RI cabinet was: Re: non-coda r-loss

[Joel S. Berson]

At 6/20/2009 04:31 PM, Wilson Gray wrote:
>Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
>
>There's a local term for "ice cream soda" or "milkshake"? I didn't know that!

Wilson, I assume in the above you're playing a
joker card.  Having worked in Cambridge at the
Harvard libraries, you surely know that the
Boston area has a local term for (New York
City's) "ice cream soda".  It is (or was, in our
day) "frappe".  When I first arrived in the
Boston area as a precocious graduate student, I
was told in no uncertain terms that that was what I needed to ask for.

Joel


>[Here, Wilson plays the race card]
>
>Probably because, when I was "coming up," as is said in BE and,
>possibly, in SE in general, colored weren't allowed access to foods as
>these. Of course, had we known exactly what they were, we could have
>made them ourselves, at home, i suppose. But they're only literary
>terms for me.
>
>Needless to say, I could easily get either or both of these anywhere
>in the greater Boston area. But now, I don't care.
>
>OTOH, I *love* barbecued "snoots" (i.e. swine snouts), but they're
>difficult to come by, in these parts, since such offal is generally
>not regarded as a foodstuff, except when inside of a hot dog.
>
>-Wilson
>
>On Fri, Jun 19, 2009 at 4:45 PM, Laurence Horn<laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:
> > ---------------------- Information from the
> mail header -----------------------
> > Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> > Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> > Subject:      Re: RI cabinet was: Re: non-coda r-loss
> >
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> > At 11:34 AM -0400 6/19/09, Amy West wrote:
> >>>Date:    Thu, 18 Jun 2009 11:20:10 -0400
> >>>From:    Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> >>>Subject: Re: Non-coda r-loss in Southern speech?
> >>>
> >>>At 5:40 AM -0400 6/18/09, Bill Palmer wrote:
> >>>  >
> >>>>I was always taken with the unusual names
> for various beverages in Boston:
> >>>>
> >>>>Soda = "tonic"
> >>>>Ice cream soda = "cabinet"
> >>>
> >>>From what I've read and seen, "cabinet" is
> >>>largely if not entirely restricted to Rhode
> >>>Island, while I have encountered "tonic" in
> >>>Boston (for 'soft drink') and "frappe" in both
> >>>Mass. and R.I.
> >>>
> >>>LH
> >>
> >>You are correct about "cabinet", though it also creeps into the areas
> >>of CT and MA that border RI. But I believe "cabinet" is also a
> >>milkshake term.
> >>
> > Yes, it's used for both milkshakes and ice cream sodas.  "Coffee
> > cabinets" were available in a shop I visited in Waverly, RI (just
> > over the CT line), but I can't remember whether it was a milk shake
> > or an ice cream soda (with coffee syrup and coffee ice cream).
> >
> > LH
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
> >
>
>
>
>--
>-Wilson
>­­­
>All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange complaint to
>come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
>-----
>-Mark Twain
>
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