See, my dad is convinced that it's a British word. I told him I had never heard any of my British friends use it. According to our dictionary, both words mean the same thing.
I never thought I would learn a word because my mother has dementia....
I never thought of it as British. I grew up saying Bumbleshoot, and learned to do so from (I think) my mother. (I grew up in southern New York State (NYC suburbs); my mother grew up in central Illinois, with substantial Chicago influence.)
Some quick Googling led to the speculation that "bumbershoot" originated in the lyrics to a song in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Although the music was written by Americans, it was set in England, leading some to think it was an British English word.
I've never heard of either. Someone mentioned that it may be from (or in) the film of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, but I don't remember it there (I may just have ignored it as a 'nonsense' word), it certainly isn't in the original book.
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I never thought I would learn a word because my mother has dementia....
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Some quick Googling led to the speculation that "bumbershoot" originated in the lyrics to a song in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Although the music was written by Americans, it was set in England, leading some to think it was an British English word.
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Until reading this post, I had never encountered "bumbleshoot" at all.
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Bumbershoot is, of course, an end-of-summer music festival in Seattle. :)
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