Separated by a Common Language

Baking and baked goods are a perennial source of US/UK miscommunication—in large part because most of our current baking/eating habits were only invented after the split between American and British English. We eat different baked goods with newish names and we often use the same old words in different...

Thanks to Twitter-followers who re-tweeted to me their nominations for 'most impenetrable to cross-ponder' tweet.  We have a winner, Transblawg (Margaret Marks) who sent two--one that I declare the winner, and one that I declare a runner-up.  First, the winner (I'm deleting the identities...

I've just announced (in several <140 character parts) a competition over on the Twitter feed. Here's what I tweeted (with added linkage for you blog-based readers): ----------------- Competition: RT to me a tweet (not by u) that is (unintentionally) so full of Americanisms or Briticisms that it...

We're back in the UK, dealing with a very jet-lagged baby. During our US visit, I had reason to think about another BrE/AmE difference in baby paraphernalia terminology, since Grover's got her first two teeth and is working on her next two: (AmE) zwieback (toast) and (BrE) (teething) rusk. These...

Today's query comes from Kirsten in Australia:Would you be able to explore/explain the expressions brown-bagging or brown-bag lunch?I first heard it used by an American colleague visiting our Melbourne office. Searching references on the net I gather it is used to refer to a home-made lunch in a school...

Better late than never, I hope (I have a fairly good excuse...), here are my picks for SbaCL Words of the Year. Thanks to all of you who have nominated words... US-to-UK Word of the Year In the category of Best AmE to BrE Import, I was fairly convinced by dearieme's nomination of subprime (though...

Overheard an exchange at the supermarket today. An elderly (English) lady asked an (English) employee, "Where are the scones?" And he replied "There are scones just there." She laughed and said "You say scons, I say scoans. It's just one of those things." I recall debating with friends in Illinois...