Vote results...

Way-back-when I posted a poll:

http://mainahglossary.blogspot.com/2006/12/time-to-vote.html

67% voted for Ay-yuh - I will change the entry next time I do an update.

L.

Priceless...

• $30 for an old scrap snowblower body
• $13 for wheels from Marden's
• Being able to plow your driveway with your 1998 Honda Civic...Priceless!

Love the quote "I can't hit the snowbank hard, because it could set off the car airbags."

Portland Press Herald article

BTW, sorry for the lack of posts! Any new words for me? I'm wicked behind again.

L.

You know you're from Maine if... (long)

1.. you've had arguments over the comparative qualityof Fried Dough. Yes
2.. you get four inches of snow and you call it "a dusting."
3.. your neighbor's house was foreclosed after an unlucky 24 hour mini-cruise on the Scotia Prince.
4.. you don't understand why there aren't fried clamshacks elsewhere in the country.
5.. you know what an Irving is and the location of 15 of them. Absolutely
6.. you knew all the flavors at Perry's Nut House.
7.. your car is covered in yellow-green dust in May. Sigh
8.. you can drive the Augusta rotaries without slowing down. Yep
9.. you've hung out at a gravel pit.
10.. you think a mosquito could be a species of bird.
11.. you once skipped school and went to Bar Harbor, Old Orchard Beach or Reid State Park.
12.. even your school cafeteria made good chowder.
13.. you've almost fallen asleep driving between Houlton and Presque Isle .
14.. you know how to pronounce Calais and Machias. Yes
15.. you've made a meal out of a Jordan's red dye hotdog, a bag of Humpty Dumpty potato chips and a can of soda. Yep
16.. you've gone to a Grange bean supper. Yes
17.. in high school, you (or a friend) packed Deering Ice Cream cones. Yes
18.. at least once in your life, a seagull pooped on your head.
19.. at least once in your life you've said, "It smells like the mill in here." Yep
20.. there's a fruit and vegetable stand within 10 minutes of your house.
21.. you have shopped at the Big Chicken Barn.
22.. your idea of a traffic jam is being the second car at the stoplight.
23.. you wonder out loud if the state can just close its borders to people from away.
24.. your house converts to a B&B every July & August for people from away that you happen to know.
25.. all year long you're tracking sand in the house; from the beach in the summer and the roads and sidewalks in the winter.
26.. you have a front door but no steps to get to it.
27.. you use "wicked" as a multi-purpose part of speech. Use to
28.. you have to have the sand cleaned out of your brake system every spring.
29.. you do the majority of your shopping out of Uncle Henry's.
30.. you've ditched the car on the side of the road somewhere because you thought you saw some good fiddleheads!
31.. you've had a vacation from school just to help the family pick potatoes.
32.. you know a lobster pot is a trap, not a kettle. Of course!
33.. you know not to plant tender crops until the last full moon in May.
34.. when you go to the dump and bring back more than you brought.
35.. when people from "away" ask for directions and you intentionally led them in the opposite direction they wanted to go.
36.. you watch "Murder She Wrote" and snicker at the stupid fake accents.
37.. you know how to find the rope swing at the quarry.
38.. you take the New Hampshire toll personally. Yes
39.. you feel really really good when you cross the Piscatiqua River bridge into Kittery. I read the sign out loud almost every time
40.. you always wave when you see a Maine license plate in another state.
41.. a roll of duct tape and a can of flat black spray paint will get your car to pass inspection.
42.. you know how to avoid all the traffic at the Fryeburg Fair by using the "Secret Entrance".
43.. you have to replace your mailbox yearly because ofthe town plow.
44.. you know how to get from Cumberland to Fryeburg via the "Egypt Road".
45.. you can remember when the "Egypt Road" was a dirt track through the woods.
46.. when you're supposed to dress up, you wear plaid flannel with a tie.
47.. you know that Moody's Diner does NOT take credit cards!
48.. you actually miss the fifteen below zero mornings in winter (that have been eliminated by the greenhouse effect) because you enjoyed running or walking to workin the silent crystal stillness, punctuated by an idling car engine as the owner waited indoors for the car to warm up before his mad dash from warmth to warmth, and your lungs did not freeze; thank you verymuch for your concern.
49.. the word "stove" refers to what you did to the right front fender of your truck after you've had a wicked bring-up on a rock.
50.. there's too much "stuff" in your 2 "cah" garage to get either of your cars into it.
51.. you know what a frappe is. Yum!
52.. you know the smell of Woodsmens fly dope.
53.. you eat supper at night and dinner at noon.
54.. your idea of a traffic jam is ten cars waiting to pass a tractor on the highway.
55.. "vacation" means going to the Allagash for the weekend.
56.. you measure distance in hours. Still do!
57.. you know several people who have hit moose more than once.
58.. you often switch from "heat" to "A/C" in the same day.
59.. you use a down comforter in the summer.
60.. your grandparents drive at 65 mph through 13 fee to snow during a raging blizzard, without flinching.
61.. you see people wearing hunting clothes at social events.
62.. you install security lights on your house and garage and leave them both unlocked.
63.. you think of the major food groups as moose meat, beer, fish, and berries.
64.. you carry jumper cables in your car and your girlfriend knows how to use them.
65.. there are 4 empty cars running in the parking lot at the convenience store at any given time.
66.. you design your kid's Halloween costume to fit over a snowsuit.
67.. driving is better in the winter because the potholes are filled with snow.
68.. you think sexy lingerie is tube socks and flannel pajamas.
69.. you know all 4 seasons: almost wintah, wintah, still wintah and construction.
70.. you know what it means when someone says they are going upstreet.
71.. rumble strip warn not of toll booths, but moose crossings.
72.. school kids toss their lunch (homemade bread and lobster sandwiches) in the wastebasket because they have them so often.
73.. you can actually see the milky way. Yes
74.. you can use your brights on the highway. Yes
75.. L.L. Bean's not just a store, it's a way of life. Absolutely
76.. you encounter any sign reading: "Next Exit: 246 miles".
77.. the nearest mall is 2 hours away.
78.. you have to yield for snowmobiles.
79.. lobster is $1.00 a pound.
80.. the state closes down at five o'clock.
81.. "The City" means exclusively Portland. Yes
82.. "salt damage" is a viable insurance claim.
83.. all of the traffic lights blink yellow at 10 o'clock at night.
84.. it's not a storm, it's a nor'eastah.
85.. open 24/7 might as well be Greek.
86.. you say room and people think you are saying rum.
87.. you can buy a minivan with four wheel drive and chained tires.
88.. all addresses start with RR# Mine use to!
89.. you've seen a woman mowing her lawn in the nude.
90.. a rest stop means a pit toilet and a picnic table.
91.. you know Moxie isn't a woman's magazine. Yes
92.. you know that L/A doesn't mean a city in California. Yes
93.. you know who "Marty on the mountain" is.
94.. you go "off-roading" before and after school.
95.. you just go for rides in your truck around town for no apparent reason other than to take a ride in your truck around town.
96.. you get turned on when you see a big pickup witha loud muffler.
97.. you diet all week so you can consume 40,000 calories at a fair. Yes
98.. you eat ice cream with flavors like 'MooseTracks" and "Maine Black Bear".
99.. you know that a chocolate doughnut is not a white doughnut with chocolate frosting. Yes
100.. you call any long sandwich an "Italian". Yes
101.. you know what fly dope is. Yes
102.. you eat potato chips with flavors such as "clamdip", "ketchup" and "dill pickle". Yes
103.. the smell of clam flats at low tide, while disgusting, brings back fond memories of childhood trips to the beach.
104.. you call the basement "downcellah." Sometimes
105.. your grandmother called shorts "shots".
106.. you live in a mobile home and have a brand new car and a satellite dish.
107.. you see a beat up Ford Pickup with a bumber sticker that reads: "I'd rather be bowhunting."
108.. you can hum the tune of "You should have bought it when you saw it at Mardens?" Yes
109.. you actually know what "Cumby's" is. Yes
110..You know what the Old Port is. Yes
111..You understand the theory behind Dimillo'sfloating restaurant. Umm...

Another word...

Gunkhole, n - a small body of shallow, stagnant, and boggy water, usually with poor fishing (for trout). Usage - "Ain't no use fishin there, nothin' but chubs and sunfish in that gunkhole!" Can also be used as an adjective, as in "near that gunkhole brook over by McDuff's corner"

- Submitted by KFB (Bangor, Maine)

I am behind...

Really need to update the glossary at some point. Glad I can at least post the suggestions I receive here! Also, did you notice that I finally update the format a bit today?

Here are a couple more suggestions...

Flush - n., a toilet (I worked in home health care as an occupational therapist when we first moved here and had many elderly Mainer's ask about grab bars and such to help them "get up off the flush.")

Quillypig - n., a porcupine (I heard this from a co-worker from Machias, referring to an animal her husband, a game warden, had dealt with.)

Received from LS (Hoosier now in Hampden, ME)

Recent suggestions...

Well I su'pose...

phrase, Necessary to signal someone you're visiting, that you're about to leave.

Hamburg

n. used to define ground beef or an actual hamburger; as in "Do you want cukes with your hamburg?"

Numnuts or Nummynuts

?? My aunt was known to call her kids this when she got exasperated with them.

- MIE originally from Costigan, Maine

Recent email...

I heard my grandmother use the expression "well, for land's sake" when she was surprised at something or, for example, if she met up with an acquaintance she had no seen for a long time. She was from the Casco Bay islands so no doubt heard that in the early days; she was born in 1892.

Jeff

Portland, ME

An older article but still interesting. There were many things I already knew about Portland but also a few I hadn't heard before. The comment about Portland being more liberal could be said about most cities.

Where the square is a triangle
Oddities are everywhere in this hip, diverse city, so different from its neighbors

By Judith Gaines, Globe Correspondent December 11, 2005

This quirky city was once known, fittingly enough, as ''Quack." Examples of its pleasure in things odd are everywhere. Monument Square, in the heart of downtown, is actually a triangle. The famous Casco Bay Bridge doesn't span any part of Casco Bay. (It crosses the Fore River.) The area near the local sewage treatment plant provides some of the best bird-watching in the state. And the city is home to what must be the only topless doughnut shop in the country.

With a population of 64,249, Maine's largest city is concentrated in a small geographic area, and it has always had a spunky, creative, somewhat wacko charm that endears it to other Mainiacs, while also setting it apart.

Its population is younger, hipper, and more liberal than elsewhere in the state. Public buses here have bicycle racks.

It's also more diverse. According to the last census, almost 9 percent of Portland's population is nonwhite, compared with 3 percent in the state. Officials say 51 languages are spoken at Portland High School. Mayor Jill Duson (whose term ends this month) isn't just the first black female mayor in the state but also only the second black woman ever elected to any office in Maine, she says.

Portland is so different from its neighboring communities that less than a year ago an issue of Down East magazine asked: Is it really part of Maine? Editors noted that all five Green Party candidates in 2004 elections came from districts in Portland, and one of them won. On issues like gun control, gay rights, hunting, and environmental politics, the magazine observed, Portlanders hold significantly different views from voters in the rest of the state.

Portland is home to the state's biggest symphony, top art museum, its only professional sports teams, and its largest concentration of restaurants. In a state almost without skyscrapers, the few high-rise buildings clustered along Congress Street, Portland's main thoroughfare, are as close as Maine gets to a downtown financial district. Although Augusta is the capital and legislative center, the state Supreme Court and the largest concentration of lawyers are here.

According to Guinness World Records, Portland is the only city in the country with one street on which a person could satisfy all his or her educational needs. A preschool, two elementary schools, a middle school, two high schools, and a branch of the University of New England are on 2-mile-long Stevens Avenue.

Some people have both their winter and summer homes in Portland. They spend winter on the mainland and summer on one of several Casco Bay islands technically inside the city limits: Peaks Island, Great Diamond, Little Diamond, Cushing's and Cliff islands among them. (For a quirky island tour, you can ride the mail boat as it delivers letters, freight, and passengers to the islands.)

The city houses at least two oddball, one-of-a-kind museums: The Umbrella Cover Museum (on Peaks Island), displaying all sorts of umbrella covers, humble and exotic, from around the world; and The Museum of Cryptozoology, dedicated to animals whose existence has not yet been confirmed, such as Big Foot, assorted sea monsters, and the like.

Especially in the historic Old Port, the city boasts a large assortment of one-of-a-kind shops and many distinctive galleries. Among them is SPACE, which sponsored an event in September that included rolling a huge swath of sod down Congress Street, making it an impromptu park, and turning dumpsters into theaters for puppet shows, dance, and other performances.

Other art openings take place in similarly unconventional settings. Just a few weeks ago, a hair salon called Head Games hosted the opening of an exhibit by photographer Arthur Fink. Fink said he was drawn to the salon as a place to show his work because of its light and space, and he likes the idea of new art constantly appearing throughout the city in surprising places.

For Portlanders, Fink said, being quirky ''is a way of staying fresh and alive, and making new connections."

Now through mid-February, visitors also can see the arresting sculptures of Pandora LaCasse, which she describes as ''little oases of light and cheer to warm the dead of winter." An abstract sculptor, LaCasse wraps trees, poles, and homemade forms in strings of colored lights all over the city. In a park at Middle and Exchange streets, turquoise ovals hang from pink trees. On Congress Street, fanciful orange and red megaphones cluster in front of the Time and Temperature Building. On Commercial Street by the harbor, blue and green spheres protrude from some shops, as if they were big water bubbles.

Portland's quirkiness is long-standing. Right from the start, it developed a reputation as a liberal, free-thinking place.

Maine was settled in part by people who objected to what they considered the Puritanical, restrictive ways common in Massachusetts, and they seem to have gravitated particularly to Portland, established in 1786. When Maine became the nation's 23d state in 1820, Portland was its first capital.

One guidebook describes Portlanders in the 1800s as ''boozehounds" and says waterfront laborers routinely took ''grog breaks" in the mornings and afternoons. Munjoy Hill, in the east end of town, was known as ''Mount Joy Hill," in honor of the prostitutes who frequented the area.

One of the city's towering oddities is the Portland Observatory, which looks like a lighthouse in a distinctly urban setting on Congress Street. Sandwiched between the Portland Free Methodist Church and the Fire Department and across from Colucci's Hilltop Superette, it is actually an old signal tower, erected in 1807 as a communication aid for ships heading to port.

Over the years, several well-known distilleries have had headquarters here, including McGlinchy's and the John Morgan Brewing Co., and the city remains famous for its microbrews such as Shipyard, Allagash, Geary's, and Gritty McDuff's. It has a flourishing nightlife, with several nightclubs and saloons where you can hear local bands. So many bars are crowded into the Old Port that a person can bar crawl without having to drive.

Most of Portland's attractions are concentrated on its peninsula, a compact area about three miles long and less than a mile wide. Still, outlying areas bear exploration as well. Within the city limits are at least two waterfalls and a network of about 30 miles of trails that meander around the Back Cove, along the Fore River, around the harbor, and through the Maine Audubon Sanctuary, which has two important sites in the metro area. Bird-watchers especially enjoy a trail that passes the city's sewage treatment plant, where ospreys have erected a huge nest on an abandoned railway trestle, and where you can sometimes see a bald eagle or exotic sea gulls.

Just north of the city limits but well within Metro Portland is Mackworth Island, a good place to witness the local pleasure in fun and fantasy. Given to the state by Percival Proctor Baxter as ''a sanctuary for wild beasts and birds," the island now is home to the Governor Baxter School for the Deaf, but a 1 1/4-mile trail around the perimeter is open to the public. The path passes a pet cemetery (the final resting place of 13 Irish setters and one horse); a ''listening tree" said to be able to understand the sign language of the hearing impaired as well as entreaties from more conventionally speaking people; and an extensive ''community village for fairies," where children are invited to build fairy homes out of natural materials.

On a recent day, Delaney Derrig, 7, a second-grader in nearby Westbrook, was beginning construction of one of these little twig dwellings under the watchful eye of her grandmother. She said fairies are drawn to the area ''because there are homes for them. They need somewhere to live."

Portland also is a restaurant town. Many locals proudly claim it has more restaurants per capita than anywhere in the country except San Francisco. One list shows 187 restaurants in Portland, or one for every 343 people.

City regulations do not allow food chains downtown, and the restaurants can be as quirky as the city itself. You will never pay more for less food than at Bandol's, where the portions are so tiny as to be laughable. (A recent entree of braised veal on a potato pancake with chanterelle mushrooms measured no more than two inches in diameter, including the sauce.) Hugo's, the trendiest spot in town, with somewhat bigger portions and considerably better food, offers cod tongue tempura.

Street & Company, the favorite of many locals, may be one of the few restaurants in the country that serves no meat; it's strictly about seafood. Silly's, a popular cheap eats joint near Munjoy Hill, sells an avocado milkshake, which is better than it sounds. Joe's Boathouse boasts a local favorite known as ''The Zook," a wrap with fresh chicken, tomato, onion, and homemade caper mayonnaise.

Sitting at Joe's, you can watch the comings and goings in the outer harbor and gaze upon another local oddity: Fort Gorges. This looks like a huge granite square floating in the bay with some grass on top. In fact, it's an old fort built on Hog Island in 1858 to defend Portland Harbor. However, no shot ever was fired from it.

The topless doughnut shop, part of an adult center called Platinum Plus, looks more like a plush nightclub lounge than a morning breakfast spot. But it's open Monday through Saturday, 6-11 a.m., and it does sell doughnuts, $1.50 apiece. They don't make their own, though, a young blonde woman called ''La Bomba" told me when I finally mustered the nerve to go in. When I asked who does, she giggled and said, ''It's a secret."

Coffee Brandy is #1 (and #2 and #6 and #9)...

BANGOR - When it comes to spirits, coffee brandy remains Mainers' libation of choice.

State sales figures for last year show that Allen's Coffee Flavored Brandy remains by far the top-selling brand of liquor in the state, just as it's been every year for more than a decade. Nearly 994,000 bottles worth $11.9 million were sold in four different bottle sizes in Maine in 2006.

Allen's is so popular that its different bottle sizes rank first, second, sixth and ninth on the Maine Bureau of Alcoholic Beverages and Lottery Operations list of the top 25 alcoholic items sold last year. Allen's is the only brand that appears more than once in the top 10.

No. 2 in revenue totals was Captain Morgan Spiced Rum, with $4.7 million worth of sales in Maine and 252,300 bottles sold. Bacardi Light rum sold 253,643 bottles, with revenues of almost $4.3 million.

Other top sellers in Maine in 2006 included Orloff Vodka, which sold 212,000 bottles, and Absolut Vodka, which sold 135,000 bottles. Absolut ranked fourth in terms of revenue with $3.3 million.

Coffee-flavored brandy is something of a New England specialty and is not well-known outside the region. Allen's is made by family-owned M.S. Walker Inc. of Somerville, Mass.

The dark-colored liquor that's been called "the champagne of Maine," while immensely popular, is also associated with the state's substance abuse troubles.

A decade ago, state Superior Court Judge Robert Crowley was quoted as saying the brand "is very prevalent in the criminals who come before me. I don't know whether brandy is more bang for your buck but it runs the gamut. I see it in bar fights, domestic assaults, (drunk driving) and worse crimes."
------
Information from: Bangor Daily News, http://www.bangornews.com

A couple more...

• chimbly: "You pobly ought clean tha chimbly - don't need no fyah heya!"
• pobbly: "I pobbly stove up the truck on thayt deeah yestidy - sides all staved in."

- From Mike (Ex-Mainer)

New words...

• axe - Not the thing you chop wood with. The things that the wheels on your car, truck or four wheeler roll on. "I hammered the throttle off the line and she broke an Axe." (from Mike S. of Passadumkeag, ME)
• buot - As in "Why don't cha take the buot out the cove n' check some a them pots?" Often spelled "Boat" due to a total corruption of the pronounciation outside a the coast a Maine.
• punt - Ain't got nothin ta do with the football. It's just the name given to the thing you row in when yer goin from the wharf to ya buot. "You gonna walk out theyah, Jimmy, or take the punt like a told ya?"

A couple of "new" blogs...

Found these during my wanderings today:

Words Matter

All Things Maine

L.

More words...

Bay-Ree
A tiny little fruit that grows on a bush.

Bake Be-Uns
Downeast style baked beans.

They's
Same as "there is."

Submitted by D. Crouse (from Stow and Bangor, Maine)

Happy New Year!

Finally found the time to do a website update today...

Added a new joke (Maine Barbies - really bad but still funny) and several new words. Don't forget to vote in our Ah-yuh vs. Ay-yuh poll.

Also, here are some other Mainah words up for debate:

• Bah Hahba or Bah Hubbah?
• Bangah or Bangowah or Bangor?
• Cohen or Con?
• Powrtland or Pawtlan?

Feel free to post your comments on pronounciation here!

L.