People using the wrong words for things - does it drive anyone else up the wall?

[LanisHouseLot]

I was recently staying with relatives and one kept offering and making Welsh rarebit. Lovely! Except that it was just cheese on toast. I like cheese on toast too but it is definitely not Welsh rarebit. I had to bite my tongue from saying anything because despite feeling enraged i have no desire to make anyone feel stupid or corrected. But it was bubbling up inside nonetheless!

Today I saw a 'High Tea' event advertised. Little sandwiches and cakes, cups and saucers etc - clearly afternoon tea rather than high tea. Why does it bug me so much that I'm still thinking about it and wanting to tell the organiser, and all the women looking forward to their high tea, that they've made a terrible mistake and that high tea isn't what they think it is?! Does anyone else find it unbearable?

I am similar about apostrophe misuse and spelling mistakes (despite not seeing my own mistakes half the time ). These errors are even more infuriating because it is entirely the wrong thing being described.

@Funkyslippers , I agree. Have you tried a mac'n'cheese pie? I won't make that mistake twice.

I come from just north of Glasgow and have never heard “dinner school” before. Always school dinners to me, though one thing I have always thought interesting is that it’s less common in Scotland than it is in the north of England to call your midday meal “dinner”. Most people of all classes call it “lunch”. Yet the phrase used in Scottish schools is definitely “school dinners” not “school lunch”. For example the Singing Kettle have a fab song called “School Dinners”.

“Carmel” though- yes. Often people say “Tunnocks carmel wafer.”

Love Mac'n'cheese but I have family in the US. They would look at me with side eyes if I said 'macaroni cheese' as if I'd just called a pram, a perambulator .

I'm in NE Scotland and I know a High Tea as toast, followed by a cooked meal then a selection of cakes with tea or coffee.

Many recipes for it call for an egg yolk in the roux mix, you dont have to, but I love rarebit, it should be butter, flour, milk, beer, cheese, mustard, egg yolk.

Is it 🤔 I've lived in Ireland for over 40 years and I've never heard a soul call speed ramps/bumps a "sleeping policeman" especially as we don't generally call the gardai, police.. Are you in the north?

As an aside, when i was a child and I read Welsh rarebit in books I used to misread it as Welsh rabbit and just assumed it was rabbit on toast which the posh people in my books were eating.

No (well, yes now ), both parents from Dublin would've said it occasionally.

This is what l know as high tea. Cold meat or fish, salad, cheese, sandwiches and cakes.

You haven't answered where the Ritz are doing high tea

Well that's a new one on me! I might start calling them that 😁

Maybe they just used it from TV or something, but I certainly grew up hearing it.

True. I'm American, and I always use the serial comma.

Sleeping policemen is a completely normal phrase, maybe young people wouldn't know it as its probably fallen out of use like frogman or jam sandwich (car not foodstuff) but otherwise an everyday phrase

Many people say bee instead of wasp when spying one hovering near them.

@Misthios, I used to see ‘rest bite’ a lot on a forum for carers of people with dementia. But even my fully-paid up inner pedant couldn’t get too irate about it - the poor things were desperate for a ‘bite’ of ‘rest’.

Plus bread and butter, and tea in a pot.

If we're being pedantic, you definitely can't 'contract' Ofsted but you might (pointlessly) contact them.....

I use staycation to mean a holiday in your own country, as does everyone I know.

Not in my country. I live in Georgia (the one in the US). If I go on holiday in Hawaii, that is definitely not a staycation.

@171513mum typo. I should have proof read properly.

I know it's like before the word was invented all those holidays I ones own country didn't exist

It seems to have become more common since COVID and there been a collective memory loss of times before that

Thank you for the OC! My favourite, barely used correctly if at all.
The Health Secretary under Liz Truss banned them from department reports. There is no hope...

I'm pretty sure that it was originally called "rabbit," and "rarebit" came into use later.

@ArseInTheCoOpWindow

Well the Ritz advertise it as high tea….

I suspect this is one of the north/ south things. A cooked tea is just called tea in the north.

No they don't.
^
From their website:
^
The term high tea originates from the evening meal of the working classes during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and is still used today but is often abbreviated to ‘tea’. Consisting of a substantial meal of bread, cheese, meat, and vegetables and often accompanied by hot cup of tea, it was eaten after weary workers returned home at 6pm. One theory for the meal being called ‘high tea’ is because it was eaten at a high table or counter, rather than the low tables that Afternoon Tea was customarily served on.
Meanwhile, a cream tea is simply the scone element of an Afternoon Tea, served alongside clotted cream or butter and strawberry preserve, as well as a cup of tea (naturally). Cream tea is most associated with the West Country in England, an area which is the epicentre of another scone-based debate still to come.
Hence why at The Ritz, we call our offering of finger sandwiches, scones, pastries and cake, Afternoon Tea, tracing back to the custom started by the Duchess of Bedfordd* when she had a desire for a light snack in between lunch and dinner. Phew, glad we got to the bottom of that one.

There was no Oxford comma in @thedendrochronologist ’s post.

I’m surprised you thought there was, given you profess to be such a fan?