24 October 2005

Luncheon

I am at work taking my luncheon break. Not a term I use but the whole word from which lunch is derived. Many folks up here where I live call it dinner. Supper is for the evening meal. I like colloquialisms. I think we need them. If we all get washed out like the evening news newscasters we lose sight of the richness of being alive.

Take for instance soda; pop; tonic; softdrink, coke, sodapop, etc. I have lived in places where the locals said pop and where the locals said soda. I have become a soda sayer, myself. The "when in Rome" phenomena, I suppose.

I grew up saying pop. I like it. It describes the sound plucking the cap off the bottle made. POP!

I had a friend in Boston who called pop, tonic. All of it. Not just tonic water.

Here, the people around me call it soda. And I've never heard anyone around me actually order soda water. Not once.


Check this out for more on the POP vs. SODA debate
http://www.popvssoda.com/

1 comment:

Lee Hartsfeld said...

Here in central Ohio, you hear both. ("Give me both, please."--Person ordering pop/soda.) I say pop, because that was the Toledo term. In the Navy, "soda" was the default term. But I recall a fellow sailor from Boston who called pop/soda/tonic "seltzer." Which is better than "bromo," I guess.

My favorite Spike Jones moment is in "Laura," when the singer sings: "And you see Laura on the train that is passing through." ("Bromo Seltzer, Bromo Seltzer, Bromo Seltzer....")

Wow. Word verification is "naaugd." Sounds like someone falling off a cliff.

Lee