Wait til you hear that one random tiny state calls milkshakes “cabinets”
One common, but unsubstantiated, explanation is that the soda jerk or pharmacist kept the coffee syrup in one of the polished wooden cabinets behind the counter.
The good old days when you had service minded jerks rather than the unpleasant ones we have today 😄
I used to work as a Coffee Karen at a Starbucks.
Did you keep demanding to speak to your own manager?
My grandmother was a soda jerk for a time. Also did the switchboard for telephones too!
Living in northern Minnesota, drinking fountain and water fountain get used interchangeably. And I’ve only known one person that used bubbler regularly. But they weren’t in their right mind most of the time.
And ain’t nothing IDs a Minnesotan faster than hot dish vs casserole or even worse, Duck Duck Grey Duck vs Duck Duck Grey Goose. We WILL go to war over that stuff.
You mean Duck Duck Goose.
Ahhhhh no, Duck Duck Grey Duck!
Duck Grey Duck vs Duck Duck Grey Goose
So it HAS to be grey, but it’s debatable whether or not it’s vodka? Americans are weird sometimes 🤔
Where I’m from in the US it was always duck duck goose, a kid moved to our school and said grey duck once. Poor kid didn’t hear the end of it until middle school
Funny enough, there’s a brand of vodka made in Minnesota called Grey Duck.
There is no debate. It’s Grey Duck and Grey Duck only! ;):) And why would anyone drink vodka? A bottle of water has more flavor and will dilute your orange juice cheaper and just a well.
A bottle of water absolutely does not have more flavor. I’d pay good money for something non-alcoholic that tastes the way vodka does.
Bottled water is very often distilled and then has minerals added back into it to make it taste like something. And they ain’t spending money on adding back any more minerals than they need to. Even highly processed water as provided from your tap has a distinct taste from one different water system to the next.
If you want a liquor with real flavor, choose a bourbon, Scotch, rum, brandy, or nearly anything else besides vodka.
I didn’t claim water has no flavor. I just said vodka has a stronger flavor.
And yes, other liquors are even more flavored, but perhaps what I want in my orange juice is something that tastes like ethanol. Ethanol does have a flavor, after all.
why would anyone drink vodka
Getting drunk is the traditional motivation
A bottle of water has
morebetter flavorFixed it for you.
will dilute your orange juice cheaper
True.
and just a well.
Arguably untrue, depending on your goals.
Yeah, I grew up in Wisconsin closer to the Minnesota border, so I used both as well. When I moved to Eastern Wisconsin, I solidified on “drinking fountain” because people here call it a “bubbler” and tease you more about “water fountain.”
Oh yeah, and I remember getting blank stares in college when mentioning that we had a lot of hot dish growing up. I didn’t realize how regional that phrase was.
Hotdish is a term that will instantly mark you as a Minnesotan. And tater tot hotdish is our state food and religion. Everyone makes and eats it. Sadly, lutefisk and potato klub are fading away as more of us old timers die off. But lefse is still hanging on though.
Hot dish and bars motherfucker.
WTF? A bubbler is a kind of weed pipe.
show it
Nice try officer

That’s:
A. Drug paraphernalia.
B. Chemistry lab glassware.
C. A coffee brewing device that you’ll use a couple of times, and then only to impress guests.
D. There’s no way to tell without trying all of the above.
It’s disappointing when these are cut off at the Canadian border. Canada is influenced by both the UK and the US, and has been drifting towards the US over recent decades. Plus, Canada has some really weird dialect areas like Newfoundland.
It would be interesting to see which terms drift north of the border, and which ones stop at the border. How hard is the border when it comes to dialects? Does the fact that people live most of their lives on one side of the border mean that the language doesn’t tend to drift across it? Or do people hear their neighbours talk and begin to adopt some terms? My guess would be that these days it’s more influenced by what’s on TV or on the Internet.
Quebec:
Quebec has a surprising number of English speakers, and their dialect is interesting.
Indeed, myself included!
People can never tell where my accent is from.
Abreuvoir
No thanks, I already ate
British: “sippy squirty drinkingdale”
That or simply “cunt”, depending on what part of the Kingdom you’re from 🤷🏻
I grew up near the triple point so I change phases between drinking fountain and water fountain while encountering the occasional bubbler
Water fountain is the ornamental thing you see in a park with multiple tiers full of gross water and coins.
What do they call a water fountain if it’s not the drinking kind?
And having lived in the “bubbler” zone, I’ve never once heard it called that. Must be disappearing.
A fountain. Drop the word water, as you aren’t drinking from that.
That’s because they spelled it wrong. Asked someone from the Boston area. It should end in -a not -er
At least for the area of Wisconsin I grew up, it does end in -er.
People in New Hampshire watching the Bluey episode “Bin Night”

I’ve not seen that episode, but I’m guessing they use the word bubbler in it? That’s definitely what we call them in Australia. Or at least here in Brisbane where I’m from, and Bluey is set.
Definitely regional in Australia. Drinking fountain gang here.
Yes, there is mention of a bubbler
And then there’s that town that made up its own language.
I live in Australia and I use these interchangeably for some reason, but ive mainly been calling them “water bubblers”, not sure why though lol, nobody here calls it that.
elbow pasta?
Aka Zippy-Doodlers, aparently.
TIL the rest of the country uses weird words. Macaroni? They nammed Zippy-Doodlers and Orangey Goopey after the president of France???
Water dispenser
Right. Let’s dispense with the water and get on with the task at hand!
It’s Herb Kohl’s fault lol
This is a bubbler (a bubbler-brand bubbler, too!):

iirc from the last time this came up, they were super popular in the “bubbler”-using regions so the name stuck around to describe all drinking fountains, not just bubblers.
Thank you! Bubblers were created and patented in Wisconsin, too, so I’m glad we are keeping the name alive.










