What The Frig

What do you call your refrigerator? I call it a refrigerator or, abbreviated, a fridge. But my Midwestern cousins call it a "frig," which sounds like it should rhyme with twig or be used in place of a curse word, but in their heads they hear "fridge." I found out that, somewhere along the line, my cousins have actually truncated Frigidaire to frig, and they're not alone. A Google search of the word "frig" doesn't reveal any curse words—only the words "refrigerator" and Frigidaire.

Turns out that for many years Frigidaire was to refrigerators what Kleenex is to tissues—the generic term that a certain generation used to describe the icebox or the chiller. By the way, Frigidaire did make the precursor to the refrigerator, known as the icebox. And somewhere along the way Frigidaire became frig—pronounced "fridge."

I discovered that there are a lot of other colloquialisms that we use to describe things we have or do in our home that vary by generation and region of the country. Here are 3 examples:

1. Furniture. A bed is a bed—except when it's called a divan or a day bed—but a couch isn't always a sofa. In fact, sometimes it's called a Davenport or a Chesterfield. Davenport happened to be a company that manufactured couches, and Chesterfield, an overstuffed kind of sofa, was allegedly named after the Earl of Chesterfield. (Was he overstuffed, too?) When you want to put your feet up, you would get the ottoman, footstool, or hassock—depending on where in America you live.
2. Tidying Up. Need to vacuum the rug? Are you going to get the sweeper to do the job? Or will you be Hoovering the room? Maybe you need your teenager to tidy up. Do you ask him to red up his room? You might if you grew up in certain areas of Pennsylvania. And finally at the end of the day, do you "close" the lights, rather than turn or shut them off?
3. Front and Back of the House. On a warm evening you might enjoy sitting outside on your stoop (if you grew up in New York City) or your steps or porch (if you live elsewhere in America). What about the grassy areas near your home? To some that is the front and back yards. Europeans call it the front and back garden—even if there is no "garden" at all. And what about the grassy area between the sidewalk and the street? In Akron, Ohio, it's called the devil's strip. I grew up calling it the median. Elsewhere in America people might call it city grass, the parking or planting strip, a sidewalk buffer, a boulevard, or a tree belt.

Do you use a specific word or phrase to describe something around the house that others find odd? If so, I hope you'll post a comment with that word or phrase and its meaning.