Category Archives: Yanks vs. Brits

TGIF: That Gerund Is Funky (Dec 13)

Words and language in the news this week: a sign language interpreter meltdown; Yankee driving lingo; two tweets that could have used an edit; and Cormac McCarthy on punctuation …

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When the sign language interpreter at Nelson Mandela’s memorial service in Johannesburg started to “sign rubbish”, complaints started to flood in from deaf viewers around the world. According to the BBC, “Wilma Newhoudt-Druchen, the country’s first deaf female MP, tweeted: ‘ANC-linked interpreter on the stage with dep president of ANC is signing rubbish. He cannot sign. Please get him off.'” Thamsanqa Jantjie, the rogue interpreter, explained that he had a schizophrenic episode and started to hear voices in his head.

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BBC America’s Mind the Gap blog published a very useful British hitchhiker’s guide to understanding America’s driving lingo. From jaywalking to tailgating, you can get your Yankee drive-speak on.

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Slate.com’s Lexicon Valley blog argued a case for the Oxford comma by publishing a Sky News tweet reporting on the Mandela memorial. “Top stories: World leaders at Mandela tribute, Obama-Castro handshake and same-sex marriage date set…” was the tweet. “A handshake and a proposal” was Slate’s interpretation of it.

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Cormac McCarthy takes a minimalist approach to punctuation. “James Joyce is a good model for punctuation. He keeps it to an absolute minimum. There’s no reason to blot the page up with weird little marks. I mean, if you write properly you shouldn’t have to punctuate.” Open Culture examines McCarthy’s three punctuation rules and how they all go back to Joyce.

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When the University of Michigan found out that it was ranked number 12 in a world ranking, it sent out this tweet:

Ooops! Not so hot in the spelling rankings, it seems …

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Possessive waffling

So, why is it called Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream – and not Ben’s & Jerry’s? It’s what’s known as a joint possessive: because the ice cream is owned jointly by Ben and Jerry, they need only one possessive — ie. one apostrophe — between them. And this rule is good for limitless numbers of owners. Let’s say Jack Hypothetical joined the company and claimed his stake in their delicious branded FroYo: the three ice-cream men would still have to make do with just one apostrophe: Ben & Jerry & Jack’s FroYo.

Now, assuming that Ben & Jerry don’t live together, when it comes to talking about their homes we refer to Ben’s and Jerry’s houses, and to their respective loved ones as Ben’s and Jerry’s families. That’s not to suggest that they each have multiple properties or that either of them is a bigamist, however, and to be sure to avoid any confusion or ambiguity with regard to that plural matter, it’s sometimes wise to just reword the phrase. But giving them each their own possessive apostrophe clarifies that the items are separately owned — what’s Ben’s is Ben’s and what’s Jerry’s is Jerry’s — whether in single or multiple form.

That’s joint possessives covered. Double possessives are a different thing — and, just to confuse things further, they come in two forms.

First, going back to Jack Hypothetical: let’s say he started out as a friend of Ben’s. Looking at that sentence, I’ve twice indicated Ben’s possession of Jack (as a friend): first by saying “friend of” (with the of suggesting ownership), and then by giving Ben an apostrophe and an “s”. Why do we sometimes repeat the possessive sense like this? There’s no real reason, except that it’s been done for centuries and it’s generally accepted in standard English. In the same way that we say “it’s a habit of mine” (and not “it’s a habit of me” or “it’s a habit of I“), we naturally use the double possessive. In The Careful Writer (1965), Theodore M. Bernstein noted that “grammarians have argued over the origin and nature, but not the validity, of the double genitive with the fervor of hot-stove league fans rehashing a Word Series play.”

Now, what if we want to ask about Ben & Jerry’s ice cream’s calories? That seems a fair question, if a little awkwardly phrased (and a bit of a party pooper, if you ask me). This is the other form of double possessive: when something is owned by something that is in turn owned by something else. By far the best way of avoiding this sort of double possessive is to reword it: let’s ask instead about the calories of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream. But note that we don’t use the earlier form of double possessive in this case — ie. we don’t inquire after “the calories of the ice cream’s”, whereas we might inquire after that amazing FroYo idea of Ben’s (or Jerry’s? or both?). Only people and animate objects have the privilege of the extra possessive, it seems: not even ice cream warrants it. But please don’t ask me to explain why …

I know: I’m waffling now — but not in the American sense, which Oxford Dictionaries defines as “failing to make up one’s mind”. Ben & Jerry’s “Waffling?” poster uses some tasty word-play here, pointing out our failure to choose which flavor of ice-cream to put in their waffle cones. So yes, a lot of waffling goes on in North America’s Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream stores. But this particular play on words would be lost on most Brits, to whom waffle means something different: “to speak or write, especially at great length, without saying anything important or useful”. Waffle seems to be what I’m doing and spewing here — since it comes in both verb and noun form.

Here ends this waffling of mine. A triple possessive is calling me: my Ben & Jerry’s Ron Burgundy’s Scotchy Scotch Scotch…

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Sleight or slight in the magic of the hands?

Over Thanksgiving, my ex-husband was displaying some of his close-up magic skills. During one particularly dazzling card trick, he explained as part of his patter that he was using what we all heard to be a “slight of hand” technique. “Don’t you mean *sleight* [ie. rhyming with freight]?” I asked, and so did his wife who is also British. “No, it’s slight,” the amateur magician maintained. And I thought to myself: isn’t it odd that the Americans seem to use a different word in that expression, or is it simply that they’re pronouncing the right word wrongly?

Well, it turned out that it was I who was mistaken. The correct word, on both sides of the Atlantic, is sleight, and the correct pronunciation — for both Yanks and Brits — is slaɪt, rhyming with kite. And whereas I’ve been spelling it right and pronouncing it wrong for nearly half a century, many people pronounce it correctly but write it down as slight or slide, thinking that’s how it’s spelled.

“Sleight of hand”, also known as prestidigitation (“quick fingers”) or légerdemain (French for “light hand”), is a technique used by magicians and card sharps to surreptitiously hide or move cards, coins or other objects to produce an effect. The opposite of the sleight is the flourish, whereby the magician acts or gestures overtly, often to distract attention from something else he or she is doing (quite possibly a sleight).

As the Online Etymology Dictionary explains, sleight as a noun meaning “cunning” was an early 14th-century alteration of sleahthe (c.1200), from the Old Norse sloegð meaning “cleverness, cunning, slyness”. Sleight meant “skill, cleverness, dexterity” from the late 14th century, and its modern meaning of “feat or trick requiring quickness and nimbleness of the hands” is from the 1590s. The term “sleight of hand” is attested from c.1400. Because of the strange pronunciation, “sleight of hand” is often mistakenly written or understood as “slight of hand” or “slide of hand” — either of which (with slight coming from slettr, meaning “plain, flat, even, smooth, level”) would seem entirely appropriate for the magician’s cunning techniques.

The Russian president: a man of many …

This post might be a little controversial — and not because of the inherently controversial nature of its subject, Vladimir Putin.

In a recent conversation about the Russian president* that took place among three European friends — a Brit who lives in America, a Dutchwoman who also lives in America, and a Brit who lives in France — there was major disagreement. And it wasn’t about Putin’s politics: our opinions on that subject were pretty much in synch. What we couldn’t agree on was how to pronounce his name. Between the three of us, there were three different pronunciations: POO-tin, PYOU-tin, and Poo-TEEN.

The French don’t just say his name differently from the rest of us: they spell it their own way. In most of the Western world in which the Roman alphabet is used, the president’s name is transliterated as and spelled “Putin”. But not so in France. There, for what might be either linguistic or diplomatic reasons, they spell his name “Poutine”, making it rhyme with routine when said aloud. The French might argue that their pronunciation of the more commonly spelled “-in” at the end of his name bears no resemblance to the “-tyeen” that the Russian alphabet prescribes, and therefore they needed to find another transliteration. But what’s just as likely is that the French felt uncomfortable pronouncing Putin’s name in the way most Frenchmen would be inclined to do if the name kept that spelling. Said aloud, it would be a homophone of putain: the French word for prostitute or whore. Not a good sound for a head of state. Especially a big state like Russia. So Poo-TEEN it is in France. Below is how the New York Times reported on this curiosity back in 2005.

But it’s the first syllable of Putin’s name — not the second — that separates the Brits from the Yanks.

This morning on American Public Media’s Marketplace radio program, WPP CEO Sir Martin Sorrell (a Brit) was talking about Brand America and how the brand may have been damaged of late. That’s another story altogether, but during the conversation, in his cut-glass public-schoolboy accent, Sir Martin very clearly pronounced the Russian president’s name “PYOU-tin” [about 1.46 minutes in], inserting that “y” sound after the “p” and before the “u”. In the same way that we all pronounce the words pure, punitive, putrid, puny, pupil, and other words beginning with “pu” (except for those that have the open “uh” sound, like punish, puss, or publish), most Brits — at least those on the street — tend to do what Sir Martin does, inserting that ‘y’ sound. However, Americans say “POO-tin”. This is in keeping with a general rule described in an earlier Glossophilia post about the pronunciation of loan words in Britain and America: that Brits generally pronounce them according to what’s prescribed by the English spelling rather than that of the native language, whereas Americans tend to simulate the original pronunciation as much as possible. The Russian spelling of the President’s surname is Путин, which translates phonetically as “POO-tin”; if it were spelled ПЮтин, the Russians would call their leader “PYOU-tin”. (I used to speak some Russian as a kid, and I remember those two “oo” and “you” letters.) So the Americans are approximating the Russian sound, but the Brits are pronouncing it the way they themselves spell Vlad’s last name. Interestingly, British broadcasters — most notably the BBC — pronounce Putin’s name as the Russians and Americans do. (In fact, the BBC published a special guide on how to pronounce his name correctly, pointing out the common error of saying “pew” instead of “poo”.) So at least we’ve got it right officially in Great Britain. Have you ever heard Rasputin — the Russian dude with the beard and the eyes — pronounced Rass-POO-tin? Probably not, wherever you come from. A quick trot through YouTube suggests that it is pretty universally pronounced Rass-PYOU-tin, even by the Americans. Go figure.

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The New York Times delved into the French spelling and pronunciation of the Russian president’s name back in 2005:

“In France, they do the right thing by Putin’s first syllable, spelling it Pou (as in the French ou, ”where,” and fou, ”crazy”). But their difficulty arises in that second syllable, tsyin, which we approximate with in. The French have a linguistic problem that may also be a diplomatic problem. It’s the affair of the spelling of in. …

“But other, more conspiratorial linguists suggest that the spelling of Putin in English would be pronounced as putain in French — that is, sounding close to pew-TANH.

“Putain, in French, means ”prostitute; whore,” or in current correctese, ”sexual-services provider.” According to the Oxford English Dictionary, it is the probable source, slightly corrupted, of the U.S. slang term poontang, a derogation of women as a means of sexual gratification. Hence, the rejection of the English spelling of Putin and the switch to Poutine, pronounced poo-TEEN. Small wonder that French arbiters of usage and pronunciation — perhaps out of commendable delicacy, in the interest of the avoidance of offense and the leers of pundits — have embraced phony phonetics, unanimously choosing to mispronounce the name of the president of Russia.”

* I decided not to dignify his title with a capital P

In the news … (Oct 11)

Where language was in the news this week …

Grammar Girl (aka Mignon Fogerty) appeared on the Today Show on Wednesday. Take her quiz that contained all the discussion topics she suggested to the producers. (I couldn’t find a correct answer to Question No. 2; please comment below if you think one of the answers to that question was grammatically correct – and why…) Continue reading →

The best grammar and English usage books: praise from high places

I’m a big fan of these books about English usage and grammar. And I’m in good company: each book has enjoyed its own celebrity or high-profile endorsements — some surprising, and some surprisingly witty, given the subject matter of the texts. But even the best linguists can’t please everyone, and a couple of critics were happy to prove this point too …

H. W. Fowler’s A Dictionary of Modern English Usage:

“Why must you write intensive here? Intense is the right word. You should read Fowler’s Modern English Usage on the use of the two words.'” — Winston Churchill, in a letter to the Director of Military Intelligence about the plans for the invasion of Normandy

“Reading Fowler provides instruction and knowledge and direction, but the whole of it is a sensual delight.” — William F. Buckley

“[Fowler] has afforded me endless amusement and instruction through my very long life.” — Jessica Mitford

Strunk and White: The Elements of Style

“If someone wants to toss it in the box with me when I go six feet under, that would be fine; it might actually assure my passage through the Pearly Gates, since Saint Peter no doubt is a gentleman of impeccable grammatical taste, not to mention style.” — Jonathan Yardley, Washington Post‘s book critic

“An aging zombie of a book . . . a hodgepodge, its now-antiquated pet peeves jostling for space with 1970s taboos and 1990s computer advice.” — Boston Globe, reviewing The Elements of Style Illustrated in 2005

Paul Brians: Common Errors in English Usage

“Let’s just say that Common Errors in English Usage is the most cheerfully useful book I’ve read since the Kama Sutra.” — Scott Simon, host of NPR’s Weekend Edition

Bryan Garner: Garner’s Modern American Usage

Garrison Keillor has called it one of the five most influential books in his library.

Mark Davidson: Right, Wrong, and Risky

“When I was nineteen I traveled by bus to New York with a copy of Roget’s Thesaurus on my lap, educating and delighting myself along the way. Now with Mark Davidson’s wonderful Right, Wrong, and Risky, I long for a similar trip in which to instruct my mind and free my spirit.” — Ray Bradbury

Lynne Truss: Eats, Shoots & Leaves

“If Lynne Truss were Roman Catholic I’d nominate her for sainthood.” — Frank McCourt, author of Angela’s Ashes

“Of course, I knew how it would appear to other people. ‘At the age of 48, she wrote a book on punctuation.’ If you were to read that thumbnail sketch in a novel, you would know everything you needed to know about this character’s tragic lack of ambition (and ignorance of the book trade).” — Lynne Truss, on writing her own runaway bestseller

“An Englishwoman lecturing Americans on semicolons is a little like an American lecturing the French on sauces. Some of Truss’s departures from punctuation norms are just British laxness.” — Louis Menand, New Yorker

Instructions for American servicemen in Britain in 1942

In 1942, the United States War Department distributed pamphlets to American servicemen heading over to Britain to help fight the war. The aim of the publication was to prepare the young GIs for life in a foreign culture (many of the young soldiers had never been abroad before) and to try and prevent any tensions or misunderstandings between the servicemen and the locals among whom they would be living and working. As explained to the GIs in the introduction to the War Department “instructions”: “In getting along, the first important thing to remember is that the British are like the Americans in many ways — but not in all ways. You will quickly discover differences that seem confusing and even wrong. Like driving on the left side of the road, and having money based on an “impossible” accounting system, and drinking warm beer. But once you get used to things like that, you will realize that they belong to England just as baseball and jazz and coca-cola belong to us.”

The Times wrote an editorial about the pamphlet on July 14 of that year, predicting that it would be a bestseller and comparing it with the works of Irving, Emerson and Hawthorne (who had all tried to capture the essence of Britishness for American readers), saying that “none of their august expositions has the spotlight directness of this revelation of plain common horse sense understanding of evident truths”.

Here are some of the GI handbook’s observations about British English and the quirky word usage that the young American soldiers were warned to watch out for.

“The British have phrases and colloquialisms of their own that may sound funny to you. You can make just as many boners in their eyes. It isn’t a good idea, for instance, to say “bloody” in mixed company in Britain — it is one of their worst swear words. To say “I look like a bum ” is offensive to their ears, for to the British this means that you look like your own backside it isn’t important — just a tip if you are trying to shine in polite society. ”

…

“Almost before you meet the people you will hear them speaking “English”. At first you may not understand what they’re talking about and they may not understand what you say. The accent will be different from what you are used to, and many of the words will be strange, or apparently wrongly used.”

…

“In England the “upper crust” speak pretty much alike. You will hear the news broadcaster for the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation). He is a good example, because he has been trained to talk with the “cultured” accent. He will drop the letter “r” (as people do in sections of our own country) and will say “hyah” instead of “here”. He will use the broad a pronouncing all the a’s in “Banana” like the a in “father”. However funny you may think this is, you will be able to understand people who talk this way and they will be able to understand you. And you will soon get over thinking it is funny.”

…

“Instead of railroads, automobiles and radios, the British will talk about railways, motorcars and wireless sets. A railroad tie is a sleeper. … A man who works on the roadbed is a navvy. … The top of a car is the hood. What we call the hood (of the engine) is the bonnet. … Gas is petrol — if there is any.”

“You will have to ask for sock suspenders to get garters, and for braces instead of suspenders — if you need any. If you are standing in line to buy (book) a railroad ticket or a seat at the movies (cinema), you will be queuing (pronounced “cueing”) up before the booking office. If you want a beer quickly, you had better ask for the nearest pub.”

And finally, here were some important do’s and don’ts for the GIs heading off to a foreign land to face a common foe:

“Don’t make fun of British speech or accents. You sound just as funny to them, but they will be too polite to show it. … NEVER criticize the King or Queen. … You will soon find yourself among a kindly, quiet, hard-working people who have been living under a strain such as few people in the world have ever known. In your dealings with them, let this be your slogan: “It is always impolite to criticize your hosts; it is militarily stupid to criticize your allies.”

“You won’t be able to tell the British much about “taking it”. They are not particularly interested in taking it any more. They are far more interested in getting together in solid friendship with us, so that we can all start dishing it out to Hitler.”

A reproduction of the original pamphlet, Instructions for American Servicemen in Britain 1942, was published by the Bodleian Library in Oxford, which holds a copy of the original typescript issued by the War Department in Washington DC. Other than the important language usage excerpts above, the book contains similarly enlightening sections with titles such as “British reserved, not unfriendly”, “The British are tough”, “Keep out of arguments”, and “indoor amusements” — which is essentially a paragraph all about the great British pub…

Money talk

Kander & Ebb devoted a number to it in their musical Cabaret; ABBA sang about it a decade later. It’s what rappers rap about, it makes the world go around, it talks, but it can’t buy you love, according to The Beatles. This thing that motivates, defines, enables or ruins us, that we’ll beg, borrow or steal, and even kill for, comes in many guises — and I’m not talking about diamonds and gold. There are probably more slang words, nicknames, colloquialisms, euphemisms and expressions for and about money than for anything else we talk about — with the exception, perhaps, of sex (and maybe drinking). Money even worms its way into sayings that having nothing to do with moolah or dough.

Here’s some lolly lingo; please add any more to the comments section below. (And see this BBC America post for some money talk differences between Brits and Americans.)

Slang for money:

General names of money:
moolah (or moola)
dosh (British, possibly from “doss-house”)
wedge
loot
lolly
bread (Cockney rhyming slang: bread and honey = money)
dough (as bread, above)
cheese, cheddar (or chedda)
spondulicks
bacon (as in “bring home the bacon”)
brass (northern English)
simoleons
skrilla
smackers (American)

Quid (probably from the Latin phrase “quid pro quo”), nicker (pound)

Thatcher (modern one-pound coin)

Buck (dollar); also ace, bean (as in bean counter), boffo (abbreviation of box office, ie. takings at theater), bone, bullet, case, clam, coconut, fish, frogskin, lizard, peso, yellowback, C or century note

Singles (one-dollar bills)

Benjamin (one-hundred dollar bill, which has Benjamin Franklin pictured on it)

Cabbage, lettuce, kale, greenbacks, folding green or long green (paper money, bills)

Fins (five-dollar bills)

Fiver (five-pound or -dollar note/bill); also Lady Godiva in cockney rhyming slang (rhymes with fiver)

Tenner (ten-pound or -dollar note/bill)

Double / dub (twenty-dollar bill)

Score (twenty-pound note)

A grand (a thousand pounds or dollars); also K, or big one (mainly for dollars), or a stack

rock (a million dollars)

plastic (credit cards)

a few coppers / loose change (coins)

bob (the old British shilling)

petty cash (small amount of money set aside for small purchases)

pin money / pocket money / allowance (a small amount or ration of money given regularly to women or children)

slush fund (money set aside for bribery or influence)

money for old rope (easily earned or obtained money, suggesting that something worthless has been sold; might date back to public hangings in England)

sourdough (counterfeit money)

rhino (British; ready or available money, cash)

This web site lists the slang and informal names of Australian banknotes and coins.

Meaning rich:
loaded
cashed up
rolling in it
stinking rich
filthy rich
quids in
flush
on easy street
made of money
minted (British)

Meaning poor:
broke
skint (British)
a bit short
cleaned out
on the breadline
without a penny to one’s name
without two pennies to rub together

Meaning reluctant to spend money:
stingy
tight, tight-fisted
penny-pinching

Meaning expensive:
pricey
[it costs]
… an arm and a leg
… a (small) fortune
…a pretty penny

Meaning inexpensive/good value for money:
Cheap at half the price (even though it literally translates as the opposite)
Cheap at twice the price (that’s more like it)

Meaning worthless:
not worth a plugged nickel
money for old rope

Money-hued phrases:
Paying through the nose (see rhino above; paying too much for something)
Beggars can’t be choosers (if you’re poor you can’t be fussy)
From rags to riches (going from poor to wealthy)
Cash on the nail (available money, cash)
Dollars to doughnuts (certain or sure; being willing to bet dollars against worthless doughnuts suggests total confidence that you’re right)
A fool and his money are soon parted
Money makes the world go around
Money can’t buy you happiness
Here’s my two cents (one’s thoughts and input on a particular subject)
Spending money like water (spending too much money)
It can turn on a dime
Another day, another dollar (another routine and slightly boring day)
To grease someone’s palm (to bribe or influence with money)
He who pays the piper calls the tune / Money talks (those with money can influence or make decisions)
All that glitters is not gold (things that look precious or valuable aren’t necessarily so)
Bet your bottom dollar (bet confidently – ie. your last money)
A bigger bang for your buck (more value for money)
As nice as ninepence (tidy, neat, well-organized)
As queer as a nine-bob note (explained in an earlier Glossophilia post on the word queer)
Fool’s gold (any apparent treasure that turns out to be worthless)
a whip round (collection of money to spend on a joint purchase)
to take the king’s/queen’s shilling (British: to enlist in the military; to take payment and then be obliged to do something)

Penny phrases:

Pennywise, pound foolish (make false economies)
In for a penny, in for a pound (fully committed to something)
A penny for your thoughts (ask what someone is thinking about)
A penny saved is a penny earned
[it cost] a pretty penny (expensive)
Without a penny to my name (broke)
Without two pennies to rub together (broke)
the penny drops (suddenly something makes sense)
spend a penny (British: to urinate; originates from public toilets in England that charged a penny)
ten a penny (cheap, or plentiful)
penny-pinching (miserly)
tupenny ha’penny: (British: cheap, not good value)
fourpenny one: (British: violent punch or blow)

4 Things Americans Do (Verbally) That Drive Brits Nuts

Last year, Ruth Margolis published a hilarious article on BBC America’s blog Mind the Gap in which she identified “10 Things Americans Do That Drive Brits Nuts”. “American people are some of the loveliest you’ll ever meet and make us expats feel all warm, cuddly and very welcome,” Margolis assures us, with maybe a touch of irrepressible British irony. “But just occasionally they do or say something that we Brits find a tad… eccentric.” Here are the four of those foreign felonies that involve what comes out of Americans’ mouths. Please don’t shoot the messenger (even though I secretly agree with one of these abominations) …

2. Putting last names first
The fashion for inflicting quirky monikers on babies started with American parents giving their kids surnames as first names. Remember Sex and the City’s Smith? Absurd. Then last week at the launderette I got chatting to “Anderson.” Could not take him seriously.

8. Spelling words the wrong way
I might as well pry the letter “u” from my keyboard for all the good it does me in over here. (But you know which letter made it big in America? “Z”! Only, they pronounce it wrong.) My point? Remembering to remove ‘u’s from words like “colour” and replace “s”s with a more abrasive “z” is a headache and I resent it. So there.

9. Pretentious pronunciation.
Americans, please note: saying “erb” instead of “herb” and pronouncing “fillet” without the “t” is not clever or sophisticated. You are not French. Make an actual socialist your president and then we’ll talk. [See earlier Glossophilia post on British vs. American pronunciation of foreign loan words — Glosso]

10. Saying “panties,” “fanny” and “bangs”
We’re all aware from watching Americans onscreen that these are the words for knickers, a bottom and a fringe. But when you live here, occasionally you’re forced to deploy these abominations in real life sentences. Only the other day, I said, “Can you trim my bangs, please?” I felt dirty afterwards. But “panties” is much worse, somehow infantilizing and over-sexualizing ladies’ unmentionables. No word should do both these things.

Visit Mind the Gap: A Brit’s Guide to Surviving America to see the full list of Things Americans Do That Drive Brits Nuts.

8 bloody good British words

Posh Spice and husband looking vaguely chuffed

Yanks just don’t say these words (at least not with these particular meanings). But they also just don’t have anything of their own — at least not one particular gobsmacking word — that comes even close to each of these fine British colloquialisms. Knock yourself out with these conkers.

Chuffed: bloody pleased with yourself. “I just beat him at squash! Yeah – I’m chuffed mate.”

Posh: toffee-nosed, upper-crust, and probably bloody loaded. “He’s going to Ascot. Posh git.”

Knackered: bloody exhausted. “I just walked home from the pub. I’m bloody knackered.”

Naff: tacky, bloody tasteless. “Did you see her party get-up? How naff can you get?”

Whinge: complain in a really annoying and tiresome way. “Will you stop your bloody whinging and moaning and get a grip?”

Beaver (verb, usually followed by away): to work your bloody arse off. “While we were all down the pub, he was beavering away on his thesis. Bloody swat.”

Twee: too bloody quaint, pretty, or sentimental. “Lace and doilies on the tea trolley? How twee can you get?”

Bloody: very. Just a bloody good word for very.