False friends: familiar names which mean something very different elsewhere

[MacLir]

@Reeses_Monkey

In my neck of the woods, “pigs in a blanket” are cabbage leaves stuffed with meat and covered in tomato sauce. (If the meat has rice in it, my mother called them hedgehogs.) Imagine my surprise when I went to a potluck in Texas and somebody brought cocktail weenies wrapped in biscuts as “pigs in a blanket.” Not bad, but not what I was expecting at all.

I’m from Western PA. I grew up in a mill town full of Eastern Europeans. Halupki is the proper name for the dish I grew up with.

I always knew “pigs in a blanket” as the sausage wrapped in dough. The other dish was “stuffed cabbage” if it was in tomato sauce, and “beef birds” if it was cooked in brown gravy.

Not quite on topic, but one of my uncles used to make what he called “beer-ox”. This always puzzled me as, while there was beef (“ox”), there was no beer in the recipe, just beef and cabbage and such in a dough wrapper. Then I took Russian in college and learned the word pierog (pie). Dawn breaks over Marblehead. :smack:

[DrCube]

@BobBitchin

I played a few gigs with an English guy.

First gig he asked me if I had an extra lead.
Huh?
Did you bring extra leads?
Um…
Turns out cables/wires are leads.:smack:

Interesting, as I call small wires for measuring voltage “test leads”, but I wouldn’t have thought to apply that word to all cables, or guitar cables specifically.

@furryman

Are you sure you didn’t order a peperoncino pizza. A peperoncino is a type of banana pepper.
Peperoncino - Wikipedia

That’s another false friend then, because I would call that a cayenne pepper and call this a peperoncini.

@Kimballkid

I think you are slightly confused. Bib overalls and overalls are the same thing.

Where coveralls are what a grease-monkey mechanic would wear.

I would say “overalls” is a general term that could include both. In fact, if I recall correctly, it originally just referred to high waisted pants. But with no other context to go on, if someone says “overalls”, I think of the bib kind.

[MacLir]

@TBG

Not only that, but US pancakes are fairly different from many other parts of the world. Thick fluffy things here but essentially crepes elsewhere. Or so foreigners on message boards have claimed in the past.

I knew flapjacks as slightly different from pancakes. Flapjacks were thin like a crepe, and pancakes were the thicker, fluffier item.

[MacLir]

@Spoons

We used “rubbers” in Canada too, at least when I was a child. Never thought of them as erasers; they were simply rubbers. And the teacher didn’t find anything wrong in telling me (for example), “You made a mistake here, rub it out. Oh, you don’t have a rubber? See if you can borrow Johnny’s.”

From what I recall, that is the original usage. Rubber - the compound - was named that because it was discovered to rub out pencil marks.

Then the term spread to shoe protectors and pregnancy protectors due to their being made of it.

[Rick_Kitchen]

@Eyebrows_0f_Doom

I’m from New York and I don’t know if I’ve ever heard “moolie” before. If I had to guess, I would think it was some kind of 1930s era gangster slang.

An Italian-American friend of mine from Ohio made a short movie about Mafiosi having a run-in with black gangbangers, and he used the word “moolie” in his script, I had never heard the word before.

[Teuton]

@Rick_Kitchen

An Italian-American friend of mine from Ohio made a short movie about Mafiosi having a run-in with black gangbangers, and he used the word “moolie” in his script, I had never heard the word before.

Gangbangers is another one, actually. In the UK, a “gangbang” is a orgy of the one female, multiple male kind, and the association of gangbanging to mean being a member of a gang just isn’t there, so I always have a giggle when one of the American crime dramas my wife watches mentions them.

[MacLir]

@Rick_Kitchen

Crib is also a US slang term for the house you live in.

Somewhat less common is as a term for a hooker’s “office” :rolleyes:

[pulykamell]

@Teuton

In the UK, a “gangbang” is a orgy of the one female, multiple male kind

It has that meaning as one of its meanings in the US, as well.

[Colibri]

@Little_Nemo

In Mexico, a quesadilla is a tortilla that’s filled with cheese and sometimes meat and then folded in half and grilled. This is also what a quesadilla generally means in the United States.

But a few years back, I found out that a quesadilla is something entirely different in Central America. It’s a cake flavored with cheese.

In Panama, a tortilla is quite different from those familiar in the US. They are much smaller and thicker and usually deep fried. And then in Spain, a tortilla is a kind of omelet made from onions and potatoes.

[MacLir]

@Little_Nemo

In Mexico, a quesadilla is a tortilla that’s filled with cheese and sometimes meat and then folded in half and grilled. This is also what a quesadilla generally means in the United States.

But a few years back, I found out that a quesadilla is something entirely different in Central America. It’s a cake flavored with cheese.

Mexican quesadilla. Salvadoran quesadilla.

The Salvadorean “cognate” to a Mexican quesadilla would probably be a pupusa. Made somewhat differently, but similar in character as a finished product.

[Colibri]

@Eyebrows_0f_Doom

I’m from New York and I don’t know if I’ve ever heard “moolie” before. If I had to guess, I would think it was some kind of 1930s era gangster slang.

As has been said, derived from the Italian dialect moulinyan/moulignon, which is from melanzane,“eggplant.” A highly derogatory word for black people, referring to the dark color of eggplants. It was used a few times in the Sopranos and turns up in other movies.

[terentii]

@Yorkshire_Pudding

Biballs? Never heard that before! It sounds a bit…well…silly, really.

It was used in a work by Stephen King, which is where I read it. And overalls, in my experience, do not necessarily have a bib. They can be synonymous with coveralls.

Never have I heard “gangbangers” used in anything other than a sexual context. The term “gangbusters” comes from a popular radio show that started during the Depression era. It told stories about crime-fighting G-men (“G” for government) in the mold of Eliot Ness. The violent opening (gunfire, squealing tires, sirens) led to the expression “Coming on like Gang Busters” (i.e., being heavy-handed about something).

Gang Busters

“Yom,” BTW, is another slur equivalent to “moolie.”

[pulykamell]

@terentii

Never have I heard “gangbangers” used in anything other than a sexual context.

I wonder if it may be somewhat regional. I grew up first knowing the “member of a gang” meaning here in Chicago and only much later the sexual meaning (this would have been the '80s). It’s still the usual term used here, when you’re not being formal and using a phrase like “gang member.” (Though looking around on Google, it seems to be fairly common and general US English, from what I can tell.)0

Speaking of, the Chicago term “gangway” is pretty local. That’s what we call the narrow passageway in between two buildings in the city. I believe elsewhere they’d call that an “alley,” but an “alley” for us is specifically the roadway in between two city blocks where you can access the garage and where you put out your garbage for the trucks to pick up once a week.

[terentii]

To me, a “gangway” is the narrow walk you use to get on and off a boat or a ship. It’s also what you yell when you want people to get out of your way in a hurry: “Gangway!”*

*Some days you just can’t get rid of a bomb! :mad:

[terentii]

Origin of “gangway”:

gang - Wiktionary

[pulykamell]

@terentii

To me, a “gangway” is the narrow walk you use to get on and off a boat or a ship. It’s also what you yell when you want people to get out of your way in a hurry: “Gangway!”*

Those meanings are known here, as well, but “gangway” is used commonly, while the other two definitions are fairly niche usages.

[SciFiSam]

Another one:

Solicitor, US: a person selling something on the street, especially sex.
Solicitor, UK: A type of lawyer who deals with contracts, commercial law, preparing cases for court, etc, but does not represent defendants or act as a prosecutor.

Really quite different occupations!

The verb, soliciting, is used in pretty much the same way in both countries, but often in the UK it means selling stuff door to door, so you occasionally see signs in people’s windows saying “no soliciting.” An American friend many years ago saw one and assumed it meant we were in a really rough red light district

[Chronos]

In my part of the US, “no soliciting” signs are also common, and mean the same thing as in the UK.

[pulykamell]

@Chronos

In my part of the US, “no soliciting” signs are also common, and mean the same thing as in the UK.

Same here. It’s the standard sign, AFAIK, to discourage door-to-door folks from bothering you.

[Spoons]

@SciFiSam

Another one:

Solicitor, US: a person selling something on the street, especially sex.
Solicitor, UK: A type of lawyer who deals with contracts, commercial law, preparing cases for court, etc, but does not represent defendants or act as a prosecutor.

Really quite different occupations!

I’m a lawyer in Canada, and though I am technically a “Barrister and Solicitor” (as are pretty much all Canadian lawyers), I always have to be careful when I’m in the USA. If the guy on the next barstool asks “what do you do?” and I answer “I’m a barrister and solicitor,” he won’t understand. So I just say “I’m a lawyer,” and he gets it.

I’ve drafted contracts and represented clients in court, so I guess that I am truly a barrister and solicitor. But in the US, I find that it’s best to just call myself a lawyer. Not a bad thing, really–Abraham Lincoln was one too.