"Rule No. 1: NO POOFTERS!"
‘chav’ and ‘numpty’ are 2 I haven’t heard at all
Words travel fast across the Pond, eh wot?
There is one that isn’t popular........ thank goodness.
After he was shot dead, they took Travon to hospital.
Sorry to take issue with ya,Scotsman (well,take issue with the BBC that is) but I can only see one or two that are used here.And being a huge,longtime,fan of Britcoms and British drama I’m more familiar with these words than are most Yanks.Most Yanks (not including Osama Obama,obviously) have great respect for Britain but that doesn’t cause us to use your words.Canadians,OTOH,use many of *our* words....”gas”...”bucks”...”soccer” among quite a few others.
Its like the difference between Russian and Belarussian. Except for minor differences in spelling they are same!
Only buggers and dafts speak the Queen’s English!
I’ve noticed a couple more. One that has been appearing here on FR is “spot on”. Another started being used by the media in disappearance cases a few years ago; “went missing”.
For later
"Rule No. 1: NO POOFTERS!"
I’m off to fetch a bit of tea.
Outside of movies and the occasional Monty Python show, I only recognized about 4 or 5 of these words.
Knock me up sometime, we’ll share a fag.
I see “muppet” means stupid person. No wonder Dems insist on subsidizing them.
A bit of a sticky wicket, what? That’s dodgy.
The BBC is a bunch of wankers.
Muppet is one of the greatest words ever... Bugger is right behind it :-)
We lived in the Caribbean when my kid was young and he started school there, lots of British ex-pats on the island, so his friends were either British or Caymanian. He still uses many British terms today and he’s a grown man.
But when we moved back to the states he was still in elementary school. On the island, and to the Brits, a “rubber” is a term for an eraser. So
I had some explaining to do when he asked the teacher if he could borrow a “rubber.”
I’m not sure I think this is such a great list. Some of these words I’ve always used, like frock, and I don’t think row meaning fight is really a Britishism, I’ve always heard that usage.
A word not on the list is dear, meaning expensive, my grandmother (from Ireland) always used that word. She used frock too, of course, so maybe that is why it is familiar to me.
Now, there are some words that have different meanings over here, so I don’t think these Brit usages will ever become popular.
One on the list is bum. We use bum to mean a no-good person or a vagrant. I don’t know what the brits use for those meanings.
Another Brit word that is always confusing is jumper, meaning sweater. My grandmother never used jumper for sweater, and believe me she sewed me a lot of jumpers, so it might have come up. I don’t know if that is not a term used in Ireland or if she just was careful not to use it. I still don’t know what the brits call the frocks we call jumpers.
I always use the phrase bother, as in “bother it, bother me” etc. Of course I got that from Brit books, but it fits very well in some instances when even “darn it” would be too strong.
There, I wasn’t keen on the list, but I did bang on and on about it, didn’t I?
Winston Churchill: “Americans and British are one people separated only by a common language.”
I grew up over there and don’t see many of the words being used here very much. Perhaps gobsmacked and cheeky? “You cheeky wee brat” was a favorite at home. :)
Maybe it depends on where one lives here.