Tennis Shoe ????

**pluckyduck** · #1 10-14-2001, 08:55 PM

A quote by Joubert:

Quote:

The tongue of my tennis shoe bows to ya!

prompted me to request that we settle the issue for once and for all.

Is it a "tennis shoe" or is it a "sneaker"?

Let me give you a hint:

It's a sneaker!

Andrea

theeye · #2 10-14-2001, 09:09 PM

I always thought I wore sneakers. I certainly didn't wear "tennis shoes" or "running shoes" or even "walking shoes" (my daily step counts are probably lower than my IQ -- and I'm not bragging about my intelligence here).

That was before I went to the mall (in my former life as a suburbanite) and found that Easy Spirit marketed one of its models as ... get this: a shopping shoe. I kid you not!

Of course, these days nearly all of my shopping takes place in front of a computer monitor. When I'm not in bare feet, I'm wearing good old-fashioned sneakers.

-TheEye, who's not sure how she wandered into Health & Fitness and is pretty sure it won't happen again

**taurusmoon** · #3 10-14-2001, 09:22 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by theeye
-TheEye, who's not sure how she wandered into Health & Fitness and is pretty sure it won't happen again

Hey Andrea, the subliminal messages worked!

Sara
Who asserts that tennis shoes are for playing that game with the fuzzy yellow ball

**slick4591**[$] · #4 10-14-2001, 10:19 PM

Neither one. It's tenny shoes. Don't know exactly why, but that's what I grew up with. My best guess is it had something to do with not playing tennis, nor doin' much sneakin'.

Sorry, can't help ya much, Andrea.

theeye · #5 10-14-2001, 10:41 PM

When I was a teenager, my family moved to Omaha, NE (don't ask -- it was very traumatic) for my last two years of high school.

They called sneakers "tennies" there.

It wasn't the only weird thing. My first day of school, a boy asked me if he could borrow a pin.

It struck me as odd, but I asked him what kind he needed. "A ball point would be fine", he replied.

They called soda "pop", which I found rather juvenile (when you're 16, a lot of things strike you as juvenile).

But the most remarkable moment was when a classmate told me, with obvious admiration and not a drop of irony, that she loved my New Jersey accent. Until that moment, I had no idea that I had an accent -- and I expressed astonishment at her comment.

She told me that she found my pronounciation of the word "very" particularly sophisticated. I, of course, correctly

pronounced it as "verrrrry" (with a sound like "learn" in the middle). She pronounced it as "vairy" (rhymes with "fairy").

(side note: my 17 month old son desperately wants to contribute to this thread. If any incoherent sequences of characters show up, you'll know who to blame.)

-TheEye, who knows that she's veered off-topic here, but points out that if you're going to send subliminal messages to bring me into a forum that I've got no business in, then you'll have to expect some off-topic material

**taurusmoon** · #6 10-14-2001, 10:46 PM

I've got the sneaker/tennies controversy going on in my household.

Chip (the transplanted Mid-Westerner) often asks me to hand him his tennies.

I, quite correctly, tell him to get his own damn sneakers.

Sara

hypotenuse · #7 10-14-2001, 10:51 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by slick4591
Neither one. It's tenny shoes.

Yup.

Lynne

**pluckyduck** · #8 10-14-2001, 11:13 PM

Quote:

TheEye, who's not sure how she wandered into Health & Fitness and is pretty sure it won't happen again

I'm reasonably confident the same thing happened to me.

. I seem to remember taking a wrong turn at the Oscillating Gourmet... next thing I knew I was wearing a pedometer, ordering a very large ball online and (true story) telling DH to feel my legs to confirm that there is still no muscle discernable in the front of my lower leg.

Oh, and taking vitamins and drinking all of my water.

So, ya never know. This place is populated by some seriously deranged people. You might fit in!

Andrea
who had lack of front lower leg muscle confirmation this AM

quasar · #9 10-15-2001, 01:02 AM

Tennis shoes are actually a very specific type of sneaker...the ones with totally flat rubber soles. They were originally just used for playing tennis (gee, there's a shock). Generically all of the various types of athletic shoes are sneakers. Different subsets with different characteristics have other more specific names as well. Some areas of the country may have adopted tennis shoes to cover all sneakers, but technically that isn't correct and if you go into an athletic store they should make a distinction (but may not if a term has been adopted into common parlance).

Janice, who had to listen to many lectures on this very subject growing up from her father the formerly ranked tennis player/tennis coach

**lynnzop**[$] · #10 10-15-2001, 11:28 AM

Quote:

When I was a teenager, my family moved to Omaha, NE (don't ask -- it was very traumatic) for my last two years of high school.

Yikes, I've been here for close to 13 years...not feeling a bit traumatized YET.

It's tennys.

I, myself, don't find that I "SNEAK" anywhere. I walk fast and loud. People can hear me coming a mile away.

And yes, it's POP. And the thing that spouts water is called a "Drinking Fountain"...while visiting Milwaukee one time, I was told to meet someone by the "Bubbler".....peals of laughter when I finally figured out what the darn thing was.

Enough picking on us Midwesterners.

Lynn

theeye · #11 10-15-2001, 11:43 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by lynnzop

Yikes, I've been here for close to 13 years...not feeling a bit traumatized YET.

:snip:

Enough picking on us Midwesterners.

One of my best friends

grew up in Omaha (we didn't overlap there and only met much later, in NYC) and I tease her a lot about it. And she teases me right back: she's still a big Cornhuskers fan.

Oddly enough, it wasn't until I moved to Omaha that I learned that New Jersey had something less than a sterling reputation around the country: this was quite a revelation to me.

You Midwesterners have just got to develop a tougher skin like us NYers.

Seriously, though, it was fairly traumatic. A big move at the end of high school is bound to be traumatic regardless of the destination. And for me there was a lot of culture shock: I was an observant Jew moving into a city where most people had never met such a creature. Trust me: it wasn't easy.

**conradd** · #12 10-15-2001, 02:45 PM

Here in the middle of Oregon, no one calls them sneakers. Tennis shoes is marginally acceptable but most of my friends called them tenny-runners when I was a teen. Now, I just refer to them as my Nikes, since I wouldn't wear any other brand. Coke, 7-Up, and other beverages are always "pop". We don't have an accent either.

Deb

#13 10-15-2001, 03:10 PM

Sneaker? Tennis shoe?

Your dog thinks it's a chew toy.

AmyLEnsor · #14 10-16-2001, 01:48 AM

Sorry, I had to vote for tennis shoe. That's what it always was when I was growing up, probably because the shoes we wore actually were very much like tennis shoes. Now I don't call them that because they aren't shoes for tennis and I never play tennis. But sneaker seems like a completely inappropriate word to me, as if the shoes are soft-soled slippers or something. Or maybe rubber soled, so maybe it makes sense. I think athletic shoes is a good choice, but I say sneakers for convenience and tennis shoes when I slip.

Sneakers is like saying pop instead of soda, or on line instead of in line.

Well, maybe not the latter-I heard a mom at Costco the other day telling her children to go get on line. It just sounds so wrong to me and sneaker seems fairly normal. Pop seems a little old fashioned. It would probably sound OK if people pronounced it as pawp, but I can't help but hear the accent of my Wisconsin and Michigan relatives when they say it-almost like pap. My Michigan relatives moved to Texas years ago and my niece practically has a southern accent, but she still says pop.