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Index of entries
Arse
A proper
Advert
Advisor
Amongst
Baby bump
Barman
Bent
Bespoke
Bin
Bits
Bollocks
Book (verb)
Boxing Day
Brilliant
Bum
Bumbershoot
By-election
Call on (a phone number)
Called
Chat show
Chat up
Cheeky
Cheers
Clever
A coffee
Collect
Cookery
Crap
Daft
DIY
Divisive
Dodgy
Drinks
Early days
Erm
European date format
Faff
Fishmonger
Full stop
Get on with (a person)
Ginger
Glottal stop
Go missing
Gobsmacked
Gobstopping
Good on (a person)
Grey
Had got
Hang on
Have a look
Hoover
In future
Journey
Journo
Keen
Kerfuffle
Laddish
A laugh
Logical punctuation
Loo
Mad
Mate
Maths
Minder
Mobile
Mum
Nick
Nil
No worries
Nonstarter
Note
Nutter
On holiday
One-off
On offer
Pants
Pictures
Plonk
Posh
Presenter
Queue
Ring
Roundabout
Rubbish
Run-up
Scenario (pronunciation)
Sell-by date
Shambolic
Shite
Short-listed
Sit for (an exam)
Snog
Sort of
Sort out
Spot on
Sport
Spotty
Stag do
Starter
Stockist
Straight away
Streets ahead
Suss out
Take a decision
Takeaway
Telly
Thank you very much, indeed
Tick
Tin
Too clever by half
Top oneself
Top up
Trainers
Twee
University students
Veg
Vet
Wait for it
Weds.
Wanker
Well played, sir!
Whilst
xx
… Years on
Ben,
This was fun but some entries really surprised me, perhaps because I grew-up hearing Scotland-born grandparents and their kids (e.g. my dad) using tin, bin, keen, veg, cheers (and “cheerio” as good-bye), daft, dodgy, fishmonger and a coffee (and similarily “a tea”) as part of everyday conversation. I think I do as well but never thought it anything but normal.
More clearly Scot but still used a lot at home were wee, lass, laddie, bonnie, dram…
One Britishism not on your list that I’m hearing lately is “tosser.” Not sure exactly how it relates to wanker.
Hey…what about “collect”? As in, “I need to collect Rover from the vet.” I wrote “collect” in an email to my husband the other day and he wasn’t sure what I meant. FYI I lived in England in the late 80s and some things stuck with me for a long time, e.g. kitchen roll. It took me a while to remember that kitchen roll = paper towel. Other words/phrases that stuck with me…bin, went missing, on the dole, cheers, and a few others I can’t remember this second.
My British colleagues were curious about “getting canned”. They were disappointed it meant “to be fired or made redundant”; they were thinking it had a sexual connotation
. I personally like the term “made redundant”…wish we used it here.
A Briticism that I loathe and that has been spreading like wildfire in the last few years: “At the end of the day” — I don’t like it when a Brit says it either.
Rubbish!
Well played.
How about “have a go” in place of our “give it a try”?
“Call on” in the telephone meaning is US, instead of “call me at. ” Call me on xxx-xxx-xxxx. In the sense of coming to visit, that is common for salespeople in the US.
Up to school, university. I know that “university” instead of “college” is Canadian also, but the “up to” part is from the mother country. Analog to “down to” the country.
“She put the phone down on me” — Americans would probably just say “hung up on me”
Steady on
One I heard on a radio program this morning: bouncy castle, which I always translate into “moon bounce”, whether it looks like a castle or not. There are phrases that I imagine are so daft or so twee that no American would ever use them and yet I am so very often surprised.
Where is “nonstarter”?
Is that actually a Britishism?
I couldn’t find an address to make general suggestions for noobs, so this thread seems appropriate.
I came across the term “fair cop” in the blog of Brad DeLong, economics professor at Berkeley. I always thought this was quintessential Cockney (“Fair cop, guv!”= “You caught me fair and square, boss”). Is this in fact common in US English as well?
PS I am continually delighted, surprised and sometimes a little nonplussed to see terms that I thought were universal English are in fact noobs.
OOOOH. I am over the moon that I found this site today!
Just found this site, love it! What about the use of “wang” as in, “I’ll just wang over.” Also, the use of “Doris” to refer to a married woman.
Not yet on the list (but coming ‘straight away,’ I hope):
going forward
winge
tosser
spawny
get
knock me up
Rachel: “getting canned” does have a (recent?) sexual connotation. Check Dan Savage’s advice column (“Savage Love”).
What a joy to find this site. I’m British and have been living in NYC for 14 years now, but still find myself amazed at the differences in our use of a common language. One of my favorite jobs was as a copy editor for an American-edited English-language newspaper in Moscow in the early 90s. Our readership included many nationalities, including British and American expats. Though not really NOOBs, my two favorite catches in articles written by fantastic young American journalists were:
“She walked down the runway, showing flashes of fanny through the thigh-high slits in her skirt,” and, just a few weeks later, “The typical image of a Conservative minister sitting at his desk in suspenders.”
Left unedited, neither of these would have made suitable reading in a daily paper for our British readers. “Fanny,” a harmless reference to buttocks in the US, means “vagina” in British slang. “Suspenders” refers to a garter belt in the UK. (Brits say “braces.” Though perhaps “suspenders” would have been more appropriate for a few Conservative ministers at that time.)