Growing up in Massachusetts, David always used the word bubbler to denote a drinking fountain. So he was flabbergasted during a trip to Southern Indiana when no one had any idea what he meant when he asked where he could find a bubbler. He might not have had that problem had he been wearing a T-shirt from the Wisconsin Historical Society. Wisconsin is one of the few places in the world besides parts of Massachusetts and Rhode Island where people call drinking fountains bubblers. And Australia! This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Bubbler for Water Fountain Isn’t Heard Just Everywhere”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hi, this is David from Plainfield, Indiana, and I have a regional dialect word for you from where I grew up in Massachusetts.
Okay.
And a great story to go with it.
Yes, please.
I was looking at colleges, and I flew in to do a little tour of the college in Evansville, Indiana, way down in the southwest corner.
Mm—
And the first morning there, we went to breakfast, and then we go start on our tour, and there’s people from all around the nation. There’s people from Texas, Oklahoma, a few from Indiana. I think we even had one from, like, Washington State or something.
And in the middle of the tour, we enter another building, and I’m thirsty. So I said, hey, where’s the bubbler? And I get, like, 11 looks of, huh? I’m like, you know, the bubbler. And they’re like, what’s a bubbler? I said, it’s in front of the bathroom. You get a drink from it. The water fountain. And they’re like, oh, yeah, it’s over there. Why didn’t you say that? And I was like, I did say that.
And a few years later at college, I got one of those things came up and said, take this 10-question survey, and we can tell you where you’re from. And I was like, yeah, right. So I take it, and it comes back and says, you’re from this little section of Massachusetts, this small section of southern Maine, or this small section of Minnesota, because you use the word bubbler. And I went, really? Like, nobody knows what this is? I mean, is it really that regional a word that it’s like these three or four small places in the U.S. are the only ones that really use it?
Well, that’s a good question. They’re different places. I mean, I’m sure that that dialect quiz narrowed down your location because of some other things that you said besides bubbler. Because where you hear bubbler, actually, for water fountain is southern and eastern Wisconsin. All our Wisconsin listeners are going, yeah, yeah, yeah.
And in Massachusetts, what part of Massachusetts are you from?
Central. I’m from Shoesbury, Massachusetts. It’s the first town east of Worcester.
All right, Worcester. And like everybody back in Massachusetts used it that I knew of. Everybody in Worcester and Massachusetts and Shoesbury would know if you said, yeah, where’s the bubbler? They’d go, yeah, over there.
Right.
Right. So Wisconsin, parts of Wisconsin, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island do refer to a water fountain as a bubbler. And I’ll tell you, David, that when we were, Grant and I did a couple of appearances in Wisconsin recently, a few months ago. And we appeared in Milwaukee and Madison. And when we were in Madison, folks gave us some T-shirts from the Wisconsin Historical Society. On the front it says, it’s a bubbler. And it’s got a picture of a water fountain. And on the back, it’s got a picture of a fountain. And it says, fountains are where you throw coins.
Oh, my God, yes. I need to get one of those. Where is that from?
Somewhere in Wisconsin?
Yeah, yeah. You can get them from the Wisconsin Historical Society. So people have strong feelings about that.
I need to write that down. That’s priceless. I need that shirt.
Yeah, you do. But you guys love regional dialect words, and I thought I would call in with that one.
That’s a great example, Dave. That’s a classic.
Yay. So it is like a really small group of us that actually know what it means.
Right. I’ll have to teach it to my kids and whatnot.
Buy them all T-shirts, yeah.
Yeah, you can go to wisconsinhistory.org and find them.
Wisconsinhistory.org.
Okay, thank you so much for that.
Thank you for your call.
Thanks for calling.
Bye.
Yep, bye.
Take care.
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