Words you've only heard your parents use for things

[DrMadelineMaxwell]

My Mum calls the cupboard under the stairs the 'spence' and I've never heard anyone else call it that or use that word.

@Knittingnanny my mum was born in 1953 so maybe not so much a generational thing as a regional one perhaps.

In reply to a previous post (sorry can't remember who wrote it) I've also heard people refer to things that are turned the wrong way or upside-down as 'Irish' and never understood why.

I also found it strange when I first moved to Herefordshire that people would say 'now in a minute' or 'now in a while' instead of just saying 'in a minute' but think this could be a Welsh thing that has crossed the border?

Could "fowsty" be fusty? That's a real word!

Just remembered that my grandmother would call poo BM (bowel movement): as in, "do you have to do a BM?"

@Gerty75 , no I am from the NW but my Dgf traveled around the country a lot so he could of picked it up there

We also hot called grubby Arab too but it was pronounced Ab'rab.

@ParkheadParadise my dad goes for messages. I used to say it til i moved to london. I like it asit is not just shopping. It can be anything, getting a key cut, dropping off dry cleaning...

My DF used to call a hat a «titfer»

DM goes to «mash» the tea

She will also «siden «the table (clear away the dishes)

DF used to refer to a stupid person as a «fathead»

My dn always called hands 'dannys' is it a Scottish thing do you think? Her parents were Scottish I know.
Other favoured expressions were 'hang on the bell Nelly!' 'Up the wooden hill'

My grandad used to call hiccups "snatch guts"

@31RueCambon75001

I say it all the time.

Donnys - hands

Wesh - wash

Hokey - ice cream

Got a bag on - bad mood

(Warwickshire)

My gran called an umbrella a gamp, a magazine a book and a cardigan a coat. She was born 1902.

Both my DH and FIL (from Midlands area) say don dons for hands. I think it's quite sweet when they tell the kids to wash their don dons.

@scarecrowhead "agate" is a really common word in Lancs dialect. The context I know it in is "he was agate.." meaning "he said...".

My mum calls a Hoover a 'cleaner' I have never heard anyone else call it this.

Most of this is dialect with some family terms thrown in.
Hav a dik at eh, Not understandable to most but the best representation of a common phrase that means something to that group that cannot be represented by the written English language

@DelurkingAJ I had a friend at school from Hackney, London and she'd use mush in that way. As in "Oy mush" (to rhyme with bush)

Lurgy and mufti are also used in London.

My mum used to say I smelt like a poofters armpit, if I’d sprayed too much deodorant or perfume as a teenager.

My mother also has a ‘glory hole’ . It’s a box room full of stuff . Ante room is a normal word. My parents talked about ‘gubbins’, meaning general rubbish . Never heard anyone else use that word.

Anyone else hang their washing on a maiden?

Lurgy and gubbins are pretty common words aren't they 🤷‍♀️

Titfer is rhyming slang for hat. Tit for tat = hat.

Some of these words are in common use where I am, but I'm intrigued by "spence" and "gamp" - googling no help this time!

Any idea where they came from?

HoobaHooba- having a tension might come from the way a small child was trained to ask for help with the toilet when there were visitors. DM was told to say "I need attention" if she needed to go to the loo. This then got corrupted in our family to a tenchie = a wee.

SarfE, 'gamp' is from a character in Dickens - Mrs Gamp in 'Martin Chuzzlewit'. She always carried an umbrella and the name came to be used as a term for the thing.

dellacucina I say ‘geez’ quite a bit - and also ‘geez louise’ if I’m particularly impressed.

Not my dm but my dgm said kitchenette.