Spoon Cute and other Colloquialisms

Today I received my first order from Hawaii! I have had orders from all over the Continental United States, England, and Australia. One of my favorite things in dealing with customers from outside of Pittsburgh is noticing their regional colloquialisms. Pause for an English teacher flashback--"a colloquialism is a conversational, informal type of speech. Colloquial  is often mistakenly used with a connotation of disapproval, as if it meant 'vulgar' or 'bad' or 'incorrect' usage, whereas it is merely a familiar style used in speaking and writing." (Dictionary.com)

Back to reality, Pittsburghers (yes, that is what we call ourselves), are notorious for some colloquialisms.  For example, every morning I ride my husband to to the bus stop.  What I really mean is that I give him a ride, in a car, to the bus stop, but Pittsburghers eliminate those pesky "unnecessary" words.  I will not even get started on Yinz (similar to the southern y'all) and pop (at least we are not alone on this one). We call it Pittsburghese and some of us refer to the speakers of Pittsburghese as Yinzers.  Check "aht" this site for a whole list of words spelled phonetically for your pronunciation pleasure. http://www.pittsburghese.com/

By the way, even though I was an English teacher and promoted more formal speech, there is still a place for all of the Yinzers.

The whole point of this ramble is that I was working with a customer from Georgia and when she sent me the pictures that she wanted included on her card they were soooo cute.  Since I was away from my computer, I used my phone to respond to her message and wanted to tell her how cute her pictures were. The only problem was that my phone "helped" me with the message and instead of "sooooo" it inserted "spoon."  The message read:  "Those pictures are spoon cute!"

The next day when I looked back at the message I noticed the error and wrote back explaining the error, neurotic English teacher that I am.  She replied that she thought it was just one of my sayings and that it was real!

Now, I must start using it.  Spread the word.  I want spoon cute to become a phenomenon.  Anthony joked that it must be real and that I did not make it up. He googled it and he came up with the picture above.  I like it. It definitely is spoon cute!

Have a lovely night!