# Non-US Dopers: Please Share Any US Culture References You Didn't \*Get\* from Exported American TV/Mov **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [September 7, 2012, 6:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-us-dopers-please-share-any-us-culture-references-you-didnt-get-from-exported-american-tv-mov/634017 "2012-09-07T18:05:59Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 9
**Author:** ![Donnerwetter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b2d939/32.png) [@Donnerwetter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Donnerwetter)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2013, 2:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-us-dopers-please-share-any-us-culture-references-you-didnt-get-from-exported-american-tv-mov/634017/161 "2013-09-23T14:08:13Z")
> [@terentii](#): > > Examples, please? :dubious: For instance baseball analogies with regards to human sexuality: (Not really safe for work!) > **[Urban Dictionary: baseball analogy](https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=baseball%20analogy)** > > the everlasting sexual bases metaphor. The best way to remember them is the four "F"s: French, Feel, Finger, Fuck. first: the first step in a sexual relationship kissing with an open mouth or using tongue (french kissing) first and a half base: under... ---
**Author:** ![SciFiSam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/47e85d/32.png) [@SciFiSam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SciFiSam)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2013, 2:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-us-dopers-please-share-any-us-culture-references-you-didnt-get-from-exported-american-tv-mov/634017/162 "2013-09-23T14:12:39Z")
When I was a kid I had no idea that “wash up” in America meant to wash your hands, because here it only means washing plates, cutlery etc. So when a mother in a TV show would tell tiny kids to wash up before dinner it was like they only washed the plates just before using them and even little kids had to do it. Sometimes multiple little kids and their older siblings or even adults had to wash the dishes before dinner. Even adults who are guests had to wash dishes before they ate. How many plates do these people have and why don’t they wash them after eating? > [@terentii](#): > > Examples, please? :dubious: In a recent re-run of Friends I saw, Chandler made some complicated baseball reference that I can’t quote because I didn’t get it. Maybe it wasn’t even complicated. I have no idea. “Third base” as a sexual metaphor was something I had to put some real thought into as a kid, and my teenager has asked me what it meant. “Home run” is used enough that I get the general idea and most others probably do, but it doesn’t have the same impact and requires some translation. Then there are the times when a character (not playing baseball) touches their nose and chin or something and I think it’s a baseball reference but what to precisely I have no idea. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2013, 2:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-us-dopers-please-share-any-us-culture-references-you-didnt-get-from-exported-american-tv-mov/634017/163 "2013-09-23T14:22:48Z")
> [@Filbert](#): > > It took me ages to work out what a nickle and dime actually were worth. It’s generally obvious from context that they’re small, not very valuable coins, but the actual number of cents they represent? No need to say, everyone knows that! Well, references to British money have mystified their fair share of American readers/viewers. ---
**Author:** ![Donnerwetter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b2d939/32.png) [@Donnerwetter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Donnerwetter)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2013, 2:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-us-dopers-please-share-any-us-culture-references-you-didnt-get-from-exported-american-tv-mov/634017/164 "2013-09-23T14:24:55Z")
Non-sexual baseball metaphors: > **[Sporting Metaphors - Baseball Metaphors](https://sites.google.com/site/sportingmetaphors/baseball-metaphors)** > > Tip: How to add, remove or customize items in this list ---
**Author:** ![robardin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/43a26b/32.png) [@robardin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robardin)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2013, 3:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-us-dopers-please-share-any-us-culture-references-you-didnt-get-from-exported-american-tv-mov/634017/165 "2013-09-23T15:32:47Z")
In baseball, baserunners and batters are supposed to look for instructions on in-game strategy from the manager or coaches (“should I swing away or bunt or take the next pitch”, “should I try to steal a base our stay put”, etc.), and these instructions are given as gestures from the sidelines. To avoid tipping off the opponents, these gestures are coded and changed over time. A common visual joke about baseball is how complicated these gestures can (in theory) become. ---
**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:** [September 23, 2013, 3:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-us-dopers-please-share-any-us-culture-references-you-didnt-get-from-exported-american-tv-mov/634017/166 "2013-09-23T15:35:38Z")
Never mind! 🙂 ---
**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:** [September 23, 2013, 3:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-us-dopers-please-share-any-us-culture-references-you-didnt-get-from-exported-american-tv-mov/634017/167 "2013-09-23T15:41:14Z")
> [@robardin](#): > > A common visual joke about baseball is how complicated these gestures can (in theory) become. As in _ **The Naked Gun** _. 🆒 ---
**Author:** ![robardin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/43a26b/32.png) [@robardin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robardin)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2013, 4:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-us-dopers-please-share-any-us-culture-references-you-didnt-get-from-exported-american-tv-mov/634017/168 "2013-09-23T16:00:50Z")
> [@terentii](#): > > As in _ **The Naked Gun** _. 🆒 Or the Simpsons episode “Homer At The Bat” 🙂 “All right, Simpson, let’s go over the signals. If I tug the bill of my cap like so, it means the signal is a fake. However, I can take that off by dusting my hands thusly. If I want you to bunt, I will touch my belt buckle not once, not twice, but thrice. If I tug this here…” ---
**Author:** ![BleizDu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/9dc877/32.png) [@BleizDu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BleizDu)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2013, 4:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-us-dopers-please-share-any-us-culture-references-you-didnt-get-from-exported-american-tv-mov/634017/169 "2013-09-23T16:04:29Z")
> [@terentii](#): > > Examples, please? :dubious: Getting to third base with a girl for example. First read that in a novel. I kinda got it involves the genitals being touched in one way or another, but I was like"is there then a first base? second base? who thought up that system???" Then I learned it came from baseball. ---
**Author:** ![Yllaria](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/yllaria/32/3452_2.png) [@Yllaria](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Yllaria)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2013, 4:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-us-dopers-please-share-any-us-culture-references-you-didnt-get-from-exported-american-tv-mov/634017/170 "2013-09-23T16:05:02Z")
> [@bump](#): > > . . . Basically every town or area has a high school, and in the days before television, the only way most people could see a sporting event would be to go to the local stadium on Friday night and see their local school play some other nearby school. Since a lot of small-town people had attended the school and lived in the community, and many may even have children, nephews or grandchildren on the team, there’s a lot of civic pride around the local high school teams. . . In a previous thread, several people pointed out that folks would often come to the game just because it was where everyone went. You could walk around and visit/network with the game as background. > [@Loach](#): > > . . . When you cook an egg over easy you flip the egg “over” and do it in an unhurried or “easy” manner so as not to break the yolk. . . I alway thought of the ‘over’ part as meaning it was flipped and the ‘easy’ part as referring to how much total cooking was done. Sort of ‘easy on the heat’. The other two done-ness words are ‘medium’ and ‘hard’. I can see that you’d maybe flip the egg sooner for an ‘easy’ egg, and that you’d want to be careful and do it gently. But flipping a less cooked egg is difficult, not easy, especially if you’re doing it at home, in a frying pan. So I alway thought of ‘easy’ as the egg equivalent of ‘rare’, rather than thinking of it as how you were flipping it. ---
**Author:** ![BrianJ](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/54ee81/32.png) [@BrianJ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrianJ)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2013, 4:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-us-dopers-please-share-any-us-culture-references-you-didnt-get-from-exported-american-tv-mov/634017/171 "2013-09-23T16:06:01Z")
> [@njtt](#): > > “Would you like that to eat here or to take away?” is standard, grammatical English, with all the words used with the same senses that they have in other contexts. > > “Would you like that to eat here or to go?” is ungrammatical gibberish unless you happen to be familiar with the idiom; either that, or you are being asked whether you would like the food to leave without you. In other contexts, food is not something that “goes” (except when it goes with other food, but that is another matter). Cars go, people go, but food, being unable to self-locomote, does not (although it certainly can be taken away). Food doesn’t eat itself either /nitpick.😃 What I don’t get is why someone says ‘check please!’ when asking for the bill. 😕 ---
**Author:** ![Fleetwood](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fleetwood/32/271_2.png) [@Fleetwood](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fleetwood)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2013, 5:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-us-dopers-please-share-any-us-culture-references-you-didnt-get-from-exported-american-tv-mov/634017/172 "2013-09-23T17:32:15Z")
> [@bump](#): > > Homecoming is I think, a relic of when college football teams would go on extended road trips, and there would be a “homecoming” celebration upon their return. High schools have just adopted this as their own, even though none that I’m aware of go on anything other than _maybe_ an overnight trip. I think it refers to the alumni returning to the school to catch up with each other and get shaken down for contributions in person. ---
**Author:** ![Solved](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/85e7bf/32.png) [@Solved](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Solved)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2013, 5:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-us-dopers-please-share-any-us-culture-references-you-didnt-get-from-exported-american-tv-mov/634017/173 "2013-09-23T17:42:35Z")
> [@Donnerwetter](#): > > Metaphors, comparisons, jokes etc. which are taken from American sports like baseball and football are often somewhat obscure to a mainstream European audience. Indeed! At first, I hesitated contacting the last-minute nanny service provided by my employer because they were called “pinch hitter nannies”. I wondered what type of cruel person would name a babysitting service after pinching and hitting! ---
**Author:** ![ricksummon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ricksummon/32/3333_2.png) [@ricksummon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ricksummon)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2013, 5:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-us-dopers-please-share-any-us-culture-references-you-didnt-get-from-exported-american-tv-mov/634017/174 "2013-09-23T17:47:24Z")
This kind of thing is exactly why my large German dictionary has little sidebars explaining American and British cultural concepts in German as well as German cultural concepts in English. If you look up “Thanksgiving” in the English-German section, for instance, it’ll have a paragraph or two explaining what the holiday is about instead of just something like “Dankbarkeitsfest”. ---
**Author:** ![Eyebrows\_0f\_Doom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eyebrows_0f_doom/32/3119_2.png) [@Eyebrows\_0f\_Doom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eyebrows_0f_Doom)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2013, 6:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-us-dopers-please-share-any-us-culture-references-you-didnt-get-from-exported-american-tv-mov/634017/175 "2013-09-23T18:00:25Z")
> [@BrianJ](#): > > Food doesn’t eat itself either /nitpick.😃 > > What I don’t get is why someone says ‘check please!’ when asking for the bill. 😕 Because the check _is_ the bill. ---
**Author:** ![Leaffan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leaffan/32/299_2.png) [@Leaffan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leaffan)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2013, 6:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-us-dopers-please-share-any-us-culture-references-you-didnt-get-from-exported-american-tv-mov/634017/176 "2013-09-23T18:04:20Z")
> [@Solved](#): > > Indeed! At first, I hesitated contacting the last-minute nanny service provided by my employer because they were called “pinch hitter nannies”. I wondered what type of cruel person would name a babysitting service after pinching and hitting! That’s freakin’ hilarious! ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2013, 7:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-us-dopers-please-share-any-us-culture-references-you-didnt-get-from-exported-american-tv-mov/634017/177 "2013-09-23T19:08:43Z")
> [@keving](#): > > Somehow, it is baseball terms that I find more baffling that football. I don’t know why, because baseball is no harder to understand than football, indeed it closely resembles the game rounders which most Brits have played. But baseball seems like cricket in its love of jargon and acronyms. It still don’t completely get what “RBI” really means, for example. When I first encountered it there was no Google, and eventually I learned that it stood for “runs batted in”. But batted in what? Batted in shorts? Batted in July? > Eventually I surmised that it either means “in” in the directional sense, i.e. “runs that came IN to home plate while the batter was batting”, so he “batted them in”, or it means “in” in the inclusive sense, i.e. runs scored IN which the player was batting. Almost but not quite. The batter has to be in some way responsible for the run coming in. [Wiki entry](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Run_batted_in). So, if there us a passed ball or wild pitch while the batter is up, and a run comes in, the batter does not get an rbi. ---
**Author:** ![BrianJ](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/54ee81/32.png) [@BrianJ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrianJ)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2013, 7:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-us-dopers-please-share-any-us-culture-references-you-didnt-get-from-exported-american-tv-mov/634017/178 "2013-09-23T19:39:33Z")
> [@Eyebrows\_0f\_Doom](#): > > Because the check _is_ the bill. To me the check (cheque in Canadian’) is what you pay with 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Spice\_Weasel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spice_weasel/32/5435_2.png) [@Spice\_Weasel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spice_Weasel)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2013, 8:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-us-dopers-please-share-any-us-culture-references-you-didnt-get-from-exported-american-tv-mov/634017/179 "2013-09-23T20:28:59Z")
Great thread idea. The most surprising revelation has been all of the confusion about eggs. Do people outside of the U.S. not eat their eggs cooked in a variety of ways? I mean, do you have an equivalent to an omelet, scrambled eggs, poached eggs? Is it just the language or is it the very concept? ---
**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:** [September 23, 2013, 8:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-us-dopers-please-share-any-us-culture-references-you-didnt-get-from-exported-american-tv-mov/634017/180 "2013-09-23T20:36:25Z")
> [@BrianJ](#): > > To me the check (cheque in Canadian’) is what you pay with 🙂 Unless, of course, you pay in $5, $10, $20, $50, or $100 bills.\* 😃 \ ***NB:** Canadians have neither $1 nor $2 bills, just coins (“loonies” and “twonies”). [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-us-dopers-please-share-any-us-culture-references-you-didnt-get-from-exported-american-tv-mov/634017.md?page=8) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-us-dopers-please-share-any-us-culture-references-you-didnt-get-from-exported-american-tv-mov/634017.md?page=10)