There have been local elections today. Several candidates called at the house in recent days and started engaging in friendly chat, until they realised we weren't eligible to vote and then they couldn't be seen for dust. Someone came by yesterday and left a plastic bag hanging on the front doorknob - a bag full of campaign literature, Tootsie Rolls (toffees) and a single lollipop. That lollipop caused such controversy in our household that frankly I wouldn't have voted for the candidate responsible even if I could have.
According to a book I've been reading with the Girl, lollipops are also known here as 'suckers'...
... as they are in Mansfield
ReplyDelete...and what are people who believe everything they read called?
ReplyDeleteSomeone told me that French Toast is known in the UK as "Poor Knights of Windsor" (they had read it in Wikipedia so it must be true). I've never heard it however. Perhaps in Mansfield - I hear they have some strange ways with words there?
The book in question is Beverley Cleary's 'Beezus and Ramona', a volume from the popular American children's fiction 'Ramona' series written mainly in the 1970s - perhaps it's just a dated expression (or is Ms Cleary secretly from Mansfield?)
ReplyDeleteFYI, Exile, here is 'sucker'as defined by the Newbury Dictionary of American English:
ReplyDeletesucker /skr/ n. 1 s.o. who is easily fooled, a gullible person: I bought a watch from a man on the street and it broke the next day; what a sucker I was to buy it. 2 hard candy kept in the mouth until it is gone, a lollipop: The little boy's tongue was red from a cherry sucker.
So, suck on that!
OK, righteous indignation over now. :-)
I love the idea that the pronunciation of that word is skr.
ReplyDeleteNo offence intended - I can't resist a pun as you're probably aware :-)