The word 'belly'

[eighteentwentytwo]

I'm a southerner in the north and I'm wondering if 'belly' has the same awful connotations that it has where I came from.

My son is using it all the time and I hate it! I would prefer he said 'tummy'. AIBU?

Hope your geet doesn’t start using a word you don’t approve of relating to farts. 💁🏻‍♀️

People might think she's <whispers> working class.

Unless OP means the awful connotations of having a beer belly or a bad bellyache

I 'tummy' is quite cute when a child says it.

When an adult says it, I cringe myself inside out.

*I think

I thought it was a harmless word like "tummy" but my (now deceased) grandmother thought it was an incredibly rude and vulgar word! She was deeply offended by it. She was born in 1910 so I assumed perhaps it used to be more vulgar than it is now.

This is probably not regional, but rather class or culture. I dislike the word lounge as in living room. I also have dinner, while my DH who is enjoying the same meal will be having tea😄😄

It’s nothing to do with being from the South, or not being polite. It’s just one of those words some people don’t like, like moist.

It’s quite.. earthy I suppose

Do you have a belly button or do you call it something else?

No idea why the word belly is an issue, standard drip feeding post

Tummy is a word for very young children to use. Adults using it is embarrassing

Eh? This is the most absurd thing I've ever heard 😂😂

I'd say 'I've got belly ache', I'd refer to it as a belly button - what are you calling it? A tummy button? A stomach button?

Northerner, by the way.

But what word do you use for adults when you don't mean the stomach? Like inside but a pain in an organ below your stomach, or outside, the bit you show in a bikini?

Southerner here too and I hate it too. Some people used the word for a vagina where I lived (south east)

I'm a southerner and I've never heard of belly to have awful connotations and to be not polite. I don't use it often, I usually say tummy or stomach, but I wouldn't notice or care if others used it.

I wouldn't say "awful connotations" but growing up it certainly was considered less polite than "tummy" and I would have been corrected if I had used it.

Northerner. I use tummy and belly interchangeably and would see neither as crass or childish. Just informal words for stomach 🤷‍♀️

Can’t speak for all southerners but I’d say abdominal pain

Same. My mother hated us using it! Something crude about it but I can't place why

Always a tummy button.

Probably lower abdomen or near my bikini line?

I would too, it was just obvious that you couldn't use stomach. What about what you see in a bikini? Surely that is a belly?

agree, I never say tummy
It's childlike to me

I know I will be accused of terrible snobbery but I find it v vulgar too. Born and raised middle class and would never have heard or been allowed to say belly, unless with button or dancing afterwards. Certainly would never have used to describe tummy ache 😁

Belly and stomach (or urgh tummy) are not synonyms.

Tummy just sounds very young to me, like 'poorly', I can't stand it when adults say that!