Different Meanings for Words

[P-p-p-penguin]

U.S.:  Stone = rock, or hit with rock
UK:    Stone = a measurement of weight, 15 pounds?

(I'm sure stone means rock in UK too but a stone as a measurement has always mystified me.)

14lb.

[RainhaDoTexugo]

..."to get boned"

a) to play scrabble with someone
b) to get fired

And someone once told me that in England to "suck up" to someone means something completely different than brown-nosing.

You may be thinking of 'suck off'. Which...yeah...work it out for yourselves.

That may explain the reaction I had when I told a guy to go suck up to the boss to get a free beer. The Aussie accent may have slightly changed what he was hearing...

Hahaha!  I hope he'd get more than a beer for that!

We use suck up for brown nosing and suck off for the recreational activity here in Chicago.

[Dazi]

Something I'm curious about - how many slang terms for "drunk" do you have?  Off the top of my head I can think of several terms which would be interchangeable in the phrase "Let's go get ________!" :

smashed
hammered
plastered
blitzed
sloshed
pickled
wasted
sh1t-faced
tipsy
trashed

I know there are some you Brits use and we don't, but I can't think of them offhand    Do the rest of these translate?

'p1ssed' is the obvious one you missed there.
My personal favourite is 'trousered', though.

  (And for that matter, can you use ANY verb and make it obvious?  Hmmm . . . "Let's get bowdlerized."  "Let's get flattened."  "Let's get impeached."  Yep, looks like it  )

Michael McIntyre thinks so: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xewe4mlX2tc

You can pretty much substitute any word and people will know what you mean!  Another one missing is "wankered".

As Gavin & Stacey fans, my friend and mine's particular favourite, however, is "twatted".  As in, "I'm absolutely twatted." to mean, "I am very, very drunk."

blootered
steaming
drunk as a lord

Paralytic
Off his/her trolley

I am rather fond of snockered.

[Thipu1]

One more take on being drunk.

Back in the 1960s there was a satirical show titled, 'That Was The Week That Was'.  In one memorable episode, people playing Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton were shown singing the Welsh lullaby, 'All Through the Night'.

 The great line was when Liz sang, 'I played flute and he was har-pist all through the night'.

[EngineerChick]

And then there's all the words for vomiting.
Praying to the great white porcelain god
Spew
Chunder
What else?

How about:
Calling Ralph
Driving the porcelain bus
Upchucking
Losing one's lunch
Tossing one's cookies
Chumming (this is a usual term when one gets seasick on a fishing boat)

Calling Ralph on the big white phone, even! 

Barfing
Blowing chunks
The Technicolor yawn <--my favorit, but it is not often heard

[oz diva]

On thongs and biros.

When I was a child, the inexpensive rubber sandals now called thongs were called zoris.  They were a great novelty in the 1950s.  My first pair was bought at a Woolworth's in Asbury Park  NJ.  Why do remember things like this?

In the 1970s, when I first visited the UK, inexpensive ball-point pens were called biros.  We've visited the UK often since.  Over the years, the term 'biro' seems to have fallen into disuse.  Does anyone know why?

I use biro, it's a catch all term for ball point pen for me.

What do you call a cloth for cleaning up messes?

We call it a wettex and aluminium foil is 'alfoil'. Both brand names.

[RainhaDoTexugo]

I had to google Wettex   From what I can see, I'd call that a sponge cloth.  There are a million different types of cloths for cleaning up spills, though, and they wouldn't all be sponge cloths.  If it's made of actual fabric, I'd call it a rag or a towel, or if it's one of the small square towels, a dishcloth. 

[oz diva]

It's not really a sponge cloth as it's not spongy. It has holes in it though and they're either blue, pink or green. I don't know if there's a difference in the strengths or what?

[katycoo]

What do you call a cloth for cleaning up messes?

We call it a wettex and aluminium foil is 'alfoil'. Both brand names.

I had to google Wettex!  Seriously never heard of it before so I'm calling regional on this one.

That's just a cloth.  Possibly a 'kitchen cloth' or damp cloth if there's a possibility of confusion.

And I just call it foil.

[RainhaDoTexugo]

It's not really a sponge cloth as it's not spongy. It has holes in it though and they're either blue, pink or green. I don't know if there's a difference in the strengths or what?

Maybe my googling just didn't come out right.  I saw a site that called them sponge cloths, and we have something here I call a sponge cloth, so I assumed they were the same.

[oz diva]

Not to worry, I think we're over thinking cleaning supplies. 

[pharmagal]

Depending on where the spill was, I'd use a dish cloth, or the Floor cloth.  Both of which are small facecloth sized pieces of cloth.   And alfoil, I call it tinfoil.  What do you call cling wrap?  We call it Gladwrap, even though it may not be the brand in the drawer it's always gladwrap.




edited to add an l - since I have no idea what gadwrap is, but I'm fairly sure I use gladwrap.

[MsMarjorie]

I'm Australian, and I was in a thread the other day and said "You should ring her" and the American poster noticed straight away the difference in language - what do Americans say when they want to call someone?

Also in 'Strine (that Aussie speak) we say;

nappies - is it diapers for Americans and nappies also for the UK ehellions?
mobile phone
4 wheel drive (4WD) - for a car that can go off road
ute - for a 2 door car with an open tray at the back

and a truck to us is a big many wheeled vehicle that takes heavy loads, I always have to remember this when a US ehellion casually says "I took the truck to the mall" and I sit there thinking "Crikey, thats a bit of overkill, must have lots of shopping to do"

and these words always trip me up
biscuits - hard, flat and sweet (best with choc chips  )
scones - like a little bread roll (best with jam & cream)

[oz diva]

It's always gladwrap.

[Hollanda]

I love the biscuits vs cookies debate lol. When we went to the US, we saw on a menu something that was basically a casserole (stew) with biscuits?!?! I asked why anyone would have biscuits with casserole?! We found out that these biscuits were more like scones.  Cookies are the sweet biscuits...how totally confusing lol!! We'd have "dumplings" with casserole...small scone-like things made out of a heavy, rich, suet pastry. I don't particularly like them but they are popular in the North of England.  They also have "puddings" (meat and potato etc), which are made out of the same suet pastry.  I dislike them intensely as they are too filling and stodgy for my poor, sensitive stomach, but my Dad adores them. When I hear "pudding", I think jam roly *******, apple pie and custard or Spotted wingadingdingy and custard...

Our biscuits are...well, US cookies...not always with choc chips, there are Custard Creams, Ginger Nuts, digestives, shortbread, fruit shorties, Party Rings etc. My favourite in America were the "Chips Ahoy!" cookies. I could devour a packet of them!!

Scones are sweet or savoury in the UK - you can have cheese scones, sultana scones, cherry scones or...my absolute favourite...plain scones with clotted cream and jam...still warm from the oven, served with a pot of tea. What the Cornish call a "Cream Tea". How many calories are in just one scone with jam and cream, I have no clue!!

Oh, that brings me to the jam vs jelly debate. Jam to a UK person is what you guys in the US call jelly. Our jelly is I think what you in the US call jello, and is usually served either in a trifle (mmmmmmmm) or with ice-cream at a children's party. When I first heard about peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, I thought it was a bit odd...!!!