Heaven: 2021 Proof Americans and Brits speak a different language

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  • Toilet paper, toilet tissue, and TP are used interchangeable in our house USA.
  • Robert ArminRobert Armin Shipmate, Glory
    I'd never come across TP until this thread. I don't think it's used in Britain - which is normally the signal for lots of folk to tell me differently!
  • What about disposable tissue you blow your nose on? We call it kleenex even that that's a brandname. I do hear "tissue" by usually in the context of "have an issue? here's a tissue."; "snot rag" is the rude version.
  • Yep Kleenex, no matter the brand. I also hear tissue used.
  • Gramps49Gramps49 Shipmate
    Here is a good one:

    Bangs

    Say ‘bangs’ to a British person and perhaps they’ll imagine thunderstorms or fireworks - the word is used in the onomatopoeic sense to refer to a loud noise. In America, though, the term bangs refers to a shorter section of hair which is cut straight across the forehead – what is called a fringe in Britain. The word bangs first started being used in 1878 and is thought to have stemmed from the adverbial use of bang to mean ‘abruptly’ – the hair is cut bang off. When used adverbially in Britain, however, the word bang translates to ‘exactly’ or ‘directly’ – for example: ‘the train arrived bang on time’ or ‘I tripped bang in the middle of the road’.
  • orfeoorfeo Suspended
    KarlLB wrote: »
    You'd think there'd be something based on dunny.

    Yeah, I guess "dunny paper" would be a thing. People I know wouldn't often say "dunny".

    Maybe I'm just struggling because until now there hasn't been much of a reason to talk about toilet paper in social settings.
  • EnochEnoch Shipmate
    "Bang" in Brenglish is the noise an explosion makes. I don't know how the expressions like 'bang on' that @Gramps49 mentions come to derive from it, but they are widely used.

    In the hair context, I've never heard it used to mean a fringe, but I have, very occasionally, heard 'bangs' used as an alternative to 'bunches'.

    In case that expression itself isn't familiar in the, US, bunches are what we call the girl's hairstyle where the hair is tied, with ribbon or some sort of elastic into two clumps one on each side of the side of the back of head.
  • Robert ArminRobert Armin Shipmate, Glory
    Recently I read an American book where a girl was described as having "dog ears". I assumed that was what you describe as "bunches", but I haven't heard that term before.
  • Yep Kleenex, no matter the brand. I also hear tissue used.

    Paper hankies in this house.
  • Yep Kleenex, no matter the brand. I also hear tissue used.
    Same here.

  • strangely enough, "tissues" is one of the rare cases where we don't use the brand name in our house
    we talk about doing the Hoovering, for vacuum cleaning, and Sellotape for any sticky tape.
  • Kleenex (generically speaking) is often on the box referred to as "facial tissue" although nobody calls it that.

    "Bang" as a transitive verb can also mean "have sex with" -- usually spoken of the male in P-I-V sex.
  • Wet Kipper wrote: »
    strangely enough, "tissues" is one of the rare cases where we don't use the brand name in our house
    we talk about doing the Hoovering, for vacuum cleaning, and Sellotape for any sticky tape.
    I've heard that the Australian equivalent to (UK) Sellotape and (US) Scotch tape is Durex. It has been known to lead to occasional cross-cultural awkwardness.

  • KarlLBKarlLB Shipmate
    Wet Kipper wrote: »
    strangely enough, "tissues" is one of the rare cases where we don't use the brand name in our house
    we talk about doing the Hoovering, for vacuum cleaning, and Sellotape for any sticky tape.
    I've heard that the Australian equivalent to (UK) Sellotape and (US) Scotch tape is Durex. It has been known to lead to occasional cross-cultural awkwardness.

    DIY condom...
  • KarlLB wrote: »
    DIY condom...
    Ouch.
  • Durex means condom to me in western Canada.

    Bang is a multipurpose word. It is an activity you might need a condom for, a sharp sound, but has to be plural to mean hair "bangs". Bang also means something that happened suddenly. "So here I am in the meeting and bang the boss says <something startling>"

    For no reason, except it's a genius song and he dances and bangs so well: I Want to Bang on the Drum All Day.
  • Gee DGee D Shipmate
    Wet Kipper wrote: »
    strangely enough, "tissues" is one of the rare cases where we don't use the brand name in our house
    we talk about doing the Hoovering, for vacuum cleaning, and Sellotape for any sticky tape.
    I've heard that the Australian equivalent to (UK) Sellotape and (US) Scotch tape is Durex. It has been known to lead to occasional cross-cultural awkwardness.

    I have no doubt that you've heard that, but we've not heard it for decades - and even then it was not common.
  • Damn, all this talk of bangs has got ricky martin stuck in my head, she bangs she bangs. Used to be a favourite track.
  • Bunches = "pigtails." One bunch is a ponytail. And "fringe" in the U.S. is something you find on carpets and upholstery--or really, really horrible shirts.
  • Hey! whoa there about shirts!
  • Well, if we could get you to MODEL it, we could form a proper idea... :wink:
  • And "fringe" in the U.S. is something you find on carpets and upholstery--or really, really horrible shirts.
    Don’t forget the leather vests and jackets of the late 60s and early 70s. They were cool. :wink:

  • Oh great. Now I've got horrid sparkly fringey things following me around the internet. The sacrifices I make for you folks!
  • KarlLBKarlLB Shipmate
    Nick Tamen wrote: »
    And "fringe" in the U.S. is something you find on carpets and upholstery--or really, really horrible shirts.
    Don’t forget the leather vests and jackets of the late 60s and early 70s. They were cool. :wink:

    A vest in the UK is underwear. A leather one doesn't sound comfortable.
  • Penny SPenny S Shipmate
    Bunches in my experience do not equal pigtails. In bunches, the hair is held close to the head by some elastic, and then hangs loose. In pigtails, the hair is plaited (braided) and then held at the end by some elastic. Greta Thunberg has pigtails. Though possibly hers are too long to be pigtails proper, just plaits.
    A quick image search of bunches pulls up a variety, some cute, some weird. The same of pigtails pulls up images of both styles, and Wikipedia suggests a wide interpretation of the term, so I can see where LC is coming from. But where I grew up, pigtails were always plaits.
  • MMMMMM Shipmate
    Same here*, Penny S, I agree with your definitions. I find it difficult to think of pigtails as anything other than plaits.

    MMM

    *south east England
  • jedijudyjedijudy Heaven Host
    I wore my hair in pigtails most of my childhood in NW PA They were two braids. Others around me said that pigtails were not braided. Maybe the difference was because my mom was raised in Florida.
  • DafydDafyd Hell Host
    The Oxford English Dictionary maintains that pigtails are plaits.
  • mousethiefmousethief Shipmate
    edited March 2020
    KarlLB wrote: »
    Nick Tamen wrote: »
    And "fringe" in the U.S. is something you find on carpets and upholstery--or really, really horrible shirts.
    Don’t forget the leather vests and jackets of the late 60s and early 70s. They were cool. :wink:

    A vest in the UK is underwear. A leather one doesn't sound comfortable.

    Vest:US::waistcoat:UK
  • My definition was Southern California. I never had enough length in hair to braid, so it was exploding pigtails all the way. No plaits. Can't do plaits even today, unless I do a lot of them--hair much too thick and too much of it. It's that Cherokee heritage, I'm telling you.
  • LeafLeaf Shipmate
    I wore my hair in pigtails when I was a little girl: hair parted in the centre, then gathered on each side of the head with elastics, usually above the ears. No braiding was involved. The gathered hair hung down in curly loops like... a pig's tail.

    In my parlance, Greta Thunberg wears her hair in braids.

    I may have read the word "plaits" and figured out from context what was meant. I would have pronounced it the same as "plates." It was only when I was watching The Great British Baking Show that I heard the word "platted" bread and could not figure out what was wanted. Did platted mean flattened, like plateau? When they produced braided loaves I understood. Platted (plaited) is utterly unknown here as a word for braid.
  • My mother plaited my hair into pig tails as a child. Sometimes my aunt would do my braids. On a side note once my mother was in the hospital and my father had to do my hair. He said, "Well I know how to braid the horse's tail so guess I can do yours."
  • Robert ArminRobert Armin Shipmate, Glory
    I've never heard of hair being called "braids" in the UK. Does it happen?
  • Penny SPenny S Shipmate
    Not round my way. Braid is a fabric term, with strands of yarn woven into a narrow strip - the weaving is usually diagonal, a complex plaiting arrangement. I have a vague image of Sami (Lapp) braids, which may not be diagonal.
    And from geography, braided rivers, with criss-crossing streams between shingle banks.
    Not hair.

    I remember stories by Zenna Henderson in which her People "plaited the twishers" to use their power. I'm wondering if that was in the American editions or if the ones I read had been Britishised.
  • When I think of plaits I think of something flat, like a broad ribbon. A braid in a woman's hair doesn't seem very plait-like.
  • Penny S wrote: »

    I remember stories by Zenna Henderson in which her People "plaited the twishers" to use their power. I'm wondering if that was in the American editions or if the ones I read had been Britishised.

    The word was actually "platted," not "plaited," though I grant it might have been derived from "plaited."

  • mousethief wrote: »
    When I think of plaits I think of something flat, like a broad ribbon. A braid in a woman's hair doesn't seem very plait-like.

    Maybe we're getting it from the same source, whatever that is. I tend to think of something that is looser and therefore flatter--the part up on the head is of course flat to the head, and the hanging down bits are still not particularly tight or fat (and therefore not so three-dimensional.) But that might just be the result of seeing endless illustrations of people with pale, fine hair described as "in plaits"--you couldn't get a proper three-dimensional braid out of that stuff if you tried. When I think "braid," I'm thinking of something sufficiently tightly woven that it could theoretically be used for rope, or at least cord. Something like what you see on old American Indian photos.

    Another way of getting at it--I read novels where some idiot tries to pull a girl by her plaits and the plaits rip at least partly from the scalp. If you tried to do that with an American braid, you could drag the whole girl by the braids. Nothing loose, flat or whispy about them.
  • What do you call French braids? The ones that are not dangling free but within the head of hair? In the 1970s sophisticated men wore them with fringed shirts.
  • In US south they were called French braids, and in my house were for special occasions and not everyday school pig trials.
  • BroJamesBroJames Purgatory Host
    In England I’ve heard them called French plaits.
  • Penny SPenny S Shipmate
    Thanks for the Henderson spelling, LC. I wondered when I posted it, but couldn't get at the books to check. I always assumed, from the description in the books, that it was a process not unlike plaiting.
    I'm thinking it would be interesting to find why we have these two words used for a pair of related things, but with opposite meanings according to where the users of the words live. At which point in time did they separate? Were they used differently in the home countries, and an existing difference became fixed on crossing the ocean?
    Just checking in my Old English dictionary. There is a root word for braid with a meaning, along with a lot of others which are hard to relate to it, of weaving and knotting. Plait doesn't appear, unless as "plett" with the meaning "fold". That seems to come from Latin, via French, and be related to pleat. And pleating does not include any crossing over or knotting action. Odd. I was wondering whether colonists from the part of Britain with dialect related to Norse had dominated the development in America, and it looks as though that might be true.
  • orfeoorfeo Suspended
    Gee D wrote: »
    Wet Kipper wrote: »
    strangely enough, "tissues" is one of the rare cases where we don't use the brand name in our house
    we talk about doing the Hoovering, for vacuum cleaning, and Sellotape for any sticky tape.
    I've heard that the Australian equivalent to (UK) Sellotape and (US) Scotch tape is Durex. It has been known to lead to occasional cross-cultural awkwardness.

    I have no doubt that you've heard that, but we've not heard it for decades - and even then it was not common.

    See, I was just going to say someone had been having Stercus Tauri on. I've got no recognition of that term, whereas I'd probably understand both Sellotape or Scotch tape.
  • Robert ArminRobert Armin Shipmate, Glory
    When I went out to Australia in 2002 I was warned about the Durex confusion, and then found it wasn't an issue. No one warned me about thongs however....

    And thank you for the reminders about Zenna Henderson. They will be good comfort reading.
  • MMMMMM Shipmate
    I remember the ‘durex’ confusion from the ‘80s with an Australian lad studying over here in the UK. He told us how it had caused some concern with his landlady...

    MMM
  • orfeo wrote: »
    Gee D wrote: »
    Wet Kipper wrote: »
    strangely enough, "tissues" is one of the rare cases where we don't use the brand name in our house
    we talk about doing the Hoovering, for vacuum cleaning, and Sellotape for any sticky tape.
    I've heard that the Australian equivalent to (UK) Sellotape and (US) Scotch tape is Durex. It has been known to lead to occasional cross-cultural awkwardness.

    I have no doubt that you've heard that, but we've not heard it for decades - and even then it was not common.

    See, I was just going to say someone had been having Stercus Tauri on. I've got no recognition of that term, whereas I'd probably understand both Sellotape or Scotch tape.

    I first heard it in the early 70s from an Australian post grad student in Aberdeen. I still remember the occasion when it was explained to him. But yes, that's a long time ago.
  • Gee DGee D Shipmate
    edited March 2020
    Hang on, the 70s are pretty recent. All I can say is that Durex (for adhesive tape) was not used in my (conservative) part of Sydney from the mid-50s.
  • The 70s ended about 40 years ago. As far as glaciers go, that's recent. But that's half of a healthy human lifespan.
  • orfeoorfeo Suspended
    Gee D wrote: »
    Hang on, the 70s are pretty recent.

    Yes, well, we've established in a different thread that to you they are. But I'm a middle-aged man and I have some difficulty remembering much of Kindergarten in '79.

  • Gee DGee D Shipmate
    You're not even 50, hard to accept that you're middle-aged.
  • orfeoorfeo Suspended
    It's even harder to accept that life expectancy is 100, because it isn't.
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