Guessing Regional American Slang Terms

Laurence Brown is a British man who married an American woman and moved to the US. In 2015, he started a video series called Lost in the Pond in which he shares his observations on the differences between the US and Britain. Later, he moved from the East Coat to the Midwest and found out that America is different from even itself because of all the space between the different regions. This month, he's challenged himself to guess the meaning of slang terms used in different regions of the US. He started with the South. That's a fraught dialect, since "buggy" has about a dozen meanings, but shopping cart would be at the top. "Druthers" is definitely a portmanteau, but it stands for "I would rather" and was not only corrupted, but also turned into a noun somewhere along the way. And now Brown wants to go mudding.

East Coast slang gets the same treatment. These are words most Americans know from watching television that comes out of New York City. And then there's West Coast slang, which despite Hollywood, might confuse you as much as it does Brown. No doubt New England and the Midwest will follow. If you enjoyed these and want to see more, I would suggest starting with Brown's earliest videos, when he was experiencing severe culture shock after immigrating to the United States.