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.

I had also never heard of mufti until I moved to Devon! I had a letter home from school about it and I was like wtf is this?

My mum also always called ear buds "q tips" and I thought that's what they are called. I remember once playing one of those party games where you get half a minute to remember ten items before they are covered and then you need to list them from memory. I really sucked at it big time and tried to explain for ages what q tips are. Funnily enough ear buds had not been among the ten items anyway.

"I'll have a shufti."

Cue lots of blank looks in my workplace.

One that could have been embarrassing.
"Twat"= either hit or a jokey insult akin to "silly sausage". As in "He twatted me" (he hit me) or "stop twatting around" (stop messing around).
That was where I was growing up. I moved area and found it has a different meaning here. Thankfully I found out before I used it.

The other one which I was surprised to find wasn't a standard expression was the fairy lights you had on your tree where if one bulb didn't work, the whole lot didn't work. They were known in my family as "union lights" (as in "one out the lot out"). Apparently this isn't a generally known expression. I may have found out when I used it in front of my fil who was a very keen union member. 🤣

Moved about 12 miles once but over a border so spidge became bubbly, spice became tuffee, chip buttie became chip cob - no one knew what mardy meant and I didn’t know what manny meant! You pick the new words or phrases up so quickly though that my return home was equally problematic to understanding!
Just to add to a poster earlier who thinks lairy must be sane as mardy - I wouldn’t have said so as I would say lairy for a bit loud, OTT or shouty but mardy for sulky - but there are some different interpretations of words over time and use.

Always heard 'round the wrekin' but thought it was a mythical place until late teens 😁

Mooning = longing stare
Alright cock = a perfectly friendly and acceptable greeting in Greater Manchester

Pikelets

Never called them crumpets, never will do. DH pointedly reads the package every time.

Don’t care. It’s a pikelet.

😁

@Dacadactyl I use those words and I'm from a small town in Greater Manchester.
Also mardy/mardarse and mithering

We used to use "mufti day" for non-uniform day years ago in the SW, but my kids' schools (Midlands) never called it that.

@caoraich I think I moved to your home city! I also wondered, when I met my then MIL for the first time, who on earth this ‘Ken’ was that she was always on about.. (Ken what I mean - often abbreviated to just Ken - means y’know what I mean).. I catch myself saying it now on occasion 😂

My own mum used to use ‘jobby’ in the same way as ‘thingy’ or ‘wotsit’.. here it means poop 💩 I also came across ‘play piece’ (a snack a child takes to school for playtime) and ‘closey’ (a tenement style block of flats).

I think mufti is an old term used at boarding schools. I'm sure I learnt it from Enid Blyton! I certainly used it and got a few

Just googled it and it's of Arabic origin which the British adopted and CJ angels the meaning of. Fascinating!

Barm for a bread bap/bun

Do you mean a batch?

We use 'rootle' when referring to looking around in a drawer or the bottom of a bag. Several people have told me they'd never heard of it. I'm from the 'North' but live a posh bit of the south, and my colleagues often look confused at some of my colloquialisms. I call trousers 'keks', tell the kids to 'stop wamping' when they're whinging, when something looks particularly attractive it's a 'bobby dazzler'... my Mum was from the Midlands, used 'mardy' .

Pikelets are similar to crumpets but flat here

Also to lower the tone further, tooty = poo (but that may have been from the Scottish side of the family)

My grandparents used to say 'in the house' meaning in the room they mostly lived in, the back room on the ground floor of their three up, two down house.

E.g. If they were in the front room - "Where'd you put paper?" "In the 'ouse."

A cheese sandwich is a piece on cheese, can also have a piece on jam or toast on jam but it's always cheese on toast 🤷🏼‍♀️

Spelk, all of my family are from the North east but I’ve never lived there. Always used it and didn’t realise it wasn’t recognised by everyone until I moved in with my partner at 26

My MiL always uses the phrase "I was sat there like piffy on a rock bun". From what I can gather it means " she was sat alone"

Not so sure this is regional, but more age related. I used it all the time where I grew up (Home Counties) although funnily enough moved to LIverpool!

Bet there's some twining as well as crack 🤣

An ex of mine was very confused when my dad asked him if he wanted his bacon on a tea cake.

Narrows it down to quite a small geographic area I believe. I once had to take a photo of a supermarket shelf to prove to my uni mates I wasn't making it up!

I'm from N.ireland and moved to England when our children were small. I quickly discovered that in England people ask, " how old are you?" after getting confused looks when I asked, " what age are you?" Moved back to NI and had to revert to ," what age are you?". This was after I'd said to a child, " how old are you?" and the father said to her," she's asking what age are you".

When I went to uni I confused everyone by saying "don't look at me gone out" which I thought was universal. Also my mum used a lot of weird words, but I think that's more her than a regional thing, like mullaker (no idea of spelling) meaning a mucky person or mullaking. She often called me a mullaking child.

You are Karl Pilkington and I claim my five pounds! 🍊