when one dad gives a joke answer to "what are these called?" so hard that a regional dialect change happens
this post was submitted on 01 Jul 2025
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That makes so much sense. Explains why the same bug within like 100 mi.² is called a Slater, a pill bug, a roly-poly, a potato bug, an armadillo bug…
They're called isopods.
Your dad is an isopod!
Isopod deez
Not by those Dads
Woodlice are my favourite for this. From the wiki:
Common names include:
- armadillo bug
- boat-builder (Newfoundland, Canada)
- butcher boy or butchy boy (Australia, mostly around Melbourne)
- carpenter or cafner (Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada)
- cheeselog (Reading, England)
- cheesy bobs (Guildford, England)
- cheesy bug (North West Kent, Gravesend, England)
- chiggy pig (Devon, England)
- chisel pig
- chucky pig (Devon, Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, England)
- doodlebug (also used for the larva of an antlion and for the cockchafer)
- fat pig (Ireland)
- gramersow (Cornwall, England)
- hog-louse
- millipedus
- QuaQua regional to Beddau and Keppoch Street Roath
- mochyn coed ('tree pig'), pryf lludw ('ash bug'), granny grey in Wales
- pill bug (usually applied only to the genus Armadillidium)
- potato bug
- roll up bug
- roly-poly
- slater (Scotland, Ulster, New Zealand and Australia)
- sow bug
- woodbunter
- wood bug (British Columbia, Canada)
Roly poly or pill bugs!
I had no idea what you were talking about until I got to pill bug.
Stevie/Stevies (as in the name, Steve) is the house-level localised name here. Stevie Slater.
Why, I don't know.
DRG?
Potato bug ftw
I seriously thought my parents made that up and nobody else called them that. I still don't know if they have any particular affinity for potatoes or something.
rolly-poley gang rise up
I had not clue what this was till I got to rollypolly lol
Just don't call them extinct!
The steamed hams of the insect world
my favorite is the tiny area in mississippi/alabama that says "the devil's beating his wife" when there's a sunshower.
My buddy is from South Carolina, and I distinctly remember the first time he said this. We were hanging out in his living room with some other friends, and it started to storm. He dropped the “devil’s beating his wife with a frying pan” line, and I swear it was a record scratch moment for everyone in the room. Every single person instantly stopped what they were doing, trying to process what he had just said.
My grandmother & great grandmother said this when I was a kid, but they were from Nebraska.
I heard that plenty in East Texas too.
I just had to convince someone the real game of tapping people and running around the circle to grab their seat is called: Duck, Duck, Grey Duck
And they straight up wouldn't believe me. Who cares if it's only the Minnesotans that say that. So do some Swedes!
The regional term that pegs me to where I grew up is calling access roads "feeders."
Hell yeah I love regional pegging
Glitter BUTTS makes more sense
I love looking at accent maps of the US, it's interesting to see how batshit bad at the language some of my countrymen are
Nukular
Here's another article that doesn't require a sign-in.
Long story short: People in Saskatchewan call hoodies "bunny hugs" and no one knows why.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatoon/good-question-bunny-hug-1.7125965
Thank you. I didn't have that requirement.
re: "no one knows why" i've heard it was like department store catalogue regional marketing copy. i know that doesn't fully explain "why" but it's at least a bit of an explanation.
I've heard so many explanations I'm pretty sure Saskatchewan is like the Joker, coming up with a different lie every time someone asks.
Also like the Joker, Saskatchewan is fictional
Me moving to the South:
"Red bugs."
"Chiggers?"
"Yes. Red bugs."
"Are we talking about the same thing?!"
This is lovely. I really like the quirks of language.
Makes me think of the jibberish that my dialect makes when simply pointing out a direction.
Yinz.
Yinz love them lighning bugs.
Back where I come from we call mirrors 'leaks'.
Peenie wallie! 🇯🇲
Just find me the place where 'u' is still relevant, like they're using pre-T9 1996 phones and are too lazy to press [9][9][9][6][6][6][8][8] to spell a real world, so I can give them all phones that won't continue wrecking their wrists from the weight.
Nevermind. They're a lost cause. Nuke it from orbit.