Kamikaze : (Montréal, Canada)
Small bulldozer used to clear snow off sidewalks. Called Kamikaze because the vehicle barrels down the sidewalk at speeds nearing 60mph, seemingly on a mission to hit anything not fast enough to get out of its way.I was talking to someone today and she mentioned that she the sidewalks were not being cleared-off as well as last winter and that she hadn’t seen a single kamikaze on her street since December.
I knew exactly what she meant since this is a common term in Montréal, however, I’m well aware that anywhere else in the world, kamikazes were Asian suicide pilots.
Does anybody have examples of that type. Words that mean one thing to the world in general but have a completely unrelated, and un-guessable meaning in your region/area?
Another example in Montréal is Green Onion. Those are the guys that hand out parking tickets. They got the name “Green Onion” because they had a green uniform and, well, they stink. At least you think it stinks when you get a ticket
. The uniforms changed a few years ago (the government hoped it would stop the name-calling by making them blue) but they are still called Green Onions.