You occasionally see this here, too, especially when a building sprawls across uneven ground. This way, you can have the entrance at one end be on the “1st floor”, while the entrance at the other end (one story down) is the “ground floor”.
And US men’s shoe sizes are, at least approximately, the length of the foot in inches, so one would never see a man’s shoe that was a size 1 or 2. Likewise, men’s [del]pants[/del]trousers are sized by the circumference of the waist and the length of the leg, also in inches. Women’s shoe sizes, however, like most articles of women’s clothing, have no rhyme or reason to them whatsoever.
I don’t know about CurtC, but even though I know that it means to tease, it still doesn’t make sense. What does “piss” mean in that context? It doesn’t seem to mean urine or drunkness, which are the only two definitions that I know of in American or British English.
Don’t be so quick! My wife’s from Cumbria and will occasionally use the word ‘pants’ when referring to trousers. I had assumed it to be dialect rather than an Americanism, but I guess I should check…
When I lifeguarded, we wore fanny packs to carry first aid supplies. The British girl couldn’t bring herself to use that term, so she called it her bum bag.
Yeah, note that “fanny”, in the US, is about the least offensive word for the buttocks there is. It’s the sort of thing one would say to one’s grandmother, much milder than, say, “ass”.
Interesting that “ass” has become more and more negative over time rather than the opposite. “Ass” obviously refers to the animal, and “to be an ass” is to exhibit a lot of the negative attributes of a donkey. Spanish uses this same concept in the use of “burro,” which is also a donkey. Further consider the old, old cartoons, wherein when someone made an ass of themselves, they would be temporarily depicted as a donkey.
At some point (either or before the use of “ass” in the above context), the word has come to refer to the derriere, and by extension, the outlet pipe in said ass as the “ass hole” or “asshole,” which is an impolite term compared to “ass,” but is commonly used to refer to someone where “ass” would be a perfectly suitable appellation. Now that “asshole” is impolite, cautious ears now (and IMHO incorrectly) attribute “ass” as being socially impolite, when in fact it’s a perfectly useful word.
Um, no, Balthisar, the meaning of “ass” as “buttocks” does not derive from the meaning of “ass” as “donkey.” They have always been two separate words derived from two separate roots. It’s only comparatively recently that in some accents (most American ones) that they have merged in pronunciation. In other accents (most British ones) they are still pronounced differently.
To be fair, I didn’t say that one meaning derived from the other. In fact, that would make no sense. I did say very specifically that “[a]t some point (either or before the use of “ass” in the above context), the word has come to refer to the derriere,” which would plainly indicate that I’m not at all making one the derivative of other.
By “old cartoons”, you mean A Midsummer Night’s Dream?
And I note, incidentally, that that play had a fair bit of punning between “donkey”, “ass”, and “bottom”. So there was at least some merger of the terms going on well before any American dialects.