US, UK and and our 'common' language

US word and UK/Au equivalent:

Biscuit = biscuit
Cookie = biscuit
Cracker = biscuit

Feel free to join in.

A real homemade biscuit is made from scratch with buttermilk. I doubt many cookies or crackers are made that wayKant

A UK cracker is not a biscuit. Or it is.

It is designed to be eaten with a topping such as cheese.

I'm still working on chips vs crisps vs fries vs fritos. And more importantly:

pants, n = undergarment (UK)
pants, n = outer garment (US)
pants, v = strip-off lower garments (US)

I also note: The Biscuit, a card carried by the current U.S. President containing the Gold Codes, the authorization codes needed to launch nuclear weapons. And: Feces, particularly with the slang phrase "making a biscuit".

Hypoxia said:

I'm still working on chips vs crisps vs fries vs fritos. And more importantly:

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potato chips - crisps
french fries - chips

vacation - holiday
parking lot - car park
truck - lorry
RV - caravan
hood - bonnet
trunk - boot
pharmacist - chemist
garbage can - bin
garbage - rubbish
back yard - garden
soccer - football
flash flight - torch
sneakers - trainers
stupid - daft


Are we going for slang too?
whatcha talkin' 'bout? - what are you on about?

editing what I remember from watching BBC shows on Netflix as I remember

J_R_Ashunwhy said:

potato chips - crisps
french fries - chips

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But what of crispy tortilla chips (wheat or maize corn), vegetable chips, and wood chips? (Yeah, some of those crispy chips taste like salted sawdust.) And while French (Freedom!) fries, papas fritas, and home fries usually involve potatoes, I've also seen vegetable variants. Carrot chips, anyone?

ObTopic:
pissed = drunk (UK) or angry (US)
smart-ass (US) = clever-dick (UK)
O Christmas Tree (US) = Communist anthem (UK)
pneumatic = softly air-filled (US) or big boobs (UK)

tire = tyre

Kantarii said:

A real homemade biscuit is made from scratch with buttermilk. I doubt many cookies or crackers are made that wayKant

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'Biscuit' means 'twice-cooked' in French, but the English comes from the Latin 'biscoctum panem' - literally, 'twice-cooked bread', and, until the 18th century, was correctly spelled 'bisket. The adoption of the French spelling (but without the pronunciation) was not only pretentious and pointless, but wrong as well. In French, 'un biscuit' is not a biscuit, but a sponge cake - a biscuit in the English sense is 'un biscuit sec'. Biscuits in the English sense were cooked twice to make them last longer than bread, and according to Dr. Johnson's dictionary, biscuits designed for long sea voyages were cooked four times.

In North America, biscuits are more like what the English would call a 'scone', and what the English call a biscuit, the Americans call either cookies or crackers. As a side note, the word cookie comes from the Dutch word koekje, which means 'cake'...

Living with an American wife does mean that occasionally the fact we're speaking the same language (mostly - the words are the same, but the meanings...) throws up some bizarre, cross-purpose conversations, like this one the other day.

me: I ran into Luc today, he was absolutely pissed, I had to take him home, he couldn't walk straight
Lori: Why was he angry?
me: He wasn't angry, he was drunk
Lori: Then why didn't you say that?
me: I did
Lori: No you didn't, you said he was mad
Me: No, I said he was drunk
Lori: I have extremely good recall, you just f***ing told me he was pissed
me: He was, he was blind drunk
Lori: Then what was he pissed about?

I scrammed, the danger signs were appearing, but this is typical of the rapidly downward-spiralling conversations we get into sometimes.

Hypoxia said:

But what of crispy tortilla chips (wheat or maize corn), vegetable chips, and wood chips? (Yeah, some of those crispy chips taste like salted sawdust.) And while French (Freedom!) fries, papas fritas, and home fries usually involve potatoes, I've also seen vegetable variants. Carrot chips, anyone?

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From what I have seen, if the product has American packaging and trademarks, then it's the same regardless.

https://americanfizz.co.uk/fritos

I have seen non-American brand vegetable crisps for vegetable chips, and as far as I know, wood chips are wood chips.

beachbum1958 said:

...Biscuits in the English sense were cooked twice to make them last longer than bread, and according to Dr. Johnson's dictionary, biscuits designed for long sea voyages were cooked four times.

...

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Ship's biscuit and lifeboat biscuits were very hard. "Hardtack" They were designed to keep for years, sometimes decades. They were very difficult for insects to penetrate and almost impossible for humans to eat unless they were soaked first.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardtack

J_R_Ashunwhy said:

I have seen non-American brand vegetable crisps for vegetable chips, and as far as I know, wood chips are wood chips.

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Let us not omit buffalo chips. But I digress. I see some crispy chips tabeled as twists or waves and of course we have cheezy puffs. BUGLES (which I had the occasion to beta-test five decades ago) are funnel-twists of maize corn. I forget what they're called in Mexico but totopos = maize tortilla chips.

Which reminds me of regional differences in Mexican Spanish. In the north, a burrito is a glob of stuff wrapped in a large wheat tortilla. In the south, it's broiled baby burro / donkey / jackass. Words for speedbumps, vehicle tires and their repair, and other foods are almost unknown at far ends of the country.

Back to UK vs US. 'Bloody' has very different impact. Pissed, faggot, bum, and so on. See the canonical list.

I'm a Brit but have lived in the USA for 22 years - so I'm intimately familiar with both versions of the language.

oggbashan said:

A UK cracker is not a biscuit. Or it is.

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Brit "biscuit" = USA "cookie" or "cracker"

Do not make the typical American mistake of thinking that a USA "biscuit" is the same as a UK "scone". They are very different. Oh - and in the UK, "scone" is pronounced "sconn".

beachbum1958 said:

...
me: I ran into Luc today, he was absolutely pissed, I had to take him home, he couldn't walk straight
Lori: Why was he angry?
me: He wasn't angry, he was drunk
Lori: Then why didn't you say that?
me: I did
Lori: No you didn't, you said he was mad
...

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LOL

USA "pissed" = angry
But "pissed off" = angry in the UK and in parts of the USA
UK "pissed" = drunk
UK "mad" = USA "crazy", or nuts, or mentally demented, etc.
USA "mad" = UK "pissed"

oggbashan said:

Ship's biscuit and lifeboat biscuits were very hard. "Hardtack" They were designed to keep for years, sometimes decades. They were very difficult for insects to penetrate and almost impossible for humans to eat unless they were soaked first.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardtack

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We used to get these in the army. They were usually too hard to bite, but soak them in (hot) tea or coffee and they were easy to consume. They were surprisingly tasty.

We used to call them "dog buscuits".

Two Nations separated by a common language.

Hypoxia said:

See the canonical list.

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way to take the fun outta trying to remember

Handley_Page said:

Two Nations separated by a common language.

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And attitude issues.

haulover said:

USA "pissed" = angry
But "pissed off" = angry in the UK and in parts of the USA
UK "pissed" = drunk
UK "mad" = USA "crazy", or nuts, or mentally demented, etc.
USA "mad" = UK "pissed"

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This reminds me of one of my favorite slang terms for an expression of anger than I picked up from a friend in the UK. Saying that something "really boils your piss" makes me crack a smile every time.

sr71plt said:

And attitude issues.

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And lack of mutual understanding of our respective political systems.

US politics seems nonsensical to Brits; British politics seems mad to US people.

Why can't Americans have an official Monster Raving Loony Party? Or a political party that believes the world's problems and rubbish collection will be solved by Yogic Flying?

The Monster Raving Loony Party's proposals for Wales:

https://www.loonyparty.com/about/policy-proposals/

oggbashan said:

And lack of mutual understanding of our respective political systems.

US politics seems nonsensical to Brits; British politics seems mad to US people.

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Perhaps worse, most Americans are so insular they don't think of British politics at all.

sr71plt said:

Perhaps worse, most Americans are so insular they don't think of British politics at all.

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Whereas Brits know that the outcome of US politics will affect them personally.

We're pleased we don't have to choose between Trump and Clinton but are worried whichever of them win.

oggbashan said:

Why can't Americans have an official Monster Raving Loony Party?

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We do. They're called Republicans.

Or a political party that believes the world's problems and rubbish collection will be solved by Yogic Flying?

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Those are the Democrats.

Meanwhile, USA alone has mutually incomprehensible dialects. A westerner saying 'ball' and a southerner saying 'poon' might not realize they both mean 'fuck'. And in parts of the South, 'dope' means cola, specifically Coca-Cola.

Of course Americans can pronounce or spell things however they wish, but I always like to point out that it's called English, we invented it, and therefore however we spell it or pronounce it is correct.

Hypoxia said:

We do. They're called Republicans.

Those are the Democrats.

Meanwhile, USA alone has mutually incomprehensible dialects. A westerner saying 'ball' and a southerner saying 'poon' might not realize they both mean 'fuck'. And in parts of the South, 'dope' means cola, specifically Coca-Cola.

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I can assure you there are literally hundreds of different dialects in the UK - with many words that are incomprehensible once you leave a particular geographical area.

RelentlessOnanism said:

I can assure you there are literally hundreds of different dialects in the UK - with many words that are incomprehensible once you leave a particular geographical area.

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My eldest daughter can't understand why I refer to day visitors to our seaside town as 'grockles'.

It's a word in use on the Isle of Wight, around Portsmouth and in parts of Devon and Cornwall. The normal phrase is 'bloody grockles' as they block traffic, use all the parking spaces and get in the way of people trying to lead normal lives.

I started work in Portsmouth and then worked in Plymouth, Devon. In the Summer bloody grockles made getting to and from work difficult.

But often I can't understand my eldest daughter. She teaches multi-ethnic classes and is familiar with Jamaican patois and various variants of English in use throughout the Commonwealth.

My youngest daughter also works in London, mainly in the East End. She is familiar with English from parts of the Indian sub-continent and where she lives is popular with Japanese residents. Her use of English isn't like mine, nor like her oldest sister.

sr71plt said:

Perhaps worse, most Americans are so insular they don't think of British politics at all.

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QFT!

RelentlessOnanism said:

Of course Americans can pronounce or spell things however they wish, but I always like to point out that it's called English, we invented it, and therefore however we spell it or pronounce it is correct.

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Yah - My Dad (Scottish) says cynically that the Americans haven't spoken English for 200 years.