Reverse Dictionary #18

I have swapped out the “contract” definition for one that describes a different sense of the word.

To be fair, the definition for the word related to cutlery does warn the quiz taker that it is a U.S. term. But, to digress a bit, some in the U.S. refer to it as “silverware,” even when it is made of stainless steel or some other material. In fact, I occasionally even hear the phrase “plastic silverware” used to refer to plastic eating utensils. Language and usage can be strange things!

Regarding the “p” word, I agree it is a classist definition. But that sense of the word is seldom used in the U.S. Occasionally, actors engaged to appear in the touring company of a Broadway play might make a tongue-in-cheek reference to “playing the provinces,” but my impression is that this is very much a British definition of the word, although perhaps dated and deprecated as politically incorrect.

[To be continued…]

I associate that use of the word almost entirely with period films in which British or French aristocrats figure prominently. A recent example is the 2019 film Downton Abbey, written and produced by aristocrat Julian Fellowes, in which a member of George V’s household staff snootily refers to Downton Abbey as “a minor provincial house.”

There is certainly historical evidence that the movers and shakers of 18th century Great Britain referred to her North American colonies as “the provinces,” to the manners, culture and lifestyles of the colonists as “provincial,” and to the colonists themselves as “provincials.”

[To be continued …]

I recently came across a book published in London in 1865 (abbreviated title A Dictionary of Archaic and Provincial Words by James Orchard Halliwell-Phillipps, ESQ., F.R.S.) in which the author enters into a discussion of “The English Provincial Dialects.” Among the “provincial” dialects he discusses are those of Middlesex, the Isle of Wight, and Buckinghamshire. In the section about Bucks., he refers to “[t]he language of the peasantry.” Middlesex is disposed of very quickly: “The metropolitan county presents little in its dialect worthy of remark, being for the most part merely a coarse pronunciation of London slang and vulgarity.” I doubt that authors of scholarly works would be able to get away with using similar language in 2024.

This sense of provincial also survives in the names of furniture styles (e.g., French provincial, Italian provincial) that refer to ruder, less ornate adaptations of styles then prevalent in Paris or large Italian cities.