We were on a walk yesterday and came upon this little playground.
I remember teeter-totters but not one made of a log. And, of course, the universal playground sign in the US has a teeter-totter on it even though no US playground has had a teeter-totter in many years. Far too dangerous for our delicate kids.
As it happens we were in a town a few days ago and we actually saw two kids playing on a teeter-totter. European playgrounds still have them, but, curiously, don’t use them on their signs.
This playground also had a swing.
The old kind, with a flat board seat that you could stand on and swing really high or sit on and jump off of at the top of the arc. The fun, exciting things that are too dangerous for modern kids to try.
We also no longer have seesaws in playgrounds. Oh, wait. A seesaw is a teeter totter. I grew up back east. Charlie grew up out west. Is this a regional language difference. What does Wynette call it?
My first encounters with those tippy devices was in Duluth in Northern Minnesota, some 70 years ago. They called it the Great Northwest when I was there although that never made sense to me. Anyway not the West. Wynette says she said seesaw. I knew of both terms as I was growing up but most people said teeter-totter, harder to type but more fun to say, and, to my mind, more descriptive.
Perplexity says “In the United States, the term “seesaw” is used more generally, while “teeter-totter” is commonly used in the northern inland states and westward to the West Coast. The northeast United States, particularly New England, has a variety of regional names for the equipment, including “teeter” or “teeterboard.” In southeast New England, it is called a “tilt” or a “tilting board,” and in the Narragansett Bay area, it is known as a “dandle” or “dandle board” [2][3].
Sources
[1] Seesaw or Teeter or ? | AgilityNerd https://www.agilitynerd.com/blog/agility/equipment/seesaworteeter/
[2] Seesaw or teeter-totter? – Wordorigins Discussion Forum – Tapatalk https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/wordoriginsorg/seesaw-or-teeter-totter-t7845.html
[3] Seesaw – Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seesaw
[4] What do you call those in American english? I’ve heard seesaw … – Reddit https://www.reddit.com/r/EnglishLearning/comments/10z3pdl/what_do_you_call_those_in_american_english_ive/
[5] What is the etymology of the word teeter totter? https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/76907/what-is-the-etymology-of-the-word-teeter-totter” but there is always the chance it is hallucinating.
And speaking of dangerous practices, I remember we used to stand in the center and tilt it back and forth.
Ex-California girl here. We were equal opportunity see-saw, teeter-totterers.
I remember pranks where you’d jump off mid swing to let the other person crash onto the ground. Not that I ever did that!