The Off Topic Topic

[Valmy]

Interesting the set from Mary Poppins now has people living in it.

[Admiral Yi]

I might have asked this question before, but what do terraced houses have to do with terraces?

[Tamas]

Point is you have neighbours right across two of your "outer" walls. Which is better than 4, but calling it a house is really pushing it.

[Tamas]

I might have asked this question before, but what do terraced houses have to do with terraces?

It's Britain. You just roll with it.

[Tamas]

Also: terraced houses have as much with terraces as American football with actual football.

[Valmy]

I might have asked this question before, but what do terraced houses have to do with terraces?

I believe it has something to do with gardening. Like they all used to have terraced gardens or something.

[Sheilbh]

Because they're in a terrace?

Stands in a football stadium are called the terraces - so it's like a flat strip, like terrace farming?

[Valmy]

Also: terraced houses have as much with terraces as American football with actual football.

We had association football and rugby football. Both were football. We have been over this.

We and the Brits decided to name them in the opposite way. Our version of the later became football, and their version of the later became Rugby.

[Sheilbh]

Point is you have neighbours right across two of your "outer" walls. Which is better than 4, but calling it a house is really pushing it.

I'm kind of with Jacob. Stairs = house (except bungalows).

[Admiral Yi]

Because they're in a terrace?

Stands in a football stadium are called the terraces - so it's like a flat strip, like terrace farming?

Terraced farming is the flattening of land that has pitch.  Terraces at a fodbol pitch (which is incidentally not pitched) obey the same principle.  Yet you build a row of townhouses on level ground and call it terraced.

[Jacob]

Point is you have neighbours right across two of your "outer" walls. Which is better than 4, but calling it a house is really pushing it.

In Danish we call them what translates to row-house. In North America, in my experience, we call them townhomes (but then there is this to my ears weird usage where people sometimes use "home" to mean "house").

Anyhow - while you're right about the proximity of neighbours, flats and apartments don't typically have direct street access - they open into a hallway, a lobby, or a staircase and then a shared door to the street. Townhomes/ terraces/ row-houses have private doors to the outside.

[Sheilbh]

Yeah but they're all joined together, flat and at the same height, no? Like a terrace in a garden - we're just lucky it's not called patioed houses.

FWIW I looked it up and it's just 18th century entrepreneurial fashion. They used to be called rows, property developers (of that Georgian terrace for example) found naming the terraces was more fashionable/appealing and it stuck.

It's basically like hoovers.

[Sheilbh]

In Danish we call them what translates to row-house. In North America, in my experience, we call them townhomes (but then there is this to my ears weird usage where people sometimes use "home" to mean "house").

Townhouse to us means fancy terrace - like those Georgian ones. "I live in a townhouse" is very grand - possibly because it hints at the existence of a country house.

[Jacob]

In Danish we call them what translates to row-house. In North America, in my experience, we call them townhomes (but then there is this to my ears weird usage where people sometimes use "home" to mean "house").

Townhouse to us means fancy terrace - like those Georgian ones. "I live in a townhouse" is very grand - possibly because it hints at the existence of a country house.

Yeah, in North America "townhouse" has just become all encompassing for a unit with a separate entrance but shared walls - from fancy ones, to ones you'd call terraces, and to even dinkier places. Because fancy sells, I suppose.

Apparently the Japanese use the word "mansion" for what we'd call an apartment or a condo, which I think is a similar dynamic. Lots of Japanese people live in mansions

[Sheilbh]

Fancy sells is the one thing we've learned from terraces to townhouses to mansions.

And of course in Japan "terrace house" means iconic reality TV program that's the best thing on Netflix