Jeremy Stein - Journal

British English

Traveling to the UK? Actually, you’d be “travelling” to the UK. Time to learn the Queen’s spelling.

Here are some words that are different in the grandmother country.

Surgery – Doctor group office of General Practitioners (GPs). Confused me terribly when I was just trying to find the closest family doctor and didn’t want to get operated on.

Tuition – Tutelage, not money. If you want to improve your golf game, you might get some tuition.

Subway – Not the underground train (that’s the tube). These are the walkways that go under the road to get non-drivers safely through a roundabout (Boston-level-crazy traffic circle).

Crèche – Nursery. For the little ones during church.

Barbie – Barbecue. Probably not as good as a Texas BBQ, but it will involve grilled meat.

Dodgems – Bumper cars. Apparently Americans emphasise the bumping and Britons the dodging.

Take away – Take out, i.e. from a restaurant.

Constructor – Construction worker. This is so logical, I’m not sure why we don’t use it.

Tomato sauce – Ketchup. The watered down tomato paste we know as tomato sauce is not a concept in British cooking.

Table – If you table a discussion, that means you start talking about it (unlike in the States, where it means the opposite).

Momentarily – Generally means “for a moment” rather than “in a moment”.

Paracetamol – Exactly the same thing as Acetaminophen (i.e. Tylenol). Oddly, the dosing is different. The British don’t seem to worry as much about their livers.

Kerb – The noun “curb”. You still curb behaviour, but your car runs over the kerb (a more frequent occurrence in the UK).

High Street – Main Street.

Overleaf – Other side of the page. Such a beautifully concise term. Needs to be adopted in the States.

Jeremy Stein - Journal

British English

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