Lexicon
The following is a list of words and phrases used in the Baltimore area that are used much less or differently in other American English dialects.
- pavement (sometimes pronounced "payment") – commonly substituted for "sidewalk".
- hon – a popular term of endearment.
- natty boh – local slang for the beer originally brewed in Baltimore, National Bohemian.
- down the ocean – acceptable in place of "down to/on/at the ocean", whereas ocean most likely refers to Ocean City, Maryland. Frequently contracted to the pseudophonetic "downy-ocean".
- O's – refers to the MLB team the Baltimore Orioles
Read more about this topic: Baltimore Dialect
Famous quotes containing the word lexicon:
“According to Fathers lexicon people who started on a job and didnt stay at it for 50 years were quitters. If you stayed 20 years and then shifted to more congenial work you were a drifter.”
—Richard Bissell (19131977)
“Psychobabble is ... a set of repetitive verbal formalities that kills off the very spontaneity, candor, and understanding it pretends to promote. Its an idiom that reduces psychological insight to a collection of standardized observations, that provides a frozen lexicon to deal with an infinite variety of problems.”
—Richard Dean Rosen (b. 1949)