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Vijay wrote:

KathTheDragon wrote:Boringly, "not show up".

I would probably use the same. I would also accept "flake out," "ghost," and "stand me up."

To me, "stand someone up" specifically refers to a date.

"Not show up" for me, too.

Are you referring to ice cream that is two flavors? If so, here on the west coast we do not have a name for that.

Zaarin wrote:

Vijay wrote:

KathTheDragon wrote:Boringly, "not show up".

I would probably use the same. I would also accept "flake out," "ghost," and "stand me up."

To me, "stand someone up" specifically refers to a date.

"Not show up" for me, too.

Same for me as well.

Zaarin wrote:

Vijay wrote:

KathTheDragon wrote:Boringly, "not show up".

I would probably use the same. I would also accept "flake out," "ghost," and "stand me up."

To me, "stand someone up" specifically refers to a date.

To me, it's a date in the more generic sense, of a scheduled event that someone bailed on at the last minute: "Cindy and I were going to meet up to see Star Wars this morning, but she stood me up so that she could spend more time with her new boyfriend." It also has a bit of a malicious connotation, in that it ascribes more malicious intention on the person who didn't show up.

"Didn't show up" is pretty neutral, as though they didn't have a choice, while "stood me up" implies "they intentionally led me on about doing this and then cut out at the last minute".

Being stood up at an altar for a wedding is "being jilted".

"Ghosted" isn't in my dialect. Someone "flaking" is, however, and it has the connotation of being a character trait of being unable to follow through on commitments. Someone who flakes isn't malicious, they're just not reliable.

To say something like "she bailed on the plans" would also work for it. But yeah, back to the original question, if it was a totally neutral thing with no other context, "She didn't show up" would be how I'd say it. Or, I might shorten it to "she didn't show", probably with a shrug. Though in today's world of texting, it's pretty rare that I actually have a friend who simply doesn't show without adding further context.

I would never say "she bailed on the plans." I would say "she bailed on me."

I would say "she bailed on my plans", even though "she bailed on the plans" does not sound exactly right to me.

Yeah, now that you mention it, using the possessive sounds better, though I would pluralize it: "She bailed on our plan". Both "plan" and "plans" sound fine to me, though, and I can't figure out if I have any different connotation in them.

"She bailed on me" to me implies that she and I started doing our plans: for example, we met up and had dinner together, but then contra our original plans, she left before going to a movie. When kvetching to my spouse, I'd possibly say something like "Dinner was nice, but she bailed on me before the movie."

The act or result of drivers slowing down to view the scene of an accident.

In Chicago, this is called a "gapers' block". In other parts of the country, it's "rubbernecking" and apparently the drivers themselves are referred to as "looky-loos" in some localities.

I'm pretty boring about this, too. For me, it's just something like "looking at the scene of an accident."

Yeah, no special word for this either for me.

I've heard "curiosity delay" on radio traffic reports and I think that's it's only meaning so I would be understood if I called it that.

I don't have any special word for this either.

I would understand "rubbernecking" to be this behavior, and I've heard people around here use the word, but I can't offhand think of when I used it to describe what was going on. More often than not, when my spouse wonders what took so long to get home, I just say "there was an accident".

linguoboy wrote:New question: You make plans with someone and then they don't show up. What verb(s) would you use to describe what they did?

flaking out, being a little bitch, etc

Not a word I've ever used, but I've heard my dad use the term "rubbernecking."

linguoboy wrote:New question: You make plans with someone and then they don't show up. What verb(s) would you use to describe what they did?

"They no-showed." Alternately, they flaked out or skipped out.

Upon reading everyone else's responses, "X bailed on me"/"X bailed on the party" would also be normal for me, although it wasn't the first thing into my mind.

linguoboy wrote:The act or result of drivers slowing down to view the scene of an accident.

In Chicago, this is called a "gapers' block". In other parts of the country, it's "rubbernecking" and apparently the drivers themselves are referred to as "looky-loos" in some localities.

Rubbernecking for me as well. I have no special term for the drivers, the accident itself, or the resulting traffic jam, however.

You are standing in line/in a queue at a service counter. Somebody who was not standing in line/in the queue when you arrived shows up and takes a place in line/in the queue ahead of you. They have just ____?

Cut in line or cut in front of me.

I remember when I was in kindergarten, in the middle of the year, I had a new classmate who was monolingual in Russian, which motivated me to try to learn Russian at the time (I was even allowed to spend some time doing this on my own in school, at the end of the day IIRC). One day, we were lining up, and she cut in front of someone, so I felt I needed to explain to her the concept of how Americans don't like it when you're expected to be in one position in a line and you assume a different one instead, but when I tried to get her to go back to where she was earlier in line, she yelled "[nʲeːː]!!!" and I was like "okay, whatever."

linguoboy wrote:You are standing in line/in a queue at a service counter. Somebody who was not standing in line/in the queue when you arrived shows up and takes a place in line/in the queue ahead of you. They have just ____?

"butt in line" or "cut in line". The former is more colloquial than the latter (I remember it more from my school days than from adult usage)

Axiem wrote:

linguoboy wrote:You are standing in line/in a queue at a service counter. Somebody who was not standing in line/in the queue when you arrived shows up and takes a place in line/in the queue ahead of you. They have just ____?

"butt in line" or "cut in line". The former is more colloquial than the latter (I remember it more from my school days than from adult usage)

Same. What prompted this was recalling shouts of "NO BUTTING!" from when I was in grammar school. I'm wondering just how regional that is.

I mean, "butt in line" doesn't sound that different from "cut in line," so it's not like the meaning is unclear, and I might have come across it before. I don't remember ever hearing "no butting" before, at least not to mean 'no cutting in line'.

Btw the anecdote that I mentioned in my last post took place (in my last year) in St. Louis.

"Cut in line" or "cut in front of me" for me. I would understand what "butt in line" meant, but wouldn't say it myself, and might be a little surprised to hear it. The context I think of when I hear "butt in" would be someone butting into a conversation or event--inserting themselves into it, even though they weren't invited.

In school, we said "push in". I don't think I have a natural phrase to say anymore.

"Push in" actually makes more intuitive sense than any of these other terms to me.

alynnidalar wrote:"Cut in line" or "cut in front of me" for me.

Interesting, I wouldn't have expected to have the exact same two phrases as someone from the other end of the country!

This question is specifically for speakers of those English varieties in which the primary meaning of "torch" is "electric torch" (i.e. NAE "flashlight"):