Favo(u)rite expressions from across the Atlantic

Calboner

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It's 'Twat' not 'Twot', for starters. :biggrin1:
I'm puzzled. I thought that "twat" rhymes with "watt" in both the US and the UK. The Oxford English Dictionary does not list any other pronunciation. The only other pronunciation that I have ever heard was from an Irish actor who pronounced it to rhyme with "hat." Are you Irish?

Bent as a three pound note (there are no three pound notes, or coins)
Well, we (in the US) used to say "Queer as a three-dollar bill," but that has fallen out of use as the word "queer" is no longer used in the sense of "odd." I did not know that the word "bent" had that sense in the UK, though.

When you're a kid you call your penis a 'todge' :smile: at least some do. Can also be todger.
I had learned the term "tadger" from Monty Python. ("From the tiniest little tadger to the world's biggest prick.") Is "todger" more common?
If someone has a roll of fat (or a few) on their belly we say they're "carrying a spare tyre."
Oh, that would produce utter incomprehension Stateside. We say over here that someone has a "spare tire," you see. Completely different expression.

If something is "The dog's bollocks" or the "Bee's knees" then its pretty neat.
I had encountered "It's the bee's knees" used facetiously: I think it was current in the US about eighty years ago. "Dog's bollocks" is great, though: I'll have to use that.

Lunch is usually called dinner, at least round here
Tea = dinner (evening meal)
I have encountered those uses of "dinner" and "tea" and been bewildered by them. E.g., "I have buttered scones for tea." How, the American listener asks himself, can you have anything but TEA for tea? You can't drink a scone!
PS "Well, fuck me sideways!" is used to express surprise/shock...might not be solely English though?
I may have encountered it used by an American. At any rate, it is certainly easily understood!
rumpy pumpy
And I thought that expression was made up by Rowan Atkinson or whoever wrote the episode of Blackadder in which he uses it!
I embarrassingly discovered that the word "fanny" means entirely two different things in the USA and Australia..........I was referring to a "fanny pack" that an aussie mate of mine was wearing!
Yes, it is very important to know this. Americans, be advised that, outside of North America, a "fanny" is something peculiar to females. There is a parallel case in Dutch. The Dutch word for "arse" or "ass" is "kont," which is cognate with the English word that it resembles. There seems to be some historical basis for confusing the vagina with the posterior.

The vocabulary of masturbation invites many misunderstandings. I was a bit shocked by a passage in Martin Amis's Experience where he spoke of talking on the phone with one hand while "beating off" a friend of his father's with the other. After reading the passage a few times, I figured out that he meant fending the man off (who was making sexual advances on him)—just what that phrase means in history books. On the other hand, I wonder what impression Americans make on British audiences when they say that someone "tossed off" certain remarks.
 

got_lost

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'Twat' in the UK definitely rhymes with hat!!

'The Dogs bollocks' is a huge compliment and I do use that a lot.


I had no idea you didn't have a clue of all these things.... :O
 

No_Strings

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I'm puzzled. I thought that "twat" rhymes with "watt" in both the US and the UK. The Oxford English Dictionary does not list any other pronunciation. The only other pronunciation that I have ever heard was from an Irish actor who pronounced it to rhyme with "hat." Are you Irish?

Nope, I'm English, but yes it should rhyme with 'hat'. :biggrin1:

Brekkie = breakfast
Lunch is usually called dinner, at least round here
Tea = dinner (evening meal)

Woah, woah, woah. I know there are some big differences between the north and south, but how I've always known it is;

lunch = cold afternoon meal
tea = cold evening meal
dinner = either hot meal

so - breakfast, lunch, dinner
or - breakfast, dinner, tea
:smile:
 

DaveyR

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Woah, woah, woah. I know there are some big differences between the north and south, but how I've always known it is;

lunch = cold afternoon meal
tea = cold evening meal
dinner = either hot meal

so - breakfast, lunch, dinner
or - breakfast, dinner, tea
:smile:

I've been involved in the Tea/Dinner arguement on another site and it really depends on where in the UK you are.
 

B_ScaredLittleBoy

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A packed lunch will be obviously cold. But it would still be what you eat at dinner time...

Breakfast is breakfast.

Tea is the evening meal.

Tea can be hot or cold (the meal) but more often than not its hot...

PS I'm from the North (West) :confused:
 

Calboner

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'Twat' in the UK definitely rhymes with hat!!
Nope, I'm English, but yes it should rhyme with 'hat'. :biggrin1:
Of course I defer to you on current usage in the UK, but I am surprised. I can only say that the other pronunciation (rhyming with "watt") is not of American origin; it's just the older pronunciation of the word. Apparently it has fallen out of favor in the UK, but, as I said, the OED, hardly a dictionary to favor American usage, does not report any other pronunciation (yet).
 

novice_btm

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Bent as a three pound note (there are no three pound notes, or coins)
We say, "He's as fake as a three-dollar bill." (same, no 3's in our notes, or coins) Although, that's also been used as, "He's as 'queer' as a three-dollar bill." Originally, it was meant queer=odd/strange/suspicious/something that stands out as not right, which fit in with 'queer' now being used for "gay", and I've even heard, "He's as gay as a three-dollar bill."

When you're a kid you call your penis a 'todge' :smile: at least some do. Can also be todger.
I bought a military surplus kilt once, and was asked, "Did it still have it's "tadger patch"?
"Um, it's 'what' patch?"
"Tadger patch. The piece of soft cotton that squaddies stitch into their kilts, so that the wool doesn't rub their tadgers raw on long marches."


"Taking the piss..." is one that sounds strange to uninformed Americans, or at least as though there are a lot of Brits that engage in "water sports". :tongue:

(An aside along those lines, I was once asked if I liked water sports.
I said, "Yeah, I love them. I'm actually on a team."
"A TEAM?"
"Yeah, a rowing team."
"Uh, are you for real?"
"Yeah, three times a week."
"No, I mean, you don't know what 'water sports' are?"
"Yeah, rowing, swimming... Duh!"
"OK, but sexually, they mean urine play."
"Uuu, umm, oh, ok. Uh, I gotta go." :eek:
:tongue::tongue::tongue:
 

Yorkie

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The word "arse" merits some special comment....
I also find it amusing that, as I understand, "arse" can be used as a mass term for anything very unwelcome ("This is the sort of arse that I have to put up with!"), or even as an exclamation by itself ("Arse! I forgot my wallet!").
I would be particularly interested in hearing if members in the British Isles have any favorite (favourite) American expressions.
In the Fawlty Towers 'Waldorf Salad' episode Basil joined US and UK language together with his classic "Bunch of arse!" :biggrin1:
 

Calboner

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In the Fawlty Towers 'Waldorf Salad' episode Basil joined US and UK language together with his classic "Bunch of arse!" :biggrin1:
Damn, Yorkie! That is exactly where I got the phrase that I quoted as an illustration! You must be at least as big a fan of the show if you can actually cite the name of the episode. To explain for the benefit of others reading this: Fawlty, the hotel proprietor, is baffled when an American guest uses the phrase "to bust someone's ass" (surely any Englishman but Basil Fawlty would understand what that meant?): "Everything's bottoms, isn't it?", he says, when he finally catches on. Then, when he faces a rebellion by his guests, he fumes at them: "This is typical . . . absolutely typical of the sort of . . . ARSE that I have to put up with!" (I'm consulting my book of scripts as I write this, so that is verbatim.)

Basil Fawlty is my hero.
 

frizzle

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Anyway, I was going off to my Pope in Rome, when the old Trouble and Strife's only gone and left the Horse and Carriage and Cat and Mouse and left me a message next to the Dog and Bone on an Alexander the Great up the Apples and Pairs. She's gone of with another fella with a lot of Poppy Red. Made me so Hit List, you know? So I gos and gets meself a Pigs Ear. Not bothered really, just she dragged her huge Kingdom Come off with my Sue Rider!
 

Calboner

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Anyway, I was going off to my Pope in Rome, when the old Trouble and Strife's only gone and left the Horse and Carriage and Cat and Mouse and left me a message next to the Dog and Bone on an Alexander the Great up the Apples and Pairs. She's gone of with another fella with a lot of Poppy Red. Made me so Hit List, you know? So I gos and gets meself a Pigs Ear. Not bothered really, just she dragged her huge Kingdom Come off with my Sue Rider!
Well, I knew "trouble and strife" and "apples and pears," and by using my loaf of bread I could figure out some of the others; but is there a glossary of rhyming slang that we could all have a butcher's hook at?

I wanted to copy here something concerning Anglo-American communications that I posted in another thread but that got no responses:

Johnny Depp visits an English tailoring shop

"You're an American, aren't you? Have you been here long? BONED anyone yet, sir?"

YouTube - Johnny Depp The Fast Show
 

JustAsking

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...Basil Fawlty is my hero.

Then you are my hero.

Basil to Sybil: "You rancorous, coiffured sow!"

Only the British could insult somoene like that.

One of my favorite Anglicisms:

"Belts and suspenders." - Americans often mistake this for "bells and whistles", but instead it implies a large amount of redundancy in design.

"All singing, all dancing." - This is the phrase used in the UK for "bells and whistles." Which means an excessive number of features of any kind in a design. I imagine it harkens back to a carnival promoter hawking the amazing talents of the act his is promoting.

Hosepipe = garden hose.
Garden = lawn.

But I love the use of the particle phrase turned into a word, "innit". It is an obvious contraction of "Isn't it." when you are being demonstrative in an assertion. Like, "It surely is raining hard, isn't it?" It's like the French, "n'est-ce pas?, or "is it no so?".

But the funny thing is that the contraction has taken on a life of its own, when people in the UK might say something like, "Hey, he is pretty tall, innit?" To which the affirmative reply would be, "Innit!".

I had figured out the "innit" thing by the time I had seen a few of Catherine Tate's Lauren sketches on Youtube. Nothing funnier than Lauren, innit?

"Beyonce, she is well bing bing".
"Bing bing!, Bing bing! no, you mean bling bling. But she is well fit, innit?"
"Innit!"
 

Gillette

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Garden = lawn.

Was speaking with a friend from London and was lost for words when he said he had been mowing the garden. I was imagining mulched flowers. Why would you do that?

If the garden is the lawn what is the space specific to growing flowers or vegetables called?


Giving head.

I had always associated this with fellatio exclusively. The head of the penis being inside someone else's mouth(head). It just seemed intuitively obvious. Much to my surprise cunnilingus also falls under "giving head". I'm not sure if this example is regional or just my own insular ignorance.