Americans, what are the words or phrases that British people say that you don't use in the US?

Americans, what are the words or phrases that British people say that you don't use in the US?

How would they know?

Fortnight
Knob (slang for 'penis'/insult)
Lorry

"Bloody" and "bugger" are a couple of swears over there that are either inoffensive or known to be distinctly British in the US.

Conversely, although I assume it's more Australian, "cunt" is one of the few words, along with slurs and "fuck" and its derivatives, that remain genuinely offensive to most people here, especially in reference to a woman. In other words, dems fighting words. Also "rubber" means condom in the US.

Another thing is that, although the institutions themselves often have the word "University" in their name, we refer to such a school in general as "college," as in "I'm going to college" or "College is a great time to get drunk," rather than "university."

You use pretty much the same slang as us

Also these, although "knob" would probably be understood as penis given context.

Just came in to say I like the word gaol

I like "cross"
it's always delivered so well on TV and I always think to myself"I know what that means!" and feel a little proud of myself

Brings up a good point. "Oh bugger/bloody hell" are never used in the US, but at least we know what they mean to Brits. "Cross", in the sense of "angry" is one of those words that is neither used in the US nor so stereotypically British that we know what it means regardless. BTW, how often is "mad" used to mean "angry" in the rest of the Anglosphere?

We don't use the expression "take the piss out" of someone.

"Pavement" is used here to describe the place of the road where the cars go, as opposed to the pedestrians whose areas are known as the "sidewalk".

twat
the endless list of your -y, ie. "butty", nicknames
cuppa

be better if you just give a list to yes/no

Americans don't use forknife.

College and uni are two different things here. You do college and then university.

But we don't have the middle school that you do.

Yanks don't have "cheeky".

you guys say "in hospital" instead of "in the hospital" and "going to univeristy" instead of "going to the university"

"lad" in the sense of "dude", old people say lad to young kids or about young kids

"When I was a spritely young lad"

it gets even worse if you're from yorkshire

In yankland "pissed" means angry while here it means drunk.

In yankland "mad" means angry while here it means crazy.

In yankland sleeping with a man is gay while here it's just a bit of cheeky banter.

>"mad" means angry while here it means crazy.

Unless you are a madman

>Knob (slang for 'penis'/insult)

It would be 'nob'.

Mad's sometimes used in that context, but yeah, crazy/insane are much more prominent.

In the US, saying "Allah akbar" means you get shot

In the UK, it means you get elected the Mayor of London

What's the difference over there?

Here it's:
Primary education - Elementary and Middle Schools (sometimes combined like mine was)
Secondary education - High School
Post-seconday - College

As in, is college Secondary Education like I think it is?

Primary school
Secondary school
College
University

Bugger
Ponce
Nonce
Bloody(though some really old people use bloody as an adjective so I think it's a recent developement)
Lad
Mate
Scone
Pasty
Cheeky
Alri

>BTW, how often is "mad" used to mean "angry" in the rest of the Anglosphere?

Fairly often.

You can however be called piss drunk which means really fucking drunk

>Scone
uwot
>pasty
Pastry?
Regardless we use both.

Never heard pasty, but Scone in the US is different from Scone in the UK. In the UK they refer to what we call biscuits.

We use them in a different way

threads not about clusterfuck different meanings, just about general phrases/words we flat out don't use.

on british news they say someone is 'ill' in hospital, when it would be more accurate to say 'injured'

always struck me as a bit weird

A pasty is a relative of the pie. Your yoopers in Michigan have them.

Mexico has them due to us, just like how the Jamaicans got the patty from our pasties.

some places in england have middle schools (I went to one) but it's not the norm

>mfw an ameriyank calls a scone a biscuit

we have those, they just go by "pot-pie" assuming I have them right.

Is college a sort of institution where you continue studying and University where you research, like American Undergraduate and Graduate schools, or are the two like American Universities but split into two, or is it something else? Sorry for asking so much, I'm intrigued at this.

My elementary school was also my middle school. I'm from Chicago, so it might be an urban-rural thing, IDK. I don't see the point in middle school, though my Elementary School did change its format for 6th through 8th grades (the equivalent of middle school) to prepare us for High School, so I assume that's what Middle Schools do.

Calm down autismo

Yeah, it's like only poor people actually go to college.

Saying ill covers everything, when someone is injured it means like broken bones or something physical, but if someone had cancer or AIDS you'd say they were ill instead of injured

high school ends at aged 16, hopefully you get some GCSEs, which are the most basic qualifications.
16-18 is optional college, where you get A Levels, which are reqired to go to university (there's also more voctional options avaliable).
after that is university, where you get a degree

>mfw you forgot your proxy

In the US, "ill" doesn't cover trauma. BTW, is there any difference between "ill" and "sick" in the UK? Here they're synonymous.

No, that's not it. Wjhat you call a pot pie is just a type of pie. Pasties and pies are pretty identical but still distinct.

We call them trucks not lorries

No, I didn't.

>is there any difference between "ill" and "sick" in the UK? Here they're synonymous.
pretty much the same, except 'sick' is a slang term for 'good', or at least it was ten years ago, idk what kids say theses days, with their skateboards and MTVs

So it's essentially the equivalent of Junior and Senior Years of High School here.

Do you have an exam related to University entrance like we have the ACT and SAT?

Captcha has been doing my nut in on that one.
>Please select all trucks

Don't even get me started on the "cookies" one.

And "pissed" always means "really mad", never "drunk".

For "autumn" and "football" we still use the English "fall" and "soccer"

Ditto, although "sick" has a slightly more negative connotation of the two (it's used disparagingly to refer to perverts, for example).

Our agents are in position, soon it shall be our time.

They can both mean the same and different, you could say 'I'm feeling ill' and 'I'm feeling sick' and they both would mean you are not feeling good (like you have a cold or something), but you could also say 'I'm going to be sick' which means vomiting

We don't have any rhyming slang, that I'm aware of.

This, as a contraction of "pissed off".

The two terms for that season are used roughly equally here.

SATs are the exams we do at the end of primary school at 11 years old.

>still has European Union embossed on it

>So it's essentially the equivalent of Junior and Senior Years of High School here.
I suppose so
>Do you have an exam related to University entrance like we have the ACT and SAT?
for decent unis, yeah there are entrance exams and interviews, plus you are accepted based on what A Level results you achieve

To add further confusion we have babby exams for kids called SATS, which everyone gets upset about 'cos we shouldn't be testing kids all the time because they will feel bad about being stupid

Trousers

Also it's how you use some words,
You use " sat" when we us "sitting
>You: I was sat there when..."
>us I was sitting there when..."

And you use "well" as an adjective with a noun all the time for example you might say "that was well proper", but we would never use well like that

That reminds me of a story a yank posted here many years ago about a new British guy who worked at his company, they went on a night out, the British guy got off his tits and proclaimed "I am so pissed", which everyone took to mean he was very angry and put a damper on the night.

>autumn and fall
Not where I'm from. "Autumn" is pretentious and foreign in my dialect.

I still don't quite understand A Levels and O Levels.

Now that I think about it, do Americans use "piss off" to mean "get lost"/"fuck off" or is it a Brit thing?

the most important thing for an american to know when visiting bongland is that 'fanny' over here roughly translates to 'pussy'

nah, that's just a person-person thing lad.
I always use "I was sitting there".
"I Sat down for a poo" is when I use it.

Not for long.

How I learned Brendan Gleeson was a Brit:
In the movie Lake Placid, he stares down another character and calmly says "I think you are a mental."
It was the first movie I'd ever seen him in and it stuck out like a sore thumb.

O levels are GCSEs now. Are you like 50?

Yea apparently I shouldn't go around saying what my grandmother's name was.

What I'm saying is Brits don't use "sitting" at all.

You use sat and sitting just like we do

... and now that I google him, he's Irish. Oh well.

oops, silly me.
apologies la

We don't say "Con-trivass-ee"

You were right the first time.

Not quite. I heard it on The Young Ones.

brits say got, americans say gotten

I've got fat
I've gotten fat

O Levels don't exist anymore, they were replaced with the GCSE (general certificate of secondary education?) You study about 10 of them, taking exams aged 16. Everyone is supposed to take them.

A (advanced) Levels are higher version, typically you study three or four subjects over two years after you've done your GCSEs. They are optional, but a necessity if you want to go to uni

To clarify, I'm saying that Brits use the perfect past tense "sat" in the imperfect tense, and it's really bad English.

You won't here a non Brit use "sat" like that, only in the perfect past tense, like in your example

IDK, 2bh

It's surprising that a yank would even know what The Young Ones is.

Special branch was the liaison unit between Scotland yard and the security services if that joke didn't make sense to you.

>I look at another thread and there's a map of Doggerland
For another thing, dogging someone is two totally different things on either side of the Atlantic.

Well now I just don't know what to think.
Did they make a 2016 Olympics game for PS2 or is his body just really weird?

It was an MTV staple from the 80s to the mid 90s. RIP Rik.

This post highlighted one, yanks don't say "to be honest" and that is us corrupting you through the chon, just like "mate".

>yanks don't say "to be honest"
Um, yes we do. Also "quite frankly" or "F'reals, yo."

outside of britposting, we do quite often, lad

>yanks don't say "to be honest"

you mean Special Patrol Group?

So say good luck and your welcome far more than us.

No one says your welcome here, they either say nothing or "no problem" or "all good"

I've only heard "to be honest" at the beginning of a statement, and never at the end.

murrican workplace
>to be honest sir, that is a stupid idea

bong workplace
>That is a stupid idea to be honest,

They say*

to be quite frank witchu

relevant?

It really really bothers me when British people contract "I have" when there's no other verb.

"I've a dog"
"I've half a mind to tell him off"

Canadian, but in North American English we know a "rooty-tooty point n' shoot" as a "gun" and "chocolate globbernaughts" are known as "chocolate bars". Canadian English has a few Britishisms that don't exist in the USA. We sometimes say 'mum', and 'centre' and 'colour' are spelt correctly. That's about it.

nah, all that, it's mostly just the same in America
I don't know why British have this idea whatever they say is so unique to them.

I mean do British people really think Americans don't say shit like "That's not bad"?

Why Americans don't say lad?

>not abusing contractions
autism