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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Nov 2000
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US : "wash up" meaning personal ablutions.
UK : wash the dishes after a meal.
This led to some amusing confusion when, on a trip to UK, I asked my hostes if there was somewhere I could wash up after my long drive.
wow
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Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 3,146
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Nov 2000
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Unlike CK I have heard people outside of Lewisveal talk of fixing breakfast, which I must do now.Sorry to disappoint you, Max, but I had heard of people fixing meals a long, long time ago. Stirring Jackie over it, however, has been irresistable. Hopefully within a couple of months that maligned lady can demonstrate to me, personally, what she does to "fix" perfectly undamaged food ... and hopefully, the virtue or otherwise of "He needed killin' " as a legal defence for murder will remain untested in the Kaintuck courts for a while longer afterwards! 
The idiot also known as Capfka ...
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Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 11,613
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 11,613 |
Stirring Jackie over it, however, has been irresistable
Poke the borax at me, willya? Right, eggs and
brains at 7 a.m. for you, Bub.
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Joined: Jun 2000
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addict
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addict
Joined: Jun 2000
Posts: 444 |
I heard in the past, that an alternate word for condoms in the UK was a "french cap"-- and the french called condoms --(no attempt here to put it into french) "english letters"
I've never heard 'French cap'. I know 'Dutch' cap for a diaphragm and 'French letters' for condoms.
French letters / letters anglaises is part of a special subset of your other point about 'all Greek / all Chinese / all Hebrew to me'. What the British call 'taking French leave', the French call 'filer à l'anglais' and so on.
I used to know another couple of these English-French pairings - can anyone help out? Is belMarduk still with us?
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journeyman
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journeyman
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 86 |
Re: Preparation of meals --prepare/fix/make/other Let's see if we can obtain an Ayleur consensus (non-unanimous)and not one as to what is exclusively "right and proper" but one which is merely a recognized or an understood usage by various groupings, e.g.:
I cannot , in this format , "make" the following work in true tabular form , but perhaps the idea is clear enough:
HOW WOULD ONE "GET DINNER TOGETHER":
...........................Prepare.....Make......Fix......
USA/AUS,NZ/UK/SUBC/.................................
REGIONAL............................................
URBAN/RURAL.........................................
U/NON-U ...........................................
AU COURANT/OLD-FASHIONED ..........................
TV/RADIO STANDARD USAGE ..........................
PERSONAL CHOICE OF WORD ..........................
I'll cast my vote to start. I would say "FIX" dinner, but "make a cake". That usage is heard in, at least, some parts of USA. 1.(make dinner "sounds" Northern or Western USA to me(or maybe just TVtalk), but may not be. (That is one of the usages about which I am curious.)In fact, fix dinner may be purely Southern "regional" usage), 2."slightly rural"?(tho I live in a city w/ pop. 1MM++), 3."both U and Non-U" here, and perhaps a little 4. "Old-fashioned" e.g. my children(who grew up saying "fix dinner" now say "make dinner" although they still live in this city. This is NOT our most burning issue, but it is a little usage quirk which may prove interesting, esp w/ respect to the usage in the other parts of the English-speaking world.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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On "Dinner", there phrase I hear mosy often is simply "cook" - "whose turn is it to cook dinner?". Among those I know, "prepare" would be formal, and "get dinner ready" would be quite common. "Make" is less common, but not unheard of. In summary, dinner here is indeed an ambigu.
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enthusiast
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enthusiast
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 328 |
>Bridget: English-French pairings
One I immediately thought of was that old euphemism "the French vice." The French certainly would have used a different term, but I'm not sure what it was. Somehow "the English vice" doesn't ring a bell...
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member
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member
Joined: Mar 2001
Posts: 163 |
Faldage:
>To knock someone up:
>US To get someone pregnant
>UK ? To visit someone ? To come by and pick someone up ?
In the UK: to knock on their door until they wake up.
Now onto another difference. An incident at the Sarajevo olympics which shows just how confusing the same language can be, even when spoken by neighbours.
Otto Jelinek, Canada's federal Minister of Amateur Sport at the time, was holding a press conference to complain about some ruling by some olympic official. For some reason, Canadian reporters couldn't get there on time so they asked their American colleagues what happened. They were told that the minister was clearly quite pissed.
Unfortunately, the American "He's pissed" means he's very angry. The Canadian equivalent is "pissed off". In Canada, if you say someone was pissed it means that they were drunk. Needless to say, several major newspapers had to apologise after printing headlines, "Minister obviously drunk at press conference".
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Joined: Aug 2000
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Th "pissed/pissed off" usage is the same in Zild as in Canada, it eems. "Pissed" is drunk, "pissed off" is angry. The influence of US TV means that, given context, "pissed would likely be understood correctly if used with the US meaning.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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I have never heard "pissed" meaning drunk. I heard "pissed off" meaning angry in the army fifty years ago, but it made no sense to me. (I would have been very angry if "pissed on".)
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