Britishisms

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Every expat blogger in the UK is required - by law, I think - to do at least one post about Silly Things the Natives Say.  Somehow, even though I've written about our grammatical disagreements, I don't think I've covered the semantics of speaking the same language completely differently, except sort of vaguely here.  (Yes, I'm a huge nerd.  It's cool.)  But the topic came up last week at lunch in Chelsea with a few lovely American ladies.  It was generally agreed that we shouldn't use the English word when there's a perfectly good equivalent in American; for instance, don't say you're knackered if what you mean is tired or exhausted.  However, I have to admit that words and concepts that we don't have in the States or that I only learned here in England are creeping more and more into my vocabulary.  It's all about context, I think.

Here are some examples:

I say "mom" when I talk about my mother but I say "mum" when I talk about Jon's mother.  She's just, you know, his mum - not his mom.

The kids I babysit have their last meal of the day around 5pm - that's "tea."  I don't eat "dinner" at 5pm, so I can't call it that, and my family didn't use the word "supper."

The couple who lived above us in our old flat used to have "domestics" all the time.  A "domestic" is shorthand for a family fight, but I'd never before lived in an environment where I heard the sort of arguments that inspired police visits (true story) and so the phrase was taught to me in English rather than American.

When I tell stories about Columbia to my English friends, I say that I went to "uni" instead of saying that I went to "college."  College in the UK is a different concept; it's basically the last two years of high school and it prepares you for university.  American colleges are British universities, and I'm enough of a snob to want people to know that I have a degree.

The ideal breakfast after a hard night on the town is a "bacon butty."  It's essentially a bacon sandwich - bacon with ketchup in a roll - but it will always be the British butty to me because I never enjoyed one in the States and therefore never appreciated it as a sandwich.

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I could go on, of course (gypsies live in caravans, not trailers, because we don't have gypsies in America; Jon and I fight over who has to do the washing up because I have only ever not had a dishwasher in London; etc.) but I think we've all got our Britishisms.  What are yours?