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American/British Dictionary

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19:41 / 24.12.03

Buck is just another word for Dollar over here, not actually a different unit.

Cusm, you’re kidding me! In my mind you’re probably the most British Brit on Barbelith! Mainly because in the photo you posted you look exactly like someone I used to know: as far as I’m concerned you’ve got a west-country accent and an Aga and a cat called Suzie Creamcheese.

Okay. I’ll adjust my mental image. Thanks for the tip. And yes, a quid is just a pound, although we Brits have plenty of other hilarious comedy words for various amounts of cash.

Fear - it's a whatdyacallit, a 'squash'? Like a pumpkin, only green and long. Actually, no, it's a giant-sized courgette. English tradition has old men growing marrows for competitions: the one with the largest, plumpest, most engorged marrow wins. Honestly, I'm not making this up. My Grandad spent his retirement doing such things.

20:35 / 24.12.03

BTB, I like the way this thread has exposed the extent of Barbelith’s cross-cultural curiosity: root vegetables and pants. And what to do with your hands.

01:11 / 25.12.03

Yes, cool, isn't it?

BTW, rutabaga is called swede in the UK. No, I don't know why.

Solitaire Rose as Tom Servo

04:35 / 25.12.03

>Bin bags/liners?
>Are they refuse sacks? Trash bags?

Trash or garbage bags. I think you'd get called a terrorist if you used the word "refuse".

09:52 / 25.12.03

BTW, rutabaga is called swede in the UK. No, I don't know why.

A Swede is just another name for a turnip right? A turnip is known as a Neep in Scotland, as in Neeps n Tatties....

No wonder people have language problems over here.

12:12 / 25.12.03

far as I’m concerned you’ve got a west-country accent and an Aga and a cat called Suzie Creamcheese.

Thank you, Bed Head. Although I'm not quite sure if I've been complimented, I'm highly amused none the less.

But what's an Aga?

13:48 / 25.12.03

Aga - giant stove/cooker contraption that’s the centrepiece of any ‘traditional’ kitchen worth its salt. Very expensive, but also bloody difficult to remove once they’ve been installed, so they’re much beloved of 1. Horrible posh people, and 2. Fab hippies with nice houses. The British clone Cusm, your Earth 2 counterpart if you will, had one, as well as the accent and the cat, and was a fine cook and a general all-round wise geezer etc etc. I wish I still knew him.

So anyway, what in heaven’s name are ‘grits’?

14:28 / 25.12.03

Grits are rough corn meal cereal, basicly. If you've ever had Cream of Wheat, its like that, but with corn, and a bit chunkier. Makes for a sandpapery mashed-potato like side dish that is tasty with butter. They're, well, gritty.

14:29 / 25.12.03

A hot cereal dish, like oatmeal, but made from hominy--that is, corn (or, as you call it, maize) that's been hulled and then air-dried. Hominy is known in Mexican cooking as pozole.

Grits is most commonly found in the southern US, where it is served as a breakfast or as a side dish--a bowl of whitish mush with a pat of butter and a sprinkling of salt & pepper.

Brigade du jour

17:08 / 25.12.03

Sorry for travelling rearwards, but I was talking to my Dad earlier about the cutlery issue, and he's been to the US many times and noticed that people there hold the knife differently when sawing through food. They hold it knuckles-down-and-fingers-up, which to me is upside down and surely makes it harder. Are they just showing off how strong they are?

17:13 / 27.12.03

Maybe they're just dumb. I dunno, I wield fork and knife at once, forking with the left, in the British manner. Efficiency wins over culture and manners. Then again, as Bed Head points out, I might just be an undercover Brit in disguise. I had never given much thought to the dreams of black suited men and bright lights before...

09:27 / 20.01.06

I notice in the TV schedules that ITV4 is showing a series called Wanted, which is, as far as I can tell, a straight-faced police procedural. However, I notice that the second episode is called Rubbing One Out.

Now, a brief survey of my colleagues suggests that in the UK at least you don’t have to be an aficionado of masturbation euphemisms like me to find that sniggersome, but as far as I can tell, the innuendo is completely unintentional. Is this another example of how we are divided by a common language? Is that an entirely innocent phrase in the US?

09:55 / 20.01.06

Hehe. That's priceless. You'll have to watch it Smoothly and look for the subtext. I'm sure it'll be there if you look for it. It is a cop show after all. Plenty of guns being unloaded, etc.

This is a great thread! I'm off to think of some questions ...

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

10:22 / 20.01.06

Is it time for me to make my "Stop! Or you'll shoot!!!" joke again?

Interestingly, I had grits for the first time at Christmas, as they were part of the wonderful (and huge) Christmas breakfast laid on by Lilly and Tango-Mango. Quite nice, actually. I was expecting something- well, grittier, really.

Mon Oncle Ignatius

10:46 / 20.01.06

Grits are not bad at all - I've quite got into them, though they have to be shipped over here for us.

A bit like slightly firmer semolina. Aha - I now see that the latter is known in Americky as Cream of wheat

10:57 / 20.01.06

You'll have to watch it Smoothly and look for the subtext. I'm sure it'll be there if you look for it. It is a cop show after all. Plenty of guns being unloaded, etc.

Well, the synopsis does say "When three members of a notorious Korean gang escape while in transit to an LA prison, Conrad and his team must drop everything to capture them."
Sounds like those Koreans are going to have to deal with some seriously frustrated adversaries.

11:03 / 20.01.06

Is ["rubbing one out"] an entirely innocent phrase in the US?

Not so much innocent as hopelessly archaic. To rub [someone] out was 1930s gangster slang for assassination, a targeted killing—but no one has said it unironically since the days of Edward G. Robinson.

To rub one out as slang for masturbation, on the other hand, is current but not common (cf. the near-universal jerk off)—I first encountered it in print in Rolling Stone some ten years ago, but it remains relatively obscure. I suspect that the writer thought he was making a terribly clever double entendre—or, as the English call it, 'avin a larf.

On the other side of the coin, I remember being in hysterics when the English boy who sat next to me in junior-high biology made a mistake in writing and asked me if he could borrow a rubber.

11:35 / 20.01.06

"When three members of a notorious Korean gang escape while in transit to an LA prison, Conrad and his team must drop everything to capture them."

I understand that dropping everything is often a prelude to rubbing one out.

12:11 / 20.01.06

(cf. the near-universal jerk off)

Out of interest, is ‘jerk off’ near-universal across genders, in the way that in the UK ‘rubbing one out’ is genitally non-specific?

I remember being in hysterics when the English boy who sat next to me in junior-high biology made a mistake in writing and asked me if he could borrow a rubber

Although sometimes it can be a blessing that a great many phrases get lost in translation, rather than just a few, as any Stateside Brit who has asked to ‘bum a fag’ will appreciate.

12:51 / 20.01.06

See also: the great hilarity and confusion that can come from the word "fanny"...

15:44 / 20.01.06

To rub one out as slang for masturbation, on the other hand, is current but not common

I don't know about that. It seems common in my experience.

Re. Smoothly's question, I don't think "jerking off" tends to be universal across genders. I've heard it used for girls, but not often - usually some other phrase it used, though I can't seem to think of a common one off the top of my head.

19:16 / 20.01.06

The U.S. gender-specific form of jerking off:
His: Jacking off
Hers: Jilling off

The Natural Way

18:19 / 21.01.06

Bear, I really do not understand, you mean to say you have gone through yr entire life confusing swedes with turnips? No, lovely bearok, the two are not the same vegetable.

Weird.

19:08 / 22.01.06

in england we(they) call the little white and purple root vegetables turnips and the bigger darker orangey/purpley root vegetables swedes. as far as i know, in some parts of scotland these names are reversed.

in the u.s. we call the orangey/purpley ones turnips and the whitish ones rutabaga.

i have been workiong in the organic veg industry for tooo long.

21:13 / 23.01.06

No, no -- white+purple = turnip, golden orange (and large) = rutabaga!

16:10 / 25.01.06

the plot thickens...

my yankee mama (and the rest of the family) calls the orange ones turnips. maybe there is some kind of north/south thing going on with these vegetables.

16:32 / 25.01.06

Turnip/Swede/Rutabaga/Neep/Jicama...

Wikipedia Explains All.

17:00 / 25.01.06

in england we(they) call the little white and purple root vegetables turnips and the bigger darker orangey/purpley root vegetables swedes. as far as i know, in some parts of scotland these names are reversed.

This is true.

17:13 / 25.01.06

The Wikepedia article confirms:

However, in some dialects of British English the two vegetables have overlapping or reversed names. In the north of England and Scotland, the larger, yellow rutabagas are called turnips (sometimes shortened to neeps in Scotland), while the smaller white turnips are called swedes.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

18:38 / 25.01.06

Yeah, but you guys have zucchini and eggplant instead of courgettes and aubergines (good British words, those. Not a hint of- what's that you say? FRENCH??? Pass me the eggplant!)

Lilly Nowhere Late

19:13 / 25.01.06

(boring but silly story follows):

One day T-M and I were moving furniture after having painted(decorated{it was only paint, no curtains or rugs,etc...})and I was being as particular as ever about the placement of furniture. I suggested we put the "hutch" over there. T-M looked at me in horror and said,"We're not getting a rabbit!" I replied in my puzzled way, "Wha...?" He exclaimed,"I'm not getting a rabbit and I'm not having one in the house! They chew up cables and smell and F's too small to even play with a rabbit!!!(etc, and with some swear words I believe)" I said, "I don't want a rabbit here, just the chest of drawers."
This was at least 4 years or so into our Amerikan/English relationship of confusement.
We still don't have a rabbit or enough drawers(meaning places to put stuff in, not underwear)

Mono, in the south we definitely reverse the turnips(small purple/white)and the rutabega(r)s(big orangy/purple) from you guys(y'all) in the north.

Who ever thought of digging up and eating any of them was just wrong.

19:47 / 25.01.06

Pish. You just haven't had mine. They're delicious.

I think the Filipino jicama-as-turnip thing is nuts, though. They're *all* different.

13:24 / 26.01.06

Yeah, jicama and turnip are nothing alike. Jicama looks more potato-like. Maybe if a turnip and a potato had babies.

And they're good in salad. Or just sliced up raw. Crunchy. I'd never eat a turnip that way, they're meant to be stewed.

15:54 / 26.01.06

Actually, raw turnip cut very fine isn't too different from a radish. Important component in a lot of Asian pickles (if pickled counts as raw - still crunchy, anyway).

----

Back on topic, how did the different meanings of "jumper" evolve?

16:06 / 26.01.06

what different meanings? What does jumper mean in the States?

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