# False friends: familiar names which mean something very different elsewhere **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [March 24, 2018, 6:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/false-friends-familiar-names-which-mean-something-very-different-elsewhere/811121 "2018-03-24T18:07:46Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 7
**Author:** ![Yorkshire\_Pudding](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/59ef9b/32.png) [@Yorkshire\_Pudding](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Yorkshire_Pudding)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2018, 7:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/false-friends-familiar-names-which-mean-something-very-different-elsewhere/811121/121 "2018-03-25T19:57:19Z")
> [@terentii](#): > > In the US, it’s usually just tomato sauce. Exactly. I first encountered it in an Italian restaurant in the UK and it was full of shrimp, mussels and whatnot. Marinara, rich in things marine…fair enough. Discovering it just meant tomato sauce felt like someone was missing something. ---
**Author:** ![Yorkshire\_Pudding](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/59ef9b/32.png) [@Yorkshire\_Pudding](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Yorkshire_Pudding)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2018, 7:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/false-friends-familiar-names-which-mean-something-very-different-elsewhere/811121/122 "2018-03-25T19:59:13Z")
> [@Rick\_Kitchen](#): > > What, then, is a vegetable marrow? A massive fucking zucchini. Except there’s no such thing as a zucchini in the UK, it’s called a courgette. Nevertheless, a marrow is a zucchini big enough to house a small family. ---
**Author:** ![doreen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/858c86/32.png) [@doreen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/doreen)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2018, 8:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/false-friends-familiar-names-which-mean-something-very-different-elsewhere/811121/123 "2018-03-25T20:01:25Z")
> [@Nava](#): > > What “can”? The name literally means sailor sauce or sailor’s sauce, it’s Italian. The name is a reference to sailors, but that doesn’t mean it has seafood in it. In checking, it seems the most common story given for the origin of the name is that was a simple sauce that could be made quickly on a ship and the second most common was that sailors’ wives started making it when they saw the ships arriving ( again, because it could be made quickly). There seems to be some debate over where it does and doesn’t refer to a seafood sauce - from what I can tell in _most_ of Southern Italy it is a meatless sauce with no seafood , which would explain why it refers to a meatless sauce with no seafood in the US. ( Most Italian-Americans are of southern descent which is why lasagna in the US does not refer to a dish made with besciamella sauce although that is apparently the most common type everywhere else) ---
**Author:** ![terentii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/terentii/32/212_2.png) [@terentii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/terentii)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2018, 8:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/false-friends-familiar-names-which-mean-something-very-different-elsewhere/811121/124 "2018-03-25T20:01:50Z")
> [@Rick\_Kitchen](#): > > What, then, is a vegetable marrow? A zucchini, I think. And an aubergine is an eggplant. ---
**Author:** ![terentii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/terentii/32/212_2.png) [@terentii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/terentii)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2018, 8:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/false-friends-familiar-names-which-mean-something-very-different-elsewhere/811121/125 "2018-03-25T20:03:23Z")
> [@Rick\_Kitchen](#): > > Crib is also a US slang term for the house you live in. That’s a pad, Daddy-O. 🆒 ---
**Author:** ![Yorkshire\_Pudding](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/59ef9b/32.png) [@Yorkshire\_Pudding](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Yorkshire_Pudding)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2018, 8:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/false-friends-familiar-names-which-mean-something-very-different-elsewhere/811121/126 "2018-03-25T20:05:19Z")
> [@SmartAleq](#): > > I had a head scratchy moment a bit ago when BBC followed up _Back In Time For Dinner_ with _Back In Time For Tea,_ which is specific to Northern England. I was so used to “tea” being a little four o’clock nibble meal in UK parlance that it threw me to find out that in the north “tea” is the main evening meal. And mostly really boring food too, historically speaking. Northern England definitely has a different culture, ethic and wealth level than the south–never really knew that, but it explains a lot. And “dinner” means “lunch”! School dinners, served by dinner ladies, at dinnertime. I think that is sort of a north/south thing: the three meals are breakfast/dinner/tea up north. But tea needn’t be boring. It’s just the meal served in the evening. Historically though, yeah, food in the UK was…well, it filled a hole. ---
**Author:** ![terentii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/terentii/32/212_2.png) [@terentii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/terentii)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2018, 8:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/false-friends-familiar-names-which-mean-something-very-different-elsewhere/811121/127 "2018-03-25T20:09:48Z")
> [@Yorkshire\_Pudding](#): > > And “dinner” means “lunch”! School dinners, served by dinner ladies, at dinnertime. > > I think that is sort of a north/south thing: the three meals are breakfast/dinner/tea up north. But tea needn’t be boring. It’s just the meal served in the evening. Historically though, yeah, food in the UK was…well, it filled a hole. True British food is great: very fresh native ingredients, wonderful herbal seasoning. It’s the holdovers from wartime cooking that are well known, unfortunately. ---
**Author:** ![Yorkshire\_Pudding](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/59ef9b/32.png) [@Yorkshire\_Pudding](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Yorkshire_Pudding)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2018, 8:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/false-friends-familiar-names-which-mean-something-very-different-elsewhere/811121/128 "2018-03-25T20:19:47Z")
> [@pulykamell](#): > > Oh, actually that reminds me, a “squash” in UK English can also have another meaning of a type of fruit drink concentrate/syrup. You’ll find a bunch of different squashes at the local Tesco. (That said, context usually prevents you from confusing what is meant by “squash” when someone asks you to pick up a bottle of orange squash at the store.) > > Speaking of lemon squash, has “lemonade” been mentioned yet? In the US, it is an uncarbonated drink of lemon, sugar, and water. In the UK, it’s a sweetened carbonated drink of lemon, sugar, and water. (At least every time I’ve ever had it there, it exclusively meant the carbonated drink. Wikipedia seems to say that American lemonade is also known as “traditional lemonade” in the UK.) A friend working as a manager at Sainsbury’s (British supermarket) found one of the staff, picking customer orders for delivery, exasperatedly searching for butternut squash in amongst the cordials, because…well…that’s what squash _is_, right? And it is. Squash means cordial, unless context dictates otherwise. In this case there was plenty of context, but somehow that hadn’t filtered through… Lemonade: yup, it’s fizzy. Anything-ade is fizzy. Cherryade is carbonated cherry drink, etc. It’s not ubiquitous: there’s no real convention of grapefruitade or pineappleade, for example, but if you happened across something called…I don’t know…gooseberryade, you’d know it would be fizzy and taste like an industrial chemical rendering of the flavour of gooseberries. ---
**Author:** ![Yorkshire\_Pudding](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/59ef9b/32.png) [@Yorkshire\_Pudding](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Yorkshire_Pudding)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2018, 8:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/false-friends-familiar-names-which-mean-something-very-different-elsewhere/811121/129 "2018-03-25T20:27:06Z")
> [@terentii](#): > > True British food is great: very fresh native ingredients, wonderful herbal seasoning. It’s the holdovers from wartime cooking that are well known, unfortunately. You’re preaching to the converted here! There’s a great tradition of decent food in the UK, but for a significant portion of the 20th century, vegetables boiled until they were grey and could be swallowed without chewing were the norm, and they accompanied meat which could be used for soling clogs or driving in nails. Garlic and chilli were tantamount to devil worship, and if anything appeared to be foreign in origin, it needed anglicising to death and apologising for. It’s radically different now, fortunately. ---
**Author:** ![SciFiSam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/47e85d/32.png) [@SciFiSam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SciFiSam)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2018, 8:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/false-friends-familiar-names-which-mean-something-very-different-elsewhere/811121/130 "2018-03-25T20:40:03Z")
> [@pdhenry](#): > > The US typically calls a small baby bed on rockers a cradle. > > Is the song “Rockabye baby…the cradle will rock” familiar in the UK? Yeah, very well known. We do have the word cradle but I’ve never heard anyone use it except in that song. > [@terentii](#): > > I’d call that a cradle, as in _Rock-a-bye, baby, in the tree top_… > > All of the cribs I’ve seen stand on spindly legs, and might have sides you can lower to take the baby out (or you can just lift him/her out). > > The big thing on the floor you put the baby into when he/she is big enough is called a playpen. > > What the British call a “pram” (“perambulator”) can be either a stroller (a little seat on wheels for a baby) or a buggy (a little bed on wheels with a foldable hood). > > A “dummy” in the UK is what I’d call a “pacifier” in the US (for a baby to suck on, like Maggie Simpson). A dummy is (among other things) what I’d call a department store mannequin. > > A “cot” is the kind of foldable bed you might sleep on at summer camp or in the service, or keep at home for unexpected guests. Whereas in the UK if a baby bed has sides you can lower then it’s a cot 🙂 A pram is a specific item, funnily enough with the same definition as the US buggy. And we say buggy for the sitting-up style one! (They’re also called pushchairs and very occasionally strollers, but buggy’s the most common one). If we get into words that are just different rather than false friends we’ll be here forever. The list of differences in cooking terms is so long that I really can’t use US recipes at all. One cooking false friend is flan. US = a sort of creamy custardy thing (similar to creme caramel in the UK) and UK = a pastry dish, open-topped, with a filling of fruit or cheese or whatever. The pronunciation is also different - despite what that episode of Friends would have you believe, it’s not pronounced with a long aahhh sound, but a short flat sound, [æ], like the one in bat. ---
**Author:** ![terentii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/terentii/32/212_2.png) [@terentii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/terentii)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2018, 8:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/false-friends-familiar-names-which-mean-something-very-different-elsewhere/811121/131 "2018-03-25T20:51:25Z")
> [@SciFiSam](#): > > A pram is a specific item, funnily enough with the same definition as the US buggy. And we say buggy for the sitting-up style one! (They’re also called pushchairs and very occasionally strollers, but buggy’s the most common one). My friend Bernard in Brighton called a stroller a pram.\* I remember this because I thought the woman pushing it was cute, and I said “So … are you married?”\*\* Bernard found this quite amusing. \*He was from Newcastle, though. \*\*And I was much younger at the time. :o ---
**Author:** ![SciFiSam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/47e85d/32.png) [@SciFiSam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SciFiSam)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2018, 9:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/false-friends-familiar-names-which-mean-something-very-different-elsewhere/811121/132 "2018-03-25T21:00:34Z")
> [@terentii](#): > > My friend Bernard in Brighton called a stroller a pram.\* I remember this because I thought the woman pushing it was cute, and I said “So … are you married?”\*\* > > Bernard found this quite amusing. > > \*He was from Newcastle, though. > \*\*And I was much younger at the time. :o Smooth 😃 Yeah, it could be regional. Or your friend Bernard didn’t have kids so didn’t really know all kid-related terms. ---
**Author:** ![Filbert](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/filbert/32/3433_2.png) [@Filbert](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Filbert)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2018, 9:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/false-friends-familiar-names-which-mean-something-very-different-elsewhere/811121/133 "2018-03-25T21:01:54Z")
How about a pint? 570 ml in the UK, 473 ml in the US, and just for good measure, in South Australia, ordering a pint would get you 425 ml, a measure that’s normally called a schooner in the rest of the country, but a South Australian schooner is only 285 ml, as is a Geordie Schooner in England; but not in Bristol where it’s a bleedin’ sherry glass, a Canadian Schooner could be 2 imperial pints, so 946 ml. The US apparently doesn’t care what size it is so long as their schooner has a stem on the glass, and now I don’t care either, I just want a damn beer. ---
**Author:** ![SmartAleq](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smartaleq/32/163_2.png) [@SmartAleq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SmartAleq)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2018, 9:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/false-friends-familiar-names-which-mean-something-very-different-elsewhere/811121/134 "2018-03-25T21:02:23Z")
> [@Yorkshire\_Pudding](#): > > And “dinner” means “lunch”! School dinners, served by dinner ladies, at dinnertime. > > I think that is sort of a north/south thing: the three meals are breakfast/dinner/tea up north. But tea needn’t be boring. It’s just the meal served in the evening. Historically though, yeah, food in the UK was…well, it filled a hole. > [@terentii](#): > > True British food is great: very fresh native ingredients, wonderful herbal seasoning. It’s the holdovers from wartime cooking that are well known, unfortunately. That’s why I love these series, they take it decade by decade using some very comprehensive surveys the British government collected that detailed what was served for every meal, along with the prices for the ingredients. The rationing years were DIRE! The original pair of “Dinner” series went from 1900-1990 for the south of England and the “Tea” series focused on the north spans 1918 to today. They redecorate the family’s house to reflect what they’d have had historically–and finding out that the south of England had refrigerators nearly globally at least ten years before the north was an eye opener. The north was also REALLY slow to get water heaters and other mod cons too. A huge difference in lifestyle in what seems, to American eyes, to be a super close geographical range. I think our closest analogue would be the lifestyle of backwoods Appalachians in the hollers to the city dwellers in Atlanta. Geographically close, lifestyle is light years apart. If you’ve not seen these shows, track them down because they’re fascinating. ---
**Author:** ![terentii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/terentii/32/212_2.png) [@terentii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/terentii)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2018, 9:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/false-friends-familiar-names-which-mean-something-very-different-elsewhere/811121/135 "2018-03-25T21:06:37Z")
> [@Yorkshire\_Pudding](#): > > Lemonade: yup, it’s fizzy. Anything-ade is fizzy. Cherryade is carbonated cherry drink, etc. It’s not ubiquitous: there’s no real convention of grapefruitade or pineappleade, for example, but if you happened across something called…I don’t know…gooseberryade, you’d know it would be fizzy and taste like an industrial chemical rendering of the flavour of gooseberries. In Paris on my first trip abroad, I had a craving for cold lemonade on a hot summer evening. The waiter gave me that “Another stupid American!” look and said what “What kind of lemonade?” He then rattled off a whole list that I did not recognize or understand, and I finally just said “Beer, _s’il vous plait_. Löwenbräu.”\* \*With the correct German pronunciation. 🆒 ---
**Author:** ![SmartAleq](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smartaleq/32/163_2.png) [@SmartAleq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SmartAleq)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2018, 9:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/false-friends-familiar-names-which-mean-something-very-different-elsewhere/811121/136 "2018-03-25T21:08:52Z")
Should’ve asked for a shandy, that’d fix his little red wagon! ---
**Author:** ![SciFiSam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/47e85d/32.png) [@SciFiSam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SciFiSam)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2018, 9:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/false-friends-familiar-names-which-mean-something-very-different-elsewhere/811121/137 "2018-03-25T21:10:49Z")
> [@SmartAleq](#): > > That’s why I love these series, they take it decade by decade using some very comprehensive surveys the British government collected that detailed what was served for every meal, along with the prices for the ingredients. The rationing years were DIRE! > > The original pair of “Dinner” series went from 1900-1990 for the south of England and the “Tea” series focused on the north spans 1918 to today. They redecorate the family’s house to reflect what they’d have had historically–and finding out that the south of England had refrigerators nearly globally at least ten years before the north was an eye opener. The north was also REALLY slow to get water heaters and other mod cons too. A huge difference in lifestyle in what seems, to American eyes, to be a super close geographical range. I think our closest analogue would be the lifestyle of backwoods Appalachians in the hollers to the city dwellers in Atlanta. Geographically close, lifestyle is light years apart. > > If you’ve not seen these shows, track them down because they’re fascinating. I love them too. The families are just lovely. The Southern family get on so well and the Mum’s hilarious. There’s also Further Back in Time for Dinner, Back in Time for Brixton (about black British people), Back in Time for the Weekend and Back in Time for Christmas, if you wanted more. ---
**Author:** ![terentii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/terentii/32/212_2.png) [@terentii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/terentii)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2018, 9:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/false-friends-familiar-names-which-mean-something-very-different-elsewhere/811121/138 "2018-03-25T21:14:29Z")
> [@SmartAleq](#): > > If you’ve not seen these shows, track them down because they’re fascinating. Are they with Ruth Goodman and crew? They are such great presenters; I’d love to meet them. ---
**Author:** ![SmartAleq](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smartaleq/32/163_2.png) [@SmartAleq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SmartAleq)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2018, 9:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/false-friends-familiar-names-which-mean-something-very-different-elsewhere/811121/139 "2018-03-25T21:40:33Z")
> [@terentii](#): > > Are they with Ruth Goodman and crew? They are such great presenters; I’d love to meet them. IMDB says Sara Cox and Polly Russell for “Tea,” and Russell and Giles Coren for the rest. > [@SciFiSam](#): > > I love them too. The families are just lovely. The Southern family get on so well and the Mum’s hilarious. > > There’s also Further Back in Time for Dinner, Back in Time for Brixton (about black British people), Back in Time for the Weekend and Back in Time for Christmas, if you wanted more. They really do choose lovely families for these shows, don’t they? It’s quite the challenge since they need to have teenagers involved and that can be a total crapshoot. Of the other shows I think I’ve only missed “Brixton” so I need to track that down. “Victorian Bakers” is also a standout, loved that show. ---
**Author:** ![Bijou\_Drains](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bijou_drains/32/2814_2.png) [@Bijou\_Drains](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bijou_Drains)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2018, 9:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/false-friends-familiar-names-which-mean-something-very-different-elsewhere/811121/140 "2018-03-25T21:54:12Z")
I had an Australian girlfriend. She was very surprised to hear on the radio that the governor was in a shagging contest. Around NC/SC shagging is a type of dance. Normally the music for shagging is “Beach music” but it has nothing to do with the Beach boys or california bands. [Beach music - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beach_music) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/false-friends-familiar-names-which-mean-something-very-different-elsewhere/811121.md?page=6) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/false-friends-familiar-names-which-mean-something-very-different-elsewhere/811121.md?page=8)