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Regarding speculation that "biffy" originated from the initials of the company "BFI," or Browning-Ferris Industries:
Not likely. According to "A Brief History of Solid Waste Management in the US, 1950-2000," BFI didn't exist before 1969.
(You find all sorts of interesting tidbits on the 'net.)
Wow, we have a lot in common! My dad also had an Aunt Nancy. I agree, sounds good. The game is Punch Buggy in my background too, with a twist: you had to say the color of the Bug you saw, and there was often a "no punchbacks" to preclude retaliation. So "punchbuggyblacknopunchbacks!" without taking a breath is how it would sound.
Also I only knew the strip version of padiddle. You'd only play with a mixed gender group in the car. Whoever called padiddle caused everyone of the opposite gender removed an item. Racy!
Linda said:
On the topic of padiddles, the name of that other game isn't Slug Bug, it's Punch Buggy, at least in my car. Now, for a reverse padiddle, I've taken to using padassle, but not in front of my mother.
Oh. and another thing while I'm here…
My father had and Aunt Nancy who was from the mid-west. She married a California man and they ended up in Connecticut. She was very particular that her title sounded like the insect, not that strange local pronunciation the other folks nearby seemed to prefer. Besides, Ant Nancy has a much better rhyme to it.
I grew up in Philadelphia. I remember playing the "pidoodle" (although some said padiddle) game in the car. We also had a corresponding term for a burnt out taillight -- "dinklepink." As I recall, the rules for the dinklepink would vary depending upon local agreement. Sometimes it even counted the same -- although it must always be declared with the proper term, or the claim would be null and void.
Growing up in Philadelphia, I never encountered a Bismarck until I went to school in New Hampshire. There, a Bismarck was not really a jelly doughnut, but an entirely new pastry. It was more like a cross between a jelly doughnut and an eclair. It was a long thin pastry, cut lengthwise and filled with pastry creme (never custard) and layered with jelly. As I recall, a sprinkling of powdered sugar was always on top. It was delightful, and worthy of an elevated name.
I grew up in Grand Island, NE, and we always played "Duck, Duck, Gray Duck." When I moved to North Carolina, my young daughters came home from school and talked about playing "Duck, Duck, Goose." I was really puzzled and thought they were pulling my leg. I guess Duck, Duck Gray Duck reaches beyond Minnesota!
I would have played this game in the late 50's or early 60's. My daughters played in the 80's.
Also, those of us native to Nebraska pronounce "Aunt" as "ant".
I'm a new listener to your podcast. I love it!
My father had and Aunt Nancy who was from the mid-west. She married a California man and they ended up in Connecticut. She was very particular that her title sounded like the insect, not that strange local pronunciation the other folks nearby seemed to prefer. Besides, Ant Nancy has a much better rhyme to it.
In my experience, awnt is the pronunciation in most of Britain and also, oddly, in the Maritime provinces of Canada (perhaps not everywhere but certainly in New Brunswick that is how I heard it) but not anywhere else in Canada that I know of.
I think it is not unusual for there to be different pronunciations in Britain and in North America even where the spelling is the same (including, for instance, putting the stress on different syllables as in the word 'CONtroversy' vs 'conTROVersy').
Ian said:
Wow, we have a lot in common! My dad also had an Aunt Nancy. I agree, sounds good. The game is Punch Buggy in my background too, with a twist: you had to say the color of the Bug you saw, and there was often a “no punchbacks” to preclude retaliation. So “punchbuggyblacknopunchbacks!” without taking a breath is how it would sound.
Okay, so I have an Aunt Nancy and I am with you on the rhyme. I hail from Maryland—in the PA/DE corner (closer to Wilmington and Philadelphia than anywhere in MD really)—and it's definitely Punch Buggy how you described--punchbuggyred!
If anybody is interested in how it works in Latin, professor is a word that had no feminine form, and since emeritus, past participle of the verb emereo, translations here, needs to agree with the noun its modifies (as all adjectives do), the only possible form, at least in Latin, would be professor emeritus. Professor emerita wouldn't be correct because there's lack of agreement. If the Romans had created professora (which does exist in Romance languages like Portuguese and Spanish, in the latter with one s: profesora), it would have been professora emerita.
We were an equal-opportunity punchbuggy/slugbug family. As long as you got the punch in first, it didn't matter. We also called out the color.
In regard to Martha's question about perdiddles and the version for a tail light out--we used to call it "perdunkle."
Linda said:
On the topic of padiddles, the name of that other game isn't Slug Bug, it's Punch Buggy, at least in my car. Now, for a reverse padiddle, I've taken to using padassle, but not in front of my mother.
I think you guys missed the point from the caller in Indiana who asked about doofitty. She was speaking about a situation where you can't remember a person's name. All of the words you came up with refer to things refer to things you cannot remember the na,ke for, at least that's the way I heard it. I wantedto add that I've been using the word doofus (sic?) as long as I can remember when I can't recall a person's name. I have also heard people referred to as a doofus, which isn't very flattering.
I Love the podcast. My wife and I came across you guys on Wisconsin Public Radio while on a camping trip to Lake Superior about a year and a half ago. We don't get the show on Illinois Public Radio so I subscribe to the podcast.
Bob Vincent
Springfield, IL
Minnesota is NOT the only place that plays duck, duck, grey duck. I grew up in South Dakota and we played it, too! I grew up in Madison, which, to be honest, isn't too far from Minnesota, but my friends throughout the state also played grey duck. I went to college of MN and this was a perennial conversation with folks from around the US. We never noticed a MN connection back then so I suspect others will be reporting that they, too, played it outside of MN.
My group of friends (don't know if it was my neighborhood or the school I went to later on, not the same group of people), revised the game. We played "pink duck, blue duck, black duck, orange duck" etc., so that you really had to be paying attention to notice "grey duck"! I think I may have come up with the idea, but can't be certain.
I was also familiar with duck, duck, goose, so we may have played both versions in Madison and elsewhere in South Dakota, or it may have been because of my relatives in other states.
Incidentally, the only dish that Bismarck is associated with in Germany is marinated herring, see e.g.
http://www.germandeli.com/ricbisher.html
Couldn't be further removed from doughnuts, could it?
When I was a teen in Utah we played both "Perdiddle" and "Slug Bug," and the tail light version--quite similar to Katie's--was "Perdunk."
Katie said:
We were an equal-opportunity punchbuggy/slugbug family. As long as you got the punch in first, it didn't matter. We also called out the color.
In regard to Martha's question about perdiddles and the version for a tail light out–we used to call it “perdunkle.”
Monika said:
Incidentally, the only dish that Bismarck is associated with in Germany is marinated herring, see e.g.
http://www.germandeli.com/ricbisher.htmlCouldn't be further removed from doughnuts, could it?
As long as we're on the subject, the Germans do however have a doughnut-like pastry they like to call ... an American! Yessir ein Amerikaner is the word Berliners like to give a certian round, iced fried-dough pastry.
I was wondering if Martha was an only child? That might explain why she didn't know about Slug bug or Padiddle: no siblings on car rides, nobody to play them with. I didn't have a similar-aged sibling, so I didn't hear about car games like those until I started going on band bus trips in high school.
LOL, Joan! No, I have two older brothers and one younger one who was much closer to my age. Unfortunately for Jim, I'm afraid his big sis didn't Need an excuse to beat up on him! Fortunately for me, we were well past the bratty-siblings stage by the time he was 6-foot-2 and towered over me.
No word on whether all this influenced him in his choice of becoming a professor of religion . . .
Grant Barrett said:
Steve, who says doughnuts have to have holes? No dictionary defines them as having to have holes although they all mention that they can have holes.
I know Grant likes to have a print reference, so I wanted to mention an obscure memory from my childhood that has persisted over the years. In the 1933 book
- Farmer Boy
by Laura Ingalls Wilder (Of
- Little House on the Prairie
fame) the protagonist Almanzo laments the ridiculousness of doughnuts with holes.
He cites the round doughnut with a hole as being a silly fad from "town" that his sisters preferred to his mother's more traditional doughnut sticks that she twisted in the middle so that they would turn themselves in the hot grease after they were puffed up and brown on one side. I can't remember if the author refers to this as a sort of "dough knot" or if my second grade mind made that connection, but I've often wondered if this is the derivation of the word doughnut. Almonzo assumed the round doughnut fad would fall off as a person had to babysit the pastries in the grease, making the dessert more labor intensive.
Wish I had the book to quote directly, but only ever saw it in my elementary school library...
We had these twisted stick pastries where I was growing up in southern Indiana and called them tiger tails or dunkin' sticks.
Just as background,
- Farmer Boy
takes place on the Wilder Farm in Malone, NY, boyhood home of Almanzo Wilder. Laura Ingalls wrote this (perhaps?) fictionalized biography of her husband's childhood.
Martha Barnette
Grant Barrett
Grant Barrett
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