American terms

[fairlane]

I would say linen cupboard, except I keep the towels etc in the hot water cupboard so call it that. I say pantry too.

[Masquerade]

Wow, so many terms to discuss!
I say couch, not sofa, but in my stories I would always use sofa, because I too was under the impression that it was an American term. My American grandfather says "davenport", lol.
And my grandma pronounces ketchup "catsup."
And for me, it's a linen closet. Pantry is in the kitchen for food. And so are cupboards.

[BlindedxxFalcon]

Well, we pretty much say both, only we usually say couch. And I usually say yard more then lawn. I've pretty much said what everybody else said, only I can't think of any other terms you might want clarified.

[zickachik73]

Here around philadelphia, I'm apt to say (and hear!) couch rather than sofa. Also, "yard" and "lawn" are fairly interchangeable, but I heard someone say once that a yard is what people with kids have and a lawn is the spotless, impeccable property type.

Made me laugh.

[Tensleep]

Wow, lots of words! My turn, again!

Let's see, we say:

Towel, linen or hall closet (All depends on who's grunting the answer). We also say pantry, cupboards, couch and closet. Sorry, no chesterfields in our house. But we also have a cold room where we keep things. I think most people would call it a storage room.

[BlindedxxFalcon]

Storage room... that reminds me. When we first moved into our house, MY room was the storage room! I slept downstairs for more then a month.

[EmilineHarris]

I'm from the Midwest (Ohio) and here's what I call those things:

Yard/lawn: is used interchangably for the grassy area in front of or behind one's house.

Sidewalk vs. Footpath: A sidewalk would be the paved thing in a city/neighborhood that pedestrians walk on. A footpath would be more like an unpaved trail in the woods.

Front room vs. Living room: I do not really think there is actually a difference in these two rooms. As a kid, I always called it the "front room," but now I call it the "living room." In either case, it is typically the room with the couches, TV etc. If you say "formal living room" that is something different. That is like the fancy room that no one ever goes in, but is mostly for show. My house doesn't have one of those.

Couch: As you can see if my descriptions of front room/living room, I use the term "couch." I've never referred to it as anything else, unless I'm specifying the "loveseat" versus the couch.

Ha! Look at me, I'm just adding more words (and probably more confusion).

Now a question: Is a "den" and a "living room" the same thing? That always bugged me... and I'm American.

[queenjaneapprxmtly]

Nah, I don't think a den and a living room are the same thing. A den I believe is like an office (take Mike Brady for example? haha), whereas a living room ... well, I think by now we've already established what a living room is, lol.

I may have mentioned this already, about the front room thing, but in Chicago, where I'm from, a lot of the people from the city call the living room the "front room," because there are these apartments, apparently, that only have like three rooms, and they go in order -- from the living room, to the kitchen, to the bedrooms, or something like that. And the living room is, quite literally, the front room. (I'm just relaying how my grandma explained this to me, which was in like January, so I might be a little off, lol.) So that's where the term front room came from, I believe, at least around here, if that clears anything up. :)

[zevie]

When I was younger, the den was the gross room that the kids owned, with stain-resistant brown carpeting, toy cars and a TV.

[queenjaneapprxmtly]

That's interesting; at our old house, that's what my brother and I called the play room, even when we started getting older. I guess we were just used to it.

But now we don't have that anymore, lol. We just have a basement, and it's a mess, but I still like it because it's very homey and nice. :)

[maxiekat]

We always called the place with the couches and TV the "family room" and the room with the nice, uncomfortable couches was the "living room". I always equated the word den with being another word for the family room.

[fairlane]

The only people I've heard use "den" was my grandparents. It was just a room with a couch and a tv. So I would think of it as a living/lounge/family room - theres so many terms for the same thing lol.

[fosterchild]

Rec room=ugly! You're right about that! lol

My aunt and uncle have a rec room and man, in the 70's it was bad!!! Bad panelling and a bad floor and an old (well old now) tv......yeah, ugly!

[fairlane]

I've only heard the term 'rec room' when I was at high school. It was the room with a tv for watching movies in class.

haha I just remembered my English class watched That Was Then This is Now every day for a week. Our teacher was away and every day we had a different substitue, so every day we'd say "We have this movie to watch..."

[mariah]

I'm from the southwest, orignally Tulsa, and I say "couch" all the time. I think of a sofa and I think of some big fancy leather thing. And they called it a "sofa" in HP, so I figured "sofa" was an english thing. And I also say "living room" as opposed to "front room." There's family room too, but I've always thought of that as more formal...which doesn't make great sense, but whatever. People here definitely say "sidewalk" instead of footpath too. And it's "yard" as opposed to "lawn" unless you're talking about mowing the lawn.

Also, a pantry would be like a big closet type thing where can foods and things like that are stored.

mmkay hope that helped a tad.