Sometimes the US words Flummox me

AnnieA said:
He means the hairstyle. Fringe makes much more sense. I don't know why we call it bangs.
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Wikipedia;
The term bangs originally referred to hair cut bang-off (i.e., straight across at the front), although the term is now applied to diverse forms of hair styling. It is probably related to bang-tail, a term still used for the practice of cutting horses' tails straight across.
 
Bretrick said:
Wikipedia;
The term bangs originally referred to hair cut bang-off (i.e., straight across at the front), although the term is now applied to diverse forms of hair styling. It is probably related to bang-tail, a term still used for the practice of cutting horses' tails straight across.
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I saw that too. Think it's to do with cutting the horses' tails. Fringe still makes more sense.
 
There's nothing new here for me. I grew up as a Yank in a Brit colony and some vocabulary, some spellings and many, many pronunciations differed between USA English and UK English. I used to translate the odd ways of the Americans to my British friends and the odd ways of the British to my American friends.
I mentioned this before on a similar thread: Winston Churchill once observed with his own brand of wit that Yanks and Brits were two people divided by a common language.
And come on now.......it isn't that difficult to grasp what people are saying!
 
Repondering said:
There's nothing new here for me. I grew up as a Yank in a Brit colony and some vocabulary, some spellings and many, many pronunciations differed between USA English and UK English. I used to translate the odd ways of the Americans to my British friends and the odd ways of the British to my American friends.
I mentioned this before on a similar thread: Winston Churchill once observed with his own brand of wit that Yanks and Brits were two people divided by a common language.
And come on now.......it isn't that difficult to grasp what people are saying!
Click to expand...
My husband always said that the Australian slang for Yanks was: One yank and they're down.
 
Here's just a few everyday Brit words that can have other English speakers scratching their heads.
Brownie points for translation. Some of the words have multiple definitions.

Biscuit, Bloke, Bog, Chips, Chuffed, Dodgy, Flat, Football, Gutted,
Nappy, Rubbish Barmy, Blimey, Bloody, Brolly, Chinwag, Crisps, Faff.
 
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