Wherein we ask each other dialect questions we don't quite understand

[Scott DeWar]

That was quite funny!

 

[sabrinathecat]

Oh, it's hillarious.
While the Daily show pokes a quick joke at as many topics as they can cram in, Last Week Tonight picks 3-4 topics, and runs with them for the entire episode.
Youtube.

What is even funnier is that the guy responded with another video, to which John Oliver replied on his show, setting (or trying to set up) a chain of one-up-manship.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

and now there are synthetic canniboids!

Perhaps this is another dialectic thing--as I had understood it, the scientific term would be "cannabinoids."

I honestly wouldn't know the general-use term. I've never smoked anything in my life. Heck, I live in one of the most liberal, pot-smoking cities in the US and I don't have the foggiest idea where one would go to acquire, shall we say, "non-medical" varieties.

 

[JWO]

I've also heard "bollocks" from Brits in generally the same usage. I'm not certain -- is that bovine in origin, and thus of the same extraction of the common US "bull(suffix)"?

No, you're confusing bollocks with bullocks. It's not a grandma friendly thing to explain, though. I think you'll have to look that one up off EN World.

Bollocks = Rubbish, nonsense, etc.

The dog's bollocks = The very best!

 

[Scott DeWar]

Perhaps this is another dialectic thing--as I had understood it, the scientific term would be "cannabinoids."

I honestly wouldn't know the general-use term. I've never smoked anything in my life. Heck, I live in one of the most liberal, pot-smoking cities in the US and I don't have the foggiest idea where one would go to acquire, shall we say, "non-medical" varieties.

When I take a drug test, it gets listed as cannabinoids. That is where I get the term

 

[Jan van Leyden]

One question came up in the context of the thread reagarding funerals: what's the difference between a casket and a coffin?

 

[tuxgeo]

Synonyms. In the US, "casket" and "coffin" mean roughly the same thing.

The words do have different etymologies, with "casket" coming from French "casse," and with "coffin" coming from Ancient Greek through Latin "cophinus" (which was the Latin borrow-word form).

 

[Ryujin]

Generally speaking a coffin is a plain ol' wooden box whut you'd bury someone in, cowboy style. A casket is a fancy box fer buryin' rich folk.