some British words aren't understood in America.
I don't think there are many words that aren't understood. Sometimes we understand different things from them.
Quite a lot have meanings that were originally the same but havedrifted apart over the intervening centuries. When my wife first came to the UK we were about to go out and I said to her "It's a bit cold outside. I'll just put my jumper on.". As she was packing her suitcase and booking the airline tickets back home, I found that our word for "sweater" is the same word as she would use for a type of Spambot's dress. Oh dear.
Similarly, what I call a handbag, she calls a purse, while for me a purse is a small money pouch that goes into a lady's handbag (or a man's should he be so inclined).
Having said that, if I lapse into my
[sockney]
Sockney jabber, then you'll have problems traipsing with me up the apples when we come back round the Johnny after a session sinking jars and some tipples down the rubber, cos its a bit parky art side and we'll be brass 'uns mate! It'll be a real pallaver. But we'll be soused geezes, so who gives one?
[/sockney]
But I expect we can put our jumpers on first.
Terry, you are certainly entitled the improved version as a free download.
webster_revised_oed_v2.0.pdf
Marty
Having previously sold the wife (A real Jersey Gal) into slavery so that I could buy New Horizons, this morning I went down ye Olde English Slave Market and bought her back. Now the language she was using may have been a dialect of English, but there were certainly a lot of words that I hadn't heard previously.
I now have to start my reference DVDs to locate some of the phrases she used. You know, the ones entitled "Sopranos"...
I must go to the F section for a lot of them. I think one of them was "for crying out loud..." but I may have misheard it.
