Buttered or Stuffed?

The word of the day at French Word-A-Day is beurré, meaning drunk. I did a double take when I saw this because I had learned that bourré means really drunk, and I've been corrected when my mauvaise prononciation made it sound like I said beurré. You are not buttered, he told me. You're bourré, you're drunk. The beurré/bourré issue was discussed in the comments section; evidently other people were confused too. Word-A-Day's husband said you can use both, and one reader posted that beurré is a corruption of bourré. My guess is that the word you use depends on where you're from, and probably on your accent. I'm going to stick with bourré and leave the beurre for cooking.

I also noticed last week that she used the term une chipie but defined it as an ill-tempered woman. I was told that une chipie is a little girl who likes to play tricks and generally be kind of annoying and smart ass-y, a bratty little girl. The two definitions are in the same sort of general area, but still quite different. Another regional variation? I know that some of the girls at the schools had backpacks with a Chipie character on them, so if the term comes from the character then it seems normal that different regions would have different meanings.

Of course I know that different regions will acquire different slang and terms. In the northeast "wicked" is not a reference to the Salem Witch Trials but means "super cool!" I say pop, the east and west coasts say "soda," and in the south they say "coke." I talk about my tennis shoes while you talk about your sneakers or gym shoes. It's normal that terms change in different parts of the country, but it sure makes language learning a lot harder!

Along the same lines, when I was in middle school we used to shout "oh, ash! wipe it off!" whenever someone made a mistake or did something ridiculous. I think the idea was that ash was supposed to be dandruff, and there was an accompanying motion of brushing the ash off your shoulders. This was only a thing at my middle school. There are five other middle schools in town and not a single one of them ever did this! Talk about regional slang!

Anyone else have funny stories about the differences in vocab between regions?