UK/US words with different meanings.

[silver_sun]

There must be lots of UK words that have different meanings and or connotations in the US.

I know that fanny, jumper, chips, vest, pants and cot are just a few of them.

I can now add 'uppity' to the list.

Here in the UK (or at least the little bit of the UK I'm from) uppity means something along the lines of stuck up, obnoxiously snooty, somebody who is being an arrogant know it all. I have also heard it used to mean grumpy. Historic it seems to have come from 'uppish'in the 1600's meaning something overly lavish, and by the 1700's conciieted.

Today I've found out that in the US, particularly (from what I've seen on the net - not always the most reliable source of information admittedly) in the more southern states, that uppity has negative racial connotations.

So if I ever start to write for an American based fandom (not terribly likely) I know not to use that word.

Comments

[angstosaur.livejournal.com]

good to know ... I may at some point be tempted to write True Blood fic ...

[silver_sun]

True Blood is the vampire series, isn't it? I must say the only vampire stuff I tend to watch is Being Human and that's more for the werewolves (the fact that the werewolf part of it lead to relatively refrequent mostly naked Russell Tovey and later on mostly maked Robson Green isn't a bad thing either.)

I'm going to have to make a list of the US/UK word differences sometime (although there's probably a site out there with it already on.)

Some of the weirder ones I suppose had to be that doorstep in the US is 'Stoop' and that kettles (in the plug in electric sense) aren't that common - I guess they must use on the hob varieties.

[kendermouse.livejournal.com]

hum...

for me (born and raised in Kansas) "uppity" has the meaning you listed. Snooty, stuck-up, etc. Haven't heard it used for "grumpy" though.

in a racial context, i've seen it used to talk of those who "act above their station" or try to make it seem they are of a higher social class/status than they are (or the speaker THINKS they should be). So in that context, it wouldn't be out of place for, say a slave owner after the Civil War to refer to a Free African-American who refused to act as a slave would act as being "uppity".

It's not so much the race context, but the fact the person speaking feels the person being spoken about is acting in a way inappropriate to his/her social role. So, in essence the "uppity" person IS being "obnoxiously snooty" (or trying to be "better than they really are") in the eyes of the speaker.

does that make sense?

anyway. that's just this Kansas' girl's interpretation. Hope it helps.

pax,
kendermouse

[kendermouse.livejournal.com]

btw - i'm familiar with all of the words you listed except "fanny" and "cot". help?

and one for the list: biscuits. For the UK biscuits = cookies. for the US biscuits = well, ROLLS is the closest a UK friend and i could come up with. This after he was trying to figure out what was so yummy about the "sausage gravy over biscuits" i was having for lunch one day.

led to MUCH HUMOR after we figured out the translation problem.

pax,
km

[silver_sun]

Fanny in the US is ass right? in the UK fanny is female genitals. So a fannypack is called a bumbag in the UK.

Cot in the US is like a small and/or fold up bed (as far as I can tell from the contexts where I've seen it used, I could be wrong) in the UK cot is a baby bed, the kind with the rails round all four sides so they don't climb/fall out.

With food I remember reading somewhere that places like KFC (kentucky fried chicken) sold mashed potato in the US/some parts of the US. Something that seem utterly strange to us in the UK, where it's always chips.

[kendermouse.livejournal.com]

fanny = butt but i have to admit, i kind of like "bumbag" ::grin::

your definition of US cot is correct. UK cot = "crib" here in the US.

Fried chicken and mashed potatoes are almost a "given" over here (at least in the Midwest where i'm at, and apparently is pretty common in the South as well). KFC didn't start serving chips (look! i can learn new words! ::grin::) until fairly recently (last 10 years), before that it was ALWAYS mashed potatoes.

and don't even get me started on the whole "fried" thing. A friend from Australia made the comment when he came to visit that we serve everything fried and covered in gravy here in Kansas. ::grin::

thanks for the info on UK definitions. very interesting.

pax,
km

[keestone.livejournal.com]

kendermouse pretty much describes how I understand the US/UK difference as well. It's not that there's an actual difference in word meaning but that it's been used in a racist sense where "acting like you're better than you are" used to describe a person of color means "acting like you deserve to be treated the same as a white person".

Which . . . I hate the world. The one I realized I need to avoid is "articulate". While I would have meant it in the dictionary sense without thinking about the skin color of the speaker I admired, it's been used to imply that speakers of Black Vernacular English aren't capable of "speaking properly". "Eloquent" usually works for what I mean anyhow, and as far as I know that shouldn't be irritating or an accidental dog whistle.

[msemmaloo.livejournal.com]

A while back I read a story that had Jack in trousers and a vest. I had a really nice visual fantasy going till I discovered that vest doesn't mean the same thing in the UK as it does in the US.

[gal8028.livejournal.com]

I was just going to post the same definition. Here in Virginia, "uppity" is also not so much a racial issue here, but one of class and social status. It has a lot to do with speaking out of turn here, like talking with someone who is/looks above your assumed social status. Also, if you are too "familiar" with someone above your assumed social status.

I think the word "uppity" is a remnant from when there were more strongly drawn social class lines. I remember my grandmother talking about how her mother was called "uppity" because the lady she housekept for took her to California as a companion once back in the '50's. The other housekeepers/farmhands called her "uppity" because she was too familiar/friendly with her boss. She was caucasian, so it had nothing to do with race, but with reaching/acting above her station.

A lot of times, I think words like "uppity" aren't used in common talk but somehow stay in our shared societal knowledge. Like, I couldn't tell you when the last time I heard it spoken out loud. It's just one of those words whose definition that sticks around.

[silver_sun]

I didn't know that about 'articulate' having a different meaning in the US. It's amazing the amount of differences that there are between US and UK English once you start looking.

[angstosaur.livejournal.com]

electric kettles are rare - they tend to have hob top kettles like the old ones that whistle ... I've read fics where US authors have electic kettles that whistle

[idamus.livejournal.com]

Yeah, and all those different meanings can give us poor not-english-as-a-first-language real problems ;) add to that the fact that we have English words in the Danish language that doesn't mean what they do in English, I ALWAYS snort when I hear about someone wearing long johns, cause to me that's a bike ;) http://www.velorbis.dk/klassiske-bedstemor-bedstefar-cykler/velorbis-transportcykler/velorbis-long-john-budecykel

[keestone.livejournal.com]

That's assuming they even have a kettle at all. Lots of people just boil a pot of water if they decide to make some tea. An automated drip coffee maker is far more common.

Of course, the different voltage makes electric kettles less efficient and they don't boil water as quickly as they do in the UK. A stove-top version is nearly as quick. And that's another difference, a "stove" and "oven" instead of "cooker", and "burner" or "range" instead of "hob" (hob sounds very old-fashioned to a US ear).

[keestone.livejournal.com]

There's not actually literal a difference in word meaning there, it's just that some people suck and they kind of ruined the use of a good word because you don't want to sound like you're implying what they implied.

There's a very good blog on dialectical differences between the two that I follow regularly: http://separatedbyacommonlanguage.blogspot.com/

Some of the more confusing changes aren't the straightforward lexical differences but structural differences. For instance, US English kept "gotten" as a past participle while UK English dropped it and replaced it with "got" relatively recently. (Actually, quite a few differences -- including vest/waistcoat and fall/autumn -- are instances where US English held onto a meaning when UK English changed. Although, "reckon" is one of the opposites -- the UK held onto the usage and it got replaced by other words in most US dialects, so there's a bit of cognitive dissonance when, say, Harry Potter says he "reckons" something because the first mental image a lot of US speakers will get from that word is a grizzled hillbilly stereotype.) Another grammatical difference is that US English is more flexible in using the past simple, often using it where UK English would require the present perfect.

Um, yeah. I was fascinated by language differences even before I moved from one side of the pond to another. Although, I absolutely refuse to call the "sidewalk" the "pavement". Last time I checked, the road was paved too. :)