What Do You Call This Popular Beverage?

[Mannahnin]

I’ve never heard it used outside old movies. It’s not really used in the UK. I’m sceptical that you heard it used in Ireland.

This may just be you missing vocabulary for a device you never talk about personally.

That’s interesting. I’m from the U.K. and have lived in Canada (BC) for two years, and have never heard anyone use the term soda fountain (or indeed soda jerk) outside old American films, where they seem to have often been specific stores/bars selling soda from a machine (resembling a modern soda gun or bar gun), though there’s also machines in drugstores and some diners. I therefore tend to associate the phrase with both a machine that produces soda and a store that sells soda from machines, but only in the US before 1980 or so.

Soda jerk is archaic terminology because it referred to an employee whose primary job was to operate an old fashioned soda fountain with a lever arm they pulled down on (the "jerk"). I will accept correction from anyone who can attest to it being in current usage somewhere, though.

Soda fountain - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Soda gun - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

In the U.K. and Canada (and NZ, where I’ve also lived) people seem to call the machine (usually found in pubs, bars, and some restaurants) a soda gun or bar gun. The machine that dispenses fizzy drinks in cinemas (you know, where you can press the buttons for ice and different flavours) generally seems to be called a soda machine, similarly to a Slurpee machine in 7-11 etc. But I can see why you might call it a soda fountain.

Ok, so we've confirmed that in the parts of the English-primary world you've lived you use the same terms for a soda gun or bar gun that we do. Yes, the machine a customer often operates in a fast food restaurant (sometimes they're behind the counter and the employee operates it), a convenience store, or a movie theater (cinema), with the buttons for different drinks and for ice, is the thing we're talking about. The machine is pretty ubiquitous around the world.

If you're calling what I know as a soda fountain simply a soda machine, that invites the question- how do you distinguish it from an automated vending machine you pay with cash or a card and then dispenses a bottled drink? Where I am, the latter is a soda machine, and the one where you fill up a cup and optionally put a lid on it (with a hole for a straw) and ice in it is a soda fountain.

There used to be “drinking fountains” for water in public toilets, but those have disappeared now.

Yes, drinking fountains / water fountains still exist in many parts of the world too.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

This may just be you missing vocabulary for a device you never talk about personally.

Possibly, but in UK English, "fountain" sounds archaic/lavatorial (unless it's in the middle of a park and has a statue squirting water from some part of it's body), and calling anyone any kind of "jerk" will get you punched, so, unless some UK cinema employee tells me otherwise, I will continue to believe it's known as a soft drinks machine.

Yes, drinking fountains / water fountains still exist in many parts of the world too.

But haven't existed in the UK for something like 30 years.

 

[Willie the Duck]

Don’t think so. Pubs - it comes out of a pipe or in bottles.

As in, from some sort of tap?

If you're calling what I know as a soda fountain simply a soda machine, that invites the question- how do you distinguish it from an automated vending machine you pay with cash or a card and then dispenses a bottled drink? Where I am, the latter is a soda machine, and the one where you fill up a cup and optionally put a lid on it (with a hole for a straw) and ice in it is a soda fountain.

It wouldn't be the first time two unlike things related to a single topic shared the same name. FWIW, I live in the middle of midwestern middle America and have heard soda fountains sometimes called soda machines. It is the converse (having never heard them as soda fountains) that I find unusual to my standard frame of reference.

Yes, drinking fountains / water fountains still exist in many parts of the world too.

But haven't existed in the UK for something like 30 years.

Huh, I've been to the UK enough times that I can't think of the actual number (six times? seven?) and never noticed. I guess that's something you'd pick up if you actually lived there, not tourism or business travel. Now, if they all disappeared during Covid, I would get that. Same if they just never appeared (different countries have different takes on whether there should be public lavatories and trash receptacles, so why not drinking fountains?). But having them but they all but disappeared by ~30 years ago -- what happened there?

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Huh, I've been to the UK enough times that I can't think of the actual number (six times? seven?) and never noticed. I guess that's something you'd pick up if you actually lived there, not tourism or business travel. Now, if they all disappeared during Covid, I would get that. Same if they just never appeared (different countries have different takes on whether there should be public lavatories and trash receptacles, so why not drinking fountains?). But having them but they all but disappeared by ~30 years ago -- what happened there?

I'm not sure its particularly obvious even to residents - I suspect younger folk are unaware they were ever common. Public drinking fountains just seem to have faded away (before COVID), I imagine for hygiene reasons. They were there in the 80s. But I can't recall seeing one since. There may still be a few around somewhere. Bottled water has become pretty ubiquitous instead. Prior to COVID US style water coolers where starting to take off, but they were taken away during COVID and haven't come back.

As in, from some sort of tap?

If you look at why in UK English a faucet (US) is called a tap, it comes from tapping (verb) a barrel (i.e. making a hole in it) to get the beer out.

 

[Willie the Duck]

If you look at why in UK English a faucet (US) is called a tap, it comes from tapping (verb) a barrel (i.e. making a hole in it) to get the beer out.

Yes, we (US) call our beer, uh 'spigots' (to use a third term both nations probably know but use less frequently) 'taps' instead of 'faucets' (and say that we have kegged beer 'on tap'). We (well, some people here) also tap maple trees for the precursor to maple syrup, have 'wire taps' in our cop dramas, etc. It's not the main term we use for liquid spigots, but certainly one with which many-to-most US Americans would be familiar.

If we really want to do a deep dive on beer and keg terminology, I think the next step is to overanalyze the word 'bung.' I'm sure it will go well.

What I was trying to do was clarify that 'coming out of a pipe' meant coming from a tap/faucet/spigot connected to a line (actual pipe or a flex tube) leading to a keg/tank. The sentence at face value depicts it just pouring out of an open-ended pipe, which seems implausible but I wanted to confirm the actual meaning.

 

[A2Z]

Oh, man...

I'll let a Quebecois handle that one.

I'm not Quebecois, but I lived there for two years, so; Tabarouette! C'est pas dole ca.

 

[CleverNickName]

There are a lot of laymen's terms for the word "Valve." I've seen them called hydrants, faucets, taps/tappers, stops/stoppers, shutoffs, bibs, stopcocks, spigots...but the technical name for "mechanical device that controls the flow of a fluid in a pipe" is a valve.

Water engineers are very pedantic about valves. But if you tell the waiter "I'll have whatever beverage is connected to that valve," people are going to give you a strange look.

In this part of the United States, people usually say "tap" when referring to a beverage-dispensing valve ("tap water," "tap list," "on tap," etc.) Less frequently, we also use the word "faucet" but for water only, and usually only when it's malfunctioning ("leaky faucet.")

Anyway. We engineers still call this a "soda fountain," even though it's technically a "valve manifold."

"Mmm, a delicious sugar solution, dispensed straight from the valve manifold."

 

[Twiggly the Gnome]

I think the next step is to overanalyze the word 'bung.' I'm sure it will go well.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

valve manifold.

I'm happy with that. Although I can't say as I've seen one quite so manifold as the one in the picture, even in the cinema*.

Since you are an engineer, does that valve manifold connect to the mains water supply, or does it have an independent drinking water supply?


*Unless it's for coffee. I've seen some monster coffee machines.

 

[CleverNickName]

Since you are an engineer, does that valve manifold connect to the mains water supply, or does it have an independent drinking water supply?

They are almost always connected to the municipal water supply, and might have a filter and/or water softener between the device and the water meter to meet the standards of the beverage company (Coca-Cola is very particular about the water their vendors are allowed to use). It then gets mixed with CO2 gas in the feed line, then mixed with syrup at the nozzle right before it lands in the cup.

Given the number of beverages that a soda fountain dispenses in a single day, it would require a huge tank to have its own independent water supply. Like, hundreds or maybe even thousands of gallons.