Discussion Forum (Archived)
Guest
When you're standing in line and someone gets in line ahead of you, what do you call it? I grew up in western PA and most often heard it referred to as cutting in line. Less frequently, I heard jumping the line.
When we moved to WI, I learned the term here is budging. I heard it all the time when I worked at the local elementary school. "He budged!" "No budging!"
The first couple of times I heard it, I honestly had no idea what was meant. Is this another case of Wisconsin Weirdness or do people budge elsewhere?
"Cutting" is the most common term where I grew up (Southern California, Seattle area, then southwestern New Mexico). Somewhere in there I also encountered separate names for someone already in line letting someone else cut in front of them ("ups") or behind them ("backs"); in some situations neither was allowed, while in others you might be allowed to give someone "backs" but not "ups".
I just had an epiphany on this subject! A Usenet group I read on the subject of English usage is discussing queuing behavior, even where there's no physical queue (people apparently just know who's ahead of them and when it's their turn to go next), and I recalled a complaint in a Monty Python routine about rude people "barging at the queues".
Would it be completely out of line to guess that "budging" started as some Wisconsonian's mishearing of the word "barging" as pronounced by a British person?
Martha Barnette
Grant Barrett
Grant Barrett
1 Guest(s)