DialectGuessr

Vocabulary

Esky, Chilly Bin or Cool Box? The Insulated Drinks Container

Another Australia–New Zealand giveaway. Australia says esky, from a 1950s brand of ice chest; New Zealand says chilly bin. North America says cooler, Britain says cool box or cool bag, and the older word icebox survives in patches on both sides of the Atlantic.

The question, as everyone in the survey sees it

What do you call the insulated box you carry cold drinks in?

The one you take to a barbecue or the beach.

Answer it yourself and see where you land on the map →

Who says what

Each accent profile in the survey has an expected answer to this question. Where a profile allows more than one answer, the region genuinely varies.

Cool box / cool bag

Expected in 26 of the survey's accent profiles.

Cooler

Expected in 30 of the survey's accent profiles.

Esky

Expected in 3 of the survey's accent profiles.

Chilly bin

Expected in 1 of the survey's accent profiles.

Why this question is in the survey

Vocabulary questions like this one are the fastest way to place a speaker, because the answer is a single conscious word choice rather than a sound people cannot hear in themselves. They also travel: a word that splits England into five regions often splits North America into three quite different ones. Every answer is stored with a coarse map cell for the town you grew up in, and a region is coloured in once at least two people there have answered.

See the full question bank, the accent profiles these answers feed, or how the scoring works.