Stuffing/dressing is basically north-south (with a good bit of the farm culture part of the midwest following the south, as tends to happen with foodways). Dinner/supper is a similar divide.

Sauce/relish, I dunno. I've always thought of it as a question of different recipes rather than different regions. Mine this year claims to be a chutney on the recipe, but I think that's just a matter of magazine publishers wanting to make it sound more exotic than cranberry sauce. As if.

Stuffing is cooked in the bird, dressing is cooked separately.

Sauce is a pretty general term, but (to me) relish means some sort of pickle is involved.

For the record, we said stuffing/sauce. That's in Northern Connecticut. I think I knew people growing up who might have said dressing.

My great-grandfather being born in 1850 or so, I have no idea what he would have said. And of course, he didn't celebrate Thanksgiving and it wouldn't have been in English so I guess that's no help anyway. And it occurs to me now that I have no idea what language he spoke.

I call cranberry sauce "sauce" but really it's a relish or a chutney, because it's not properly smooth, but lumpy.

And Happy Thanksgiving, Buffistas who are celebrating it!

Stuffing is cooked in the bird, dressing is cooked separately.

I wonder if now that most people know that it's not a good idea to actually stuff the turkey that will change? I doubt I will ever use dressing, even though it's been a side for years.

Stuffing here, all the way. Also our stuffing is only bread, butter, onions and summer savory, and nothing like sausage or oysters or nuts goes inside the bird.

I don't understand how sauce and relish can be attached to the same food.

We keep cooking the stuffing inside the bird--the unsafe part is when you leave it in the bird after you take it out of the oven. So we remove it right away, and in my mumblety years of having turkey stuffing, nobody in my family's ever gotten sick from it. And stuffing cooked in the bird is far better than stuffing cooked in a pan, because the turkey juices flavor it so wonderfully.

I doubt I will ever use dressing, even though it's been a side for years.

And this is more what I was talking about, not a cooking definition of the two. Regardless of how you cook it*, there are regions of the country where, if you ask "what do you have for Thanksgiving", people will say "turkey and dressing" and parts where they say "turkey and stuffing" -- it's actually one of the questions that's asked in dialect surveys for mapping projects like this: [link]

* Although now I seriously want to overlay the dialect map with a map of the predominant cooking method to see where and whether they overlap. OMG I AM DORK.

Oh, and I cook it in the pan, but not because of safety -- I like my studressffing* with lots of brown crusty bits, and I like way more of it than would ever fit in the appropriate-sized bird.

* Fake Virginian. So sue me.

Although now I seriously want to overlay the dialect map with a map of the predominant cooking method to see where and whether they overlap. OMG I AM DORK.

I was thinking it would be cool to find the same data....so I think dork is out and perfect conversation here is in.

It's not like we are discussing font types or anything. Chocolate Box font FTW!