Sunday, August 29, 2010

Careful Man, There's A Beverage Here, Eh











I like the way different folks have different words or turns of phrase when it comes to just about anything. Take beverages, for instance. The generic term for a Dr. Pepper would be what?

I've heard:

Coke (for anything in that class, including Dr. Pepper or Mr. Pibb or Cheerwine)
Soft Drink (anything non-alcoholic, but presumably cold)
Soda
Pop
Soda Pop

I grew up with SODA but have heard some old timers call it sodey-pop. To me, pop means pop culture, pop music, Iggy Pop or Pop! Goes the weasel.

Which reminds me: an old version of this actually goes,

Jimmy's got the whooping cough
And Timmy's got the measles
That's the way the story goes
Pop! goes the weasel.

This is why I prefer soda to pop. When you think of TEA, is it:

Hot
Cold
Herbal
Caffeinated
Sweet
Unsweet?

When I hear an older woman in the American South order TEA! it means iced tea, which I haven't even sampled in years; in the 1970s it used to mean sweetened tea automatically, now I hear "SWEET TEA!" for such.  

We'll keep it to that for now: WELL DRINKS to come.

Today's Rune: Harvest.

8 comments:

Charles Gramlich said...

Growing up in Arkansas we called all dark colas coke.

nunya said...

Southern iced tea is so sweet that within moments of ingesting it you have diabetes, lol. I almost choked the first time I tasted it.

In this town everyone is from everywhere else so I've heard all of those plus cola and fountain drink, and for years Mexicans would refer to the trade name even if that is not what they wanted. A "Fanta," "Pepsi" or "Coca-cola" could mean any kind of carbonated beverage.

the walking man said...

Faygo is pop. Vernors is pop everything else from somewhere else is liquid stuff.

jodi said...

Erik, up north it's ALL 'pop'. Growing up we weren't allowed much--except for an occasional treat. I never did develop a taste for it.

Erik Donald France said...

Chuckles~~thanks all for the comments~~

The term "fountain drink" seems so old fashioned (I guess it is about 200 years old), yet definitely still widely used. I like Vernors, and Dr. Brown's, though like Jodi, not a big drinker of the stuff.

Johnny Yen said...

Having grown up in and around Chicago, I call it "pop." When I went away to college, in central Illinois, I was talking to some co-workers, who were all from central and southern Illinois. I said something about "pop" and they had no idea what I was talking about, until one of them finally figured out that I was talking about "soda," as they called it.

Johnny Yen said...

BTW, when I lived in Salt Lake City for a few months (late 1980/early 1981) I worked in an old-fashioned ice cream place, Fendall's, which is still there, splitting my time between the factory in back and the restaurant in front. We made Cokes the old fashioned way-- with soda water and Coke syrup, which came from a hand pump like the toppings on the sundaes and banana splits.

Lana Gramlich said...

I grew up with "soda," but in Canada it became "pop." Down here it's "cold drink," which is pretty damned ambiguous, as far as I'm concerned. I think I'm reverting to "soda" now as a result (but I can't have many of them anymore, because of my migraine diet.)

Another, unrelated term down here is "ink pen." I HATE that! It's a freaking PEN. As a PEN it has INK in it! Were you afraid I'd mistake you for someone asking for an "ink pencil?" Argh! (/rant)
(Ironically, my verification work is "rantif.")