I’m in N. California…I generally hear check, not bill.
“I’ll get your check for you.”
“May we have our check; we’re ready to leave.”
I’m used to using “check” in the US. But here’s an interesting side note: Here in Thailand, the word checkbin has become standard Thai language. However, it actually is an import, a fusion of the English words “check” and “bill.” In Thai, syllables never end with the L sound. There is a letter L used for the beginning of syllables, but when it appears at the end, it becomes an N sound – thus “bin” instead of “bill.” Checkbin seems to be overkill, but somewhere along the way, someone decided they had to be used together, and it is now used in everyday parlance by all Thais.
Seconded (NE Ohio).
A bill can be for any goods or services. A check is unique to restaurants, I think, in American English.
I say “check,” “bill,” and (at a bar) “tab.” I probably use “bill” slightly more often than “check.” Not sure why. “Check, please!” is the usual saying, in my experience.
I wonder if the preference for “check” is due to the fact that a restaurant is one of the few times when you receive and pay a bill in a social setting. “Check” sounds a little more distanced from a grubby monetary transaction than does “bill”.
Like, hockey-style checking? That’d be awesome.
Two things:
Here in Canada, that thing you write on that’s the next best thing to cash is a cheque, not check. But that’s changing and it makes my needlessly furious. Also
A cheque or (check if you must) is something you pay with, not something you use to ask for payment. Again, in Canada, that’s called the bill.
I just had to get that off my chest.
I’m Canadian, and I have no problem with either term, depending on the context. E.g. I would talk about “picking up the check” for a meal, but I’d also say “just the bill, please” like Happy Lendervedder does.
Just picked up my car from the mechanic. “What’re the damages?”
Wish I hadn’t asked. Four new tires. Crap.
I ask for my tab, my ticket or to pay the scott.
Check. Universal in the US.
So much so that one way to call for the check across a crowded restaurant is to catch your server’s eye and make a check mark in the air.
Definitely “check,” and I’ve eaten out all over the USA. But “bill” would be understood everywhere.
Joe
Check.
You ask for the check, but you pay the bill.
Either. I use both. No rhyme or reason.
SE Michigan here.
And bill as well. Huh.
Check here in NYC and environs, unless you’re at a bar, in which case you “settle the tab.”
I agree; both are acceptable, but there are perhaps more typical ways of saying it depending on the way the question comes up.
Not that anyone cares, but in French you’d most commonly ask for l’addition (the sum).
In Australia most people would ask for the bill, they might pay it by cheque though.
Oh and a tab is used for a bar tab,.
“Overkin,” surely?