From: tmt@osf.org (Tom Talpey)
Subject: RI Trivia Redux!
Keywords: A Cabinet and a Grinder, Please?
Organization: Open Software Foundation
Date: Tue, 18 Aug 1992 14:23:57 GMT

Okay all you cabinet drinkers, now we have something to back us
up. Scarfed without permission from The Providence Sunday Journal
of August 16, 1992. The article is headed by the Bousquet cartoon
of the two waiters, one with a goggle-eyed look, the other with
a tray holding... "Believe it or not, some guy from Rhode Island
just ordered a grinder and a cabinet." All typos (save one) are mine.

Tom Talpey
tmt@osf.org

=====

'Cabinet' officially enters the language
Carol McCabe

They're revving up the Hamilton Beach mixers at Delekta's Pharmacy
in Warren and other soda fountains all over Rhode Island, ready
to celebrate. The cabinet - yes, our official state agitated-ice-
cream drink - has just made it into the dictionary.

Never mind that in most other states, the same thing - "a beverage
made of milk, flavoring, and ice cream, shaken or whipped until
foamy" - is called a milk shake. (Ask for a milk shake in the
Biggest Little and you'll get a beverage of milk and flavoring.
Period. You want ice cream shaken or whipped until foamy, order
a cabinet like the rest of us.)

The local usage of "cabinet" - a word understood elsewhere as "an
upright cupboardlike repository" - has received official recognition
from the publishers of the new Third Edition of the American Heritage
Dictionary. Its editors say this is the first dictionary to include
words unique to particular regions of America.

"Cabinet" even qualifies for a "Regional Note," a kind of aside in
which the dictionary's editors seem to say "Hey, this is kind of
interesting... ."

As the note explains: "To a person living in Rhode Island or the
adjoining part of Massachusetts ... if ice cream is included, the
drink is called a cabinet, possibly ... named after the square
wooden cabinet in which the mixer was encased. ... Farther north
in New England, the same drink is called a velvet or a frappe (from
the french frapper, 'to ice')."

Never mind that myusterious reference to square wooden cabinets. And
excuse the American Heritage Dictionary's French, because frapper
means "to ice" about as much as it means "to add coffee syrup." The
primary meanings of frapper are "to strike, to slap, to hit." As in,
"Get out of my face or I'll frappe you into North Providence."

All that truly matters is that our beloved cabinet is in the book.

But even a big book like the new American Heritage, whose editors
have crammed 200,000 definitions between its covers, can't explain
every peculiar word in America.

"Stuffies" didn't make it, nor did the Rhode Island "Please?" used
as a synonym for "What?"

Also omitted was the Rhode Island use of "cleansers", for the place
where you take your dirty clothes. (The kind of place that former
Superior Court Judge Antonio S. Almeida had in mind when he asked for
permission to travel outside Rhode Island whole released on personal
recognizance in a bribe case. "I live on the Rhode Island - Massachusetts
border," he explained in a fine example of customer loyalty, and "my
cleansers is in Massachusetts.")

Similarly, the American Heritage failed to include the use of "time"
as a synonym for a party or benefit, as in "I need $1,000 from you
before Friday for the time we're having for the judge."

Jonnycake, spelled Rhode Island style without the "h", made it onto
page 970 of the new dictionary as the second spelling of johnnycake.
But another regional note refers to the Usquepaugh Johnnycake Festival
which "features johnnycakes made of while Indian corn called flint
corn," and to the "Society for the Propagation of Johnnycakes."

They just don't get it, do they?

"Grinder" does appear, ino another regional note: "In Italian restaurants
in New England the menu is likely to include a grinder." The editors
appear to view New England as a collection of think-alike states,
when in fact this region is more like Yugoslavia than Scandinavia.

Did you ever hear John Gihorse [sic] use the word "slatch", for instance?
The American Heritage says that slatch is a "New England" word meaning
"a lull between breaking waves or a lull in a high windstorm." In
Maine, maybe?

On the other hand, that Rhode Island curiosity, "bubbler," isn't
even a New Englandism, according to the Third Edition. It's "a drinking
fountain, used especially in Wisconsin."

Please?

"Well, if you'll notice, we did use a qualifier", Anne Soukhanov, 
executive editor of the Third edition, ...

...

But in Rhode Island, ("a state of the northeast United States on the
Atlantic Ocean") hardly any of this matters. What's important is that
from now on, when we step into a spa in Massachusetts and order a
cabinet, we shouldn't have to frappe somebody to get what we want.