idea, theory, etc. ignores significant factors of the subject in hand, due to the ignorance or duplicity of the person promoting it, then “simplistic” is the right choice.)
Oh, I think there is only one “U” in burglarize. As my own fascination with phantom syllables often leads my spelling astray, I could very well be wrong.
I can explain burgle/burglarize. Even when I was young, I knew the word "burglar," but I never heard a verb corresponding to this noun. The correct way to form a verb from it would be "burglarize." The word "burgle" is what's called a back-formation. That is, someone wrongly interpreted the R at the end of "burglar" to be the suffix "-er," meaning "someone who does something." An example would be "baker," which is someone who bakes, for instance. Another back-formation would be "edit" from "editor." Again, someone wrongly interpreted "editor" as having the same suffix, and thus created the word "edit," which had not previously existed.
@@aLadNamedNathan I will grant that your explanation is better, but mine is more simplisticer.
@@Sm2Lb LOL.
"Look over yonder, what do you see?" Crystal Blue Persuasion - Tommy James & The Shondells.
"There's only one thing I hate more than lying. Skim milk, which is water that's lying about being milk." - Ron Swanson
😆 Exactly!
Shakespeare spoke in what's today west country, not 'northern'.
Railroad was the original British name, but whilst Britain later changed to railway, the Americans, mostly, stayed the same.
Hello! Lawrence!
Flap-jacks in Australia are a thin pancake more like a crepe. They're made without pain flour, and not self-raising flour or a yeast as they do not rise..
“Reckon” is heard out of the mouths of Brits fairly often whereas in the US it is very archaic and heard mostly in old movies or in literature.
It ain't archaic if you're from the South.
I reckon that's probably right.
Henry Cho comes to mind
@@Hillbilly001 or from Appalachia, where the sentence " I reckon I'll go over yonder directly." is common. (we tend to make "directly" a 2 syllable word btw)
Not in my part of America it aint. I reckon. Take a trip into appalachia or pretty much anywhere in the southeast. You'll hear it.
In Southeast Florida, I still use and hear kitty corner but rarely katty corner. Yonder is not used a whole lot, but have heard it in Northern Florida. Cattywampus is used with more regularity that katty corner, but I’ve come to find that it has various meanings. I learned the word to mean messy or disorganized. A room can be cattywampus, but so can projects or thoughts. I was surprised to find it also can mean on the diagonal, but can understand the connection to its meaning off kilter. I think the USA needs an official CATTYWUMPUS DAY! 😉
I was born and lived for 20 years on the East Coast, and the variant used was "kitty-corner." Then I moved to the West Coast, where the term is..."kitty corner." "Catty-corner" might be purely Midwest, maybe? And "cater-corner" is a variation I think I've read in novels, but have never heard.
We use "catty-corner" all the time in my area of Pennsylvania, so I don't think it is specifically Midwest. However I live in a weird area with particular dialect, so that might have something to do with it.
@@daffers2345Pa born and catty corner is what I use. Berks, Lancaster counties.
It's kitty corner in Michigan... but I have heard cater corner too.
It was "kitty-corner" in Michigan, only southerners would say "catty-corner."
@@garryferrington811 No:
I grew up in Brooklyn, and the entire northeast said “catty corner.”
I learned the word “homely” from reading Charles Spurgeon, so I learned the UK edition of the word. I liked the word and have been saying it and I confuse a lot of people lol. Also in WA, we say kitty corner
I'm impressed at your erudition. My pastor, David Wilkerson, was a huge fan of Spurgeon.
In Appalachia, fall and spring or the year live on but is dying.
Another one (unless you said it and I missed it) is faucet, which fell out of use in Britain in favor of "tap" but continued being used in the US
Brit here, who has lived in California this last 30 years. The first time my wife said “kitty corner” I was totally stumped. Others American idioms that come to mind: “the whole 9 yards”, “shellacked” (meaning beaten), “they are an item”, .. I’m sure I could think of another 50 with time. My request to you: explain why Americans don’t/can’t pronounce the ell in solder. And have you covered the use of singular/plural for groups of people? (Brits would say “the government have done …” whereas Americans would say “has”.).
Ever heard of a silent letter? Or are you one of those goofs that pronounces the "L" in salmon?
@@SkunkApe407 everyone in the UK pronounces the ell in solder. I just want to know why there’s a difference.
@@mariowolczko1396 maybe for the same reason you pronounce an "L" in aluminum, that isn't there?
@@SkunkApe407Who says "auminum"?
I’m sure you’re right that those are originally Americanisms but ‘an item’ doesn’t strike me as a remotely foreign phrase, I’d say it’s been fully nativised. ‘The whole 9 yards’ is still a little bit American though and ‘shellacked’ is extremely American to the point where you simply wouldn’t hear native Britons say it, or perhaps even understand it (though I’ve personally encountered it before).
Where I lived in elementary school, (in east central Illinois), we said “catty wampus” for kitty corner. Usually referring to outdoor locations like street corners.
We say "kitty-corner", NOT cornered.
“Kitty corner from”, never cornered
It doesn't come up much in my part of California but when it does, it's "kitty corner from" as well.
I from just outside of NYC, and we say either catty-cornered or catty-corner. It depends on the context.
Cattywanpus
Same here. Have lived in many states and heard both kitty and catty but never with -ed anywhere. I wonder if Lawrence is hearing a hyper-local variant.
Go to the pigeon forge TN.Wild Bear Inn they have the best Flap Jack's around . If you stay the night they are free for breakfast and Unlimited each cake is the size of a dinner plate!!!!😮😂
Kitty-Corner: Diagonally opposite corner
I use all of those words. My parents were from SW PA. Catty Corner was a well-used phrase. Somewhere along the line, we used Catty Corner as a slang term for Catechism class (aka CCD). I would also note that Carol King probably helped "yonder" stay current by her song "Way Over Yonder."
From the song "The U.S. Air Force":
"Off we go into the wild blue yonder,
"Climbing high into the sun;
"Here they come zooming to meet our thunder,
"At ‘em now, Give 'em the gun! give em the gun!"
My paternal grandfather was a Russian immigrant. Once when he was trying to remember the word for pancakes he said, "John... James.... Jim... Jack... Jackflaps! Flapjacks!"
Skim milk is now sold as non-fat milk in American supermarkets.
Ironically for your grandpa at least, the term "johnnycakes" was also used for pancakes back in the day :)
Skim milk is still used where I'm at. While low-fat milk is either 1% or 2% milk and whole milk is the real deal. At least in the supermarkets here. Cheers from Tennessee
@@daffers2345 Where I'm from a johnnycake is one made from cornmeal. Just saying. Cheers from Tennessee
You might go into the wild blue yonder, but you'll never get there. Whenever you think you have, the place where you are is what you call "here."
Johny cake is corn bread and I'm from the upper midwest.