h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I say house coat (old fashioned apparently)
husband says dressing gown

now I've googled it and apparently he's right,
but it got me wondering what other things do we have that have different names to different people

another difference

I say rolls
Joe says barm cakes

now I know it's mostly because we're from different regions of the country,
but on a site like ours there must be more examples of this

There was the room in the house that my dad called the front room, and everyone else in the family called the living room. (It was the least used room in the house, it must be said.) Then one day I noticed that both my parents had switched to calling it the sitting room. Dunno when that happened.

TRiG.

Of course, being Irish with English parents, I probably have plenty of examples of this. We had cupboards in our kitchen; everyone else had presses. On the other hand, we kept our sheets in the hot press, not the airing cupboard. (I'd guess that my parents' flat in Bedford before they moved to Ireland didn't have an airing cupboard.)

When I was a kid, my dad was concerned about my pronunciation when he found that I stress the word /advertisement/ on the third syllable, not the second. It was only later that he realised that everyone in Ireland pronounces it that way. (My accent is mainly British, but I do have certain Irish influences, and that's one of them. Another is the name of the eighth letter of the alphabet, which is definitely /haitch/, not /aitch/. I'm told that this last serves as a shibboleth in Northern Ireland.)

TRiG.

Haitch, you say?

I'm guessing you'll know how to spell 'arrison, then?


Geggs

for the flatter soft bread-rolls I say "breadcake" which definitely comes from my Yorkshireness. and, yes, it probably sounds odd with my accent.

Rolls are bread-rolls in our house, always. Not sure why now.

And it's definitely a dressing gown. I thought a housecoat was something that you wore after you're dressed but still inside, if that makes sense.

And I call a dressing gown a robe (or a bathrobe) and don't really know what a house coat is, though I tend to lean towards what Sho said.

Dressing gowns and house coats are two separate things, or at least they used to be.

A dressing gown was what people would wear before they got dressed if it was cold, back in the days before central heating. They wear often pieces of fashionable attire in their own right, but rarely seen by any but the closest of friends. Bath robes again were worn before getting dressed, usually made of towel material and helped in the drying process.
These were both usually only worn by the rich who had the luxury of time.

A house coat was usually a lightweight full length coat again for wearing indoors to keep warm before central heating and double glazing. These did morph a little into something akin to an overall, and were often used while cleaning to keep the clothes underneath clean and from wearing out as quickly.

So I've always understood it anyway. But it's been many years since I studied the history of fashion and many beers have passed through since, so my memory might be a little scketchy there.

As for barms, muffins, cobs and baps amongst others, these are indeed regional variations of bread rolls. They are also different types, not just different names.

Well, I once owned a red and white striped dressing gown, which was lined with toweling material, that I also wore about the house once I was dressed. Would this count as all three?


Geggs

I think it would count as an example of how the once three different items of clothing are now interchangeably melded

The bread thing you put chips on is a barm; the meal you have in the middle of the day is dinner, which is followed in the evening by tea; you take shortcuts through ginnels.

We hold these truths to be self evident.

Chips on a barm? Not in it?

You open the barm, place chips on it, then attempt to close it. If you're putting chips in a barm, you aren't using enough chips.

chips in a breadcake
dinner at 7 or 8pm, the one in the middle of the day is lunch.

Totally agree about a ginnel though

Now you see, being a "normal southerner" (is there such a thing? ) we use sliced bread for Chip Butties.

Sliced bread doesn't bear thinking about.

Breadcake though? I never managed to get to grips with that in Sheffield. Watch how these phrases roll off the tongue:

"Chip barm please"
"Bacon barm please"
"Ham and cheese barm please"
"Sausage and egg barm please"

Now compare it to this Sheffield monstrosity;

"Ey oop duck, can thi do us chips on't bread caaake please?"

It's superfluous nonsense. Barms all the way.

Unless it's crusty, in which case we're into cob territory.

Sorry 603, but that sounded like your accent when I read it out loud to myself

Anyway, compare "Chip buttie please" to "Chuirp baurm pleese douk"


So, segwaying back to the OP: dressing gown, house coat or bathrobe? I'm with dressing gown.

Dressing gown.

Or, as Pastey is undoubtedly reading that line, "dressin' gow-un"

Ooh, lots of these in my parents househole when I were a lad since they were/are scottish and we grew up in Engurland.

So I discovered that when I asked an english person for a piece they had no idea what I was talking about (a sandwich)

When we wanted a bridie we were met with blank looks (pasty down south)

Lots more that I've forgotten

The final one I only discovered when I was in my 20s and living with housemates as a student. I casually one day suggest that we leave the door on the snib.
'the what?'
I still say snib instead of latch - just force of habit.

But these are all regional variations of course.