Lanai vs. Breezeway

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi.

Hi, who’s this?

My name is Veronica, and I’m calling from Indianapolis, Indiana.

Hello, Veronica. How are you doing?

So, I feel like I should give you guys some background story about how I even got to thinking about this word.

Okay.

Me and a friend were reminiscing about the great state of Florida, which was originally where I was born. And my dad and my stepmom and a bunch of my other family members still live down there. So even when we were moving around a lot when we were growing up, we used to go and visit them all the time.

And so we started thinking about, you know, and recalling all of those just little things that are special and different about Florida. Like all the houses have clay tile roofs instead of shingles, and they’re, you know, stucco, and everybody has tile in their houses instead of carpet. You know, you don’t really see carpet a lot.

No, you don’t want carpet in a Florida house.

Right, yeah.

So one of the things that I was thinking about is how every house I’ve ever seen in Florida has a screened-in porch. Usually it has, you know, some kind of concrete floor. It’s usually located at the back of the house, and it’s all completely screened in. And this is pretty much without fail, like universal or uniform across the state. Everybody’s got one.

And the word that I used to refer to it in this conversation was lanai. Because that is the word that I had always heard it. You know, go get your brother off the lanai. Or do you want to go sit on the lanai and have a drink? When I said this word, everybody kind of just looked at me like, huh? What does that mean? What is that word?

And so it kind of got me thinking about it. Like, is that a regional word? Where did it come from? Is it specific to Florida or the South in general? You know, what’s really interesting about this term is that it’s much more common in Hawaii. That’s where it’s from. It’s from the Hawaiian language.

Yeah, it’s a Hawaiian word. Yeah, it’s been in English for like at least 300 years.

Yeah.

So it’s interesting that it connotes Florida for you, but I suspect that that has to do with developers in Florida or real estate agents applying that fancy name to what was a pretty mundane area of our house anyway.

Yeah, that makes sense to try and make it sound more like exotic and appealing.

Yeah, yeah, like you’re going to be draped with Lays and people are going to be handing you a drink with a little paper umbrella in it or something.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, we could talk all day about the difference between a porch and a lanai, but a porch, to me, is not always enclosed and is usually raised up off the ground.

Yes, yes.

Yeah.

And the one that I usually hear for that is breezeway. I’ll hear the word breezeway here in Indianapolis a lot, but I’ve never heard anybody around here say lanai.

Well, breezeway, where I grew up in Missouri, wasn’t anything like a porch, really. It was actually a passageway between two buildings, usually covered over with a roof and not enclosed.

Yeah, that’s my sense of it. You’re saying that a breezeway in Indiana is a patio, an outdoor patio?

Yeah, that’s what I’ve heard it called a lot. Like if there’s an enclosed porch, you know how, I mean, sometimes it can even be almost like another room to your house. You know, they get them all closed in. It could even have like a ceiling fan in there or something, but it’s a nice like closed in room in the house, and they’ll call that a breezeway.

Oh, interesting.

I’ve never heard that.

But I was wrong, actually. Lanai has been in English for 200 years, not 300 years. But it first shows up in some journals from some early visitors to Hawaii in the late 1700s, early 1800s. And it has met various things, including a shack or a bower or just a tiny little hut or enclosure. And eventually became kind of more specific as it came into English to refer to a screened-in porch specifically.

I mean, almost always. I could be wrong. I’m going to get a lot of people going, well, I have a lanai that’s this that’s not screened in.

I don’t think it has to be.

No, yeah.

And we’re spelling it L-A-N-A-I, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

So cool.

I would love to get to the bottom of why that Hawaiian word ended up in Florida. Maybe Martha’s theory is right. You know, home builders loved it for its exotic flavor.

Yeah.

And took it. So when you’re selling a house and you say it has a lanai, that feels fancy.

Yeah.

I mean, terms like great room.

Yeah.

Great room?

Exactly.

Well, you know, and a lot of it has been influenced, you know, by the Spanish culture down there. So I wasn’t sure. That’s really interesting that it actually comes from Hawaii. I would have just assumed that it was, you know, like some sort of Spanish word that they had adopted. You know, just like a bunch of other stuff that they have down there.

All right.

Well, thanks for calling. Really appreciate, Veronica, sharing your story with us.

All right.

All right.

Thank you for having me.

Okay.

Take care, Veronica.

Bye-bye.

Thanks.

You too.