“University”
This one has driven me crazy since first hearing a British college classmate use it in 2003.
I cannot stand when they do not use a definite article before it...maybe it’s just because University is so often associated with a particular place in the US that it seems to be missing something.
Oddly enough, it always sounds appropriate to me to use “college” in this way, as in “I went to college at...”.
I used to say I went to ‘school’ at a particular University. A Brit friend corrected me. Apparently ‘school’ doesn’t refer to University, but to lower education.
But wrt the word itself, it appears to depend upon why you went there. If you went to ‘school’ there, you ‘went to university’. If you just visited to give a lecture or attend one, you ‘went to THE university.)
They’ve become more or less interchangeable in casual speech; but some of the American states still differentiate between Colleges, which offer primarily undergraduate studies; and Universities, which offer graduate programs:
https://www.rd.com/article/difference-between-college-and-university/