Date:  Mon, 2 Oct 1995 10:07:10 -0700

From:  Dan Alford <dalford[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]S1.CSUHAYWARD.EDU>

Subject: Re: icebox



I vote with Larry here (hi, Larry!) for a national phenomenon all pretty

much at the same time. B. 1946 in Los Angeles, I remember our icebox when

I was very young; I remember the hole in the outside of the house where

the iceman placed the block of ice, and I remember years later when we

remodeled the kitchen and belatedly stuccoed over the ice door. We called

the new appliance a 'fridge' ("It's in the fridge"), which I take to be

the reduced form of refrigerator since my folks were confirmed Sears

shoppers (when Roebuck was still around), so it probably wasn't a

brand-name Frigidaire. The new even colder part was the freezer, but it

took years for everyone to stop calling the combined unit 'the icebox'.





On Sun, 1 Oct 1995, Larry Horn wrote:



> Let me add some additional evidence for Kate Catmull's suspicion...

>

> >Wouldn't the distribution be by age rather than geography? My mother (b.

> >1930, Minnesota) used "icebox" somewhat more often than "refrigerator" or

> >"fridge," and I (b. 1958, Utah) mimicked her usage when I was a child. Now

> >I almost ever hear "icebox," and I never use it.

>

> 'Icebox' was used in our house when I was growing up in New York City (b.

> 1945) and I too used it standardly at the time but less and less frequently

> since then. My wife (b. 1944), who grew up in Connecticut, reports the same

> sequence. It's beginning to look like the gradual disappearance of 'icebox'

> is a national, rather than regional, trend. We MAY have also used

> 'frigidaire' as a generic, but my memory is unclear on that one.

>

> Larry

>