A “gearhead” is a “petrolhead”. An anorak is more nerdy.
Pepperoni is “pizza salami”.
I’ve never heard the term windcheater, but I do use the term windbreaker for a lightweight jacket.
I’ve heard both, but “windbreaker” is what I grew up with in Minnesota.
It seems the owner of the car had tinkered with it himself in the past, so I’m assuming he modified the engine to the nth degree before growing infirm.
Or something like that.
Kinda, except in Europe you can sometimes get both salami or pepperoni (or similar sausage) as an ingredient (if they even recognize pepperoni as an ingredient). For example, Germany’s Pizza Hut menu has both rinderpeperoniwurst (beef pepperoni) as an ingredient, as well as salami. Other country menus I’m looking at (including Hungary) don’t even seem to recognize pepperoni as an ingredient, but may have a couple different kinds of salami or sausage. (Like in Hungary you might find szalámi and csipoõs kolbász (“spicy/hot sausage”) ).
:o As a kid, I only knew the word “solicitor” from 19th century British novels and wondered why someone up my street had a sign “No Solicitors”. Are lawyer-types really going door to door?
And “hutch” – I think I would have called something like this a china cabinet, until I saw on Antiques Roadshow that it’s really a bottom dresser-type thing with a separate hutch on top.
https://www.dutchcrafters.com/Amish-Country-Pine-China-Hutch/p/52744?so=1&gclid=EAIaIQobChMI9L7niIyV2gIVHrjACh1k8QsuEAQYCSABEgLte_D_BwE
Yeah, to me it implies maintaining a car in its original, factory-built condition — or restoring it to that, if necessary.
“Anorak styling” would I think mean going to great effort or expense on perfecting things that wouldn’t be appreciated - or even noticed - by anyone but the hard-core geeks/nerds.
Yeah, I think SciFiSam’s American friend must have been making a joke. As Chronos says, “No soliciting” signs are common in the US and always refer to uninvited people trying to sell things.
I’ve never heard a prostitute described as a “solicitor” before. Wikipedia tells me that “solicitation” can mean “prostitution” in England and Wales, but as far as I know no one in the US uses the term in this way. As the Wikipedia article explains, in the US “solicitation” can be used to describe the crime of paying someone else to commit a criminal act. On TV shows I’ve probably most often heard this in the context of “soliciting a prostitute” (i.e. illegally offering money for sex), but one could also solicit someone to steal something or attack a third party. People who commit the crime of solicitation aren’t in my experience described as “solicitors”, though.
Heard another one on ***Heartbeat ***tonight: “puncture,” meaning “a flat tire.”
I don’t think it was a joke, maybe just a local thing.
I didn’t say that people in the US ever called a prostitute a solicitor. But they do not have “solicitors” who are actually lawyers. That’s the difference.
When I think of “solicitors” in the US, I think of pimps.
There are actually some situations in the US where a “solicitor” is a lawyer- but as far as I can tell , they all involve lawyers who work for the government. For example, the US Solicitor General is responsible for representing the federal government before the Supreme Court (some states have a similar position) and some government agencies call their legal department the " Office of the Solicitor"
My mom’s recipe for slumgullion dealt with wide egg noodles, ground beef, onions, mushrooms, tomato sauce and lots of salt (she was from San Francisco, and raised ten kids in Southern California, by way of orientation). A girl I knew in high school, who hailed from Ohio, used the word “slumgullion” to characterize a pot of spaghetti noodles with the meat sauce mixed in (as opposed to glopped naked onto a plate with sauce ladled over it).
And that’s the story of how slumgullion means different things. [/HomerSimpsonVoice]
You said that in the US a solicitor is a person who sells sex on the street. That’s a prostitute, unless you meant a pimp. But pimps aren’t called “solicitors” here either, AFAIK.
Take off the “especially sex” part and this is basically correct, although in the US a solicitor can also be someone who collects donations for charity or (as doreen pointed out) a law officer. The term doesn’t carry a sexual connotation here.
One could describe the work of a prostitute or pimp as “soliciting” (they’re trying to sell something), but I don’t think I’ve ever actually heard anyone use the term in this way. “No soliciting” signs are common in the US and are meant to ward off people who go around trying to sell things or collect donations. As I mentioned previously, in a legal context “soliciting” can also mean trying to pay someone to commit a crime. I guess it’s possible that’s what your American friend thought British “No soliciting” signs were referring to, but I think he or she would have to be unusually clueless to make that mistake.
True, I should have been more specific and stuck to the verb rather than the noun. Didn’t realise I was going to be picked at quite so much!
I’ve heard soliciting used on US TV a lot when it comes to prostitution. That’s why I brought it up as a difference. I mean, either I’ve actually heard it used that way or I’m outright lying for some weird reason.
You’ve definitely heard it - but it’s just a specific case of soliciting someone to commit any crime. You’ll also see/hear references to “soliciting a bribe” and “solicitation of murder” meaning a murder for hire.
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I’m not trying to pick at you, I’m just trying to correct an error that’s relevant to the topic of the thread. “No soliciting” signs means the same thing in the US as they do in the UK, and “solicitor” doesn’t have a smutty connotation here.
I don’t think you’re lying, but you have misunderstood what “soliciting” means in the US and apparently also skimmed over my previous explanation:
There’s some ambiguity over what you mean by “here”: you mention the US and the UK but don’t specify which is “here”!
For what it’s worth, when a schoolfriend and I were doing work-experience at a couple of legal practices (UK, mid 90s), we met for lunch in town. As we sat on a bench beneath a tree, my friend’s Mum happened to walk past and said “Trainee solicitors eh? Shouldn’t you have a red light hanging from that tree?!”
I knew what she meant, despite being only about 16. It didn’t seem like a particularly obscure reference.
It can be smutty in both countries!
To be fair, you didn’t specify your location there, either, though I think most of us can probably work it out.
