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BS: Transatlantic Idioms 2
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Subject: RE: BS: Transatlantic Idioms 2 From: GUEST,Burke Date: 23 Apr 01 - 10:14 PM I've seen Dave O's Yank definition before, except I thought New Englanders called Yanks people from Maine. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Transatlantic Idioms 2 From: Gervase Date: 23 Apr 01 - 04:20 AM No, artbrooks, the term over here is "supporting William Hague"/ |
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Subject: RE: BS: Transatlantic Idioms 2 From: Crazy Eddie Date: 23 Apr 01 - 12:49 AM Aw Wavestar, I didn't mean it, I was only kidding, honest CUL8R, Eddie :0) |
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Subject: RE: BS: Transatlantic Idioms 2 From: Snuffy Date: 22 Apr 01 - 07:02 PM In UK a Davenport is a writing table with drawers - isn't it a sofa in US? |
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Subject: RE: BS: Transatlantic Idioms 2 From: Wavestar Date: 22 Apr 01 - 02:50 PM artbrooks, I think the term you're looking for is "wanking." -J |
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Subject: RE: BS: Transatlantic Idioms 2 From: Bernard Date: 22 Apr 01 - 02:36 PM The word 'mean' has another use ('In the US it seems to mean surly, curmudgeonly and nasty, but in the UK it means parsimonious and tight-fisted'): A 'mean' guitar player is 'rather good' - although probably surly, tightfisted, etc...!! US in origin, I believe, though used a lot over here these days. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Transatlantic Idioms 2 From: vindelis Date: 22 Apr 01 - 02:23 PM Not that I know of. However it does mean 'to pull.' eg you might "'yank' the sheets off the bed'" in the morning. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Transatlantic Idioms 2 From: artbrooks Date: 22 Apr 01 - 02:05 PM I once read someplace that "yanking" was an English English term for self abuse. Or do I just read the wrong books? |
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Subject: RE: BS: Transatlantic Idioms 2 From: Wavestar Date: 22 Apr 01 - 12:54 PM Hey! My family eats pie for breakfast! And we live in Vermont! Just what are you suggesting? And Crazy Eddie - you hurt me. I'm in pain. Watch me suffer - really. -J |
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Subject: RE: BS: Transatlantic Idioms 2 From: Uncle_DaveO Date: 22 Apr 01 - 11:08 AM All the world knows that a yankee is someone who lives in the USA. Everybody in the South knows that a yankee is somebody from north of the Mason-Dixon line. EVerybody north of the Mason-Dixon line knows that a yankee is someone from New England. Everybody from New England knows that a yankee is someone from Vermont. Everybody from Vermont knows that a yankee is someone who eats pie for breakfast. DAve Oesterreich |
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Subject: RE: BS: Transatlantic Idioms 2 From: artbrooks Date: 21 Apr 01 - 09:39 PM Folks on the east side of the Atlantic refer to everyone who lives between Canada and Mexico as "yanks". In the States, yanks, or more commonly "yankees" refers primarily to people living in the northeastern US. It tends to seriously confuse a person from Alabama to be called a yank. At the same time, most of us think of everyone who lives on the smaller island as Irish. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Transatlantic Idioms 2 From: GUEST,NH Dave Date: 21 Apr 01 - 06:24 PM One book that I found, well after returning from the British Isles is, British English A to Zed, collected/edited by Norman W. Schur, who alternates between Kent and Connecticut. The ISBN is 0-06-272501-7, and it retails for U$ 19.00. He deals with many misunderstandings that we have, including a short trip through rhyming slang, and military usage, although much of the localism I was used to in East Anglia didn't seem to have made it into the book. I still found it a good read, and can recommend it to anyone kept in the dark by the way others speak "English." Dave |
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Subject: RE: BS: Transatlantic Idioms 2 From: Keith A of Hertford Date: 20 Apr 01 - 06:19 PM I have just been watching a TV item about the last stand on the Imjin River by the Gloucesters.(also some Ulster Rifles and Northumberlands.) I was hoping they might use "The Ghost Army of Korea" as I've been singing it lately for the anniversary. The Brit. Colnel failed to make his American superior fully understand their perilous position when he told him things were "a bit sticky" In fact there were only about 400 left and some40 000 Chinese were attacking in relentless waves. Good Show! Keith. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Transatlantic Idioms 2 From: Irish sergeant Date: 19 Apr 01 - 07:32 PM Dave: I'm not crazy then. Does this mean I can check out of the crayon factory now? We called Reagan a seriously deranged git too. We just pronounced git "Bastard" I found the words for Hamish Henderson's "D-Day Dodgers" I love the idiom in that song particularly the line "We go to war in ties like swanks" Kindest reguards, Neil |
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Subject: RE: BS: Transatlantic Idioms 2 From: Uncle_DaveO Date: 19 Apr 01 - 06:20 PM Irish Sergeatn, "Neat" is straight without ice or water in the US, too. Dave Oesterreich |
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Subject: RE: BS: Transatlantic Idioms 2 From: Crazy Eddie Date: 19 Apr 01 - 01:41 AM Wavestar, R U alrite? U seem a bit tense. I never noticed this about U B4. My favourite was a closing salutation on an ve-mail from my nephew.
"CUB4UDK" |
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Subject: RE: BS: Transatlantic Idioms 2 From: GUEST,Wavestar Date: 18 Apr 01 - 03:38 PM ChaosCat- The 'numbers for letters' usage you mentioned in part 1 drives me crazy! Equally infuriating in every way is the use of 'u' for 'you' and 'r' for 'are.' Don't get me started. Really, don't. -J |
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Subject: RE: BS: Transatlantic Idioms 2 From: zander (inactive) Date: 18 Apr 01 - 02:11 PM Americans used to say 'Ronald Reagan ' and we here in England used to say ' seriously derranged git ' |
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Subject: RE: BS: Transatlantic Idioms 2 From: mousethief Date: 18 Apr 01 - 01:17 PM In these united states "dear" lives on chiefly in the adage "buy cheap sell dear." The other 99.9999% of the time it means "beloved." Alex |
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Subject: RE: BS: Transatlantic Idioms 2 From: JudeL Date: 18 Apr 01 - 12:52 PM Some-one earlier defined the word tidy as meaning neat & orderly but in Wales its also used as a term of approval, e.g. "there's tidy", and "a tidy sum" would refer to a lot of money. Also last year when I went to Brighton I was told that locally, if you call someone tidy you are calling them tightfisted. Jude |
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Subject: RE: BS: Transatlantic Idioms 2 From: Irish sergeant Date: 18 Apr 01 - 11:53 AM I've used dear also to mean expensive and I've heard others here in the states use it. It was more common in earlier years. But I've also heard Dear or dearie used as a term of affection in the British Isles. Personally I like the term gasper for cigarette which I believe is a British usage. kindest reguards, neil |
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Subject: RE: BS: Transatlantic Idioms 2 From: GUEST,Rana Date: 18 Apr 01 - 09:57 AM Maryrf, I never realised that "dear = expensive" was odd to Americans - seems natural to me but then I was raised in the UK. Talking of "dear", half the people working in the "Bus-stop" a cafe on the UBC campus in Vancouver (named because it used to be the bus-loop there) were cockneys, so the patrons were always addressed as dear or dearie etc. Regards Rana |
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Subject: RE: BS: Transatlantic Idioms 2 From: Maryrrf Date: 18 Apr 01 - 09:36 AM I noticed an expression that seems odd to Americans. The use of "dear" which we would take to mean "cute" or "beloved". The Brits use it to mean "expensive". |
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Subject: RE: BS: Transatlantic Idioms 2 From: gnu Date: 18 Apr 01 - 06:57 AM Perhaps this is a bit too "local", but... I met a "bayman" in Newfoundland ( a bayman is a person from a small, usually isolated, coastal community ) who greeted me with this : In English, first - What news have you today ? or... What's on your mind ? In "Bayman" - Whatcha got 'n yer mout' me ol' cock ? |
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Subject: RE: BS: Transatlantic Idioms 2 From: Gervase Date: 18 Apr 01 - 06:37 AM Another shiboleth is what what happens when you've finished a cigarette. Over here you end up with stinking fag butts everywhere. If that happened in the US I guess you'd be in a San Francisco bath-house! |
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Subject: RE: BS: Transatlantic Idioms 2 From: ChaosCat Date: 17 Apr 01 - 09:46 PM To answer KatLaughing's earlier question, yes, as a matter of fact, ~on~ the Western Slope. I spent about 5 years in Delta/Cedaridge/Hotchkiss/Paonia region, in the wildness of my youth. My sister's still in Naturita. As for Chinook Jargon, thanks graceously for the link- I'm always adding to my interlinguistic vocabulary, though I've been in the northwest now for almost 20 years, and I actually am able to manage most pronunciations. I think the thing with Oyehut is just a Copalis Beach abberation of a regional dialect.
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Subject: RE: BS: Transatlantic Idioms 2 From: Snuffy Date: 17 Apr 01 - 09:08 PM Fanny Power:
in Ireland its a tune |
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Subject: RE: BS: Transatlantic Idioms 2 From: GUEST,petr Date: 17 Apr 01 - 08:53 PM Fanny (or vagina) in the Uk seems to be one of the most misunderstood by Americans, they just think its a quaint British expression for bum. I remember when walking with a couple friends in scotland and making a comment about her fanny pack . before I noticed what I said, She said "around here we dont call it that". Also my fiddle playing friend (from Canada) who lived there at the time said she once suggested Fanny Power at a session and everyone gave her a hard time after that. One British friend of mine told me, that of her first humorous misunderstandings of some words: when someone asked her for a rubber (oh we hardly know each other!) or when someone introduced himself (Hi Im Randy - oh I bet you are). For that matter one of my older friends who is a retired school teacher from Czechoslovakia but who lived in England for a few years before coming to Canada had some interesting comments on British expressions like dustbin or charwoman (cleaning lady) not really used here. He said he called a black waiter a 'boy' without knowing that it might be offensive. on another note: my father while doing some research on his ancestors asked a librarian in the Czech republic for a book on genealogy and was a little red faced when he got a book on gynecology. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Transatlantic Idioms 2 From: Irish sergeant Date: 17 Apr 01 - 08:38 PM Correct me if I'm wrong but doesn't Neat also mean straight with no ice when discussing a drink say of whiskey in the U.K.? Then there is git which here in the U.S. is a colloquial spelling for the word get and means Leave and in the U.K. means bastard. Isn't Engllis as a first language fun:o) Kindest reguards, Neil |
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Subject: RE: BS: Transatlantic Idioms 2 From: Snuffy Date: 17 Apr 01 - 08:13 PM Pissed is drunk and pissed off is angry in UK |
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Subject: RE: BS: Transatlantic Idioms 2 From: Kim C Date: 17 Apr 01 - 03:49 PM Unless I missed it, nobody mentioned the word "pissed," which is Drunk in the UK, and angry in the US. Condoms were known as French letters as far back as the American Civil War. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Transatlantic Idioms 2 From: vindelis Date: 17 Apr 01 - 03:28 PM I believe that the American meaning for 'to table a motion' is to put the motion to one side. ie NOT to discuss it. - The UK definition would be 'to present a motion'. the exact opposite. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Transatlantic Idioms 2 From: Gervase Date: 17 Apr 01 - 09:28 AM Another word that seems to have two meanings is "mean". In the US it seems to mean surly, curmudgeonly and nasty, but in the UK it means parsimonious and tight-fisted. Which caused some embarrassment when I did a TV interview about the Queen Mother for a US station and described the old trout as mean (UK meaning) and the interviewer assumed I meant the US meaning and took the interview off an another tack entirely. Mind you, maybe it wasn't too wide of the mark... ...ducks to avoid stoning by rabid royalists... |
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Subject: RE: BS: Transatlantic Idioms 2 From: Uncle_DaveO Date: 17 Apr 01 - 09:16 AM Kat: "Neat" is a lot earlier than the 50s. It was fairly current back when I was a kid, in the late Pleistocene--well, in the early 40s. By "fairly current" I mean it was a word we used, but it was not the compulsive "in" talk that it later became. I guess that is reversing the usual sequence: Usually a slang term is ubiquitous and then cools down, accepted into the normal stream of language. Oh well. Dave Oesterreich |
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Subject: RE: BS: Transatlantic Idioms 2 From: Metchosin Date: 17 Apr 01 - 03:00 AM well maybe it will be Jon, but I'll bite. ChaosCat, maybe a little bit of Chinook Jargon will help you get around and if you want more click here
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Subject: Transatlantic Idioms 2 From: Jon Freeman Date: 17 Apr 01 - 01:54 AM This will probably be the kiss of death but part 1 has reached 130 posts. Jon |