UK BritishTerminology

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I'm in England now, but lived Stateside for a such a huge chunk of my life that I became very "Americanized" lol.

For variety of flavors, I was actually far more impressed with American selection of flavors in things like potato chips!

And coffee! I really miss my hazelnut coffee with hazelnut creamer for an everyday price from good old HEB -- can't get either here unless you buy expensive syrups.

It might be common but it's not proper language, they are still called vacuum cleaners.

Diapers are called nappies, derived from napkin. The term "diaper" is almost exclusively confined to heraldry here.

Dual Carriageway - a delightful expression for what Americans might call a two lane highway?

Procurator fiscal - from Scotland, where the word Prosecutor obviously is not good enough.

A common misconception, but that's not correct. The "carriageway" doesn't refer to lanes, it refers to the direction of travel. A dual carriageway is a road where the two directions of travel are separated by a physical barrier. Dual carriageways do tend to have two lanes in each direction, so four in total, but a dual carriageway can have one lane in each direction also.

UK: holiday
US: vacation

UK: Trolley
US: Shopping Cart

UK: Tram
US: Trolley

Taking the piss

And of course
US: Soccer
Most if not all the rest of the world: Football

What's a pram in American?

I always say vacuum cleaner but a lot of people do say Hoover.

I've adapted a few ecommerce plugins for websites and my biggest bugbear is having to change all of the references to cart into basket.

I don't know if anyones already said this but in the UK we are more inclined to say "bus" if we are just going into town shopping and "coach" for a more long haul journey.

Correct me if Im wrong but I think it might always be a "bus" no matter what in America.

Qualifier: I googled it said pushchair or buggy, but do people actually use those terms? I can't recall having seen them a lot. Sometimes google doesn't make sense.

When I need to know the time I ask "what time do you make it".

I'm not sure if they use that term in the US or might it be misconstrudled?

Trafalgar is not a name for Gibraltar!

Trafalgar Square is named in honour of the Battle of Trafalgar which took
place at Cape Trafalgar, just off the Spanish mainland.
Although the distance from Cape Trafalgar to Gibraltar is only
about 97k, the postal clerk would have been more accurate if
he had said Spain.

Good for you, but if you call sticky tape "sellotape" or a public address system a "tannoy" then you're making the same error

Yes, it's in error, but an awful lot of people DO call sticky tape "sellotape" and a tannoy a tannoy. There I just did it too. Is it just killing you inside and has it ruined your day?

Talk about pedantic.

Get the f**k over it. Not all people use brand names for things but an awful lot of people do, "Quick, hand me a KLEENEX!! !" and most people understand what they mean and don't care if they called it something different to its generic actual name.

As for "Hoover" -- among Brits personally I've almost NEVER heard a Brit call it anything but "hoovering" "the hoover." They know it's a vacuum cleaner and some call it that, but overwhelmingly I've known Brits to call it a hoover for convenience.
I DID TOO, and when I lived in the US I had to refer to it as a vacuum cleaner because Americans just don't use "hoover" as the adopted generic name.

Speaking of "adopting" words ---- part of the dynamism of language is that it is constantly changing and populations adopt "new" words and terms for thing, and integrate invented, hybrid or even brand names into general usage.

This has ALWAYS happened.

Deal with it.

Last edited by BirdInFlight on 01 Oct 2017, 8:07 am, edited 2 times in total.

One of us certainly needs to get over it.....