What do you call ...

[Vijay]

Well, yeah, to me, too. But I assume there's some kind of regional/dialect difference at play here.

I grew up with mugs of many different sizes and no saucers, so it's entirely possible that I'm just uncultured, but as far as I'm concerned even a 2oz demitasse is a mug. An espresso mug.

Huh. I didn't even think about how social conditions could be a factor. I do have saucers, but for me, they're just like tiny plates having nothing at all to do with drinking anything.

[Linguoboy]

There's a huge cultural disparity between how I (with my petit-bourgeois background on my mother's side) and my flatmate (working class on both sides) interact with dishware. The other day he left me a biscuit on a saucer instead of a sandwich plate and I was like, "The hell's the matter with you?"

He rarely uses proper dishes at all, in fact, preferring to eat his meals almost entirely out of plasticware, which really annoys me when I run the dishwasher (since dishware can go anywhere but the flimsy plasticware he uses is only safe to wash on the top level).

[Vijay]

The way my dad wants me to use plates sometimes baffles me. Sometimes he tells me to use plates that are barely even large enough for what I'm trying to eat (but probably just because we're running out of plates when he says that).

EDIT: Which brings me to another fun question...to what extent do you distinguish things you put food in or on? For my parents, it seems basically any kind of plate, food container, or even pan (with few exceptions) is a പാത്രം [ˈpaːt̪rəm].
EDIT2: So is a plastic cover, I think.

[Travis B.]

I don't think anyone in my family uses saucers proper for anything, including drinking tea (considering my parents drink tea, but either in coffee cups or in these little handle-less teacups which they use without saucers).

[Vijay]

You have tea cups with no handles? (I don't).

[bradrn]

There's a huge cultural disparity between how I (with my petit-bourgeois background on my mother's side) and my flatmate (working class on both sides) interact with dishware. The other day he left me a biscuit on a saucer instead of a sandwich plate and I was like, "The hell's the matter with you?"

What’s a ‘sandwich plate’?

He rarely uses proper dishes at all, in fact, preferring to eat his meals almost entirely out of plasticware, which really annoys me when I run the dishwasher (since dishware can go anywhere but the flimsy plasticware he uses is only safe to wash on the top level).

I use plasticware (which we call ‘Tupperware’), but only when I’m taking food somewhere else to eat. I wouldn’t use it at home.

[Vijay]

There's a huge cultural disparity between how I (with my petit-bourgeois background on my mother's side) and my flatmate (working class on both sides) interact with dishware. The other day he left me a biscuit on a saucer instead of a sandwich plate and I was like, "The hell's the matter with you?"

What’s a ‘sandwich plate’?

I understand this to mean a plate you eat sandwiches on. The kind of plate I eat sandwiches on is certainly bigger than a saucer but not as big as a dinner plate (which I would normally eat dinner on). I'm hoping that kind of plate counts as a sandwich plate. If it does, bread rolls fit on it, but for example, tortillas and large bagels barely fit on it.

[bradrn]

What do you call…

…each of these three birds?

[alynnidalar]

Weird chicken, duck of the variety that at first glance my brain always wants to call a goose, and duck

[Rounin Ryuuji]

Chicken, Duck, Duck.

[Travis B.]

They're all ducks. The first is a domesticated Muscovy duck, which unlike all other domesticated ducks is not descended from Mallards. The second is kinda goose-ish but is actually a domesticated duck descended from a Mallard. And the third is simply a duck.

[Linguoboy]

I've never heard that before; usually, the colloquial short form for me is "burger", while "Hamburg" is a city in Germany.

"Hamburger" for me is both the preparation and the raw ingredient. The former can be shortened to "burger" but not the latter. (More often I call it "ground beef" though.)

[Rounin Ryuuji]

I've never heard that before; usually, the colloquial short form for me is "burger", while "Hamburg" is a city in Germany.

"Hamburger" for me is both the preparation and the raw ingredient. The former can be shortened to "burger" but not the latter. (More often I call it "ground beef" though.)

I tend to call it "ground beef", or "minced beef" or "mince" depending on the audience, only very rarely "hamburger", though I would understand what was meant right away. And yes, I wouldn't have thought to shorten the ground beef meaning.

[Linguoboy]

"Mince" for me is veddy UK; it's only a verb IMD. I sometimes call cooked ground beef "picadillo" strictly in the context of taco/burrito fillings.

[Rounin Ryuuji]

I did pick it up from discussing cooking with a British person.

[Moose-tache]

There's a huge cultural disparity between how I (with my petit-bourgeois background on my mother's side) and my flatmate (working class on both sides) interact with dishware. The other day he left me a biscuit on a saucer instead of a sandwich plate and I was like, "The hell's the matter with you?"

He rarely uses proper dishes at all, in fact, preferring to eat his meals almost entirely out of plasticware, which really annoys me when I run the dishwasher (since dishware can go anywhere but the flimsy plasticware he uses is only safe to wash on the top level).

Not knowing what a saucer is just marks him as not a time traveler from the 18th century. They are the rotary phones of dishware.

But eating out of a polystyrene tub when you're a grown man in your own house? Unacceptable.

[Pabappa]

What do you call…

…each of these three birds?

I could see how the first one could be seen as a chicken, but i would probably be encountering it near water and if i could at least see the webbed feet i would never call it anything but a duck. i imagine they quack too. so all three would be ducks to me and nothing else unless one of them has some distinguishing trait like an unusual goose-like honking sound or inability to swim.

thanks for moving the hamburg question, ....i dont think ive clicked into this thread since the day it began.

[Travis B.]

I've never heard that before; usually, the colloquial short form for me is "burger", while "Hamburg" is a city in Germany.

"Hamburger" for me is both the preparation and the raw ingredient. The former can be shortened to "burger" but not the latter. (More often I call it "ground beef" though.)

I forgot to mention in the other thread that I too tend to refer to the raw ingredient more as ground beef than as hamburger (I never refer to it as burger or as "hamburg").

[Nortaneous]

I've never heard that before; usually, the colloquial short form for me is "burger", while "Hamburg" is a city in Germany.

"Hamburger" for me is both the preparation and the raw ingredient. The former can be shortened to "burger" but not the latter. (More often I call it "ground beef" though.)

I tend to call it "ground beef", or "minced beef" or "mince" depending on the audience, only very rarely "hamburger", though I would understand what was meant right away. And yes, I wouldn't have thought to shorten the ground beef meaning.

ground beef is the meat one makes burgers out of

[Linguoboy]

I make burgers almost exclusively from ground turkey nowadays. Better for my gout and my cholesterol.