Well if I remember correctly, there’s also a place in the UK, somewhere in Kent, I believe, called ‘Pratts Bottom’. My mum used to laugh her bum off at that one…
Eh. Where I live, napkins are cloth and reused; serviettes are paper and disposable.
On both sides of the pond, pants are something you use to cover your fanny.
But I remember the first time I heard of an aubergine. Absurd! Why you use that to refer to a plant that looks just exactly like an egg?
I’m guessing it’s US = popsicle. This assumes what’s wanted is sweet flavored ice on a stick. It’s from a brand name and the standard model comes as a twin form with two sticks that then have to be broken apart.
I would think that an icy pole would be a peppermint stick or candy cane.
One of my ex-wife’s teachers told a story about when he had visited England and ended up getting slapped just for introducing himself. His first name was Randy.
He learned very quickly to call himself “Randall” for the duration of the trip.
Until you said this, and I googled it, I didn’t know that it wasn’t the other way around. On the other hand, my Irish-speaking cousins opt for ‘craic’, so should I argue that they should be spelling it the English way? :eek:
How about the Brown Willy effect?
Very much so. Anybody ordering halfs is a bit weird.
Rube E is correct. An icy-pole is definitely a popsicle. Although, in some parts of Australia I have also heard ice block for the same item, which is just weird.
Recently I was on my way to meet my German language tandem partner for a bit of light-hearted language exchange. It was about one o’clock on a Sunday afternoon, and I was running late, so I sent him a text message letting him know that I was on my way. “No problem,” he texted back, “I’ll do some shots while I’m waiting.” :eek: (see aforementioned time of day)
Fortunately I already knew that photography was a hobby of his … but it took me a second to realize that Germans don’t drink that heavily! (In the US, and perhaps elsewhere in the English speaking world, “doing shots” means drinking shots of hard alcohol - likely several.)
When I was 15 I went to Australia with People to People. One of he girls in our group was very conservative and “a Christian”. She was also a cheerleader. Her hostfamily didn’t know what a cheerleader was. So she explained that she roots for the football team. :smack:
In England, "sideboards’ are what we on this side call “sideburns”. For us, in some areas, a “sideboard” is another name for an article of furniture usually found in the dining room, where the china and silverware are stored. In other places, it’s known as a buffet. That’s what my family called it.
Well it’s probably too prevalent now to be argued against. In a way it IS craic cos they say it is if you know what I mean but my brother who is only 5 years older than me was saying he remembers a time before that usage became popular. Crack is actually an English dialectal term, adopted in Ireland and since died out (to the best of my knowledge) in England. However the tourist board and various pubs got wind of the idea that this was a marketable concept so it became the Irishified “craic”. I could be wrong with one or more of my ascertions but this is my understanding of the term.
No, a UK lolly is hard-ice-cream-on-a-stick.
In a project involving people from Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, two different Mexican regions and Spain, we had quite an entertaining time trying to find a way to say in Spanish “the program pulls data from…” using a verb that wouldn’t give anybody the giggles. As one of the Argentinians said when we finally agreed on jalar, “and I bet you anything you want there’s a country where jalar means that!”
Same group, a guy (who amazingly enough was not out of his country for the first time, just incredibly naive) proposed not using any words that may have a double meaning. My speech involving fish, meat, oysters, snails, rabbit, conch, green beans, sausage, dates et al had the rest of the Hispanics in stitches and the Americans asking “what is so funny?”
In many countries a crack is a top sportsman. I had to explain this to a US coworker who almost fainted seeing a bar called “crack” in Spain.
True, but in England it wouldn’t be polite to go out wearing only pants and a shirt.
What else would you call an aubergine colored vegetable?
A lollypop is hard candy on a stick. Or it’s something made of frozen water and food colouring on a stick that you buy from the ice-cream man.
It’s not ice cream. No milk products in it.
Well, what can I say, to me it’s a polo. And it can too have milk, several of Nestle’s varieties as well as Magnums have milk.
Yes, but Magnums etc. aren’t lollies. They are ice cream. Or choc-ices. They just happen to be on a stick.
In New Zealand and Australia (and presumably the UK), a “Rubber” is something used for erasing (“rubbing out”) mistakes when writing with pencil.
In the US, it’s got an entirely different meaning- apparently it’s the slang term for a condom. :eek:
I recall my French teacher telling my class about a previous student of his who had stayed in Brest (story has nothing to do with that 
) in the north west of France.
She arrived very late and was exhausted and so got a room at the first hostel she found, even though it was a bit of a dive (it was a just few rooms above a bar). When she had checked in, she went straight to her room, only to find that the matress was missing from her bed… So she went back down to the bar, and told the guy that she needed a mattress for her bed.
Only instead of saying matelas, she said matelot, and the bar went quiet…
In the major port that is Brest, in a bar next to the harbor, she had loudly demanded a sailor for her bed 