20 British words that don’t sound real with Heather
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- čas přidán 11. 06. 2024
- Lived here this long and still get surprised with new words.
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Someone who farms is a farmer. Someone who jokes is a joker. Someone who burgles is a burglar. Burglarize is an American latter-day invention. I'm not jokerizing.
Thank you :D
What’s funny is I would call a joker a jokester, as an American
I think burglarized is regional even in the US. I would just say robbed. A burglar robs someone
@@tomrogue13 in British law, robbery is when violence is used and burglary is without violence
“Joker” is synonymous with “jester” in my American brain and would not call just anyone a joker lol Like Anna, I would say “jokester,” or maybe even “clown/clowning around” depending when referring to someone cracking jokes. That said, I find “burglarize” to be too much of a mouthful &, while I’ve heard it used, “rob/robbed/robber” is used far more frequently where I grew up in the pacific northwest of the US. Language & how it’s used differently around the world & even in different regions of the same country is just so… interesting? 😂
If you've been burglarised it means someone has converted you into a burgler so you can burgle people.
Burglar
@@mariansheilamansilla6431 yes
Omg, that's it!😂
Only thing left is to figure out is why we are here?😒
@@libraryofthoughts0 because if we weren't here, we'd be elsewhere.
Makes sense. When you pulverize a rock, you "pulver" it, make it into dust.
It's actually drawn from the concept of "whispering grass". The story from antiquity where the Kings counsel knows a secret about the king, but knows he will be sentenced to death if he ever told anyone. However his urge to tell someone is so great, he digs a hole in the ground, and whispers the secret into the hole and fills it in. To his horror, the secret is betrayed by the grass which grows out of the ground, in the sound it makes as the wind moves through it...
I never knew that! Thanks now I understand the song whisper grass better. 🎶😳🤠
This is fantastic, I will remember this for ever and it also makes so much sense.
Well, well, well. 😮
Wikipedia says it's from "snake in the grass", and also gives rhyming slang "grasshopper =copper", which sounds a bit dubious to me.
In Northern I reland growing up in the Troubles, a tout (and for scalper people would more likely say ticket tout than ticket touter) was also a word for an informer or grass. And then rhyming slang would take over and there was graffiti that said "BRUSSELS SPROUTS WILL BE SHOT"
*King Midas has asses' ears".
"when you have a bag of potatoes you'd call that a hessian sack" I'd call that a sack of spuds personally
same
As in a scruffy person, they are tied up ugly like a sack of spuds.
Exactly !
Especially as Sacks now are mostly plastic.
A traditional sack is made of sacking (sackcloth sounds like Bible-speak). We just don't use "hessian sack" as a collocation as Americans do "burlap sack" for sacking, even if it is actually made of hessian. A sack is a sack, and if it's made of plastic it's a plastic sack.
I’m totally with you on this.
Sack of potato’s is what I’ve always called it. ( spuds is an even better word )
In the UK, I've heard cuddly toy and stuffed animal. But for me, all my stuffed animals were 'teddies' - regardless of whether they were bears or not.
Cuddly toy, stuffed animal, soft toy... we have a load of words for them!!! The eBay UK search category is literally: Soft Toys & Stuffed Animals
@@elaineb7065 They deserve all the lovely terms we give them!
Yeah I’d often used teddy bear for cuddly toys that were other animals. But usually only animal ones. Like if it was a soft toy car or block, I’d say soft toy or cuddly toy.
Am I showing my age when I associate 'cuddly toy' with Bruce Forsythes generation game 😅
I've watched so much youtube recently that I think "plushy" is replacing cuddly toy for me - so many content creators make them, even including some British ones that I follow, and that all call those things plushies - so that's becoming my standard word now.
"grass" is also British slang for an informer, which is believed to have originated from the phrase "snake in the grass," meaning a hidden threat or untrustworthy person.
Also, you grass someone _up_ not _out_ - at least, that's the term I've always heard and used for 50+ years.
6:20 - Yes! I thought it was a abbreviated version of "a snake in the grass..."
alternative is grasshopper -> copper
@@chrissampson6861 wouldn't that be rhyming slang?
@@AyaBlue22 yes it would be.
You don't grass someone out, you grass someone UP. A person isn't a ticket touter, he's a ticket tout. And skiving is not so much bunking off school, as avoiding doing work, usually by finding somewhere else to be.
When you guys are saying "draught", Evan is saying it in a northern accent and Heather in a southern accent which made me smile..... (as a northerner!) :D
'burglerize' sounds like it was coined by someone trying to sound smart but they aren't
The first time I heard it was from George Bush so you're spot on!😁
burgled sounds like someone was gargling and someone mistook it for a word.
Sounds like some real kinky shit....
I'm a Canadian, and I'd consider "a shill" and "a plant" to be 2 different things. If a presenter is secretly paid to present a company in a favourable light, they'd be "a shill", but if an audience member is called upon to speak and they were "planted" in the audience in advance to fulfill part of the presenter's bit, then the audience member would be "a plant".
That's how I, a British person, think of it as well. Plants are a common tactic in magic shows or scam street performers
As an American, this is my understanding of these words as well.
what if he or she was a triffid?
@@jazzzzdude A carnivorous plant who can walk?
A shill is a plant, a plant isn't necessarily a shill.
As a Northerner, I've never heard of "wagging off". Skiving is absolutely the word
Aussies use wagging school but not wagging off
I'm a northerner and would use both skiving and wagging!
@@Lily_The_Pink972 I'm a southerner. We go to school. 😂
@@ianz9916 Hey, I always did as well!! My mum worked at my junior school!!
My favourite version of "Builder's Bum" that we use is "Workman's Smile". It manages to be both cute and horrifyingly evocative.
Usually accessorised with the elasticated part of their underpants. 🤣
@@j0hnf_uk
Surely that can only ever be regarded as TMI ... Lol!!?!!
It's called a plumber's smile in french, I guess this smile is universal.
Never heard that one before, and I'm ancient, and I was a builder years ago. I like it, though!
Plimsolls were named after Samuel Plimsoll, a politician who campaigned for safety regulations on merchant shipping in the 19th century. He was known as the sailor's friend and is most remembered by the Plimsoll Line, which indicates when a ship is sufficiently loaded. It was a common type of shoe for sailors.
For many years I have seen it as a relation of the Deck Shoe.
We called them daps.
This makes sense. I had teachers in school who came from the east coast of the US who referred to these shoes as deck shoes and had a grandfather who was in the US Navy during WW2 (and from New Hampshire originally) who literally referred to them as boat shoes. So it’s neat finding out the connection! Thanks for sharing this info!
Growing up in Scotland, my (English) Dad used to call them Plimsoles and I got teased mercillessly for that. The "correct" name was Sandshoes (thanks Dad).
@@iaina3251 Wikipedia reveals that there are numerous local synonyms for these shoes. The defining features are a solid rubber sole to which a canvas "upper" is glued. They used to have laces, but later had an elastic insert.
Grass has a couple of possible origins one is that it comes from the rhyming slang for policeman, which is grasshopper / copper.
The grass would inform the copper.
The other is it is a shortening of "snake in the grass"
To me, it sounds more like setting someone up by planting weed on them
Yep. I looked it up in the Oxford English Dictionary. The OED says "In use with reference to a police officer or informer (see sense 12) probably short for grasshopper n. (compare sense 11 at that entry, although that is first recorded later with reference to an informer). Alternatively, it has been suggested that this sense may have arisen as a shortening of grass in the park (20th cent.; also grass park ), rhyming slang for nark n. (compare nark n. 2), but this is more likely to have developed from the ‘informer’ meaning of main sense."
But personally I'd never heard the term "grasshopper" in this sense before, and as I know it a "grass" is never a police officer, it's someone who isn't in authority themselves but reports things to the authorities - whether police, teachers, management or any other authority figure.
I've also hear grass hopper short for shopper, i.e someone who shops you.
It's 'shopper' -- 'grass(hopper)'
Also, if you told on someone to the police to get them out of the way, you'd be "putting them out to grass", so that's probably a third meaning of grass, in this context.
The one that always gets me is suspenders, as in men’s ones holding up trousers/pants. We call those braces in the UK. And yes we call tooth straighteners braces too. Suspenders are for women to hold up stockings.
Garter belts hold up womens stockings
There is a different word for 'skiving' pretty much everywhere in the UK. Sometimes it's a different word from one side of town to another. Bunking, skiving & wagging are all pretty common & recognisable anywhere but there's usually a more specific local version. In Northern York it was Jiggin'.
Bunking and skiving feel more posh or old fashioned to me, while wagging was the preferred term at my school (officially the 3rd worst school in the country when I was there, according to Ofsted)
I'm from Hull. It was always twagging to me. "He's twagging school today"
Ah the wonderful British lexicon - I would like to add 'Mitch/mitching' for avoiding school. whereas skiving is generally avoiding work. ie. That Evan, never around when you need him, he's probably skiving again
Dogging It was the term when I was at school in Scotland
Definitely mitching off where I’m from
For the school one we used the term "bunking off". There are, in fact, many different words for skipping school in the UK, just depends on the region and or dialect.
In England (or more precisely London) words such as bunking, skipping and truanting is more commonly used
@@nurseii9018Mitching, down here in Devon.
Jigging off, in York.
@@moschops2002 Sagging in Liverpool
Manchester it was wagging off. But I would say do you fancy skiving off? When asking a friend to join.
Poor Heather is questioning her entire existence now. 😂😅
"builder's bum" has a the perfect alliteration
My mum was from Armagh (NI) and she would call plimsolls 'gutties'. I believe it is based on Gutta-percha which is an old Malay word for rubber.
Gutters in the west of Scotland as well.
In Bristol plimsolls are daps
Died laughing when Evan was trying to describe a waistcoat and Heather was so confused lol I kept shouting "it's a waistcoat" and then she said it lol
Yup, as a Dutch person I totally believed "Builder's Cleavage", as we have "bouwvakkersdecolleté" which translates to literally the same. Also, we call hickies a "zuigzoen", wich is literally a "suck kiss". Weird how languages can differ and how they can be the same.
The Netherlands is fast becoming native English speaking. I lived in NL for my teens and I visited this year and I barely heard any Dutch spoke. I was speaking dutch to ‘front of house’ staff that couldn’t speak Dutch 🤔. Waar voor heb ik Nederlands geleerd 🤣
In Germany it’s bricklayers décolleté. Maurer Dekolleté
In Icelandic, a builder's cleavage is just called 'a plumber' - 'pípari'.
@@boxtradums0073 Om mijn comments te kunnen lezen, natuurlijk!
Maar ik ken je probleem wel, en het is een beetje jammer :/
I was about to comment the same thing :)
Although I would also mention that I heard _sourire de plombier_ (plumber's grin) for the same thing in French, which is also interesting.
It is going to blow Evan's mind when he learns what the word 'bugger' means. I remember the first time I heard the American term boogerman (in England it is bogey man btw and a bogey is something horrid that might come out of your nose when you blow it) . Well anyway, I interpreted to mean bugger man and found it hilarious. Also, my wife is from california and we discussed how fanny means something different in England to in America. My wife was studying at the time, and her teacher congratulated everyone for, "working off their fannies!" It was the best day ever because she explained what fanny means in English English. Btw bugger means to insert a todger up a rectum, and where fanny means the groove at the rear in America, in England it also refers to an opening at the front commonly found on a woman. Please enjoy this information 🥰
In the UK we had the buggery act making it illegal whereas in the US it's the soddomy act (biblical reference to Sodom and Gomorrah being metaphors for homosexuality and/or crimes against nature)
It's boogeyman, not booger man. A booger is hardened mucus from the nose. Bogey is an enemy intruder.
@@michaelrue1400 bogey is also hardened nasal mucus
The act is buggery, whereas someone who does it is deemed a bugger. That being the literal meaning, of course. Generally, it's used to describe someone being churlish, acting strange or even someone looked upon with a degree of contempt. 'Look at that daft bugger over there!' 'Oooh, you dirty bugger!'
@j0hnf_uk not necessarily churlish. Bugger is a placeholder for anything really. It is used playfully as much as it is used to express frustration. Bugger is one of those versatile words, and it depends on the person using it and their mood as to what it means
Important to note that the US is so big that there are few idioms that we ALL say. I've never heard anyone say "burglarized". If someone breaks in and steals things, you were robbed. And "playing hooky" is considered an old-fashioned phrase in Ohio; we would usually say we "ditched" school. But I do find these videos very interesting, thanks!
If you were robbed that something that happened directly to you. And burglarized is something that happened to your house when you weren't there.
Plimsolls are rubber soled shoes for sailing boats. They were also suitable gyms because they have wooden floors.
I looked them up and they reminded me of Keds, from the US.
I went to primary school before uniforms where mandatory and we changed into plimsolls for games.
Plimsoll was a 19th century politician, Secretary of the Navy. He also gave his name to the Plimsoll Line, the safe loading limit for a ship.
They're called gutties in Scotland and Northern Ireland, not sure about Wales.
Daps.
im canadian and have never heard the word burglarized and burgled sounds much better to me
I'm Canadian also and only say Burglarize, never burgled
@@tuxcatjodi So somebody who plays a trumpet is a trumpetizer? Do birds tweetize....
Congrats on never burgling
Also Canadian and would say burglarized instead of burgled
@@DanTheCaptain strange
As an USian living in the UK for the last 6 years I cannot explain how much I enjoy this content
😊 Do please try?!
This could be even more 'fun'?!!😊😅😂
A Thief is someone who steals something, a Robber is someone who steals something from premises without breaking in, someone that breaks & enters to steal something is a Burglar.
So a bank robbery usually occurs while the bank is open but a burglary usually takes place at night or when the crime-scene is locked up.
Not so, a Robbery in law is using violence or threats of violence to steal or attempt to steal.
@@Eastlomond if you’re allowed in the property and you take goods without paying it’s theft. So shoplifting is theft. If you aren’t allowed in the property and take something it’s theft. If you take something from someone in a public place it’s robbery.
Scotland may have different definitions.
The origin derives from rhyming slang: grasshopper - copper; a "grass" or "grasser" tells the "copper" or policeman. So similar to narc.
Grass is also a slang term for canabis, so it's on the narc theme.
I read that it came from "shop". To shop someone was to rat on them so a rat was a "shopper" which turned into "grasshopper"
Either way it works I suppose.
And rhyming slang was developed to fool the police, so grasshopper, shopper becoming grass makes sense.
Meanwhile, the cannabis connection is highly unlikely.
The rhyming slang derivations make sense, but I suspect it stayed around as part of criminal argot because of the idea of the 'snake in the grass'. Similar to 'rat' as both noun and verb. In prison, at least in Australia, a 'rat' is also a 'dog' - either way, a reputation to avoid! In schoolboy slang, it was a 'sneak' amongst other terms, and in Australia, a 'dobber' - one who dobbed you in.
@@philroberts7238 we use dobber in the U.K. too.
Yeah, but you see that face you pulled when you contemplated the word "love bite". I pulled the same face when I thought about "hickies". To me, hickies sounds like a disease, like measles or something, or some kind of spot.
Like shingles.
Although I would say love bite over hicky, why are we disputing which term should be used when it is wierd they are even a thing. I've never wanted one and it felt weird giving one. At least kissing and sex feels good but love bites look like a bruise on your neck. They neither look or feel good. Just stupid
@@user-ww1ez3kj6i It's basically a territory marker for people too timid to just wear a collar :P
Back in the early days, footballers wore actual ankle length boots with studs made from laminated leather. In the late 1950s/early 60s the boots became more lightweight and cut below the ankle with plastic soles and either moulded or screw in studs.
I am french, I have lived in the UK for nearly 23 years, and when my son joined a football club a year ago, I had to google the term "football boots" which was on the list of the required kit. As a learner in France I had learned that boots were what the Americans call boots (and yet we were taught british English..)
Any footwear that goes over the ankle joint is called a 'boot' (at least when it was devised) - hence:
Wellington boots
Football boots
Ruby boots
Ski boots
Snow boots
Riding boots
Walking boots
Climbing boots
Boxing boots
etc
The term 'boot' actually comes from French, and is still similar to 'bottes'.
In French the term is something like 'chaussures de football' - which translates as 'football shoes' - perhaps the difference is that the game was formalised earlier in the UK and around that time the football boots really did look like boots, being above the ankle, with hard toe-caps - think less Kylian Mbappé and more Vinnie Jones ;-)
I laughed when I first heard an American say burglarised, I thought they'd made it up, it just sounds so unecessarily lengthened. Hey why not add some more, burglarisationalismist!
it makes sense though because so many other verbs have the IZE suffix. like you wouldn't say demoned in place of demonize.
Most of us say robbed by a robber.
look at how we spell things, unnecessary length is clearly our thing LOL Through for one.
@@Okayiranga Press if you push down on something. Pressurise if you blow lots of air or another gas into something. Pressurize[sic] if you don't know how to spell properly.
Someone who " burgles" is a " burgler". The past tense of to burgle is " burgled", not " burglarised"
"Plant" is most likely a shortened version of industry plant - like if a company paid someone to "shill" in an open forum, said company would've "planted" them there.
"Upmarket" refers to catering to a higher market segment, makes more sense to me than "upscale", as like Heather said, it could be confused as referring to size.
Yes, exactly.
Or it's a posh shop....
…. And I would (from the north) pronounce ‘plant’ closer to an American than what the other ‘plaauuuunt’ 😅
What's interesting to me is that some of these British words are identical to the corresponding German words.
For example:
Builder's Cleavage is Bauarbeiterdekolleté which is used often in Germany. It's a direct translation of Builder's Cleavage.
And
Cuddly Toy which is Kuscheltier
The direct translation would be Cuddly Animal, but it's very similar.
On the subject of Germany, in America they refer as kindergarten which is very German, whereas in England it is called playschool
@@user-ww1ez3kj6i When I was young (in early 2000s southern England) it was never "playschool", but "nursery" or "playscheme".
@@nathangamble125 I was born in 1980, Leicester. Playschool was what it was called where I went
I call it a „Maurerdécolleté“.
@@user-ww1ez3kj6i Or nursery, which I admit is confusing because that can also be a babies bedroom or a place that you buy plants for the garden.
I'm always amazed at how amazed US citizens are that other countries have different words to describe things.
But then a good percentage of them don't know there is a whole big world outside their borders.
Especially when said county is England, where their language was formed.
Amazing isn't it ? 😂
The thing I find that’s fascinating about the UK verses the US is the UK is a smaller country yet we have more variety of words. Like the school down the road you’d use different words to describe the same thing.
I always thought grass came from Cockney rhyming slang
That's because as a country we had thousands of years of people not being able to move further than about 10 miles from home on a large scale whereas the US has always been able to move people around the country so the language is a lot more uniform.
@@lloydcollins6337 but it’s still applying today, so I don’t think it can be exclusively due to that. The accents maybe a bit but there are new words that are very localised. Like an unfortunate derogatory name when I was at primary school i didn’t realise was specifically due to the special needs school down the road. A horrible word I didn’t even realise the meaning of until I was an adult, but a localised newer word. It happens a lot more in the UK I find, maybe cause a community to us is a smaller area. Like whenever I hear ‘a small town in America’ and they mention the population I’m like ‘how is that small?’ Lol
That's because it's not about the size of the country but the age of the country. Words change over time: the longer the words are around the more they change
South London slang versus North of the river slang too. I noticed this the first time I worked north of the river.
In France we say "le sourire du plombier" (the plumber's smile) for "Builder's Cleavage", it's even weirder :)
I really like that😊
I shall use when I visit my sister's in France next month, that will make her laugh (she's been living in France for 40 years)
I love that! Much better than builders bum!😂
In Finland we say "rekkamiehen hymy" (the truckers smile) for "builders cleavage" which I think is way farther down on the weird road. Although I've heard the "putkimiehen hymy" (plumbers smile) also.
In German we say Maurerdekolletté = mason's cleavage 🤷♀️
@@yp1851 Ahah with have a "Mason's smile" version too :))
Plimsoles represent a specific type of shoe worn for PE in the 70s and before. A thin rubber sole with little to no cushioning, and a stretchy canvas upper without laces. They became less popular with the advent of trainers which are the equivalent of sneakers.
Stenographer is definitely used in UK courts and elsewhere... Parliament replaced shorthand reporters with stenographic reporters, who used stenograph machines to take phonetic shorthand records of what was said.
Evan has only touched the tip of the iceberg. If he really delved, the regional variations would make his head spin.
do you think he's discovered Wassailing yet?
Like in some parts of the UK the word "while" has the same meaning as "until" which brings a whole new meaning to "do not cross while the green man is flashing".
@@Chemlak1I live somewhere people say that and i can't accept it!!
@@silkvelvet2616 wait til he comes across Morris dancing
A stenographer is someone who is skilled using a stenograph which is a keyboard machine that produces "shorthand" symbols that represent spoken words. A shorthand typist records the spoken word manually with pen and paper using "shorthand" symbols. They then type-up these symbols as normal text for distribution. Interestingly, I have only ever seen stenographs used in American courtroom dramas. According to my dictionary though, the two words mean exactly the same thing in both US and UK English.
Yeah, that one made me think "Whut? No, two different things!"
Came here to say exactly this. A stenographer would be called a courtroom recorder or a stenographer.
Short hand typists are a completely different thing altogether.
I grew up calling plimsolls pumps. We had lace ups and slip ons. They were either white or black, made of canvas and had rubber soles. We used to clean the white ones with a special white paste.
This was really good fun. More, please, Evan.
One that got under the radar here was 'momentarily'. In the US it means IN a moment, but in the UK it means FOR a moment. So when one of my (British) teachers went to the US and was on a plane when he was told that they would take off momentarily...
and THEN wHAT HAPPENS?!!! Is this a boat?
it has wheels right?
That one has puzzled me. I just assumed that the American usage was illiteracy.
In Denmark, some of us call the visible buttcrack on a bent-over builder a "coin slot" (møntindkast).
Others are more boring and call it a "manual labourer's crack" (håndværkersprække).
I love this one best!
It’s often called a coin slot in Australia too.
It seems like builders bums are a global phenomenon that deserve to be named
Here in Germany, it's usually called "Maurer Dekolleté" (bricklayers décollete). If enough is shown, it might also be referred to as a "bike stand".
We do coin slot in america! high school, if you had one you literally got coins put down it lol
Upmarket makes sense because we call the grocery store the supermarket. Feel like heather forgot that at the end 😂
Yep upmarket refers to the goods being of a higher quality and price than the stores selling lower quality goods while being up scale implies a larger store does not it sells better quality goods just more selection of the same
Definitely needs multiple parts to this
In high school we had an English exchange student and she said a student who was missing in class was "wagging off."
For the last 37 years, I thought the missing student was doing something else.
The problem with wagging off in the UK is that it sounds a lot like wanking off, which may well be a reason to be off school, although it is a tad specific and sets you up for being called a walker by the whole class, including the teacher sometimes
Love bites sounds nicer than Hickies.
I’m going to use that and preserve it best I can.
Love handles for a little more fat on the hips also sounds friendlier.
Preserve it and then show it off at school by pretending to hide it!
@@philroberts7238 Why would you hide a love bite????
@@user-xi6nk4xs4s Her husband might object
@@yveslafrance2806 :o)
Canadian here. To me, skipping a class at school was either "playing hooky" or "ditching". I do also have "bunking" in my vocabulary, but to me that's "cancelling plans with friends".
I worked in construction for 20 years. We used the word builder all the time. Builders build. Demo does demo. I worked in fire damage restoration, I wasn't a builder myself. I mostly did demo and wall repair. We were all 'construction workers'.
5:50 there's also the more formal/old-school "playing truant"
6:20 one of my favourite things about narc is that in the UK we also have the term nark, with the same meaning, but (usually) spelt differently! Where narc comes from narcotics officers, nark comes from a Romani word for "nose", but again refers to someone who rats you out. Grass is an abbreviation of the older phrase "snake in the grass" which is a translation of Virgil
Ooh! Yet again, I find another Romani word that's the same in Urdu. "Naahk" is nose in urdu/hindi
"Nark" is used near the beginning of _Pygmalion._ One of the Cockney bystanders sees Higgins writing stuff down and accuses him of being a "copper's nark".
I heard it was from Cockney Rhyming Slang: Grass: Grass in the park: Nark
@@greysontyrud that's likely a folk etymology. Snake in the grass is well attested in this sense and far earlier than nark is, so getting grass from there, rather than from nark via rhyming slang is much more plausible
Plimsolls are a massively southern word. They're "pumps" up north. You would not believe the number of regional words there are for alleyway. In my particular part of the south (Sussex) we call them twittens. There are like 10 different words from different parts of the country.
I would enjoy seeing Evan's mind being blown by how many words there are for alley 😛 Where I come from (Sheffield) it's called a gennel, but a few miles down the road they would call it a ginnel. The same goes for all the different words for an individually portioned unit of bread (my vote is for breadcake) and the game where children chase each other (which I would call tag or tiggy). Regional variation is a wonderful thing!
Not just a southern word - we very much call them plimsolls in Scotland too, or sometime gutties
Yes definitely Pumps. If I'd have had said Plimsoll as a kid I would have been laughed out of the school.
I've lived in Sussex my entire life and never heard the word twittens before. I'm now questioning my Sussex-ness
i'm from the south west and had never heard plimsolls until recently, we always called them daps
As well as upmarket, you also have midmarket, and downmarket, it mostly denotes what one can expect to pay and how fancy it may look: 'Oh, we bought an upmarket pain au chocolat, it was divine'.
Upscale and downscale is typically used in the UK to refer to the size: 'We downscale'd from a 3 bedroom to a two bedroom house.'
Plimsolls are named after a man called Plimsoll who developed rubber souled shoes for safety on ships. The lines showing how a ship sits in the water are also Plimsoll lines.
Also, Bob the Builder had more UK number one hits than Bob Marley.
It's always interesting watching these videos from a Kiwi's perspective (i.e. the people in NZ not the bird or fruit) because so much of ours is similar to the UK, but then suddenly it's not. For example, I agree that 'plushie' is a very specific type, but we don't call them all 'cuddly toy', but rather 'soft toy' or 'stuffed toy'. I have noticed that 'plushie' has become more and more popular though, due to the American influence in our media. Also, yeah, 'Builder's cleavage' is a thing here too (although 'builder's bum', and 'plumber's crack' are also used).
As a Brit, I have also heard stuffed toy and even stuffed animal (not the taxidermy kind) but it's less common.
Pretty sure we speak the same language. I am Aussie 😂
I'm from New Zealand too and I stg that "plushie" is a very recent term. I remember back when I was a kid nobody, not even Americans, called them "plushies" - everybody called them "soft toys" or "stuffed toys". "Plushie" to me has always specifically referred to a soft toy (or "plush") version of a character that was not originally created to be a "plushie" i.e. plushies are of pre-existing characters from media, but something more generic like a teddy bear or a dinosaur stuffed toy isn't and has never been a "plushie".
@@jmckenzie962 I 100% agree
I'm from the UK and I'd say 'soft toy' is more common than 'cuddly toy'. Cuddly toy seems to mostly come from a game show (or at least it became more prominent because of that show) where the contestants would win prizes by listing what they could remember after having seen the prizes go past on a conveyor belt. 'Cuddly toy' was always one of the prizes so it became a catchphrase and caught on.
Builders cleavage exists in German as well. It’s called ‚Bauarbeiter Dekolleté‘. And I’m not making this up :D
Sometimes also more specific as Maurerdekolleté. :D
When I was in the US visiting my friend she called her handbag a "pocketbook" It sounded to me like a diary lol
That’s an old fashioned term my mother used. We usually say purse or bag.
6:19 - grass someone up? Thank the East Londoners. One theory is that the use of ‘grass’ derived from ‘grasshopper’. Grasshopper means ‘copper’ (police officer) in Cockney rhyming slang, so a person who is an informer for the police was shortened to ‘grass’.
4:40 at least in Scotland we often call that dogging, like "he's dogging school" or "I dogged history yesterday", and then you grow up and learn that dogging is something very different lol, also for narc/grass, we do use grass but also use "clipe"
Also I've never actually heard ticket touter, it's generally just a tout or occasionally a ticket tout but that might also be regional
The shoes for children are called plimsolls in the south but in Yorkshire and Merseyside they are Pumps and in the Northeast they are called sand shoes. There are probably other names I haven't heard of
I recall them being called gutties. EDITED TO ADD I'm in Central Scotland. Not sure where I learned gutties but I've lived in Stirlingshire, Lothian, Loch lomond, (lowland side, Ayrshire and for the last 40+ Years Clydesdale.
In Glasgow they’re sannies. I know that from Limmy 😂
I am from (north) Wales - I have only ever heard them described as pumps
@@TheAnalyticalEngine south wales and it’s pumps or plimsoles here, but my nan is the only person i know who says plimsoles so i think it’s an older generation thing
In parts of the South West they're called daps!
I'm surprised she didn't explain that a draught can also mean cold air coming through a gap in a window or a door!!
I grew up in india with British English but have spent the last 6 years in the US, so I love how my vocabulary has become a combination of this LOL
Shorthand Typist is a pretty much defunct term for an office worker who would take dictation from a superior, and then type it up. Word processing has pretty much obliterated the role. The person who keeps a true record of court proceedings in the UK is the Court Reporter.
Shorthand though is very much still a marketable skill. Vital for keeping notes/minutes in meetings. It will help you get that executive assistant role and much higher pay.
As a trained secretary and shorthand typist (sorry, I'm a boomer) I bemoan the demise of the secretary. Nowadays every Tom, Dick and Harry writes their own correspondence and everything is peppered with typos and ambiguities.
I'd guess that since shorthand has become a little known thing nowadays, the word itself just sounds like it refers to tiny little baby hands, instead of a different writing system.
@@HackedYoWeather The only places I’ve heard keeping some of the shorthand skills alive are anthropology (incl. similar fields, such as ethnography), where the ability to quickly and relatively unobtrusively record copious written notes still seems to be important.
I think "grass" comes from the idea of a "Snake in the grass"
Its cockney rhyming slang thats slightly changed meaning over the years. Grass-hopper copper (police officer). A bit like greg means neck; Gregory Peck Neck. So originally Grass just meant the police but over time changed to someone who would tell on you to the police.
@@GCOSBenbow That's interesting - and something I've not heard before. I just remember than if somebody outed somebody at school, everyone would start hissing at them like a 'snake'. This could be an alternative way of getting the same point across, and just have similar shortenings?
I enjoy your channel, lots of fun. Thanks.
Americans use cleats in more sports than football/soccer. We use them in cross country, baseball, American football, soccer, and occasionally in other sports involving mud and turf.
We would never use the word cleats in the UK, it is studs and studs are always on boots. I suppose runners have spikes rather than studs but they would be on running shoes or running spikes.
Australia has a mix of words from each. I like 'coin slot' for 'plumbers crack'.
In the UK its a 'fruit machine' when someone's sat on a barstool hunched over
Tout is in the OED. It means to sell in a direct or persistent manner. Sounds pretty accurate. They’re normally seen outside gigs shouting that they have spare tickets to passers by
In fact in BR English 'tout' is closer in meaning to the US 'shill' than 'plant'.
Just Tout. Never really heard touter being used.
In Danish, the term is “ticket shark” and used analogous to “loan shark” and there is a similar term to denote people who jack up rents, “housing shark” (typically including other associations of slum lords, such as poor housing conditions and unwilling to do repairs).
My parents were English and I spent some of my growing up years in England. I've been Australian for almost 50 years. In England, we used to call the people who stood in shop doorways shouting out about the wonderful goods inside "touts". They were touting for business. The people selling tickets outside sports and entertainment venues were ticket touts. In Australia they are "scalpers".
In my university nude figure drawing class a guest teacher from the UK got us laughing with a few expressions that came off oddly.
At one point he asked for a rubber. This while a young woman was modeling in the nude. We later learned it was an eraser.
Later into the class he said rather loudly he was dying for a fag. Learning it was a cigarette was far less interesting.
Language is so fun!
Bunking off school is the most common I hear in East London. In my mind, Skiving is more a sense of shirking responsibility, so better fitting work than school, but you can be physically at work and still be skiving, if, for example, you're hiding in the staff room on your phone when you should be at a reception desk serving customers.
There is also the concept of a "supergrass" - someone who informs on many of their partners in crime in order to get a lesser prison sentence. Also the name of a 90s band.
They were caught by the fuzz!
Check out Bertie Smalls, a London armed robber who became the first supergrass in London, early 1970’s.
Bleachers (as in temporary scaffolded seating) aren't really as popular over here, where people sit at football matches are called "stands" (or terraces), and are usually a permanent structure, often in concrete. The reason they are called stands is because they didn't use to have seats, people use to have to stand in terraced rows. All seater stadiums were introduced as a safety measure after a report on the Hillsborough Stadium disaster of 15 April 1989, it took five years to be introduced in 1994. Yet they retained the name stand, or terrace.
However recently (from 2022) standing was reintroduced, mainly due to push back from fans who enjoy the atmosphere created by standing, and improvements in stadium design that allow for it to occur in a safer manner than previously.
When I was a kid in Britain, a long time ago, football boots were lace-up and above your ankle. They had leather studs, made from multiple layers of leather, nailed into the soles.
Grass comes from whispering grass by the ink spots an early doo wop from the late 1940s,Whispering grass don't tell on me.
Being somewhat older than Heather, and possibly older than her dad too, sneakers weren't a thing when I was a young child. All canvas shoes were plimsolls, They were never very substantial either unlike the American sneakers my Aunt sent me, which I am guessing were basketball inspired. Anything else were trainers.
I remember getting a pair of "baseball boots" when I was very young (they were made of canvas & rubber, the rubber formed the soles, toe caps, ankle covers & heel caps), they had the name of a famous (in the US) Baseball player printed on them.
We called Plimsolls daps.
Football & Rugby boots had studs in the soles & came above the ankle, cricket boots/shoes had spikes for grip.
@@petarnovakovich240 They sound like what we used to call 'Bumper Boots.' I remember they would have a round rubber section just to protect the knuckle on the ankle.
In the area of the UK I live in, at school (60 years ago) we thought plimsoles were posh gym shoes only used at posh schools. No plimsoles for us, we has sandshoes or as we kids called them "sannies". Years later I found out the correct name for our gym shoes was in fact plimsoles. As kids we referred to any soft canvas sport shoes as "sannies". Our own home "sannies" were fairly cheap tennis shoes (Usually Adidas or Puma).
Before you ask, I have no idea why they were called sandshoes. Guessing here, maybe they were a soft cheap comfortable shoe worn on the beach that the owner didn't mind getting wet with salt water??? or boating shoes, rubber soled for grip on wet wooden decks???
Cleats were originally the things that stick out below the sole to give you grip. In British English those are either "studs" (if they're rounded like the ones for football or football or rugby) or "spikes" (if they're pointed like the ones for running on a track).
Over time, Americans have come to use "cleat" to refer to the whole item of footwear and not just the actual cleat.
Football (soccer) was originally played in boots, as in they did extend up the ankle, so when versions that didn't cover the ankle were introduced in the 1960s, they weren't renamed as "football shoes" - even though the boot/shoe distinction is exactly the same in British and American English.
Oh, and "bleachers" for cheap seating don't really exist in the UK. The British tradition for a cheap place to watch sport is that you stand. Once there are more people watching than can be accommodated by standing around the edge of the ground, the initial approach was just to pile up dirt to create an artificial hill sloping down to the pitch. Eventually, these were converted to having terraces, ie lots of levels of hard standing, rather than just dirt (it's the same meaning as terraces of farms on the sloped side of a hill). Particularly large terraces are often known as "The Kop" or generically as "kops", because there was a then-famous battle involving a large hill called Spion Kop in 1900 and many large terraces were built in the 1900-1914 period. Anywhere that you could watch sport while sitting down was always much more expensive compared to standing on a terrace. This continued until large terraces were banned after 1994 for safety reasons - all standing at the highest levels of football is banned, while lower levels and other sports are permitted to have standing provided that it's physically divided into many smaller sections (to prevent crowd surges).
Plimsols were traditional shoes worn on sailing boats and yatchs
Plimsolls originally are shoes that you would usually wear on a boat. The name comes from the plimsoll line . The line is found in harbours it’s painted on the harbour wall to give the height of the water
You wouldn’t believe the British words & expressions I picked up from my in-laws when I came to the U.K. over 30 years ago. They used Victorian idioms!! And the workplace as well. Many funny stories when I was trying out the lingo & dropping clangers.
If you drop a clanger the soup dragon will get you 😜
Welcome to English where many words have more than one meaning but do not necessarily have the same origin.
Evan's cross vs x's and the little jesus kiss had me absolutely cackling
"Grass" is actually cockney rhyming slang. Originally the slang to "to shop" (as in to shop someone out) was “grasshopper,” which was then shortened to Grass, and "verbed".
its funny how 'on accident' sounds weird, but 'on purpose' sounds perfect fine.
how does 'on accident' sound weird?
On accident??? Sounds weird because it's not right. It should be by accident
"By accident" or "accidentally"
@@Simply.Vantastic I'm guessing you are from the USA, as you say 'on accident' and in the UK we say 'by accident'?
Or "it was an accident"
A builder in the USA is almost exclusively the person who builds your house. If something commercial or institutional is being built, we are more likely to call that person a contractor.
Even then, I think the builder is a company who builds a whole subdivision of houses. I think the person on site who's in charge is the contractor and each of the trades has their own names (framer, roofer, plumber, electrician, etc)
We call them " builders". What's wrong with the word?
@@LiqdPT If you are working with a giant homebuilding company , that makes sense. However, if you are working with a small, independent home builder, you will refer to the person in charge as the builder. In a large national homebuilding company, the person in charge of building your home might also be called your builder or your supervisor, or project manager.
@@jlpack62 makes sense. I've never lived in a brand new freshly built house, but I general when I hear builder I think of the companies that are putting up subdivisions (which is mostly what I've seen around me)
We also have contractors in the UK, because a 'builder' and a 'contractor' make reference to two different things. a 'contractor' is a person who does something for you under contract (many professions potentially included there) while a builder is a person who builds things (and may or not be working for you under contract). A builder can simultaneously be a contractor, or not..
My favourite experience overhearing a tout outside a Weird Al gig in London, and the dude was entirely dispassionately calling out "Tickets for Mad Al, tickets for Mad Al."
In my area we called plimsolls "pumps" for some reason. Also, we would call cuddly toys "teddies", which must come from the American Teddy Bears (although we'd say it even if they weren't bears)
In Wales we would say "mitching" for missing school.
It's "mitching" in Devon as well
We'd jump, bunk, skive, skip, dip, or all of the above in Watford. That weird mix of almost-London but still distinctly not.
Yeah, in my part of Wales skiving you could do while still at school, you're just not doing the work you're supposed to, while mitching is specifically not showing up at all.
As someone who only speaks English because of the internet, it's a 50/50 if it's the British or the American version of some words which sounds weird. I guess this videos confirmed this again lmao
In the US, the sleeveless undershirt you showed is technically known as an "A Shirt" (A for Athletic) as apposed to a T Shirt which is named for it's resemblance to the letter T
We so use the term 'Cleat' in the UK but its specific to shoes you wear for riding a bike (the ones that clip into the pedals)
Football boots used to be boots. Workers would nail (yes, nail!) studs to the bottom of their work boots to play football. As time went by, football boots evolved into what players use today but the name was kept.
I was definitely thinking there was some historical reason as to why the term was used. That happens a lot in language where a thing is called something because it’s obviously that, but then as times change and the item changes it doesn’t seem to make sense. When my niece was around 5 and I told her to rewind back to the part of the movie she wanted to show me the scene from and she asked me “what does rewind mean” it made me realize that the term didn’t make sense with a DVD. I just told her it meant go back, but it was a moment where I realized we were using the term way beyond it’s original context since DVDs don’t wind anything in any direction!
I'm confused why they'd call football boots cleats too; the only cleats I have are the ones I have on my bike/wear to clip on to the cleats on my bike.
Football boots were ankle boots until the early 1960s when low-cut "Continental" boots appeared.
They were boots because the ball was leather and weighed a ton
In many cases those who played football had no other footwear.
I will always be confused by the burglarize thing with Americans...As I have never once heard an American call the Hamburgler the Hamburglarizer.....although part of me actually wants that to happen :P I am also fairly sure that if I had to report a theft from my home I'd just say that I've been Robbed.
Robberized?
why would we call it the hamburglerizer? that sounds like a tool you'd use to steal hamburgers. no, a burglar (noun) Burglarizes (verb). to call it a hamburglarizer would imply that its something that allows you to do the action, not the person themselves. putting a verb form in there changes the whole meaning.
why would we call it the hamburglerizer? that sounds like a tool you'd use to steal hamburgers. no, a burglar (noun) Burglarizes (verb). to call it a hamburglarizer would imply that its something that allows you to do the action, not the person themselves. putting a verb form in there changes the whole meaning.
@@oliviawolcott8351 yet a cook cooks and when he's finished he's cooked, not cookerized, a painter paints and when she's finished she's painted, an actor acted in that show you saw, not actorized... I get how different dialects evolve, this one just always puzzlerized me.
Bleachers we call stands and the reason is because stadiums/grounds used to be all standing but generally now they are seated.
Plimsolls are named after Samuel Plimsoll, a British MP who was interested in ship safety. He led the way in mandating a mark for all ships to identify when they were overloaded, known as the Plimsoll Line - still used on every single ship.
Plimsolls were designed to be safe to wear on wet decks of ships (specifically, to give good grip on wet wood), and because of their good grip they also became standard gym footwear for athletes in team games indoors, enabling them to change direction fast on a smooth wooden floor without slipping over. Trainers, on the contrary, were designed particularly for runners or joggers on a concrete or tarmac surface, and so give good foot support but not such good grip. They're different things.
Burglarize???!
To be honest, I first thought he was making it up.
@@Vanda-il9ul I have heard yanks say it. Yeah, it sounds stupid.
I'm Canadian and only say burglarize.
Someone who farms is a farmer. Someone who jokes is a joker. Someone who burgles is a burglar. Burglarize is an American latter-day invention. I'm not jokerizing.
Brit here but remember hearing The Offspring using it in “Walla Walla” a couple of decades ago :-)
Bleachers are people that work in a Bleching facility! At a sports field you will be siting in the Stands or on the Benches
Do they bleacherize? If they did it a my place will it have been bleacherized?
stands would be something we'd say in the US, but also bleachers. the Benches would specifically be what the teams sat on.
In Australia, the bits on the bottom of sport shoes that grip the ground are commonly called sprigs. A "cleat" is the funny thing screwed to the wall beside a window that the cord for a blind (like Venetian blind or Roman blind) winds around to stop the blind from dropping.
A plumber's crack (builder's bum) is often called a plumber's smile 🙂.
I'm Australian and never heard it called that! It's always been plumber's bum or sometimes crack.
@@maritatripet7480 Maybe you haven't. It might depend on where you live (It's quite common here in Canberra) or the fact that I am 63 and have lived through multiple slang trends. It's a good one though, and I've always liked it!
The origin of grassing up, being a grass, etc. comes from the rhyming slang for policeman, grasshopper = copper. A grass is all chatty with a copper