In the UK, you’d ask for a cracker. Crackers here are any kind of savoury/neutral dry baked item, most commonly eaten with cheese.
In the UK, Pringles are labelled ‘savoury snack’. Also to apparently to confuse everyone (except actually confusing nobody), some crispy snacks are called ‘chips’ - corn tortilla snacks are most often labelled ‘chips’, and it’s fairly common to find the term on other crunchy snack products that are not actual slices of potato, such as pitta chips
Yes, we’d call your first example a mobile home, or a static caravan. Trailer is something that’s pulled behind a car and holds ‘stuff’. A caravan that is pulled behind a car is just that, a caravan.
Good example, Brits would call that the boot (also not confused with the things you put on your feet).
There is a reason for that. On a horse-drawn conveyance, it was a storage compartment for boots. The dashboard was a screen to stop mud from being ‘dashed’ up from the horses’ hooves. Guess what they kept in the glove compartment.
I think the same might be true of ‘trunk’ - it was a luggage trunk lashed to the back end of the vehicle.
“Lemonade” in North America is generally a non-carbonated beverage consisting of water flavored with lemon and sugar. If you order “lemonade” in the UK or Australia, you get a carbonated lemon-flavored beverage similar to 7-Up. You need to order a “lemon squash” to get the desired non-carbonated version.
They are both beans because they are the same plant. A green bean is literally a green (young or immature) bean. If you let it mature, it takes the other form. So it is actually, literally the same vegetable, and “not a different animal altogether.”
If you order lemon squash, you’ll get something that’s made up from a concentrated syrup. Lemonade made from fresh lemons, sugar and water isn’t really a thing here in the UK
In the U.S. we never call something pulled behind a car a “caravan.” We use “caravan” only to mean a convoy or train of (not physically connected) vehicles, animals, and people, or combination thereof, traveling together, usually for safety or to share resources. Think a line of camels in the desert. That’s a caravan to Americans, not something you attach to a car.
And there’s also the brand name for a minivan, the Dodge Caravan, whose name evokes that line of camels in the desert. Funny that in Britain that brand name seems much more literal, whereas in America it’s romantic and exotic.
Just to note, I’m perfectly happy for this thread to evolve into a more general ‘separated by a common language’ type of theme, but if anyone has any more examples of pairs-by-name-not-by-nature, I’d love to hear about them
For us those are cookies. Everything is either a cookie or a cracker (except the aforementioned Graham cracker, which is an animal unto itself). So we don’t have an equivalent category of biscuits that are neither cookies not crackers.
American Cookies don’t have to be soft and chewy. Were I to guess, I believe that the majority of what we consider cookes are in fact hard and crumbly rather than soft and chewy.
So “cookie” in Britain seems to Ben a much narrower category. Like “candy.” My understanding is that in Britain only hard boiled sugar sweets are called candy. In America, chocolate is also candy.
Isn’t that a prime business opportunity? Fresh lemonade is one of the greatest things ever, especially on a hot summer day. I would think someone could make a killing on it by introducing it to the British. It’s far better than either lemon-lime soda pop or diluted lemon syrup.
That’s correct on both terms - cookies in the UK are chewy or crumbly, often irregular, and usually contain chocolate pieces, raisins, nuts etc, and (with exceptions) most often eaten fairly fresh - within a day or two of baking.
Candy refers to confectionery primarily made from cooked sugar - hard boiled, or sometimes chewy (but not toffee)
Ignorance fought, thanks!
‘especially on a hot summer day’ - drink it up kids, before the rain dilutes it too much!
I don’t know about you, but I do most of my beverage consumption indoors anyway. Maybe Britain won’t have kids sitting on the curb selling lemonade for five (cents/pence), but I can’t recall the last time I saw that in real life anyway.
I don’t think I’ve ever heard someone in the US call an actual mobile home a trailer. These are called “trailers” (although I wouldn’t call it relatively small) and I suppose they can be permanently parked at one location , but I’ve never heard something like this called a trailer -although the places where they are permanently parked are sometimes called “trailer parks” *
- Although whether it’s called a “trailer park” has a lot to do with who lives there - if it’s fairly well-off, retired people living in double or triple-wides during the winter, it tends to be called something different.
Maybe it’s regional. I lived in a rented single-wide mobile home for two or three years in college. I called it “the trailer” as did all my family. My sister lived in a different single-wide mobile home for a year or two when she was first married. We all called it a trailer. My aunt has lived in a mobile home most of her adult life, and she calls hers a trailer.
According to Walmart they’re two different things. Our Walmart was recently revamped and the aisles were moved around and re-organized. I went to buy kidney and cannellini beans so I went to the aisle marked canned vegetables - nope not there. I wandered around until I found them 4 aisles down with baked beans. I wish I could remember what the aisle was marked and what else was on the shelves. I want to say peanut butter but could be wrong. Whatever was there, it didn’t make sense to me.