Filene's is long gone, but one question remains: How to pronounce it

By adamg on Thu, 04/22/2021 - 9:29am

Tim Lawrence reports:

My parents were cleaning the attic and found my old sticker album. This random blast from the past was in it. Fi-leens or Fill-eens? (always was Fi for my family!)

Topics:

History

Free tagging:

Filene's

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Comments

Tree sylables!

By anon
Thu, 04/22/2021 - 9:35am

Fie Lee Knees.

Local Flavor

By Boston Accent
Thu, 04/22/2021 - 8:26pm

Fye - as in "why"
Leens - as in "beans" (for want for a better word

Fye - Leens' Emphasis on the last syllable.

Always impressed and amused by people not from the area or having benefitted from living here a long time not knowing how these things are pronounced, especially the words that are not spelled the way we say them.

Gloucester (gloss'-tah), Worcester (woos'-tah), Natick (Nay'-tick), and the ever-popular Billerica (bill'-rik'-ah)

Well I say Fi-leens and my

By Jimbo
Thu, 04/22/2021 - 9:47am

Well I say Fi-leens and my mom says Fi-leens but her mom (my Nanny) said Fill-eens, and while we're at it, do you eat corn on the cob "typewriter style"? or "toilet paper style"?, and while we're at that, do you do your toilet paper roll "over the top" dispense?, or "under" dispense? Important questions of our time which demand and deserve answers!

My nana definitely said Fill-eens

By tachometer
Thu, 04/22/2021 - 10:58pm

But she also pronounced words like bath and grass with an "ah" sound. I heard both so many times (though I think Fi-leens was more common) I just used them interchangeably. Nobody ever commented on it so I think they were both just so common that it didn't really matter.

never knew this was a question

By berkleealum
Thu, 04/22/2021 - 9:48am

fye-leens

There have been enough weirdo Uhub threads recently.

By Pete Nice
Thu, 04/22/2021 - 9:58am

No need to entertain the psychos who pronounced this "Fill-eens".

Leadfinger

By John Costello
Thu, 04/22/2021 - 10:08am

That was the nickname of Sister Henrietta at St. Mark's in Dorchester in the 70's/80's.

She got that name owing that if you were screwing up she would poke you with her finger in your left shoulder really hard.

She, owing that she was a psycho as you refer too correctly, was the only person I know who pronounced it "Fill-Enes". All others on the planet; Fi-Lene's, even my wife's Oak Square raised aunt, who had essentially the same vocabulary as me, said Fi-Lenes.

I have no idea how the subject of department store names came up in English / Palmer Method Indoctrination / Shoulder Torture class, but the way she pronounced it stayed with you.

Did she have a brogue?

By Pete Nice
Thu, 04/22/2021 - 10:17am

Or one of those hybrid Brahmin/Boston accents who just had different pronunciations?
(baa..throom for bathroom)

I hope she didn't call soda...... tonic.

Brahmin / Boston accent hybrid to the max.

By John Costello
Thu, 04/22/2021 - 11:03am

I still call it tonic by the way.

Some guy asked me where to get a pop about 30 years ago in Park Square. I had no idea what he was talking about. I thought it was slang for speed. I told him the girl hookers were by the Park Square garage and the boy hookers were by the Greyhound station and they might have some. I had no idea what pop was until he explained it was a carbonated beverage with natural and artificial sweetners.

It is still called tonic. That's how you wash down a spuckie.

By anon
Thu, 04/22/2021 - 3:15pm

Fi Lenes is where you would buy some new clothes for a trip, say to Caliphoneia, if you were rich enough to ever see the inside of a plane. Rex Trailer used to torture us with his annual trip to Disneyland. I suppose Paragon Park and Castle Island were good enough when they still allowed pahkin thaya.

The Origin of “Soda”

By SamWack
Thu, 04/22/2021 - 4:15pm

The boring but inoffensive alternative “soda” was introduced by St. Bonifallacious to bring an end to the brutal Pop/Tonic wars.

My father used to tell this story on himself

By Ward8Mahatma
Thu, 04/22/2021 - 7:50pm

When he was in graduate school in Toronto, he got a job as a waiter in a hotel bar, interesting choice for someone who didn’t drink aside from the occasional beer. His first day, a customer ordered a gin and tonic. My father politely asked him, “What kind of tonic?” The puzzled patron stared at him as if he had two heads, then said, “Schweppes?” The bartender ultimately clued him in that tonic meant tonic water and Schweppes was a brand name not some exotic Canadian soda.

Boy hookers at the Greyhound?

By Brian Riccio
Thu, 04/22/2021 - 8:40pm

No!!! Really?

OMG

By cybah
Thu, 04/22/2021 - 9:13pm

THAT WAS YOU?!?

OMG

By cybah
Thu, 04/22/2021 - 9:13pm

THAT WAS YOU?!?

It's tonic dammit!

By anon
Thu, 04/22/2021 - 1:06pm

It's tonic dammit!

Everyone called soda TONIC -

By anon
Thu, 04/22/2021 - 5:19pm

Everyone called soda TONIC - i noticed that changed when i moved back here in the 1990s
I had immigrant grandparents and they all said FILL-enes.
Never heard of the corn on the cob in same sentence as toilet paper.
Eating it likeTypewriter was a given esp since it was in bugs bunny or one of those cartoons
Older folks called it CON-on the cob
And HOSS for horse

Sister Henny-penny!

By Rose
Thu, 04/22/2021 - 3:19pm

Sister Henny-penny!
Had gladly forgotten that ruler-wielding nun.
She loved jabbing her finger into her students.

St Greg’s had Sr. Mary

By anon
Thu, 04/22/2021 - 5:25pm

St Greg’s had Sr. Mary Catherine who could have made Spock himself submit with her ear pulling and her bang-the-desk-with-your-elbow move. That was second grade!
God rest her tortured soul

Psychos?

By anon
Thu, 04/22/2021 - 10:20am

An entire generation of older Boston women pronounced it "Fill-enes", including my grandmother. I am Boston born and raised, now in my 60s, and I remember this to always be the case. It had nothing to do with class or snobbery either. Everybody from blue collar to blue blood did it, and they were almost always women. And nobody had an answer why, they just did it.

Truth!

By Sammy White
Thu, 04/22/2021 - 6:36pm

My mom and aunts from Newton always said Fill-enes but no one else. Very funny!

I can vouch for that

By Ward8Mahatma
Thu, 04/22/2021 - 7:55pm

Both sets of grandparents and all their brothers and sisters said “Fillene’s”. They were all born in the first 12 years of the last century. My parents pronounced it the same and that’s the way I and my siblings grew up pronouncing it.

My Grandma from Nova Scotia

By JPMom
Fri, 04/23/2021 - 1:42pm

called it "Fill-eens" and pronounced it very quickly, almost like one syllable. She also had a funny way of pronouncing the word, "film." Fill-um, she called it, with two syllables.

I,myself, always said "Fye-leens."

Man, I miss that place! All my best buys came from there, including mine and my husband's wedding attire. As a kid, I used to go down there with my aunt from HP on the Orange Line. We'd get dressed up and wear white gloves and cross the street for a celebratory Jordan Marsh blueberry muffin when we were done with our successful hunt. The loss of Filene's almost made going downtown irrelevant for me, except when I'm forced to go to City Hall for some reason or other.

btw, That video of Menino waxing poetically about "The Basement" is pure gold!

fi-lenes

By bostnkid
Thu, 04/22/2021 - 10:06am

but all you really had to say was clothes shopping in town.

Interesting question, but an easy answer:

By Turalura Lipschitz
Thu, 04/22/2021 - 10:08am

Start by adding the word 'basement' to the root, and "Fie-leenz" Basement is the only possible answer.

filenes basement (the REAL one)

By bostnkid
Thu, 04/22/2021 - 10:26am

that place was awesome. such an old school boston feel and great prices on girbuad jeans and polo jackets!!

...and no dressing room for

By anon
Thu, 04/22/2021 - 5:28pm

...and no dressing room for the ladies. So while we wiggled and jiggled men got fitting rooms AND a personal tailor!
I loved the store but there were always perverted men around watching girls and women undress. Such Bullshit

My grammy used to pronounce

By anon
Thu, 04/22/2021 - 10:12am

My grammy used to pronounce it fill-ehns - but to be honest, I've only ever heard maybe a half-dozen people say it. . .I always thought it was fye-leens, and grammy was wrong, myself!

How the store pronounced it

By adamg
Thu, 04/22/2021 - 10:17am

Also, Tom Menino:

But that was for that ONE DAY

By anon
Thu, 04/22/2021 - 10:56am

But that was for that ONE DAY and Menino is dead so no answer to the question.

I ran into Menino four or five times over the

By MC Slim JB
Fri, 04/23/2021 - 11:21am

years in the suits and sport coats section of the Basement. He must have hired a stylist at some point, because his taste in tailored clothes got way, way better in his last few years in office.

I always said FIE-leens, but often heard older folks saying fuh-LEENS. I started life saying FAN-you-uhl Hall, but have adopted the affectation of saying FAN-ill Hall like I was born in the city.

Pat Marciano

By John Costello
Thu, 04/22/2021 - 11:19am

There was a great woman named Pat Marciano who used to tip off the mayor on what was coming into FB. She tipped me off to a few good Barney's suits before the advent of dress down circa 2001.

That doesn’t matter. It is

By anon
Thu, 04/22/2021 - 5:36pm

That doesn’t matter. It is how the people pronounced it. And the old people when I was young all said Fill -eenz. But I am Irish and they were Irish immigrants or first generation mostly born pre 1950.

Yet other, older

By massmarrier
Thu, 04/22/2021 - 10:18am

Brahmin descendants way back in my Beacon Hill days firmly insisted on a monosyllable — Fleens. Note too these were the same sorts who corrected those who pronounced S.S. Pierce the grocer as anything other than Perse, said Purse. They claimed knowledge of all things Boston and arguing with them was unproductive.

Separate Situation

By anon
Thu, 04/22/2021 - 10:37am

Not to complicate all this, but the "Fleens" pronunciation is an entirely separate situation than the long standing "Fie-lenes/Fill-enes" debate. The people who said "Fleens" are the people who said "lit-ra-ture", for example. It's an affectation. The "Fie-lenes/Fill-enes" situation was simply a phenomenon nobody really knew the reason for.

Never heard it any other way than Figh-Leens

By Ron Newman
Thu, 04/22/2021 - 11:27am

and the TV commercial and Menino interview confirm that.

Are you originally from Boston?

By anon
Thu, 04/22/2021 - 7:59pm

The "Fill-leens/Fuh-leens" pronunciation was reasonably common among older Boston women when I was growing up in the 60s and 70s. Nobody is saying it's correct, or that it was the official pronunciation, but they used it and swore by it.

Another aid in knowing how it

By anon
Thu, 04/22/2021 - 11:36am

Another aid in knowing how it is pronounced is knowing the origin of the name.

William Filene started the store and was a German immigrant. When he moved to America he wanted a classier Latin-sounding name but related to his original name in German, which was Wilhelm Katz. (Thus 'Filene' comes from 'Feline')