Now all we need for this thread is to find an American novel that features characters “playing checkers”, where the British edition renders this as “playing chequers”.
That sense of “draught” is not listed in the Oxford English Dictionary. The conscription sense is found only under “draft”, and is marked as an Americanism.
I recently got a new car, which runs on diesel. It features “BlueInjection is the cutting-edge SCR diesel technology from Vauxhall that uses AdBlue® to further reduce the level of nitric oxide and work towards cleaner emissions.”
Further instructions includes the following gem:
“Cars fitted with the Blueinjection system need Adblue refills approximately every 2,485 to 4,038 miles depending on the vehicle and engine as well as your driving style.”
After my initial reaction of “Whaaaat…?” I converted the numbers to kilometres, and it all suddenly made sense.
Ha! That’s ones especially funny, since they straight-up say “approximately.”
First one I thought of, and annoyed the shit out of me. Even if you thought the reference was too, I dunno, esoteric, it’s the perfect opportunity to just leave it the hell alone and teach a kid something. “Hey, Mom/Dad, what’s a philosopher’s stone?” :smack: Kids are only as dumb as you let them be – don’t assume they’re idiots. (Or, who knows, maybe they were avoiding the awkward situation of a parent not knowing what a philosopher’s stone was but, even then, hey, let’s teach mom and dad something!)
Thank you.
Next question: In what way did “National Service” differ from conscription or the draft?
Apparently related to “draft/draught” as in beer, in the sense of an amount “drawn off” from the whole for a particular purpose.
Originally (early 18th century) used of a group of soldiers “drafted” for special duty, and subsequently of a group of civilians “drafted” to serve as soldiers.
Someone in a Whatcha Readin’ thread here awhile back said he had a British edition of Stephen King’s 11/22/63 which laughably changed several Americanisms into Britishisms, including changing “cigarettes” to “fags,” which is not something anyone in 1963 Texas would ever have called them. Ever.
Supposedly the Boston Globe’s newsroom computers once had a macro which changed any reference to “black” to “African American,” which resulted in the headline, “Governor says next year’s state budget will be back in the African American.”
Short answer: it didn’t; that’s what it was called from 1939-60. More than you might have wanted to know:
Thank you.
At least the arithmetic editors didn’t change the title to 1/126 - otherwise they wouldn’t have known it was the same book! 
Or today, I suspect.
The TV show “How it’s Made” is full of these. It is a Canadian show so all of the distances, dimensions, and temperatures are in metric. For rebroadcast in the States everything is converted to standard units. You get a lot of cooked at 347°F or 19.7" long (175°C and 50 cm).