What do you call this?

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Gulliver
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Re: What do you call this?

Post by Gulliver »

finlay wrote:you call that "it"? it's called tig in the uk and tag in america.
It's called tig in some parts of the UK; at my primary school, it was called it. Stuck in the mud was called sticky toffee (which is the one where someone has to crawl through your legs to release you, inevitably headbutting you in the crotch).

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Re: What do you call this?

Post by Salmoneus »

Gulliver wrote:
finlay wrote:you call that "it"? it's called tig in the uk and tag in america.
It's called tig in some parts of the UK; at my primary school, it was called it. Stuck in the mud was called sticky toffee (which is the one where someone has to crawl through your legs to release you, inevitably headbutting you in the crotch).
Indeed - I've never heard of "tig". I think I've heard stuck in the mud called 'sticky toffee', though (I think that may have been one of those weird words you discover other people use when you get to secondary school). Guess should be no surprise, given that you and I grew up in the same general area. I also agree entirely with your bun/bap/roll distinction, although I'd make more general the rule about bap texture - baps lack crust and are soft and light, as well as being flat.


Finlay: I think twenty-twenty was the only one I didn't explain, because I thought it was ubiquitous, like hide-and-seek. Twenty-twenty is a varient of hide-and-seek, but those being sought can render themselves safe and uncatchable by reaching a particular area, or more commonly by touching a particular object (eg a chair). The catcher therefore hangs around the target object, and the seekers attempt to run in when the catcher isn't looking. It's considered unsporting for the catcher to just stand next to the thing - since if they do, nobody runs in and neither side wins and the game never ends. Instead, the catcher goes some distance from the target, in the pretence of searching the area for people hiding, while luring people to make a run for the target. The running bit involves having to cover the distance before the catcher can shout 'twenty-twenty, I see ____', and often involves amusingly crashing and knocking over the target and/or each other.
In some versions, particularly in larger areas and with more people, the catcher recruits the ones they catch to serve as more catchers, so that some can guard the target while others fan out looking for the ones who haven't been caught yet.

In case the others weren't clear: when I say 'with homes', i mean that the game allows safe areas in which you can't make people it. Some versions also allow some sort of 'no returns' formula to stop two people just continually itting each other at close range.
Bulldog is played on a large rectangle, with homes at either end (we usually used an area marked out for football, where the homes were behind the goallines and spectators could stand behind the touchlines). Everyone is in one home, with It, now called Bulldog, in the middle. Everyone runs en masse to the other home, and bulldog tried to grab and hold someone as they pass (unlike normal it, you can't just touch them, you have to actually stop them, and ideally tackle them to the ground - I guess that's the reason for the name?). If someone is caught, they become an additional bulldog, and so on. You can run between homes by yourself if you like, but this is reckless - it's safer for everyone to do it in one go. This is ideally played by as many people as possible at one go. Often the bulldogs start out as being the older children - in fact sometimes at secondary school at the end of the year the younger teachers would join in as bulldogs.
We played bulldog at both primary and secondary school, usually in bouts - people would start playing it, more people would play it, until it reached a level of chaos and violence where the authorities had to step in and ban it for a while.

Hotbot, which I also didn't explain, has nothing to do with it-games at all. People gather alongside a wall, with one or more tennis balls. People throw the ball(s) at the wall, and other people have to catch them. If you throw the ball and someone catches it without it having hit the ground - or if it has hit the ground but they catch it with one hand - you earn a forfeit. Likewise, if you try to catch the ball and drop it, or if it just hits you, you earn a forfeit. The forfeit is having to run across the face of the wall while everybody throws tennis balls at you as hard as they can. If you get hit by a tennis ball, you then have another forfeit - this time you have to stand in front of the wall, facing the wall, while everybody else throws tennis balls at you as hard as they can.
Teachers didn't like that one, either, for some reason. It also frequently resulting in inter-age aggravation, since my school was made up of narrow areas between buildings, which inevitably were constantly used as hotbot arenas, so that even innocent people trying to walk anywhere would find themselves accidentally pelted with stray tennis balls - which, when the innocent victim was bigger and older than the players, would often result in confrontation...
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Re: What do you call this?

Post by Nortaneous »

linguoboy wrote:
Travis B. wrote:Conversely, the only kind of bun which is sweet here is a cinnamon bun.
Or a honey bun, which is essentially a cinnamon bun without the cinnamon.
Wait, what? Honey buns are flat and oval-shaped and glazed to high hell and you buy them in packs of six or eight at the store; cinnamon buns are cylinder-shaped, not flat, and if they're glazed, it's white stuff poured on top, not the sort you'd see on a glazed donut.
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Re: What do you call this?

Post by linguoboy »

Nortaneous wrote:
linguoboy wrote:
Travis B. wrote:Conversely, the only kind of bun which is sweet here is a cinnamon bun.
Or a honey bun, which is essentially a cinnamon bun without the cinnamon.
Wait, what? Honey buns are flat and oval-shaped and glazed to high hell and you buy them in packs of six or eight at the store; cinnamon buns are cylinder-shaped, not flat, and if they're glazed, it's white stuff poured on top, not the sort you'd see on a glazed donut.
It varies. Here's what "cinnamon rolls" look like when you get them from Dunkin Donuts:

Image

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Re: What do you call this?

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Drydic Guy wrote:
finlay wrote:you call that "it"? it's called tig in the uk and tag in america.
At least in america, the game is Tag and the designated outcast person is indeed called it.
right, yeah, but you don't call the game "it"... fucking london...

i don't know the name twenty-twenty, although i think i've played it. i can't remember what we called it.

i've also played some reversal variations – there was one where "it" has to run away from everyone else, and whoever touches them becomes it themselves. and there's a version of hide and seek called sardines where one person hides, and everyone else tries to find them, but when they do, they have to hide with them (it's called sardines because you end up squeezing into a tight space together), until only one person is left seeking. best with about 6-8 kids.

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Re: What do you call this?

Post by Gulliver »

finlay wrote:right, yeah, but you don't call the game "it"... fucking london...
Fucking Souf East England, please - don't lump me in with that city.
finlay wrote:and there's a version of hide and seek called sardines where one person hides, and everyone else tries to find them, but when they do, they have to hide with them (it's called sardines because you end up squeezing into a tight space together), until only one person is left seeking. best with about 6-8 kids.
Hah! I played that. I haven't thought about that in donkey's years.

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Re: What do you call this?

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The Abominable Englishman wrote:in donkey's years
Speaking of "what do you call this"...
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Re: What do you call this?

Post by linguoboy »

Hallow XIII wrote:
The Abominable Englishman wrote:in donkey's years
Speaking of "what do you call this"...
"in a coon's age"
"in forever"

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Re: What do you call this?

Post by KathTheDragon »

finlay wrote:
Drydic Guy wrote:
finlay wrote:you call that "it"? it's called tig in the uk and tag in america.
At least in america, the game is Tag and the designated outcast person is indeed called it.
right, yeah, but you don't call the game "it"... fucking london...

i don't know the name twenty-twenty, although i think i've played it. i can't remember what we called it.

i've also played some reversal variations – there was one where "it" has to run away from everyone else, and whoever touches them becomes it themselves. and there's a version of hide and seek called sardines where one person hides, and everyone else tries to find them, but when they do, they have to hide with them (it's called sardines because you end up squeezing into a tight space together), until only one person is left seeking. best with about 6-8 kids.
Of course the game's called 'it'. It's only ever been 'it', pardon the pun.

I've always called it twenty-twenty-it.

I love Sardines. I actually won that game, cos no-one could find me, so they started another game. To be fair on them, it was dark, I was wearing a green jumper, and I was hiding in a bush.

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Re: What do you call this?

Post by Drydic »

Does it seriously not strike you as a pretty bad idea to refer to something as it when speaking to people who do not in fact call the game that? Even something like "the game It" would be vastly less dumbly confusing.

I had to reread Sal's initial post 4 or 5 times before I had a clue what the hell he was talking about.
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Re: What do you call this?

Post by clawgrip »

Seems odd to call the game "it". It's like calling baseball "batter" or boxing "boxer". Clearly either "tig" or "tag" is a corruption of the other, but I don't know which.

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Re: What do you call this?

Post by Salmoneus »

Drydic Guy wrote:Does it seriously not strike you as a pretty bad idea to refer to something as it when speaking to people who do not in fact call the game that? Even something like "the game It" would be vastly less dumbly confusing.

I had to reread Sal's initial post 4 or 5 times before I had a clue what the hell he was talking about.
...? Does it not strike you as a bad idea to refer to something as tag when speaking to people who do not, in fact, call the game that?

True, I guess you could if you really wanted misunderstand and confuse the name of the game with the pronoun... but then I intentionally spelled the name with a capital letter to prevent that, seeing as how the pronoun doesn't have a capital letter normally.
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Re: What do you call this?

Post by Dewrad »

Gulliver wrote:
finlay wrote:right, yeah, but you don't call the game "it"... fucking london...
Fucking Souf East England, please - don't lump me in with that city.
I dunno. Just "England from the Midlands south". If anyone's weird for calling it "tig", it's the fucking jocks.
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Re: What do you call this?

Post by linguoboy »

So do you have a name IYD for this handy little contraption?

Image

[This is a compact form of percolator for brewing espresso which sits directly on the burner of a stove.]

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Re: What do you call this?

Post by Salmoneus »

"Newfangled"?
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Re: What do you call this?

Post by linguoboy »

Salmoneus wrote:"Newfangled"?
All along I've suspected you of being an Edwardian time traveler, and this only serves as further confirmation.

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Re: What do you call this?

Post by Gulliver »

linguoboy wrote:So do you have a name IYD for this handy little contraption?

Image

[This is a compact form of percolator for brewing espresso which sits directly on the burner of a stove.]
I think I should call it a mocha moka, but I think I would actually call it a little stovetop espresso maker.

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Re: What do you call this?

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linguoboy wrote:So do you have a name IYD for this handy little contraption?
That would have to be a "nut kettle" if I ever had to come up quickly with an English term for it. It has the vague resemblance of an octagonal nut and that's a direct translation of what I'm already calling it.

It's a marvellous piece of engineering, I have to say. I'd own one if I'd drink coffee regularly.

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Re: What do you call this?

Post by Salmoneus »

linguoboy wrote:
Salmoneus wrote:"Newfangled"?
All along I've suspected you of being an Edwardian time traveler, and this only serves as further confirmation.
Other words that do not appear in my dialect/experience (since this is the 'what do you call this' thread: percolator, burner, and stove. The first is a word, but I never hear it and don't know what it means exactly other than 'something involved in coffee-making' and 'thing that fish can be put in in American TV shows'. The last is a word for 'thing that Edwardian time travellers might have', and 'thing that women in 1950s america laboured all day in front of'.

[Looking it up, apparently a 'percolator' was a coffee-making device used in households in America between the late 1930s and the early 1970s. They weren't able to make espresso, as they couldn't reach the necessary pressures, but they could make strong coffee.]

[Everyone I know who drinks coffee just uses a cafetière, although cafés and some workplaces may have 'espresso machines', or 'coffee machines' which I guess are for making American Coffee].

[[And now the word 'coffee' is starting to be looking all ridiculous...]]
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Re: What do you call this?

Post by linguoboy »

Salmoneus wrote:Other words that do not appear in my dialect/experience (since this is the 'what do you call this' thread: percolator, burner, and stove.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but if you had a little moka pot, you'd be putting in on a ring of the Aga, n'est pas?

(To those of us in Yankeeland, of course, this sounds like the name of a prop in a fantasy quest.)

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Re: What do you call this?

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linguoboy wrote:
Salmoneus wrote:Other words that do not appear in my dialect/experience (since this is the 'what do you call this' thread: percolator, burner, and stove.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but if you had a little moka pot, you'd be putting in on a ring of the Aga, n'est pas?

(To those of us in Yankeeland, of course, this sounds like the name of a prop in a fantasy quest.)
No, I'd be putting it on a ring of the oven (not strictly correct, but something I might say), or of the cooker, or on the hob, or on a ring of the hob (which is even more fantastical...), or on a hob of the oven/cooker (probably not 'correct' either, since I think the hob 'should' be all the rings together, but I mostly use 'hob' as synonymous with the individual rings as well as being the collective term for them).

My family COULD be the sort of people to have an AGA (or equivalent), but we're neither rural enough nor high-income enough to be core AGA demographic, and my mother's never liked them anyway. A few people I know come from families with agas (and any aga-like contraption is called an aga, even if it's not made by AGA - and do note that AGA are second-cousins to the LORD, typographically speaking, as are all their AGAs). Myself, I've never been able to afford one even I wanted one.
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Re: What do you call this?

Post by Dewrad »

Salmoneus wrote:[Looking it up, apparently a 'percolator' was a coffee-making device used in households in America between the late 1930s and the early 1970s. They weren't able to make espresso, as they couldn't reach the necessary pressures, but they could make strong coffee.]
Are percolators still common in the US? I've always kind of fancied getting one, but you never see them here in the UK.

(Also, for me the appropriate words are "range/stove" and "fire", but I think that's possibly a chef thing.)
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Re: What do you call this?

Post by Nortaneous »

linguoboy wrote:So do you have a name IYD for this handy little contraption?

Image

[This is a compact form of percolator for brewing espresso which sits directly on the burner of a stove.]
Moka pot.
Salmoneus wrote:[Everyone I know who drinks coffee just uses a cafetière, although cafés and some workplaces may have 'espresso machines', or 'coffee machines' which I guess are for making American Coffee].
We call those French presses and they are annoying and, as I have learned, precisely the most suboptimal thing to use to make coffee in a college dorm, since they are all made out of glass and your roommate will step on them and break them, and when you get a new one *you* will step on it and break it

I eventually gave up and just got a strainer and some coffee filters, put the filter in the strainer, poured the water through the filter, then emptied the mug of coffee into another mug to pour it through again, repeating until the coffee wasn't hot enough anymore to extract anything.

Also, they're coffee makers, not coffee machines, and they make drip coffee. I've never heard of American coffee but there is such a thing as an Americano, and that is watered-down espresso. No, really. They have them in Germany too so I guess everyone else thinks drip coffee sucks? (it does)
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Re: What do you call this?

Post by ---- »

The way I understand it, the oven refers to the whole shebang but I'd never say 'put it on the oven', you always put things 'on' a stove. However, you never put things 'in' a stove, either. Things go 'in' an oven.

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Re: What do you call this?

Post by 2+3 clusivity »

Where I am. . . Moka Pot: espresso maker; as Xerox: copy machine. So, I'd call it either, but probably a Moka Pot.
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