Things I probably should have known, but didn’t, and have just recently discovered: one linguistic (on a pronunciation in BrE), one botanical (on the identity of a plant growing on the street a block from my house).
How to say it: urinal in BrE. The porcelain bathroom fixture, a recurrent subject of my postings — most recently of “human urinal” on 4/8, about a video pissoir with some (male) human body parts and a fierce desire for sex with men. My net searches in connection with this odd item of gay porn brought me some discussions of the fixtures from UK sources. Where it developed that the noun urinal in BrE is accented on the second syllable rather than the first, and has /ảɪn/ (rhyming with wine) vs. AmE /ɪn/ (rhymes with win).
Though I have lived for significant periods of time in the UK (in Brighton in England and Edinburgh in Scotland, plus shorter visits to Cardiff and Beaumaris in Wales, and of course London), I had somehow missed this pronunciation, parallel to BrE /aɪn/ in the adjectives
clandestine, uterine (with secondary accent); doctrinal, vaginal (with primary accent)
which I was aware of. But urínal was a surprise. I’m still getting used to it.
What is it: a labiate plant with fleshy leaves. In walking around the block, Isaac and I come by a plant with fleshy light-green leaves that Isaac recognizes as a familiar plant from his childhood, notable for its aromatic leaves (when crushed). Yes, I verified, square stems, so almost surely a labiate plant (in the mint family). But I recognized neither the appearance nor the scent, and found nothing that looked like our plant in searches on the net.
Yesterday, however, Isaac found it. It’s oregano. Well, more exactly, an oregano. It turns out that there are lots of species of Origanum, and within O, vulgare a stunning catalogue of varied subspecies, some with named varieties. Some are grown as ornamentals, some with leaves that are dried and broken into bits to serve as culinary spices (with different flavors); ordinary “Itaian oregano” or “Greek oregano”, such as you would put on your pizza, is O. v. subsp. hirtum — and the plant on Emerson St. is something else. (Meanwhile, “Mexican oregano” is Lippia graveolens, in the verbena, not the mint, family.)
Now the crucial fact. All my experience with oregano has been culinary; I had no idea what oregano plants, of any variety, look like, or what the fresh leaves smell like. Somehow I never bought a pot of sone ornamental variety, or tried growing oregano plants in my garden, along with other labiates. Somehow I was labiate-wise but oregano-ignorant.
April 14, 2026 at 12:51 pm |
As a BrE-adjacent speaker I’m pretty sure that both pronunciations of “urinal” are in use. My sense (for what that’s worth) is that the first-syllable-stressed one is more usual. My 1983 Chambers Dictionary agrees me and is of course the Source of Correctness. It relegates the second-syllable-stressed pronunciation to an “(also)” parenthetical.
April 14, 2026 at 1:59 pm |
Ah, that would explain why I didn’t pick it up from when I lived in the UK.
April 14, 2026 at 1:00 pm |
I first noticed the British pronunciation of urinal in connection not with the plumbing fixture you stand in front of, but the portable bottle-like device that can be brought to a non-ambulatory patient to use wherever he may be.
April 14, 2026 at 4:15 pm |
Ah, considerable terminological complexity.
If you use the plastic bottles, you call them “urinals”, period (I have one in every room of my house, because I need to whizz a lot).
Fir commercial purposes, “urinal” refers to a plumbing fixture — an appliance (typically porcelain, and wall- or floor-mounted) connected to a sewage system (typically, in a public place).
For commercial purposes, the bottles are called “male urinals” or “urinals for men”. Or “portable urinals (or men)” or “(male) urinal bottles”. (Don’t complain to me; these terms are not my inventions; I don’t sell the things.)
April 16, 2026 at 6:05 am |
I have been growing (culinary) oregano in my summer herb garden for many years. It’s a mostly hardy perennial even in this (Gloucester, MA) climate, although I do have to replace it occasionally. It tends to be low-growing. (Rather more low-growing, and considerably hardier, is oregano thyme, which is in fact a thyme with an especially sharp flavor that suggests oregano.)
April 16, 2026 at 5:25 pm |
Robert, you’re probably growing Origanum vulgare. Down here, we grow Coleus amboinicus (Cuban oregano) and Lippia graveolens (Mexican oregano), and many recipes call for one or the other. They all have a similar flavor.