Re: Question: Different English names for "picnic cloth"

In the Midwestern American dialect of my youth it was either simply "a cloth"
when needed for some unspecified purpose, or "picnic blanket" for any sort of
cloth spread on the ground for a picnic. A cloth spread on the ground for an
extended stay at a camping spot (as opposed to a quick picnic), however, is a
ground cloth (or possibly groundcloth, since I never had occasion to write it
out or look it up.) A groundcloth, however, is usually heavy canvass or a heavy
plastic tarp, while a picnic "blanket" can be anything from a bed sheet or
table cloth to a heavy wool blanket.

--gary


--- On Wed, 11/26/08, Eugene Oh <un.doing@...> wrote:

> From: Eugene Oh <un.doing@...>
> Subject: Question: Different English names for "picnic cloth"
> To: CONLANG@listserv.brown.edu
> Date: Wednesday, November 26, 2008, 12:54 PM
> I was writing when I realised the cumbersome turn of phrase
> that is the
> English "piece of cloth", for which I have been
> looking for a more poetic
> synonym or periphrasis.
>
> Is there a difference between Anglophone countries as to
> how this unwieldy
> phrase is rendered, more specifically perhaps "picnic
> cloth"?
>
> Eugene

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