# Do you use any Britishisms or vice versa? **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [June 8, 2005, 2:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-use-any-britishisms-or-vice-versa/307393 "2005-06-08T02:16:02Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![GorillaMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/50afbb/32.png) [@GorillaMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GorillaMan)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2005, 7:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-use-any-britishisms-or-vice-versa/307393/61 "2005-06-09T07:10:54Z")
> [@seosamh](#): > > A “guy” is the thing you burn on Bonfire Night …and somethign that holds a tent up. > [@El\_Kabong](#): > > I tend to say ‘shite’ quite a lot This one’s an Irish-ism > [@](#): > > ‘It’s gone all pear-shaped’, mainly for the consternation that ensues amongst my friends and family. To really puzzle them, vary it with “It’s all gone Pete Tong” 😉 ---
**Author:** ![TheLoadedDog](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/35a633/32.png) [@TheLoadedDog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TheLoadedDog)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2005, 7:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-use-any-britishisms-or-vice-versa/307393/62 "2005-06-09T07:43:35Z")
I’ve picked up, I think from this very board, the Americanism " a couple things" instead of " a couple _of_ things". I believe it is not universal in the States , but I’m not sure which areas use it and which don’t. Also the delightful expression “to have one’s ass handed to him/her on a plate”. I’ve been playing my small part in introducing this wonderful thing to Australian English. ---
**Author:** ![ZebraShaSha](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/eada6e/32.png) [@ZebraShaSha](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ZebraShaSha)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2005, 8:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-use-any-britishisms-or-vice-versa/307393/63 "2005-06-09T08:11:03Z")
I use, and don’t regret using, the term “love” way too often. Everyone looks at me crazy, especially guys. With girls, I don’t mean to unless I feel like flirting, which it seems to be like on many different levels over here. ---
**Author:** ![Sir\_Doris](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b5ac83/32.png) [@Sir\_Doris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sir_Doris)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2005, 8:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-use-any-britishisms-or-vice-versa/307393/64 "2005-06-09T08:53:05Z")
> [@GorillaMan](#): > > ‘Toilet’ is used across the board in Britain. ‘Loo’ is very middle-class. > I’d have been stumped by ‘kakky’, too. I think the second instructor was just winding you up 😉 Loo is universal in the UK. I say “loo” mostly but occaisionally “toilet” slips out, since my mother insisted “loo” was vulgar. “Kakky” could of course be taken to mean “shit” or “shitty” though it’s not a word that I’ve heard much among adults. I occaisionally use a few Americanisms. I use “ise” and “ize” interchangeably. Sometimes I will use “I guess” instead of “I suppose” and “sure” for “certainly”, I got both of these from my boss, who’s Home counties and public school educated, strangely enough\* \*Not Owl Stretching Time since he doesn’t like football. ---
**Author:** ![Beware\_of\_Doug](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/278dde/32.png) [@Beware\_of\_Doug](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beware_of_Doug)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2005, 1:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-use-any-britishisms-or-vice-versa/307393/65 "2005-06-09T13:45:22Z")
Briticisims I use: **that’s as may be** (for “maybe so” “or you’re right, but…”) **Eurghh!** (for “Yeech!”) Picked up both from a notable M.P. Re khaki: Isn’t British khaki a lot closer to olive drab? ---
**Author:** ![Rayne\_Man](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/df705f/32.png) [@Rayne\_Man](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rayne_Man)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2005, 3:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-use-any-britishisms-or-vice-versa/307393/66 "2005-06-09T15:58:52Z")
A couple of facts about **wanker**. There is a hand gesture that goes with this word . I’ll leave you to work that one out. So , the next time another car driver pisses you off, you can use the gesture instead of giving him one (or two) fingers. There is also a piece of rhyming slang for the word. This is **merchant banker**. After reading about the exploits of Goldman Sachs sand similar companies I find this very appropriate. ---
**Author:** ![GorillaMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/50afbb/32.png) [@GorillaMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GorillaMan)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2005, 4:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-use-any-britishisms-or-vice-versa/307393/67 "2005-06-09T16:19:23Z")
> [@Sir Doris](#): > > Loo is universal in the UK. Perhaps there’s regional differences - but it’s certainly not used across the board around here. ---
**Author:** ![Bippy\_the\_Beardless](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ac8455/32.png) [@Bippy\_the\_Beardless](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bippy_the_Beardless)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2005, 4:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-use-any-britishisms-or-vice-versa/307393/68 "2005-06-09T16:32:33Z")
> [@Rayne Man](#): > > A couple of facts about **wanker**. > > There is a hand gesture that goes with this word . I’ll leave you to work that one out. So , the next time another car driver pisses you off, you can use the gesture instead of giving him one (or two) fingers. > > There is also a piece of rhyming slang for the word. This is **merchant banker**. After reading about the exploits of Goldman Sachs sand similar companies I find this very appropriate. Well the symbol used when a car driver pisses you off is more likely the dick head symbol (wanking an imaginary large dick on your forehead) the wanker symbol involves wanking an imaginary very small dick in its usual place 2 spanks of an imaginary monkey will do just right. ---
**Author:** ![Nawth\_Chucka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/c57346/32.png) [@Nawth\_Chucka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nawth_Chucka)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2005, 4:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-use-any-britishisms-or-vice-versa/307393/69 "2005-06-09T16:47:04Z")
After I watch my 4 hours of Coronation Street on CBC Sundays, I tend to use the Northernisms like ‘oh, aye’, ‘flamin’ Nora’, ‘owt’ and ‘nowt’. It fades by Thursday, typically, only to flare up again. ---
**Author:** ![Rodd\_Hill](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/3ab097/32.png) [@Rodd\_Hill](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rodd_Hill)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2005, 5:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-use-any-britishisms-or-vice-versa/307393/70 "2005-06-09T17:14:33Z")
We often use “porky pie” for “lie” as in “tell a lie” and “half-inch” for “pinch” as in “steal:” “someone’s half-inched my sarnies!” (sarnie=sandwich) Khaki, by the way, has always been pronounced “kar-key,” by the many, many dozens of British ex-soldiers of both world wars that I’ve known. It’s from the Hindi for “dust-coloured,” and is really a very light brown, almost beigey colour, apparently first used for European troops by Henry Lumsden up on the North-West Frontier in 1847, then becoming standard issue during the South African War for the British Army. Here’s old Harry: [http://cabal.national-army-museum.ac.uk/nationalarmymuseum/IIS/pages/NAMPages/cabal/FMPro?-db=nam%205s.fp5&key=33223&-img](http://cabal.national-army-museum.ac.uk/nationalarmymuseum/IIS/pages/NAMPages/cabal/FMPro?-db=nam%205s.fp5&key=33223&-img) ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_L.A](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnny_l.a/32/1084_2.png) [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2005, 5:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-use-any-britishisms-or-vice-versa/307393/71 "2005-06-09T17:20:14Z")
> [@Rodd Hill](#): > > Khaki, by the way, has always been pronounced “kar-key,” by the many, many dozens of British ex-soldiers of both world wars that I’ve known. I was a little offbase (I didn’t want to say I was a little ‘off’! You’d think I was a bottle of milk!) in my instructor’s pronuncuation. It was more ‘cah-KEE’; emphasis on the second syllable. Now that I know the correct pronunciation, I’m tempted to use it – but I have a feeling most people herer wouldn’t know what I was talking about, or would think I was being silly. Hence the little hesitation when I say the word. ---
**Author:** ![Dusty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a183cd/32.png) [@Dusty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dusty)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2005, 5:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-use-any-britishisms-or-vice-versa/307393/72 "2005-06-09T17:26:20Z")
I call the big pieces of wood that hold railway rails together “sleepers”. I think this is because I first heard them called anything on _Ground Force_ and, being my first exposure, the term engraved itself in my head. Similarly, a generic Dumpster is a “skip” rather than… whatever they’re called here–“large garbage disposal unit” or some other phrase altogether too long. “Toilet” is British? I’d’ve never guessed, everyone here calls it a toilet when not speaking euphemistically. And the word for a playhouse or cinema is “theatre”, I don’t know where you’d go to find to it spelled any other way. I pronounce the word “leisure” as rhyming with “pleasure”. I don’t know why, I always have. “_LEE-zhur_” just sound so very wrong to my ears and is difficult to pronounce. Words ending in “r” usually transform into “ah” and those ending in vowels seem to magically gain “er”, but that’s as much a New English accent as it is an English one. I read a lot, always have, and I mostly read older books. If you’ve ever read old books–and I mean that literally, I don’t know if reprints maintain the same spelling–you’ll see that most books written pre-1930 or thereabouts use spellings that are either an odd morphing of American and British or just straight out British. Thus, my first exposure to many written words have been British spelling. On all but very common words like “color” (words I probably learned much earlier), I have to put up a conscious effort not to spell them the way I know them. “Honour”, “favour”, “neighbour”, “catalogue”, “encyclopaedia”–if I’m not paying attention, that’s how they’ll all come out. I tend to contract “I have not” into “I’ve not” rather than “I haven’t”, which used to be odd but nowadays isn’t that unusual. I also contract contractions, which most everyone does in speech but few do in writing (to use an extreme example, “I would not have” becomes “I’dn’t’ve”). Is that British or just me? As a side note, is “wanker” gaining ground here? Was a time when using it would be a clear mark of British origin, but you see it more and more in mainstream media now (I’ve been noticing it ever since _The Simpsons_ adopted the term, but it may have begun earlier than that). ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_L.A](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnny_l.a/32/1084_2.png) [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2005, 5:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-use-any-britishisms-or-vice-versa/307393/73 "2005-06-09T17:29:20Z")
> [@Dusty](#): > > As a side note, is “wanker” gaining ground here? Was a time when using it would be a clear mark of British origin, but you see it more and more in mainstream media now (I’ve been noticing it ever since _The Simpsons_ adopted the term, but it may have begun earlier than that). I’ve used ‘wanker’ for 25 or 30 years, so it was known when I was young in California. I’ve also been known to use ‘tosser’. ---
**Author:** ![Eleanor\_of\_Aquitaine](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/a88e4f/32.png) [@Eleanor\_of\_Aquitaine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eleanor_of_Aquitaine)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2005, 5:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-use-any-britishisms-or-vice-versa/307393/74 "2005-06-09T17:36:29Z")
I like the British way of referring to companies in the plural, as in “British Telecom are interested…”. While watching **Keeping Up Appearances** I liked how the characters refer to their relatives possesively, i.e. “Is your Hyacinth coming?” rather than “Is your sister coming?” I find myself doing that sometimes. I don’t know if that is common in Britain or not. I don’t think I’ve heard it anywhere else. ---
**Author:** ![Nawth\_Chucka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/c57346/32.png) [@Nawth\_Chucka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nawth_Chucka)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2005, 5:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-use-any-britishisms-or-vice-versa/307393/75 "2005-06-09T17:42:38Z")
> [@Eleanor of Aquitaine](#): > > I like the British way of referring to companies in the plural, as in “British Telecom are interested…”. > > While watching **Keeping Up Appearances** I liked how the characters refer to their relatives possesively, i.e. “Is your Hyacinth coming?” rather than “Is your sister coming?” I find myself doing that sometimes. I don’t know if that is common in Britain or not. I don’t think I’ve heard it anywhere else. I think it must be very common, on Corrie people are always referring to members of their family as ‘our so-and-so’, resulting in the shorthand ‘RToyah’ or ‘RJack’. I tend to use it as well. ---
**Author:** ![GorillaMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/50afbb/32.png) [@GorillaMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GorillaMan)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2005, 5:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-use-any-britishisms-or-vice-versa/307393/76 "2005-06-09T17:47:40Z")
> [@Portia](#): > > I think it must be very common, on Corrie people are always referring to members of their family as ‘our so-and-so’, resulting in the shorthand ‘RToyah’ or ‘RJack’. The ‘our _xyz_’ form is a particularly Lancastrian one - ‘your _so-and-so_’ is more widespread. ---
**Author:** ![irishgirl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/8edcca/32.png) [@irishgirl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/irishgirl)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2005, 6:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-use-any-britishisms-or-vice-versa/307393/77 "2005-06-09T18:15:47Z")
Dahling, it is not “toilet”, nor is it “loo”. One asks to go to the “lavatory”. …which is pronounced LAV-atree, not LAV-a-TOR-ee. ---
**Author:** ![Rodd\_Hill](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/3ab097/32.png) [@Rodd\_Hill](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rodd_Hill)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2005, 6:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-use-any-britishisms-or-vice-versa/307393/78 "2005-06-09T18:46:37Z")
How about that weird British construction: “Do you have any windows wanting cleaning?” or suchlike. Always stuck me as odd phraseology. ---
**Author:** ![Cemetery\_Savior](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/439d5e/32.png) [@Cemetery\_Savior](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cemetery_Savior)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2005, 6:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-use-any-britishisms-or-vice-versa/307393/79 "2005-06-09T18:49:33Z")
> [@Daithi Lacha](#): > > …(or as I usually say, “sammitch”)… You, my friend, may be a Chicagoan. ---
**Author:** ![swanky\_glue](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9a140/32.png) [@swanky\_glue](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/swanky_glue)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2005, 7:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-use-any-britishisms-or-vice-versa/307393/80 "2005-06-09T19:00:04Z")
I’m not sure if these qualify, but because I love Red Dwarf , I have added ‘git’, ‘smeg’, and ‘smeghead’ to my daily vocabulary. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-use-any-britishisms-or-vice-versa/307393.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-use-any-britishisms-or-vice-versa/307393.md?page=5)