Interesting, those are not part of my dialect, but the meaning is quite understandable of course, they may be regional variations or recent changes (I have lived in the US for the last decade).
(But remember that unless you’re talking about Pall Mall, we don’t have malls, we have shopping centres! I’m pretty sure that hasn’t changed.)
It may help dispel your sense that it’s pretentious if I tell you that when I was growing up in an zeitgeist of generally mild but pervasive xenophobia, “the Paki shop” was a widespread term. Literally “Pakistani”, of course, but a generic racist term, deliberately failing to distinguish between immigrants from anywhere in the Indian subcontinent. Just as in many countries, immigrants were often the most hardworking and entrepreneurial shopkeepers, running local convenience stores that would be open long hours when everything else was be closed.
Those sounds like correct usages to me (native Londoner), and neither are particularly unusual or new. Example of fannying from 1990s sitcom: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l63RSzqpwHQ
Agreed! As a Canadian living in the U.K.(2.5yrs)there are many things I won’t say for fear of sounding like I’m taking the piss.
For example a normal greeting around here is, hiya, ya’allright? I’ve picked up the hiya part, but the y’allright part I can’t say without(to myself) sounding like an arse. And though I’m called duck at least once a day I don’t think I can bring myself to say it.
I do love to say bits n bobs, I use the occasional cheers, and love eating bacon baps.
Take away=to go. I picked that one up pretty quick when the first time I said I’d like my coffee ‘to go’ I got a rather confused look.
When I’m crossing the street I STILL get confused about the direction of traffic. Though I have no problem driving.
A friend of mine is an annoying anglophile. He’ll use UK spelling, date format, and say “shedule.”
I caught him by the bullocks though. I asked him “does that mean you’ll be celebrating July 4th on November 5th?”
“What’s November 5th?”
“Guy Fawkes day, ya wanker.”
He hadn’t heard of it. Poser.
He was right. November 5th isn’t anything. Bonfire Night is the 5th of November.
And bullocks are bovines, perhaps you mean bollocks. Even so, although “bollocks” has several slang meanings, “caught by the bollocks” does not have any meaning other than the literal one. It doesn’t mean “caught out”.
I can’t say I’ve really picked up any Britishisms, except maybe a couple. For some reason I now find “I might have done” and similar constructions more natural than “I might have”, though I usually still say the latter.
Particularly in online interactions, I find myself using the word “university” to mean “college” in the sense of attending any tertiary degree granting institution. Outside of the United States, “college” can mean certain kinds of technical or secondary schools, so I’ll say “university” if it seems necessary to underscore the distinction.
I use the word “bollocks” occasionally and once inadvertently said it on the radio. It’s a word that can be used as a vulgarity in Britain, or not. I don’t remember the context but I didn’t mean it in a vulgar sense, but it flashed through my mind right after I said it that it could have been taken as such. Fortunately I didn’t get called on it, since people don’t pay close attention to what radio DJs say anyway.
Not quite, the red mist descends often in situations of high competition or confrontation, where the protagonist takes over the top action without any regard whatsoever to consequences for themselves or others.
Example - imagine you are riding your motorcycle and someone else passes you, you catch up and the pace gets higher and higher, until eventually the ‘red mist’ descends and one rider takes utterly insane chances just to have the bragging rights.
It can happen when alcohol is involved too, inhibitions are left far behind and common sense goes out of the window. The window of judgement is clouded over.
Pretty much as back in post #77 but I do find myself adding a couple car-related terms here and there; especially “boot”. I blame it all on Captain Slow and the Hamster.
I use rather a lot apparently.
However I was raised in Canada, where I think we use them more than the USA to start with.
Then I spent twenty two years living in the BVI, so I think they’ve come about naturally, rather than intentionally.
One I used to use fairly often , but the occurrence doesn’t pop up much anymore is
“do go and see if you can find pater, I believe he’s flushing a badger out of the ha-ha” into conversation ever since RobDog posted it some weeks back.