I saw something I’d like a British person to decipher in Harry Potter 7, and it would be great if other people put their questions here as well.
Hermoine: …I took out all my Building Society savings… (165)
What’s that? a bank?
Close. I was a member of a building society here in Australia, but then it became a bank. They’re two different things.
Here’s the Wikipedia article.
ETA:scooped.
An earlier one, I forget which book: “He took a napkin out of his pocket that contained sandwiches.”
Are British napkins made out of wax paper or plastic?
So a Building Society is a lot like a Credit Union, here, right?
In Australia at least, we have credit unions as well.
Napkins used to be cloth of varying quality, now they’re commonly paper of varying quality but occasionally still cloth. In the context of a wizard carrying sandwiches, I’d assume cloth unless he got the sammies from a cafe (paper).
So in Britain, wrapping paper is a “napkin?”
I just figured he wrapped the sandwich in a table napkin and shoved it in his pocket. I always think of linen napkins and fine silver at Hogwarts but I’m sure a boarding school wouldn’t really have that.
Actually, I wouldn’t be surprised if they did have cloth napkins at Hogwarts. Rowling describes them living as if the Industrial Revolution never happened. The dining hall is illuminated with candles (albeit ones that are magically floating), they use quills and the residence halls are heated by fireplaces. In that atmosphere, paper napkins would be out of place.
No, he’s just wrapping up his sandwiches hobo-style. (Well, in a napkin, not a handkerchief, but you get the drift.)
By “paper”, think less wrapping or writing paper and more that kind of paper/cloth mix you might find in a serviette at McDonalds.
Serviette? Paper towel ?
Those paper things you wipe your face with after having a soda or eating a burger?
Or the snooty waiter flaps and lays across your knees before you eat at a fancy restaurant?
One of those.
Probably a lot like the Bailey Brothers Building and Loan.
The closest U.S. equivalent is a savings and loan association.
British sandwiches contain a LOT fewer fillings than US ones. My American friends over here frequently laugh at the ‘one slice of ham and one slice of cheese’ kind of sandwiches we have. Unless it’s really sloppy, you can get away with wrapping your sandwiches in a paper napkin as the filling is in no danger of escaping.
When I was a semester-abroad student in London in late 1985, we were told quite emphatically that to Brits, “napkin” meant a sanitary napkin or tampon, and that a “serviette” was what we’d want to wipe our mouths and fingers with at the dinner table. Times change.
Or you were given some hypersensitive or misinformed information… I grew up in the UK for the whole of the 1970s and 80s and when we said “napkin” we only ever meant the thing on the table.
Did Nancy Mitford labour in vain? She was famously discussing whether it’s ‘serviette’ or ‘napkin’ as far back as 1956. (For the record, ‘serviette’ was the non-U one.)
“Non-U” being non-upper-class – so the nobility and gentry would talk about “napkins”, while the middle class and unwashed masses would talk about “serviettes”.