beach seaside
bouncer chucker-out
bowling-alley skittle-alley
bung-starter beer-mallet
carom (billiards) cannon
caroussel runabout
checkers (game) draughts
closed season (for game) close season
deck (of cards) pack
detour (road) road diversion
fender (automobile) wing, or mud
gasoline, or gas petrol
gear-shift (automobile) gear-lever
generator (automobile) dynamo
ground-wire (radio) earth-wire
headliner (vaudeville) topliner
highball whiskey-and-soda
hood (automobile) bonnet
hunting shooting
intermission (at play or concert) interval
lap-robe carriage-rug
legal holiday bank holiday
lobby (theatre) foyer, or entrance-hall
low-gear (automobile) first speed
movie-house cinema, or picture-house
muffler (automobile) silencer
oil-pan (automobile) sump
orchestra (seats in a theatre) stalls
pool-room billiards-saloon
race-track race-course
roadster (automobile) two-seater
roller-coaster switchback-railway
rumble-seat dickey-seat
saloon public-house, or pub
sedan (automobile) saloon-car
shock-absorber (automobile) anti-bounce clip
shot (athletics) weight
sight-seeing-car or rubberneck-wagon char-a-banc
soft-drinks minerals
spark-plug sparking-plug
sporting-goods sports-requisites
ten-pins nine-pins
stein (beer) pint
top (automobile) hood
vacation holiday
vaudeville variety43
vaudeville-theatre music-hall
windshield (automobile) windscreen44
Similar lists might be prepared to show differences in a great many other fields — business, finance, government, politics, education, ecclesiastical affairs, and most of the arts and sciences, including even cookery. Despite their steady gobbling of Americanisms, the English continue faithful to many words and phrases that are quite unknown in this country, and so the two languages remain recognizably different, especially in their more colloquial forms. An Englishman, walking into his house, does not enter upon the first floor as we do, but upon the ground floor. He may also call it the first storey (not forgetting the penultimate e), but when he speaks of the first floor he means what we call the second floor, and so on up to the roof, which is covered, not with tin or shingles, but with tiles or leads. He does not ask his servant, “Is there any mail for me?” but “Are there any letters for me?” for mail, in the American sense, is a word that he uses much less often than we do. There are mail-trains in his country, and they carry mail-bags (more often called post-bags) that are unloaded into mail-vans bearing signs reading “Royal Mail,” but in general he reserves the word mail for letters going to or from foreign countries, and he knows nothing of the compounds so numerous in American, e.g., mail-car, -matter, -man, -box, and -carrier. He uses post instead. The man who brings his post or letters is not a letter-carrier or mailman, but a postman. His outgoing letters are posted, not mailed, at a pillar-box, not at a mail-box. If they are urgent they are sent, not by special delivery, but by express post. Goods ordered by post on which the dealer pays the cost of transportation are said to arrive, not postpaid or prepaid, but post-free or carriage-paid. The American mail-order, however, seems to be coming in, though as yet the English have developed no mail-order firms comparable to Montgomery-Ward or Sears-Roebuck. To the list of railroad terms differing in the two countries, given in Chapter IV, Section 2, a number of additions might be made. The English have begun to use freight in our sense, though they prefer to restrict it to water-borne traffic, and they have borrowed Pullman, ballast and track, and begin to abandon left-luggage room for cloak-room, but they still get in or out of a train, not on or off it, and their only way of expressing what we mean by commuter is to say a season-ticket-holder.45 They say a train is up to time, not on time, they designate what we call a station-agent by the more sonorous station-master, they call a ticket-agent a booking-clerk, a railway bill-of-lading a consignment-note, a bureau-of-information an inquiry-office, a bumper a buffer,46 a caboose a brake-van, and the aisle of a Pullman its corridor, and they know nothing, according to Horwill, of way-stations, flag-stops, box-cars, chair-cars, check-rooms, ticket-choppers, claim-agents, grade-crossings, classification-yards, flyers, long- and short-hauls, trunk-lines and tie-ups. An English guard (not conductor)47 does not bellow “All aboard!” but “Take your seats, please!” Railroad itself is, to all intents and purposes, an Americanism; it has been little used in England for fifty years. In the United States the English railway is also used, but not as commonly as railroad. It has acquired the special sense of a line of rails for light traffic, as in street-railway (Eng. tramway), but it has been employed, too, to designate large railroad systems, and to differentiate between bankrupt railroad corporations and their more or less solvent heirs and assigns.48 To return to the mails, the kind we call domestic is inland in England and the kind we call foreign is overseas. Our division of the mails into first, second, third and fourth classes is unknown there. The English internal revenue is the inland revenue.
An Englishman does not wear suspenders but braces, his undershirt is a vest or singlet, and his drawers are pants. He carries, not a billfold, but a note-case. His crazy-bone is his funny-bone. His watch-crystal is his watch-glass, though English jewelers, among themselves, sometimes use crystal. A stem-winder is a keyless-watch, a Derby hat is a bowler, an elevator is a lift, a fraternal-order is a friendly- or mutual-society, an insurance-adjuster is a fire-assessor, a lunch-counter is a snack-bar, a pen-point is a nib, the programme of a meeting is the agenda, a realtor is an estate-agent, the room-clerk in a hotel is the reception-clerk, a white-collar job is black-coated, a labor scab is a blackleg, a street-cleaner is a road-sweeper, a thumbtack is a drawing-pin, a militia-armory is a drill-hall, a sham-battle is a sham-fight, what we call a belt (as in Cotton Belt, Corn Belt, Bible Belt) is a zone, a bid or proposal is always a tender (an Englishman bids only at auctions or cards), a traffic blockade is a block, a pay-roll is a wage-sheet, a weather-bureau is a meteorological-office, an eraser is usually an india-rubber, a newspaper clipping is a cutting, a grab-bag is a lucky-dip, hand-me-downs are reach-me-downs, a navy-yard is a dock-yard or naval-yard, a scratch-pad is a scribbling-block, a boy’s sling-shot is a catapult, a laborer on the roads or railroads is a navvy, a steam-shovel is a crane-navvy, and instead of signs reading “Post No Bills” the English put up signs reading “Stick No Bills.” An Englishman, as we have seen, does not seek sustenance in a tenderloin but in an undercut or fillet. The wine on the table, if white and German, is not Rhine wine, but Hock. Yellow turnips, in England, are called Swedes, and are regarded as fit food for cattle only; when rations were short there, in 1916, the Saturday Review made a solemn effort to convince its readers that they were good enough to go upon the table. The English, of late, have become more or less aware of another vegetable formerly resigned to the lower fauna, to wit, American sweet corn. But they are still having some difficulty about its name, for plain corn, in England, means all the grains used by man. Some time ago, in the London Sketch, one C. J. Clive, a gentleman farmer of Worcestershire, was advertising sweet corncobs as the “most delicious of all vegetables,” and offering to sell them at 6s.6d. a dozen, carriage-paid. By chicken the English can mean any fowl, however ancient. Broilers and friers are never heard of over there. The classes which, in America, eat breakfast, dinner and supper have breakfast, dinner and tea in England; supper always means a meal eaten late in the evening. The American use of lunch to designate any irregular meal, even at midnight,
is strange in England. An Englishwoman’s personal maid, if she has one, is not Ethel or Maggie but Robinson, and the nurse-maid who looks after her children is not Lizzie but Nurse. A general servant, however, is addressed by her given-name, or, as the English always say, by her Christian name. English babies do not use choo-choo to designate a locomotive, but puff-puff; a horse is a gee-gee. A nurse in a hospital is not addressed by her name, but as Nurse, and her full style is not Miss Jones, but Nurse Jones or Sister. The hospital itself, if it takes pay for entertaining the sick, is not a hospital at all, but a nursing-home, and its trained or registered nurses (as we would say) are plain nurses, or hospital nurses, or maybe nursing sisters. And the white-clad young gentlemen who make love to them are not studying medicine but walking the hospitals. Similarly, an English law student does not study law in his Inn of Court, but reads the law, though if he goes to a university to seek a doctorate in law he may be said to study it.
If an English boy goes to a public school, it is not a sign that he is getting his education free, but that his father is paying a good round sum for it and is accepted as a gentleman. A public school over there corresponds to the more swagger sort of American prep school; it is a place maintained chiefly by endowments, wherein boys of the upper classes are prepared for the universities. What we know as a public school is called a council-school in England, because it is in the hands of the education committee of the County Council; it used to be called a board-school, because before the Education Act of 1902 it was run by a school-board. The boys in a public (i.e., private) school are divided, not into classes, or grades, but into forms, which are numbered, the highest usually being the sixth. The benches they sit on are also called forms. An English boy whose father is unable to pay for his education goes first into a babies’ class in a primary or infants’ school. He moves thence to class one, class two, class three and class four, and then into the junior school, where he enters the first standard. Until now boys and girls have sat together in class, but hereafter they are separated, the boy going to a boys’ school and the girl to a girls’. The boy goes up a standard a year. At the third or fourth standard, for the first time, he is put under a male teacher. He reaches the seventh standard, if he is bright, at the age of twelve and then goes into what is known as the ex-seventh. If he stays at school after this he goes into the ex-ex-seventh. But some leave the public elementary school at the ex-seventh and go into the secondary-school, which, in this sense, is what Americans commonly call a high-school. But the standard system is being gradually replaced by a form system, imitating that of the more swagger schools. A grammar-school, in England, always means a place for the sons of the relatively rich. Grade-schools are unknown.
The principal of an English public (i.e., private) school or elementary-school is a head-master or head-mistress, but in a secondary-school he or she may be a principal. Only girls’ schools have headmistresses. The lower pedagogues used to be ushers, but are now masters or assistant masters (or mistresses). The titular head of a university is a chancellor;49 he is commonly a bigwig elected by the resident graduates for ornamental purposes only, and a vice-chancellor does the work.50 Some of the universities also have pro-chancellors, who are bigwigs of smaller size; they have deputy-pro-chancellors or pro-vice-chancellors to discharge their theoretical functions. Most English universities have deans of faculties much like our own, and some of them have lately laid in deans of women, and even advisers to women students. They have minor dignitaries of kinds unknown in the United States, e.g., proctors, orators and high stewards. In Scotland the universities also have rectors, who are chosen by election, and, like the chancellors, are mainly only ornaments.51 The head of a mere college may be a president, principal, master, warden, rector, dean or provost. In the solitary case of the London School of Economics he is a director. The students are not divided into freshmen, sophomores, juniors and seniors, as with us, but are simply first-year-men, second-year-men, and so on, though a first-year-man is sometimes a freshman or fresher. Such distinctions, however, are not so important in England as in America; undergraduates (they are seldom called students) do not flock together according to seniority, and there is no regulation forbidding an upper classman, or even a graduate, to be polite to a student just entered. The American hierarchy of assistant instructors, instructors, assistant professors, associate professors, adjunct professors and full professors is unknown in the English universities; they have only readers or lecturers and professors. If his chair happens to have been endowed by royalty, a professor prefixes regius to his title. A student, though technically a member of the university, has few rights as such until he is graduated (or, in some cases, until he takes his M.A.); then he may vote in the election which chooses his university’s representative (or representatives) in Parliament, and so enjoy double representation there. To hold this right he must pay dues to his college, which is a constituent part of the university, with rights and privileges of its own. The professors, lecturers and readers of a college or university do not constitute a faculty, but a staff,52 and they are called collectively, its dons, though all teachers are not, necessarily, dons (i.e., fellows). An English university student does not study; he reads — whether for a pass-degree, which is easy, or for honours, which give him seriously to think. He knows nothing of frats, class-days, rushes, credits, points, majors, semesters, senior-proms and other such things; save at Cambridge and Dublin he does not even speak of a commencement; elsewhere he calls it degree-day or speech-day. On the other hand his speech is full of terms unintelligible to an American student, e.g., wrangler, tripos, head, greats and mods. If he is expelled he is said to be sent down. There are no college boys in England, but only university-men. Alumni are graduates, and the graduates of what we would call prep-schools are old-boys.
The upkeep of council-schools in England, save for some help from the Treasury, comes out of the rates, which are local taxes levied upon householders. For that reason an English municipal taxpayer is called a rate-payer. The functionaries who collect and spend the money are not office-holders or job-holders, but public-servants, or, if of high rank, civil-servants. The head of the local police is not a chief of police, but a chief constable. The fire department is the fire-brigade, and a fire-alarm box is a fire-call. A city ordinance is a by-law, and a member of a City Council is a councillor. The parish poorhouse is colloquially a workhouse, but officially a poor-law institution. A policeman is a bobby familiarly and a constable officially, though the American cop seems to be making progress. His club or espantoon is his truncheon. He is sometimes mentioned in the newspapers, not by his name, but as P.C. 643 A — i.e., Police Constable No. 643 of the A Division. When he belongs to what we call the traffic division he is said to he on point duty. There are no police lieutenants or captains; the one rank between sergeant and superintendent is inspector. The blotter at a police-station is the charge-sheet. A counterfeiter is a coiner, a fire-bug is a fire-raiser, and a porch-climber is a cat-burglar. The warden of a prison is the governor, and his assistants are warders. There is no third-degree and no strong-arm-squad, though both have been made familiar in England by American movies. An English saloon-keeper is officially a licensed victualler. His saloon is a public house, or, colloquially, a pub. He does not sell beer by the bucket, can, growler, shell, seidel, stein or schooner, but by the pint, half-pint or glass. He and his brethren, taken together, are the licensed trade, or simply the trade. He may divide his establishment into a public-bar, a saloon-bar and a private-bar, the last being the toniest, or he may call his back room a parlour, snug or tap-room. If he has a few upholstered benches in his place he may call it a lounge. He employs no bartenders. Barmaids do the work, with maybe a barman, potman or cellarman to help. Beer, in most parts of Great Britain, means only the thinnest and cheapest form of malt liquor; better stuff is commonly called bitter. When an Englishman speaks of booze he means only ale or beer; for our hard liquor (a term he never uses) he prefers spirits, He uses boozer to indicat
e a drinking-place as well as a drinker. What we call hard cider is rough cider to him. He never uses rum in the generic sense that it has acquired in the United States, and knows nothing of rum-hounds, rum-dumbs, rum-dealers, the rum-trade, and the rum-evil, or of the Demon Rum. The American bung-starter is a beer-mallet in England, and, as in this country, it is frequently used for assault and homicide.
In England corporation commonly designates a municipal or university corporation, or some other such public body, e.g., the British Broadcasting Corporation; what we commonly think of when we hear of the corporations is there called a public company or limited liability company. But the use of the word in its American sense seems to be gaining ground, and in 1920 Parliament passed an act (10 & 11 Geo. V, Ch. 18) levying a corporation-profits tax. An Englishman writes Ltd, after the name of a limited liability (what we would call incorporated) bank or trading company, as we write Inc. He calls its president its chairman if a part-timer, or its managing director if a full-timer.53 Its stockholders are its shareholders, and hold shares instead of stock in it. Its bonds are called debentures, and the word is not limited in meaning, as in the United States, to securities not protected by a mortgage. The place where such companies are floated and looted — the Wall Street of London — is called the City, with a capital C. Bankers, stockjobbers, promoters, directors and other such leaders of its business are called City men. The financial editor of a newspaper is its City editor. Government bonds are consols, or stocks,54 or the funds. To have money in the stocks is to own such bonds. An Englishman hasn’t a bank-account, but a banking-account. His deposit-slip is a paying-in-slip, and the stubs of his cheque-book (not check-book) are the counterfoils. He makes a rigid distinction between a broker and a stockbroker. A broker means, not only a dealer in securities, as in our Wall Street broker, but also “a person licensed to sell or appraise distrained goods.” To have the brokers (or bailiffs) in means to be bankrupt, with one’s very household goods in the hands of one’s creditors.55 What we call a grain-broker is a corn-factor.
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