785-1: Feedback, Notes and Comments

Boulevardiers My listing last time of the many names Americans have for the grass strip beside a roadway led to numerous messages from Canadian readers. This comment comes from Elena Goodfellow: “I have not heard of any of the terms you listed, neither the British or American. I have always called it a boulevard. We also call a grassy median dividing the two sides of a road a boulevard and in addition, boulevard can be the name of a road. So where I live, our road is named a boulevard. It has a boulevard running down the centre of it and it has a boulevard beside the curb on each side of it. This part of Canadian English I’m sure is very confusing to newcomers to the country!” Lucie Singh mentioned that boulevard is also used in her part of Wisconsin; the term does appear in the Dictionary of American Regional English, with a map showing evidence in that state but more commonly from the western states bordering Canada. Not to be left out, readers in Australia and New Zealand noted that their term is nature strip.

Submariners Several readers queried my sandwich as a general descriptor for the regional American po’boy, hoagie, sub, grinder, hero and torpedo. They argued that, as they were usually long rolls, to call them sandwiches was a misnomer. The Dictionary of American Regional English calls them that, in part I suspect because most of the terms were originally qualifiers to sandwich. Torpedo appears in the Newport Daily News in 1950 as “Torpedo sandwich. A meal in itself.” Sub is an abbreviation of submarine and appears first in 1940; Better Homes and Gardens wrote in 1943, “Submarine sandwich — It’s long, low and goes down easily.” (It seems certain that this colloquial term was directly inspired, or at least popularised, by naval actions in the Second World War.) It may be their inventors couldn’t think of a good alternative term to sandwich for their creations.

Holiday break There will be no issues for the next two weeks, as my wife and I are away. The next issue will be that of 26 May.

Voting World Wide Words was the April finalist in the LSOFT Choice Awards (the Mailys) with an absolute majority of 61% of the votes. Now on to May. Even during my holiday absence, don’t forget about the contest. You can vote every day if you wish.