Sliding Pon(d)
I wanted to find a picture of a slide to accompany this post, but the only photos are of those crazy plastic new-fangled slides usually as part of a jungle gym with mulch on the ground. I wanted a picture of the kind of slide I used to use…a free standing metal slide on a black-top. I don’t even think they have those anymore. Do see-saws exist anymore either? I have fond memories of see-saws.
Growing up, we refered to a slide (as in a slide at a playground) as a sliding pon. I couldn’t seem to find other people who called it that once I left the NYC-Metro area. In fact, I started wondering if the term had existed at all because I couldn’t find anyone else who called it that! I thought I was going crazy!
So I did a little bit of research. Googling “sliding pon” did not yield many results…although I did find it on a page of Brooklynisms.
I also found a discussion about it on a word forum. It seems that sliding pon and also sliding ponD are New York terms. Nobody can figure out the origin of it. There’s even an article about it on RandomHouse.com:
The origin of sliding pond is obscure. One problem with tracking down a source is that, like many words for children’s games, sliding pond is not recorded in print until rather recently. Scholars are forced to work with memories of older people, since even common expressions or practices weren’t regarded as important enough to study and record.
I feel relieved to find that other people are familiar with the term sliding pon(d). I used to enjoy the sliding pon at Astoria Park
Filed under New York, Uncategorized, nostalgia |24 Responses to “Sliding Pon(d)”
Leave a Reply
This is the first time I’ve heard a slide called a “sliding pon.” Interesting. There are also people who refer to (wintertime) sledding as “sliding.”
Yeah, the term seems to be known only to NYCers…and I wonder if it’s an antiquated term now or if people still use it. Some people used it in Jersey, but it was probably mostly transplants from New York. The term doesn’t seem to travel too far outside the boroughs, aside from maybe southern Long Island.
I’ve never head of sliding pon or sliding pond. Why was that a term for a slide, do you know?
I love slides, but those metal slides were brutal in the summer. I like the spiraly ones the best. Whee!!!
There’s a postulation that it came from the Dutch settlers who came to New York. What they called a slide around 1600 translates into glide road, which may have somehow evolved into sliding pon/pond. I don’t know if I buy it though.
Another thought is that it came from “slide upon”…if you say it fast, it sounds very similar to “sliding pon”…I think that might be more likely.
Why the term is pretty much specific to NYC, I don’t know!
My understanding of sliding pond is a large metal slide in the water. We used to go to Graydon Pool in Ridgewood, NJ, which used to have large and smaller sliding ponds, but no longer do, likely as a result of liability insurance and litigation arising ot of injuries incurred on them. My parents from Jersey City used to call them sliding ponds. I have a snapshot of a sliding pond from the sixties, but do not know how to attach it to this message.
Ah, regional terms! These are fun. I grew up in Minnesota and tend not to use them anymore, but can affirm that Minnesota children even today will only use the first terms below and have no idea what you’re talking about if you use the more national one listed afterwards.
Teeter-Totter = See-Saw
Sucker = Lollipop
Also, my wife’s from Boston. We always used “Cherry Picker” and she always used “Bucket Truck.” Any thoughts on which one is more common nationally?
In California, where I lived for a little while, they also called them suckers.
I think I’ve always called it a “cherry picker”…
Im from Upstate New York, and i grew up in the adirondack mountains….My first time ever hearing the term “Sliding PonD” was just a few nights ago. We were sitting at my aunts dinner table (BRONX) eating, and we were talking about the city parks. She said something about a Sliding pond, but no one in my family had ever heard of that before… we were all soo confused…and no one asked what it was because we didnt know if we missunderstood her or something…
So i googled “Sliding Pond” and i found this site…
Originally from Queens, NY, I grew up calling it a sliding pon(d). As an adult, I realized what a silly term it was and started asking people what they called this apparatus. People from NYC and the environs used a sliding pon(d). Those from somewhere else never heard the term.
I believe it is a slangy version of “slide upon” just as many NYers say Sadday instead of Saturday.
New Yorkers have their own language.
Thr term “sliding pon(d)” came from “Slide Upon”.
I grew up in Bergen county nj and we also used Sliding pond as a word or phrase to describe the big Metal slides. I seem to rmrmmber them being like 50 feet tall. but i was much smaller than.
When I was very younger I used the term sliding pond. When I got older, it changed to slide.
Years later, for no reason I one day slipped and used again the phrase sliding pond. It felt comfortable, and instinctly slurred the ‘d’. But everyone else thought it was strange. Similar to the first post, I started to doubt myself and thought I had made a mistake. But could not shake the feeling, that I had not just made up the word.
I grew up first in Rutherford NJ, where I first used the term. While still a child I moved to another section of Bergen County, which is why I think I stopped using it. Another possibility was that I had older parents, and in general a lot of my vocabulary is antiquated.
hey i too miss the old playground equipement. i got two items in my backyard.check them out on my space and feel free to use the pics.
Greetings. Thanks for the note about SLiding Ponds. I grew up on Long Island and now live in the Buffalo area, and when I used that phrase a bit back, I was greeted with total lack of understanding, but I get that most times anyhow:)
During dinner with my parents this evening, my mother referred to the \"Sliding Pon…\". I heard (and used) this term during my childhood growing up in Brooklyn and Queens. This is what EVERYONE called the metal slides (And I also remember them being 50\’ tall). I have more memories of getting hurt on them… bumped heads, burned legs, etc, than I do having fun on them! (What about the huge swings with solid rigid metal seats. A whack in the head from one of them would leave you for dead!)
As with many NY-isms from my youth, upon closer examination in adulthood they strike me as odd… so I went to the web for answers and found this blog posting.
I asked my mother to spell what she was saying… because so many of these phrases are strictly verbal. The users often can\’t pin-point exactly what they are saying because they\’ve never thought about it in that way or saw it written down. She spelled \"sliding ponD\", although verbally, the \"D\" was nonexistent.
As with other NY-isms that I\’ve noted:
wada = water
terlet = toilet
berl (as in Milton Berle) = boil
Merragaround = Merry-go-Round
plus countless others that are escaping me at the moment….
These are cases of lazy speech more than an accent… the unconscious desire to reduce the number of syllables in the spoken words. Something like \"Sliding Pon\" could have very easily derived from hearing someone say \"Slide Upon\".
Merragaround…I definitely say that!!!
I was so happy to read this! When I first moved from NY and said slidin pon, everyone thought I was crazy!
Wow! I am amazed! At dinner with my hubby’s family Sunday, the term came up, and there was a rousing debate over the reality of the term “sliding pond.” They are all from NYC (Manhattan and Brooklyn). My husband couldn’t believe or recall the term. They said he was brainwashed by me (I’m from Syracuse) and from living in Albany for a few years. And by the way, our realtor in Brooklyn said “terlet.” I am partial to saying “right?” after others speak. It is a pre-curser to the Black term “word-up” or just “word.”
An interesting note for those who like to study regional language, his dad grew up in a Jewish section of Brooklyn, his mom (also Jewish) grew up in DC and then NYC, and they raised the 3 kids in Washington Heights on 157th and Riverside, then a Black and Dominican neighborhood. I think it’s interesting that the term “sliding pond” seems to have been used all over the NYC area, including NJ. And it would seem from my family-in-law that it was also used in at least one Black and Latino neighborhood.
A co-worker of baby-boomer age from downtown Brooklyn has no connection to the term, and never heard of it. I will keep polling native New Yorkers! This is fascinating!
As far as upstate and Western NY State lingo, my cousins in Batavia, NY all said “pop” but I was raised in Syracuse after infancy and we all said “soda.” My cousins in Cheyenne, WY all said “pop” too, which I found endlessly fascinating. I like to say that I was raised east of the Soda/Pop border, which I calculate to be in the Finger Lakes.
I can’t remember what my cousins in Binghamton, NY call it. It isn’t a pure sample, though, because my step-mom and her 6 sibs were raised in Massachusetts for several years before moving to Binghamton. Some of them have MA accents and use MA lingo at times.
In Syracuse, I grew up saying “teeter-totter” and “lollipop.”
The plot thickens! I have been polling people here all morning, and it’s about half and half for knowing the term or not. But two co-workers, one from Harlem and one from Inwood (uppermost Manhattan, near the Bronx) both called it a “sliding board,” and had never heard the term “sliding pond.”
I am so into this!
I was telling a very similar story and the person had no idea what I was talking about, so I googled Sliding Pond, and lo and behold I found this. Us NY and NJ residents sure know how to butcher the English language
Yesterday I was looking at a frozen puddle and thought about sliding across it, then I started wondering if that’s where the word Sliding Pond came from: because the metal slide looked like a frozen pond that you can slide down. So I asked my co-workers if they agreed, and none of them here in Colorado knew what I was talking about! Then I started wondering if there ever was such a word afterall. Thank you internet! (I am 50, grew up on Long Island and had older parents)
I believe that Sliding Pond for sliding board comes from the early dutch settlers. I believe that it may be from the earlier glijd (slide) baan (way). Glijding baan sould very easily be corrupted by the newly arrived English into Sliding Pond.
Thanks for all the comments, all!
I could see the origins of it being from “slide upon”…if you say it fast, it kind of sounds like it could be “sliding pon.”
There also is a lot of Dutch influence in NYisms and the NY accent.
Funny how it’s such a localized term, too. I wouldn’t be surprised if it wasn’t used by the younger NY generations anymore.
I’m originally from Passaic, NJ and I’ve always known it as a sliding pond. I’m living in England now and have gotten strange looks every time I’ve said sliding pond; but that being said I get strange looks for a lot of American words I use over here!
But then I starting thinking about the word and wondering if it was just me and my family who called it that or if there were others out there as well.
So, I googled sliding pond and came upon this site.
Glad to know its not just me!
As a side note, in gym class in the 1980’s we played dodge ball but we call it “bombardamum” or something that sounds a lot like that; I’ve tried googling that as well but haven’t found any information on it.
No, it’s definitely not just you ;-) I thought I was going nuts when I realized nobody else called it a sliding pon.