Regionalism's

[Tuckervill]

"How's yo mama n'them?"

My daddy use to call his mother's biscuits "cathead biscuits", because they were as big as a cat's head.

One difference I noticed between Chicago and Arkansas was the way we referred to our parents. In Arkansas, kids always said, "Mama said I can't go." I was so confused by that. In Chicago we always said, "My mom said I can't go." We only left out the possessive pronoun when we were talking to our actual siblings!

Karen

[sundial]

momnem--my mother and her peers

Karen, I noticed how so many say mama around here. Another southern thing wouldn't you say?

[Tuckervill]

Mama is definitely a southern thang, but you'll hear it all over.

eta: I just remembered something. My daddy (that's a Southern thing, too--in Chicago I would have said dad) called his mother Maw (we all did), but whenever he referred to her in the 3rd person, he'd say mama, as if it were a title. "We're going down to see Mama."

Karen

[coyote]

I'm not sure which is the regionalism:
in AZ its an arroyo - CO its a wash - from wikipedia, dry creek bed.

[sundial]

I'
in AZ its an arroyo - CO its a wash - from wikipedia, dry creek bed.

In Texas, it's known as a "crick".

[Crankin]

We called it a wash in AZ, too, but I know what arroyo means. My parents got their car "stuck in a wash," when they tried to cross it after a flash flood...

Red Rhodie, your list made me laugh. I think about three fourths of those apply to eastern MA also, with a few that are very specific to RI. I think that most of those expressions you find in blue collar towns in eastern MA, especially where people don't move away and there's generations of families living in close proximity. When I was a kid, everyone used those expressions, but I doubt I'd hear one in Concord, today! Even my students in Hudson don't have any accents or use a lot of regional words (except maybe bubbler), but quite a few of their parents do. Again, this is a community where people stay put and often live down the street from their parents, aunts, uncles.

[SlowButSteady]

In South Carolina, it's a gulley

[Aggie_Ama]

In Texas, it's known as a "crick".

Not in my area, it is a creek.

[sundial]

Not in my area, it is a creek.

You're close to civilization. I lived out in the back 40.