Have you ever used a word or phrase that you thought everyone knew but they didn't?

[CaramelJones]

Prompted by a discussion with a friend. When we first met she kept saying mardy and I had no idea what she meant.

Has anyone experienced similar with a regional word or a term that only your family use? It's making me wonder which regional words I might be using without thinking of it.

Sprotting, as in ‘Will you stop sprotting through those drawers’. It means to rummage.

Yes I would understand "his nibs", I think it's used widely.

I call them that too

Your mum didn't make up noggin, it's in dictionaries as meaning someone's head

I once told somebody ‘Never let it be said your mother bred a jibber’ and they didn’t have a clue what I was on about. A friend of mine heard us using the expression and adopted it, but unfortunately misheard so it became ‘Never let it be said your mother bread and dripping’

We call cuddles a “bosie” in the NE of Scotland e.g. “geez a bosie” wasn’t until I dated a guy from Glasgow that I found it was regional

In Dublin it is called the grushy. Not sure how common it is now though.

I think we must be from the same place 😁

I too use Nesh Carrot. And would have lobby for tea

I once used “the property ladder” when talking to an American and had to explain it wasn’t an actual ladder.

But then I was equally bemused when said American referred to ordinary cutlery as “silverware” - sounds very Downton Abbey.

Never heard of his nibs.

Yes I can't say sponge bag anymore as no one ever knows what I'm on about! Have to say make up bag 😔

Anyone use brass monkeys for cold?

When we were kids my parents would say to us, ‘stop being obstroculous.’ As far as I was aware this was a real proper word, it meant belligerent or awkward. When I was in secondary school, probably year 7 or 8, I was doing some writing work and asked my English teacher how to spell it. She of course had no idea what the hell I was on about. We spent ages with me telling her what it meant, insisting it was a real word because my parents used it all the time, and her coming up with words it could possibly be, the closest we got was obstreperous. She ended up getting a Dictionary out in the end to prove to me that it wasn’t in there, so insistent was I that obstroculous was an actual real word and she’d just never heard of it. It was a real word in our house though.

@whosaidtha 😂 we say these. Sheffield?

My grandad used to say “how you can stand there riding that bike” if you were exaggerating/fibbing and literally no-one seems to have ever heard it but I say it all the time lol

Phrases I have used that haven't been understood by Americans (disclaimer - I know the USA is huge but this was on the internet so no idea which states they were in).

Back-to-back terrace (as in terraced housing where your back wall is shared as well as the side walls)
Boxing Day - as in 26 December

@Ruibies We’re from Sheffield and people say wickle. “Stop wickiling, she’ll be fine” “I’m such a wickler”

West Cumbria? When I first moved down south I told a man (gadgie/charver) in the pub that his crack was stinking, he was mortified because he thought I meant his bum was smelly 😬

”Sagging it” - to bunk off or skip school, formally known as “Wagging it”.

Gipping instead of retch
Sock-on for fast asleep
Having monk on - being in a mood
(Northern ones)

Chuckie pigs for wood lice
Baddies for wounds/injuries
Daps as above
(South west)

I used the phrase 'went round the Wrekin' the other day in a meeting. No one had a clue what I meant. Its a west Midlands phrase that means to take a long time to get somewhere /over complicate something

I'm from NI and we've a lot of regional sayings. Foundered means cold, scundered means embarrassed or there's scunnered which means pissed off. There's also people who "canny howl their water" which basically means can't keep quiet/keep a secret. We have loads!

I once asked dh's friend if their dog was breaking down, meaning that she was bleeding and on heat. They had no idea what I was on about.

Dh didn't know what I meant when I said that the local teens don't seem to know what a corsy is. He calls it a footpath.

Mum is Scottish so I was bemused when an old friend of hers asked ‘Where do you stay?’ meaning ‘Where do you live?’ Apparently ‘The Travelodge Glenrothes’ wasn’t the right answer 🤣

Where ai live now we have ‘tampin’ (furious) and ‘lampin’ (as in lampin it down, heavy rain).

The word 'tea cake' seems to have at least three different meanings depending on where you live. Where I am at the moment it means a large, flat bread roll (bap or barm cake elsewhere). Where I used to live it meant a chocolate biscuit with marshmallow topping.

This caused confusion when I was new here and got asked on a work 'bacon butty' run if I wanted my bacon and eggs 'on a tea cake'.

I'm Welsh and my husbands English. They think it's so funny when I say I'll be there now in a minute or I'll do it now in a minute.

Makes perfect sense to me

I don’t say it any more as I’ve lived away from tyneside for so long but up there we ‘get wrong’ rather than ‘get told off’. It does not make sense to southerners. I did not know that before I moved to London.