General Chat

Someone referred to Manchester in connection to bed linen. I've never heard of that and have no idea what it means. There's an Oxford pillow case. Does Manchester have anything to do with a particular design?

Rollo - why have you chosen 'hotel' as word which could cause confusion? Apart from France, does any other country or language where it has a different meaning?

I have heard of Manchester to describe linen but it is little-used now. I have seen it used in a written leaflet and online by one of the big stores too, not in the too-distant past but for the life of me I can't remember which one.

i have always thought it was used for linen produced in Lancashire from the many cotton mills that were around the Manchester area - but that was only a thought as I've never looked up the word.

I will do so now.

Another thing that confuses foreigners is our habit of saying the opposite to what we mean, as in

You are joking

when they certainly are not!

Det, if you go onto the Myer Australia site and type in the search box 'Manchester' up pop bed linen, towels etc.

Do the same with David Jones, Australia and a good range of bed linen appears.

Thanks JoyLoise. There are a number of internet results suggesting the same thing, that the bedding was made in Manchester. There's a couple of corrections saying it should be Oldham, but that's neither here nor there ;-)

Manchester was where all the trading was done and the cotton mills were all over the North West,but the hub was in the city.

I am from Manchester originally and some of my great aunts worked in mills around Salford .

A lot of places in Victoria,especially in the smaller towns still call the bedding Manchester.I remember seeing a lot of signs in Bendigo and Echuca.

Just phone a restaurant in USA (west coast, anyway) and ask to 'book' a table, this 'evening' at 'half seven' :-D

Descriptions of bread products are confusing even across the UK.

Barm cakes, tea cakes, bread cakes, stotties = types of bread roll
Muffins, oven bottoms=also bread rolls.
Not to be confused with American muffins, which are cakes.
Or with English, or toasting muffins, which you toast.
Crumpets are similar to pikelets, which you also toast.
Tea cakes often have dried fruit in them, but are bread.

Then there's black pudding, which is a savoury dish made from offal, and white pudding which is similar.

'Taking it on the chin' could be painfully misinterpreted.

'Kecks', or 'Cacks' are pants, sorry knickers, in our house.

The word 'Doofers' I believe has a different meaning all over the country - let alone confusing to foreigners :-D

My dad (Cornish) used to call horse poo 'doofers', as it would 'doofer' the garden :-D

I was confused at seeing "Manchester department" when we were living in Melbourne in the mid-1950s

I believe that it dates back to the early settlers, who referred to cotton goods in that fashion, from Manchester being the centre of cotton trading.

I was raised in Oldham, and there were lots of cotton mills back in those days. The Cotton Trading Exchange was in Liverpool, but I think that traded raw cotton.


Could "Manchester" have been a name used in England a couple of hundred years ago for bed linens ................ I'm thinking those early settlers must have got it from somewhere.

I've just been googling ........ and one theory seems to be that crates of bed linens arriving in Australia would be labelled just "Manchester", ie indicating their point of origin.

Those crates and contents were often simply called "Manchester goods"

"Manchester goods" became "Manchester"

I've never heard of the term, but then, I'm a 'Sooth Moother' (Shetland saying) or 'Soft Southerner' - polite term - (anywhere South of Watford) :-D :-D

maggie .....

I don't think most English people would have heard it, unless they had been to Australia or New Zealand and gone shopping. You only see the sign "Manchester" or "Manchester Department" in stores, or something like "Manchester Sale" in ads in newspapers, flyers, etc.

People talk about sheets, pillow cases, bed linens, etc, not "manchester"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cottonopolis

Interesting article about Manchester.

'Manchester goods' also an expression used in India.

From an Indian Social Sciences website:

Q. Give three reasons for the decline of Indian textile industry by the end of the 19C.

A 1. As cotton industries developed ... They pressurised the govt to impose import duties on cotton textiles so that MANCHESTER goods could sell in Britain ...

A 4. MANCHESTER goods in India: Cotton weavers ....

So, as far as foreign visitors to England are concerned, it seems that Manchester may mean more to some of them than simply football. :-D

It's a small world.

This travels .....

English Oxford Dictionaries:

1. Manchester goods - cotton goods of the kind manufactured in Manchester (sometimes Manchester wares).

2. Early 18 C. earliest use found in the original journals of the House of Commons.


In a book published in 1983 in the USA, entitled

Reforms in the Caribbean 1700-1788 ... By Altagracia Ortiz

p 89: In 1770, he even banned cotton manufacturers including Manchester goods .....


It seems that the phrase 'Manchester goods' is known around the globe.

I'm hazarding a guess now that those southern USA States that had cotton-fields also used the expression.

The East India Company (and the West) transported more than cotton though, as we all know.

Another town name that has travelled abroad, but is rarely heard here is Chesterfield. I would call it a sofa/settee/couch, but my sister, in Canada, now calls it a chesterfield and I believe the same name is used in USA.

Yes, AM, it is used to describe a certain style of sofa.

And here's another ...

Durham ....

Durrum durrum, durrum durrum durrum ... Signature tune of the Pink Panther.

:-D :-D :-D

I think Chesterfiels are certain types of sofa...the sort with a button back all level with the arms,a lot of them are in leather.I had one in the 70s
Im sure the same name still applies in the UK...maybe they were first produced in,or near Chesterfield?

There are a couple of Chesterfield's in the USA, in particular Virginia and Missouri. Mind you, Wiki quotes this as a source for its name

"Chesterfield Sofa". The Traditional English Chesterfield Company. Archived from the original on 15 June 2012. Unfortunately the link to the original source is defunct.

Their site http://www.englishchesterfieldcompany.com/en/about-us/ states that "Many of our team of over 40 full time craftsmen and women, have been with the company since it’s origins." :-S