9 ms·
Words known better in the US than in the UK, and vice versa
- abridgett 5y agoRather interesting! It'd be great to have a quick definition popup so help answer the obvious "what the heck does _that_ mean?" questions.
- nwiswell 5y agoIs acetaminophen not available OTC in the UK? I am baffled by the disparity otherwise.
- nly 5y agoWe call it paracetamol. You will also find Aspirin is rarely used OTC here.
- nwiswell 5y ago> We call it paracetamol. And at that looks like acetaminophen is the "adopted" (made up) name -- huh. The chemical name is N-acetyl-para-aminophenol, which explains why I see it called "APAP" in medical contexts.
- nly 5y agoNow try and lookup "TCP" One big difference in the UK to the US is we seem to use far fewer brand names when it comes to medicine. Except Savlon. Savlon is forever in everyones childhood memories
- rahimnathwani 5y agoThe data suggest that over 80% of people in the UK know what 'pelmet' means. I had to look it up, so the 80% number surprises me. Perhaps it's because I've always bought blinds instead of curtains, or maybe the sample isn't representative? Or maybe I just need to pay more attention...
- lawlorino 5y ago> The data suggest that over 80% of people in the UK know what 'pelmet' means I think it's whether they recognise it as a real word or not, not if they understand the meaning. From the paper: > For each vocabulary test, a random sample of 67 words and 33 nonwords was selected. For each letter string, participants had to indicate whether or not they knew the stimulus.
- merlyn 5y agoYou can see the original vocab test that provided the report data still available at http://vocabulary.ugent.be/ http://vocabulary.ugent.be/
- petepete 5y agoI have curtains in just about every window and had never heard of a pelmet. I just have exposed rails like an unsophisticated peasant.
- elevaet 5y agoI was surprised that 'kebob' isn't a well-known word in the UK. I believe it's a 'kebab' in the UK, which seems so close. As a Canadian I was disappointed to find my familiarities sided more on the US side than the UK. Now excuse me as I go look up 'gazump' ...
- sdflhasjd 5y agoKerbside is listed as being unknown to americans so people do seem sensitive to spelling
- raverbashing 5y agoMakes me want to say "yes I am sensitive to spelling. Especially to misspelled words ;) " (especially as curb having the same origin as curve) but yeah, it's not hard to see what it means.
- anfilt 5y agoSeems like it was spelled that way looking at the etymology to differentiate kurb and curb. Seems like when horses were still prominent curb referred to a strap used on horses. https://www.etymonline.com/word/kerb#etymonline_v_1818 https://www.etymonline.com/word/kerb#etymonline_v_1818 Basically, curb was a type of restraint meant to hold back. So a curb/kurb on the street is just a tiny retaining wall holding back dirt. Some times it is fun to look at etymology. Also makes phrases "like curb your ambition" make more sense.
- ziftface 5y agoWait is it really called a "kerb" in the UK?
- bambataa 5y agoThe “kerb” in the UK is the step between the road surface and the bit the pedestrians walk on. More properly “kerbstone” I guess.
- freddiecoleman 5y agoFrom the UK. Can confirm I know almost all of the UK words and none of the US words.
- saberience 5y agoAs a Brit who lived in the US for roughly ten years, I knew most of them... which I guess is unsurprising. I didn't know albuterol, we called that ventolin when I was a kid. I also didn't know kwanza and manicotti, I guess those are due to the Italian and Jewish cultural influences in the US.
- azinman2 5y agoKwanzaa is specific to African-American culture.
- Ancapistani 5y agoMoreover, it's a holiday that was explicitly created in 1966. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kwanzaa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kwanzaa To be clear, I'm not stating a position of value judgement with this statement; it seems relevant to me to state it because it's not even a well-known thing in the United States. An older person from the UK would have had very little chance to be exposed to it.
- danans 5y ago> kwanza and manicotti, I guess those are due to the Italian and Jewish cultural influences in the US. Kwanza is an African American holiday.
- saberience 5y agoSee, I was testing you. :) You get an A+
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- stevekemp 5y agoAs a Brit I can say that Kwanza I know only from Futurama.
- silisili 5y agoSeems the UK lacks good Mexican food!
- tuukkah 5y agoAnd cheese variety such as the Italian provolone. (It's weird that the cheese shelves in a big supermarket basically only contained cheddars.) EDIT: To be honest, this was Tesco Ireland some 15 years ago. There may have been cheese in other forms such as soft mozzarella and powdered parmesan, but definitely no provolone, gouda, manchego, emmentaler, port salut etc. It's just natural that you might not know a cheese if your supermarket doesn't stock it. And African fish such as the tilapia.
- dagw 5y agocheese variety such as the Italian provolone Provolone seems to be a fairly 'American' cheese. I almost never see it anywhere in Europe, even in stores that otherwise have a wide selection of quality French and Italian cheeses. In the US it's far more of a staple cheese. I've also noticed that at least some cheese sold as "Provolone" in the US isn't actually from Italy, something which would not be allowed in Europe.
- gattilorenz 5y ago> Provolone seems to be a fairly 'American' cheese. It's definitely quite common in Italy (together with the smaller "provola"), but not so much in other EU countries. > I've also noticed that at least some cheese sold as "Provolone" in the US isn't actually from Italy This doesn't surprise me... I hear that there is also plenty of "Parmesan-like" cheese sold in US supermarkets too (not sure how good or bad it resembles actual Parmesan).
- dagw 5y ago"Muenster" Cheese in the US is another one that surprises people. Tastes nothing like real "Munster" cheese from Alsace. Which is making me wonder if Provolone in the US tastes anything like Provolone in Italy.
- jhoechtl 5y agoI was surprised to find the word "to abseil" being known in the UK. It clearly is of German origin and used literally (eg. to descend a mountain on a rope = Seil) as well as figuratively (to sneak out of an unpleasant situation).
- floodle 5y agoThere are a lot of very obviously German words used in the UK quite commonly: kitsch, poltergeist, doppelganger, angst, karabiner, flak...
- dagw 5y agoBoth the activity and the word seems common in the UK. We did it at least a couple of times in school as part of some "team building" adventure day. Specifically it meant lowering yourself down a vertical wall using rope, a climbing harness and a figure-8.
- leipert 5y agoThere quite a few climbing related words in English that come from German, according to this list: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_German_expressions_in_English https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_German_expressions_i... There are also a lot of „expedition“ related words (e.g. Rucksack) that made their way to Japanese. IIRC the Germans did a lot of expeditions/Mountaineering in the Himalaya, etc. and I assume that this is how these words transferred to English/Japanese.
- zwp 5y agoI wasn't aware of the figurative connotation, I will remember this next time I'm retreating from a climb. "HMS carabiner" is also common amongst anglophone climbers (for the "Halbmastwurfsicherung" knot you might use as an alternative to your sticht plate).
- kcartlidge 5y agoI have to admit that I (British) can't even think of another word to use in place of abseil, that word is so common. I've always presumed that was the only word there is for that particular activity.
- zhte415 5y agoThe chart on this page is an example why not to set viewpoint user-scalable to '0'.
- lbriner 5y agoThe irony of a site called "observablehq" and the chart is not observable on a mobile!
- nly 5y agoSomeone should do this for English speakers from Ireland and English speakers from England.
- qwerty456127 5y agoAre these even real words?
- wink 5y agoKnew 10/20 UK and 9/20 US, as a continental European. Fun article, but I am not really sure if these brand name catchall things should really count. Although Acetaminophen as a different abbreviation than Paracetamol is interesting, most people here would just ask for an Aspirin or generic painkiller (unless at the pharmacy, being exact) if they asked a friend for some painkiller - so it's either more unspecific or just wrong in this case
- HKH2 5y agoAspirin is an NSAID, whereas paracetamol/acetaminophen/Panadol is not.
- rascul 5y agoTylenol is perhaps what was meant instead of Aspirin.
- wink 5y agoNo I meant it exactly as I wrote it, without any judgement. Aspirin is just used as a generic term for painkiller by a lot of people, and until like 10-20y ago it was also the most common thing. I'd say most people are migrating to Ibuprofen these days for stuff like "I have a headache that's not killing me" but people still say Aspirin, usually followed up by a question if whatever is available is ok...
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- rascul 5y agoIn the US, Tylenol is the term commonly used instead of acetaminophen (Tylenol has been a major brand name for acetaminophen for many decades and is quite prevalent) and I thought perhaps you had Aspirin and Tylenol mixed up. I've never actually heard someone refer to Tylenol as Aspirin, and I've never heard of Aspirin being a generic term for painkiller, so I attempted to come up with what I had thought might be a more plausible explanation based on my experiences.
- blastonico 5y agoAre those words inherited from native Indigenous people? As someone who uses English as a second language and have never lived in a English native country, most of those words don't 'look English' to me.
- Ancapistani 5y agoMost of them are loan words from other languages, but not all. "Crawdad", "chigger", and "goober" stand out to me as being actually "American" in origin. A crawdad is a small fresh-water crustacean - they look like small lobsters. They're found in creeks, springs, and similar moving shallow waterways. Also known as "crawfish" or "crayfish". They're very common in the southern US. A chigger is an insect found pretty much everywhere in the South. They're so small they're effectively invisible, very common, and leave ~3-5mm itchy red bumps on your skin. If you go for a walk through tall grass, you're going to itch for days from all the chigger bites. Goober is an old word, and can mean a couple of things. It usually means "peanut". I know that in the South in the late 19th Century, peanuts were at least sometimes called "goober peas" because there was a Confederate marching song of that name. At some point it also came to mean a stupid/ignorant person. I suspect that's because of the stereotype of the poor farmers who typical grew peanuts. The mechanic on the Andy Griffith show was named "Goober", which probably either started or popularized that association.
- Mountain_Skies 5y agoIt's also the brand name for peanut butter and jelly swirled in the same jar.
- lakkal 5y agoI'm from the US and in my 50s, and read quite a bit, but never encountered the word 'bespoke' until a couple of years ago. Not sure whether it's rising in popularity or what. I see it fairly often now.
- Ancapistani 5y agoIt's been used as long as I remember for high-end custom garments. I've also seen it for a long time related to firearms in the US - but only very specifically when talking about custom, extremely high-end English rifles and shotguns. How high-end? Well, the Wiki page for Boss & Co. cites a quote by King George VI: "A Boss gun, a Boss gun, bloody beautiful, but too bloody expensive!” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boss_%26_Co https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boss_%26_Co. Basically, "bespoke" has been used in the US in reference to goods desired by or consumed by the English gentry class. Recently I've begun seeing it used to describe anything where you'd paying more for ostensibly hand-selected products. The example that comes to mind is "Bespoke Post" (https://www.bespokepost.com/ https://www.bespokepost.com/) - which is, ironically, pretty much the opposite of the historical meaning of the word. It seems like the long-term impact of the "Hipster" culture on the SV world.
- Mountain_Skies 5y agoIt's interesting how quickly a word can gain widespread acceptance. I don't recall seeing "payed" used outside of nautical contexts before a few years ago but now it's rapidly pushing "paid" out of use. It might not be to the 50% point yet but it's certainly spreading in use quickly and might become dominate soon.
- jscholes 5y agoIt grinds my gears that "tamale" is on this list. The singular of tamales, in Spanish, is "tamal". God forbid English speakers have to remember to drop one syllable.
- dang 5y agoRecent and related: Words known better by males than females, and vice versa - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30275159 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30275159 - Feb 2022 (631 comments)