BS: American vs British slang

Subject: RE: BS: American vs British slang
From: Manitas_at_home
Date: 27 Jul 02 - 12:13 PM

Kevin, I've certainly heard 'plates' as slang for feet.

Subject: RE: BS: American vs British slang
From: GUEST,your fat momma
Date: 27 Jul 02 - 12:18 PM

you are all dumb little gay idiots. get a freaking life you morons

Subject: RE: BS: American vs British slang
From: The Walrus
Date: 27 Jul 02 - 04:37 PM

"GUEST,your fat momma",

Don't come back until your IQ reaches double figures.

Walrus

Subject: RE: BS: American vs British slang
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 27 Jul 02 - 05:04 PM

You'll find pumps in a dictionary as a term for a light shoe used for dancing (ie not clog type dancing), and it was used for plimsolls at one time.

(You can really annoy some young people by referring to their trainers as plimsolls. I wonder if there are any brave young people who defiantly use the term themselves -maybe the kind of noncomformists who might go in for folk music?)

Subject: RE: BS: American vs British slang
From: Steve Parkes
Date: 29 Jul 02 - 08:47 AM

And does "starving" mean "hungry" or "cold" where you come from? (Or...?)

Subject: RE: BS: American vs British slang
From: HuwG
Date: 29 Jul 02 - 09:14 AM

Guest Steve, the (sometimes derogatory) name "Gog", applied by a South Waleian to a North Waleian, derives from the welsh word, "Gogledd", meaning "north".

If I might be politically a little uncorrect here, in the last century a typical piece of mutual insult might go:

"Gwell bantu na hwntwr" (Better to be from Africa than South Wales) "Gwell wog na gog" (Better to be from the Indian sub-continent than North Wales)

This was quoted in "This sweet and bitter Earth", a novel by Alexander Cordell.

Subject: RE: BS: American vs British slang
From: Snuffy
Date: 29 Jul 02 - 09:16 AM

I've always assumed that Gog, meaning a North Walian, is just an abbreviation of Gogledd (which is Welsh for north), rather than anything to do with LlanfairPG.

Wassail! V

Subject: RE: BS: American vs British slang
From: GUEST,Charmion at work
Date: 29 Jul 02 - 11:57 AM

To Steve Parks, in re "starving": My mother (English/Irish ancestry, born in Montreal in 1929, lived 40 years in Ottawa) would say "starving of the hunger" to remove all doubt.

Someone above mentions "stupid o'clock" -- anyone hanging around in Canadian military circles will soon hear "zero dark thirty" to mean an unspecified hour between midnight and dawn, and "zero dark stupid" to mean an unreasonably early pre-dawn hour.

In re "crab" for RAF: in the Canadian Navy of the 1970s, I learned that airmen were "crabfats", from the greyish colour of the RCAF uniform, similar to that of the grey paint used in Royal Navy ships, which was always called "crabfat". Oddly enough, this usage has survived 30 years, although the paint association has disappeared, perhaps because the Canadian Navy does not have nearly as much contact with the Royal Navy as it used to. I recently heard a youngish petty officer recounting a fanciful bit of folk etymology concerning the non-existence of fat on a crab. Among soldiers (then "pongoes", now "grunts"), airmen were "pigeons", and their arrival in the Junior Ranks' would be marked by cooing sounds. If one wished to start a fight, the thing to do was remark (loudly) that the canary would be a more representative bird, as they are too yellow to fight but too cute to shoot.

Subject: RE: BS: American vs British slang
From: GUEST,seanchai
Date: 30 Jul 02 - 12:54 AM

There is a book out called, "Cold As A Bay Street Banker's Heart", subtitled, 'The Ultimate Prairie Phrase Book'. It gives a few local expressions, such as matrimonial cake (date squares), a wedding 'social', and fowl supper.

Here are a few words / phrases to prove to you that we Canadians are not TOTALLY American:)

great white combine sleepers / strollers / grinners improved Englishman / Scotsman principal meridian cow gate

There are many more but these are some easy ones!

Jean in Winnipeg, Canada

Subject: RE: BS: American vs British slang
From:
Date: 30 Jul 02 - 01:29 AM

I've got a collection of mainly midwestern US idioms, etc. (still needs editing) here --

http://www2.truman.edu/~adavis/expressions.html

Adam