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The word "stuffie"


Guest Looby-Lou

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Guest Looby-Lou

Is the word "stuffie' in common use in America or is it unique to DDlg?

 

I'd never heard it before and honestly i can't relate to it at all - i think of "teddies" or "cuddly toys" which are the words i'm familiar with. Same with "diaper" and "nappy". 

 

OTOH i do like the words "paci" and "binkie" which are also unfamiliar to me...but i find them cute so i like them LOL.

 

I like language, so i'm curious about the origins of the word stuffie and it's general usage, if anyone can explain?

 

Looby  :)

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Guest countlieberkuhn

I always assumed that it was just more of a 'little culture' thing, but I could be completely wrong here.  Pacifier is obviously not a UK English word in that context, but I prefer paci to dummy, I think it sounds cuter.

Sippie cup is another one that I only heard when I came across this community, but I'm not sure if that's just me being ignorant to the term before :p

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USAmerican here ahoy! :D

 

"Stuffie" is common in the US. It's short for "stuffed animal" which is the general term for such toys here. Most kids say "stuffie". Can get slightly confusing when someone is talking about taxidermy though :lol: Another word that sometimes gets used is "plushie", but as far as I know that's more common among older kids/adults who prefer to display theirs, or they're a tv/video game character like a Pikachu plushie or Winnie the Pooh plushie. We do use "teddy bear" but only for bears that sit upright and have larger heads. A more natural looking bear is just a stuffie like any other.

 

"Cuddly toy" we never use but is pretty obvious what it means, and "nappy" is a Britishism. Many Americans do understand British dialect words which we call Britishisms. :)

 

"Paci" is short for pacifier, but I never heard the short version until joining this site. Maybe other Americans use it, but my family did not. It was always just "pacifier". It's not like babies themselves had to say it. "Binkie" is commonly used as well, but it's the informal word. Of course, different parts of the US have different dialect words, so who knows if there's more.

 

Hope I helped! :D

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This might very well be a regional thing, but I (an American) have only heard the word "stuffie" a few times in conversation, and it was almost exclusevly with other members of the DDLG community. Its not a super common thing (from my experiance) to hear, but just because someone drops the word doesnt mean they are for a fact part of the community - however, when I meet someone and have a suspicion that they are a little or a CG, I'll purposefully use the word in conversation to see if it gets a reaction out of them or brings up the topic. :p I have meet quite a few other littles this way!

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I can confirm that in Britain, everyone I've known growing up calls them "cuddly toys" or just "teddies" (which seemingly for many don't have to be bears, they could be any animal).

 

Plushie or Plush is a term I have heard in collectors and retailers. With my links to Disney parks in both France and the USA they call them Plushies and Plushes on both sides of the pond. 

 

I'd not heard anyone say "stuffie" til I started researching DDLG. Doesn't mean its not used outside of the community, I've just never heard of it. I just assumed it was short for "stuffed animal" and didn't question it :)

 

Whatever they are called, they are all adorable and I would like to own all of them please.  :lol:

 

And yes, Sippy cups are a thing everywhere - I think its a brandname that went into general common usage, like "Hoover" as a word for a vaccuum cleaner, or Bic/Biro as a name for a ballpoint pen. Sometimes people call then Tippee cups after the brand name Tommee Tippee which is quite a common variant.

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This might very well be a regional thing, but I (an American) have only heard the word "stuffie" a few times in conversation, and it was almost exclusevly with other members of the DDLG community. 

 

Really? I'm from the mid-Atlantic region and it's so common I assumed it was the usual word across the country. You learn new things every day! I grew up calling them stuffies.

 

 

I can confirm that in Britain, everyone I've known growing up calls them "cuddly toys" or just "teddies" (which seemingly for many don't have to be bears, they could be any animal).

 

As an American, it seems funny to me that "teddies" don't have to be bears in the UK. The teddy bear is an American invention, originating around the early 20th century. The "teddy" part is a reference to our president at the time, Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt. An avid hunter, legend has it that one day he refused to shoot a baby bear because of a moment of compassion. That's why the toys are called "teddy bears". :)

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Guest Looby-Lou

USAmerican here ahoy! :D

 

"Stuffie" is common in the US. It's short for "stuffed animal" which is the general term for such toys here. Most kids say "stuffie". Can get slightly confusing when someone is talking about taxidermy though :lol: ...

 

We do use "teddy bear" but only for bears that sit upright and have larger heads. A more natural looking bear is just a stuffie like any other.

 

"Cuddly toy" we never use but is pretty obvious what it means, and "nappy" is a Britishism. Many Americans do understand British dialect words which we call Britishisms. :)

 

 

Er...yes...*cough*...i didn't like to mention the "stuffed DEAD animal" word in my original post in case i upset anyone. But that's exactly why i just can't feel comfortable with the word "stuffie" for a toy that i'd cuddle. Just the very word conjures up awful images of what i've seen in the Natural History Museum.

 

If we (Brits) say "teddy bear" then it's a bear. But it can be a bear of any sort - firm, squishy, realistic, fantastical.

If we say "teddy" then it's any soft cuddly toy of any animal.

Although it seems strange to  you, I suppose over here the word "teddy" became a generic word much like Kleenex is used for tissues. 

Our expression "cuddly toy" is self explanatory and i think it's quite a nice expression because after all that's exactly what our stuffies/teddies/teddy bears are!

 

I love that you have "Britishisms"! Over here, thanks to the preponderance of American tv shows and the use of FB etc., we've adopted lots of American words into our daily vocabulary.  You'll often hear people bemoaning how we've become "Americanised". I do use some of the words myself but I mostly use British words.

 

Looby  :)

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Really? I'm from the mid-Atlantic region and it's so common I assumed it was the usual word across the country. You learn new things every day! I grew up calling them stuffies.

 

 

 

As an American, it seems funny to me that "teddies" don't have to be bears in the UK. The teddy bear is an American invention, originating around the early 20th century. The "teddy" part is a reference to our president at the time, Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt. An avid hunter, legend has it that one day he refused to shoot a baby bear because of a moment of compassion. That's why the toys are called "teddy bears". :)

 

Yes, I knew the story and its a really cute one! My own personal bear, who has been with me since I was just 1 year old, has always been "Teddy" to me. I always thought of teddies as bears. But as I got older I discovered that newer generations seemed to refer to other soft animals as "teddies" in general - having a "teddy rabbit", "teddy duck" or whatever. It sounded wrong to me to begin with, but now I'm used to it. As Looby pointed out, its become a more generic term here, like Kleenex for Tissue.

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A few weeks ago I was hanging out with my mom and a couple of other relatives. We saw a toddler walk by and my mom commented that he had his paci, stuffie, and binkie. My jaw nearly hit the ground. I had no idea that she knew those words!
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A few weeks ago I was hanging out with my mom and a couple of other relatives. We saw a toddler walk by and my mom commented that he had his paci, stuffie, and binkie. My jaw nearly hit the ground. I had no idea that she knew those words!

 

First the person from Michigan and now you from Boston don't seem to think stuffie is common language... I'm wondering why I thought it was so common now. :s I grew up with the word and it never seemed unusual. And while my family usually just said "pacifier", my mom sometimes affectionately calls my and my brother's pacifiers our "baby binkies" (she hangs them on the christmas tree so they make an appearance every year). And before anyone asks, my parents are very vanilla and probably don't even know ddlg exists, so these words have to exist in the general population too.

 

I'm not criticizing you Ocean, I'm just rather confused.

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I'm from Canada and growing up my parents always called my stuffed animals plushies or stuffies. I think it's less about the term being DDlg or not and more just being about regional differences in terminology.

 

Little kaiya

Edited by Little kaiya
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I grew up in the mid Atlantic region and I’d never heard stuffie before joining this forum. We called them stuffed animals. Daddy is from New Zealand and he calls them soft toys.
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I'm from Canada and growing up my parents always called my stuffed animals plushies or stuffies. I think it's less about the term being DDlg or not and more just being about regional differences in terminology.

 

Little kaiya

 

I agree...it's not that they don't exist in common language, it just depends on what the common language is where you reside or grew up 

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I'm from Northern Georgia in the USA, and we say stuffie! We also use 'binkbink' for pacifier and 'sippy' for sippy cups. On the 'diaper/nappy' thing, we occasionally say diaper, but frequently use 'dipe'. I guess it's a Southern Appalachian thing???

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  • 2 weeks later...

'm an american. never rlly hear stuffie bein used unless it's by someone who's into this life style or someone who age regresses (such as myself)

 

the only person irl i ever rlly hear say it is my daddy, cause he calls them stuffies. other than that, i never rlly hear it. i never even knew of the word until i found out about all this, when i thought i was into ddlg and then realized i age regress.

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Guest TokidokiHelloKitty

Is the word "stuffie' in common use in America or is it unique to DDlg?

 

I'd never heard it before and honestly i can't relate to it at all - i think of "teddies" or "cuddly toys" which are the words i'm familiar with. Same with "diaper" and "nappy". 

 

OTOH i do like the words "paci" and "binkie" which are also unfamiliar to me...but i find them cute so i like them LOL.

 

I like language, so i'm curious about the origins of the word stuffie and it's general usage, if anyone can explain?

 

Looby  :)

 

I'm in the USA, and from what I have noticed, I never even heard the word "Stuffie" until I knew what DDLG was. Usually most non-littles who have them call them plushies. I still call them this, but I use stuffie, too.  Teddies is also a nice word to use. For me, diaper is the word I've always heard. Where I am paci and binkie are used for pacifiers for babies, but I figured they were the "normal" words in DDLG too.

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