I'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.
Words known better in the US than in the UK, and vice versa
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Re: Words known better in the US than in the UK, and vice versa
#72I'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.
It'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.
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/) - 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.
Re: Words known better in the US than in the UK, and vice versa
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
Aspirin is an NSAID, whereas paracetamol/acetaminophen/Panadol is not.
Tylenol is perhaps what was meant instead of Aspirin.
It's very common for the older generations to call any pain or fever medicine "aspirin" and for the younger generations to call it "Tylenol".
I tend to be specific, but I still use "Tylenol" instead of "acetaminiphen" because few people would know what I meant if I used the latter. "Ibuprofen" is commonly used enough that I use that term, but I've heard people refer to it as "Motrin" almost as often. Almost no one would know what I meant if I asked for "naproxen" instead of "Aleve".
I live in the South, and the above may or may not be true elsewhere. It's definitely not limited to mediciations, either. Where I live if someone offers you a Coke and you accept, there's a good chance you're going to get a Pepsi, a Sprite, or some other arbitrary carbonated beverage.
Re: Words known better in the US than in the UK, and vice versa
#74As 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.
Kwanzaa is specific to African-American culture.
Moreover, it's a holiday that was explicitly created in 1966.
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.
Re: Words known better in the US than in the UK, and vice versa
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
cheese 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.
> 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 resemb…
I'm fairly sure that almost none of the "parmesan" cheese you can buy in a US grocery store is actually parmesan. I'd have to look it up, but I think the stuff that comes in a plastic shaker is mostly "filler" of some kind.
If you want actual parmesan cheese in the US, you're probably looking for "Parmigiano Reggiano".
Re: Words known better in the US than in the UK, and vice versa
#76Are 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.
Most 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.
Re: Words known better in the US than in the UK, and vice versa
#77I'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.
It'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.
Re: Words known better in the US than in the UK, and vice versa
#78Knew 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 j…
Aspirin is an NSAID, whereas paracetamol/acetaminophen/Panadol is not.
My only exposure to the word paracetamol in the US is from playing the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy text adventure game. Think we looked it up in the dictionary the first time we played in back in the 80s.
Re: Words known better in the US than in the UK, and vice versa
#79Are 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.
Most 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 m…
It's also the brand name for peanut butter and jelly swirled in the same jar.
Re: Words known better in the US than in the UK, and vice versa
#80It 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.