American and British Terminology

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LostInSpace
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14 May 2007, 5:18 pm

JakeG wrote:

9CatMom wrote:

Here are a couple more;

Bun in the oven
A - Tasty bread based product cooking in the oven
B - Preggers/up the duff/pregnant

Period
A - full stop, used to denote end of sentence
B - part of the female menstrual cycle

"Bun in the oven" means pregnant in the US, too, and "period" also refers to the menstrual cycle.

LostInSpace
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14 May 2007, 5:22 pm

I'm surprised no one has mentioned:

A: Diaper
B: Nappy

A: Cash register
B: Till

Occasionally I'll hear "till" in the US, but mostly as part of a common phrase like "hand in the till."

Pie
A: Baked dessert often filled with some kind of fruit or other treat
B: Actual meal-type baked dish which may have meat or potatoes or anything like that in it. More similar to the American "casserole", but not quite since casseroles don't usually have a crust.

Also, to ward off a jinx Americans say "knock on wood" while Brits say "touch wood."

0_equals_true
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14 May 2007, 5:26 pm

metal derived from bauxite
A. aluminum
B. aluminium

Quote:

Americans adopted -ium for most of the 19th century, with aluminium appearing in Webster's Dictionary of 1828. In 1892, however, Charles Martin Hall used the -um spelling in an advertising handbill for his new electrolytic method of producing the metal, despite his constant use of the -ium spelling in all the patents he filed between 1886 and 1903.[18] It has consequently been suggested that the spelling on the flier was a simple spelling mistake.[citation needed] Hall's domination of production of the metal ensured that the spelling aluminum became the standard in North America; the Webster Unabridged Dictionary of 1913, though, continued to use the -ium version.

In 1926, the American Chemical Society officially decided to use aluminum in its publications; American dictionaries typically label the spelling aluminium as a British variant

0_equals_true
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14 May 2007, 5:28 pm

LostInSpace wrote:

Also, to ward off a jinx Americans say "knock on wood" while Brits say "touch wood."

Either

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14 May 2007, 5:30 pm

Do they use hoover as a verb in the states. I thought so, jut the info on sites can be unreliable.

neurodeviant
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14 May 2007, 5:41 pm

Fag:
A: Derogatory term for a homosexual person
B: Cigarette

Ass:
A: Buttocks
B: Donkey

A: (French) Fries (which happen to be the name of a foil-wrapped snack in britain)
B: Chips

Different spellings:
A: Center
B: Centre

A: Tires
B: Tyres

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14 May 2007, 7:32 pm

good post

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LostInSpace
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14 May 2007, 7:38 pm

0_equals_true wrote:

Do they use hoover as a verb in the states. I thought so, jut the info on sites can be unreliable.

Not that I've heard. We say "vacuum."

LostInSpace
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14 May 2007, 7:39 pm

neurodeviant wrote:

Fag:

Different spellings:
A: Center
B: Centre

A: Tires
B: Tyres

Lots of things are spelled differently. Brits often have "s" where we have "z", "oe" where we have "e", "ae" where we have "a", "re" where we have "er", and "ll" where we have "l", etc.

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14 May 2007, 7:44 pm

take a/the piss on
A - urinate on
B - mock someone

Different spelling:
A - Curb
B - Kerb

LostInSpace
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14 May 2007, 9:13 pm

I was letting my dog out a few minutes ago and when I picked up my flashlight to check the yard for skunks, I thought of another one:

American: flashlight
British: torch

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14 May 2007, 9:35 pm

A: Crosswalk
B: Zebra Crossing

The first time I read Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, there was a reference to a zebra crossing, and I thought it was an odd reference to a place where zebras would cross the highway, like a Deer Crossing here in North America. It was many years later that I learned what it really meant...

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14 May 2007, 10:36 pm

tire tyre

hood bonnet

roof hood

trunk boot

gearbox gearchange

automatic autobox
transmission

windshield windscreen

fender wing

elevator lift

sidewalk pavement

mail post

rear window backlight (automotive)

cookie biscuit

loudspeaker tannoy

vacuum tube valve

fries chips

move shift

highway motorway

beer water (what they'd call ours)

airplane aeroplane

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15 May 2007, 6:01 am

You got that off a site didn't you nutbag. Not all of those are accurate

vacuum tube valve - not the same

gearbox gearchange - we use gearbox

roof hood - ???

windshield windscreen - either

rear window backlight (automotive) - ???

airplane aeroplane - both but people use airplane more often nowadays

automatic autobox transmission - automatic/automatic transmission/automatic gearbox

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15 May 2007, 12:19 pm

A- "Bang"
B- Factorial

A- "Absolute value"
B- modulus function

A- parenthesis
B- Brackets

A- math
B- maths

9CatMom
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15 May 2007, 9:56 pm

My favorite Siamese:

A-Lynx point
B-Tabby point

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