15 comments

  1. I wonder of there is a geographic distribution for this, like there is for the use of “soda” vs “pop” vs “coke”

  3. I voted garage sale but if the house has no garage OR the garage is closed to me it’s a yard sale. Isn’t jumble sale more British? Anyway, having experienced my first one I am more than happy to return to donating unwanted items to the women’s shelter or the ReStore.

  4. Given the time you spent in Massachusetts, I’m surprised you didn’t include “tag sale” as one of the options.

  5. Jumble Sale is quite British, but it’s the sort of thing associated with village halls and boy scouts.

  7. Given the time you spent in Massachusetts, I’m surprised you didn’t include “tag sale” as one of the options.

    That’s the phrase I was trying to think of. I knew there was another one, but I couldn’t remember what it was.

    I hadn’t heard of Sheldon before this. That was a total coincidence.

  8. ‘Yard sale’ and ‘garage sale’ have equal space in my lexicon. I do try to remember to use ‘tag sale’, since it covers all the other options (never heard it before moving to New York, however). My sister, living in NYC, once had a ‘stoop sale’.

  10. I grew up in the suburbs of Boston, and in my experience “garage sale” and “yard sale” were far more common usage than “tag sale,” though I did see it.

    And yes, stoop sale for nonsuburbanites!

    And the British have the “boot sale,” though I gather that’s more like a flea market than a yard sale.

  13. Usually ‘Garage’ or ‘Yard’ depending on whether it’s in the garage or in the yard…

  14. It’s “garage sale” if any part of the sale is in the garage area, and “yard sale” if any part of the sale is outside but not in any part of the garage. It’s “moving sale” if the entire sale is inside the living area of the home and the residents are moving, although “garage sales” and “yard sales” could be considered types of “moving sales” if the residents are moving. A sale held merely for the sake of getting rid of old things (and other things that get thrown into boxes in the heady excitement), if no part of the sale is outside the living area of the home and nobody is moving, is a “white elephant sale.” A “rummage sale” is a communal white elephant sale held by a group of people in a hired hall, for example the ladies of a church congregation in the church gymnasium. A “jumble sale” is a phrase I heard used once by a church lady who was new to the church I attended as a young teenager, and every other lady put down the stickers she was attaching to the rummage sale items and looked at the new lady when she said it.

  15. Oh, of course, I forgot “estate sale”. One of two overlapping meanings:

    – Someone died and we’re selling all the stuff we didn’t want ourselves
    – We want to signal that our junk is ritzier than typical run-of-the-mill junk, partly or wholly because it benefited from the glamour of having once been ours. Therefore we are marking up the tags on the items in a similar way to how Macy’s marks up the same tube of lipstick you can buy at the grocery store.

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