On a TV commercial, the narrator says he wants' some "peanut brickle." I've heard of "peanut brittle" but not that. Is there a difference between them? And what is the difference?

They're the same thing. At first I thought brickle was just a mispronunciation of brittle, but a little digging convinced me it's dialect.

The Word Detective (while discussing "work-brickle") says

quote:

“brickle” [is] " the Scots and English dialect form of “brittle” and a form common in the Midwestern US and Appalachia." ...
“Peanut brittle,” easily breakable (thus “brittle”) hard toffee containing peanuts, is also known, in the US, as “peanut brickle.”

M-W simply says that "brickle" is dialect for "brittle." Dictionary.com expands on that:

quote:

brick⋅le
  
–adjective Midland and Southern U.S.
easily broken; brittle.
Origin:
bef. 1000; Brit. dial., Scots; late ME bryckell, OE -brycel tending to break, equiv. to bryc- (mutated ptp. s. of brecan to break ) + -el adj. suffix

A reader sent me this link after reading these posts. That's my hubs' favorite ice cream.

We Americans do love our brittles and brickles, though personally I think peanut brittle is awful. I'd never waste a bunch of calories on that! Butter brickle ice cream is another story!

I have never heard of peanut brittle being pronounced as "brickle" - although it might conceivably be a Scots expression. Scottish accents are all quite different from all English accents - although I don't know whether US ears can detect that.

quote:

Originally posted by Richard English:
Scottish accents are all quite different from all English accents - although I don't know whether US ears can detect that.

When we stayed in Stirling, the hotel owner said all sorts of things to us, but I couldn't understand a word.

Several years ago, I walked to the bottom of an embankment to take pictures of a waterfall in the Great Smokies National Park. I left my wife at the top in the parking area near another couple. When I returned my wife was glassy-eyed trying to understand what the woman was saying. As I approached, the woman was saying, "En ah knowed y'all warn't fum roun her cause them tegs on yur cur is dif'rent." (And I knew you weren't from around here because the tags [license plates] on your car were different.)
The woman was from Kentucky and her accent could just as well have been Scottish to my wife.