Church key anecdote

[Laurence Horn]

At 8:02 PM -0500 2/24/05, sagehen wrote:
>  >A few years ago there was a discussion in this cyberspace of "church key"
>>as slang for a bottle opener.  I had never heard the word until I went to
>>grad school in Wisconsin, where I heard it all the time.  Nonetheless the
>>consensus on ads-l seemed to be that it wasn't a regional expression--a
>>judgment that seems to be confirmed by its absence from DARE.
>>
>>Well, the other night I was at a poker game (which we call "choir practice"
>>in the messages we exchange via the college e-mail system in the process of
>>organizing a game).  At some point I figured it was time for a beer, and
>>finding nothing in the host's kitchen to open it with (and possibly
>>influenced subconsciously by the fact that this was, after all, choir
>>practice), I asked him if he had a church key.  My question met with blank
>>stares all around--nobody had the slightest idea what I was talking about.
>>So this scientific sampling of seven guys demonstrated 100% agreement that
>>the expression was unknown in the Northwest.  FWIW, all but one of the
>>seven are in their 30s, and I think most of them grew up somewhere in the
>>NW.  One went to college in Michigan, and I think all the others went to
>>Linfield.
>>
>>Peter Mc.
>  ~~~~~~~~~
>AFAIK, it was a widely-accepted term everywhere I've lived (Midwest, West,
>Northeast). It only applied to the specialized opener of crown caps, I
>think.  Not the kind that punches a triangular hole in a can top, or that
>pries with a little hook.When I was last a beer drinker (had to give it up
>because of allergy to malt) bottlers were using a kind of crown cap that
>could be unscrewed.  Maybe the church key has simply become obsolete?
>A. Murie
>
Not obsolete (we have several, so that at least one will not be
hiding when we need them), but rarer in these days when a lot of cans
self-open and a lot of bottle caps screw off, as noted.  But you
still need church keys for imported beers and some (nice) domestic
ones.  But I think there may be age variation as well as possibly
regional variation.  I was surprised during the Christmas break to
discover that my 22-year-old son was totally unfamiliar with the
lexical item (when I happened to use it), although he's certainly not
unfamiliar with using the denotatum itself.

Larry