Percival P. Cassidy wrote:
ransley wrote:

What you call kerosine in the USA we in the UK call paraffin.
Like hoods & bonnets. Bumpers & fenders. Trunks & boots. :-)-

Or butts and bums.

And when the kids in school ask for a rubber nobody stares, it means
eraser

"Two great nations divided by a common language" (George Bernard Shaw?
Winston Churchill?)

But problems may arise in other varieties of English too. I had not been
in Australia long when I heard somebody ask for some Durex. In UK, as in
USA, Durex was/is a common brand of condom. Perhaps Durex condoms did
exist in Australia too, but it was also the brand of a widely used
adhesive tape (a local equivalent of "Scotch tape" -- or "Sellotape" for
the Brits; does the latter still exist?).


Or the time I met a pretty girl in Holy Loch Scotland. She told me I
should "Come 'round tomorrow and knock me up." Being 'knocked up' over
there has an entirely different meaning than in the States :-)

daestrom