Barry -- I know Adam Gaffin and he is an honest and clever fellow, well
worth talking to about language.
Spuckies derives from a pointy roll called a spuccadella, and is used mostly
in East Boston and by older people. By analogy, see "speedies" for skewers
(spiedini in Italian).
Bulkie roll, by the way, is pronounced Bool-key.
"American Chop Suey" is a recipe in the Inglenook Cook Book from 1911, but
that was a recipe for "real" chop suey. The macaroni kind is much later,
although I would date the general concept of non-Chinese chop suey from the
1916 *Manual for Army Cooks* which has a recipe for chop suey stew that I
used in my history cookbook.
--
-Mark H. Zanger
author, The American History Cookbook, The American Ethnic Cookbook for
Students
www.ethnicook.com
www.historycook.com
"Barry Popik" wrote in message
om...
I'm looking for historical evidence for
"Spuckies" for the next volume of the Dictionary of American Regional
English. Here are some more Boston terms (in a post I made to the
American Dialect Society):
WICKED GOOD GUIDE/BOSTON ENGLISH
More from the Wicked Good Guides/Boston English. Someone should do a
site
like this for New York.
Below are the selected food-related entries.
http://www.boston-online.com/glossary/ab/index.html
American chop suey
Has nothing to do with Chinese food (then again, only in Boston do
Chinese
restaurants serve French rolls): Macaroni with hamburg, a little
tomato sauce
and a bit of onion and green pepper.
B'daydas
You can serve them mashed, or whipped or boiled.
Bazo
Drunk, at least in Southie.
Jonathan E. Dyer
Bubbla
That's a water fountain to you, bub.
Bulkie roll
A soft, fluffy roll, you know, like a Kaiser roll. Only in Boston are
they
sometimes served at Chinese restaurants.
Kelly Holmes
Bundle
Grocery bag.
Chowdahead
Stupid person. The phrase has spread westa Wihsta, but it's definitely
of
local origins. Casserine Toussaint reports: "It comes from back when
people would
make a massive bucket of chowder and lay a clean rope in it so that
when they
put it into the unheated back room it would freeze solid and could be
hung
up. They'd slide off the bucket by putting a hot towel on it and
voila! Anyone
wanting a bowl of chowder went in and chipped off a piece to be warmed
up on
the stove. After a while the frozen block of chowder took on a round
shape, like
a head."
Coffee regulah
Coffee with some cream and two sugahs.
Dunkie's
A donut shop found roughly every 1/10th of a mile on every street in
greater
Boston.
Eric Vroom
Egg rolls
Large, fluffy rolls, a.k.a. kaiser rolls.
Reuven Brauner
Frankfurt
Hot dog. You can find them in the meat depahtment, neah the hamburg.
Served
on Massachusetts frankfurt buns, which are mostly white on the
outside.
Frappe
A milkshake or malted elsewhere, it's basically ice cream, milk and
chocolate
syrup blended together. The 'e' is silent. Despite the chocolate
syrup, it
actually comes in many flavors. "My favorite was a coffee frappe with
two scoops
of ice cream in Guild's Drug Store (pronounced like guile), which
stood on
Boylston and Exeter until this past year when they wrecked it,'' Dee
Burton
reported in 1997.
Fudicle
A Boston Fudgsicle.
netexpert
Gravy
Tomato sauce. Primarily heard in the over-40 set in East Boston.
KJMac
Green Death
Haffenreffer Private Stock Malt Liquor (refers primarily to the 16 oz.
bottles).
Michael Howell
Grinda
A sub or spuckie. Annette Leonard reports that in Saugus, it is
specifically
a toasted sub.
Half moon
Pastry known as "Black and Whites" elsewhere.
Reuven Brauner
Hamburg
Ground meat. Sometimes found near the frankfurts.
Hermits
Molasses cookies.
Jane Morris
Hoodsie
1. A small cup of ice cream, the kind that comes with a flat wooden
spoon
(from H.P. Hood, the dairy that sells them). KC Black reports: "Part
of their
charm was on finishing them you'd suck and then fold the wooden spoon
risking
splintahs from the folded wood." To which Dee Burton adds: "The lid
had a
brown-tone picture of a movie star covered by a thin layer of
protector paper that
you peeled off. Sure wish I'd kept those covers. Police used to give
us free
Hoodsies and free movies on the morning of July 4, in the days when
fireworks
were legal in Mass. (that's how far back I go!).''
2. Certain teen-aged girls, who, like the ice cream, are "short and
sweet and
good to eat." Jo Ann Kendricken recounts: "Growing up in Roslindale
(scooping
went on here and in W. Roxbury as well as Hyde Park), I was a hoodsie,
and
now when I tell people that, they automatically call me a 'Rozzie
chick/rat' and
say, 'So, you are a tough girl, aren't you? Better not mess with you!'
For
the record, I have never been in a fight, but it's nice to know that
no one will
mess witcha!'
Jimmies
Those little chocolate thingees you ask the guy at the ice-cream store
to put
on top of your cone. The multi-colored ones are "sprinkles."
Kegga
A beeah bash.
Live 'n' kickin'
The only kind of lobstahs you'll find at Boston deli countahs:
Milkshake
Milk with some flavored syrup, but NO ice cream.
Packie
A package store; wheah you buy beah.
Packie run
What you make when you go downna Mahty's, Blanchahd's oah some otha
packie to
pick up some beah for a kegga.
Penuche
The fudge equivalent of mystery meat.
Jane Morris
Rawregg
An uncooked egg.
Linda Petrous
Reefah
Refrigerator.
Roll
A bun stuffed with some sort of seafood salad, for example, a "lobsta
roll."
Often served on Massachusetts frankfurt buns, which look like they've
been
turned inside out (i.e., the outside of the bun is as white as the
inside).
Sangwich
Sandwich. Alicia from Meffid reports: "My Nonna used to say, "Take
your
sangwiches out on the piazza."
Scrod
A small, ambiguous piece of fish that never knows if it's cod or
haddock.
Some people claim that "scrod" is a young cod, while "schrod" is a
young haddock,
but, in fact, there's no difference - it's basically whatever's
cheaper at
the fish pier that day.
Spa
A luncheonette or ma-and-pop convenience store (e.g., the Palace Spa
in
Brighton). Store 24s are never spas.
Spider
A frying pan. Now largely obsolete; refers to old-style pans that had
legs to
keep them off the coals.
Connie Nowlan
Spuckie
Sometimes, spukie. What some Bostonians still call a sub or hero
(there's
even a sub shop in Dorchester called Spukies 'n Pizza). Some people
refuse to
believe it's real, but it must be, because the Middlesex News wrote
about it in
1993. From spucadella, a type of Italian sandwich roll you can still
buy at
some of the bakeries in the North End and Somerville.
David Keene reports: " 'Spuckie' is indeed a Boston word. It is not
used much
anymore, the older Italians used it. Growing up in Chelsea we alway
bought
'spuckies' at Gallo's market. My wife bought spuckies at the Italian
stores in
Eastie when she was a kid. The word is not used much anymore, because
there are
so few of us that know what it means." Richard Karasik, meanwhile,
recalls
that "Santarpio's pizza parlor (in Eastie) was the center of spuckie
heaven."
Squeet
"Let's go eat," at least in Lynn.
Paul Hebert
Suppa
Meal served around 6 p.m.
The Hudson family
Tonic
A carbonated beverage, you know, like Coke or Moxie. Oldtimers
remember
before the supamahket chains went all national and had "tonic" and
"diet tonic"
signs above their aisles.
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