BritishVsAmerican

British vs American English

• British
  • American

• bunged up (nose)
  • stuffy nose

• multi-storey car park
  • parking structure

• to mend
  • to repair

• to drive gear (= manual transmission)
  • to drive stick

• surname (British preferred)
  • last name (American preferred)

• built environment
  • urban design/city planning

• inverted commas
  • quotation marks

• take away
  • to go

• eat in
  • for here

• fizzy drink
  • pop, soda, coke [The Great Pop vs Soda Controversy]

• show you it
  • show it to you

• Portaloo (proprietary name)
  • Porta Potti (proprietary name)

• move house
  • move

• as well (British preferred)
  • too; also (American preferred)

• parliamentary party
  • caucus (<? Algonquin: 'cau´-cau-as´u', for 'counsel'; also en-CA)

• yoghurt (/YA-gert/)
  • yogurt (/YOOU-gert/)
    • en-CA: yogourt; fr-CA: yogourt; fr-FR: yaourt

• bill (in a restaurant
  • check (in a restaurant)
    • it: conto; es: cuenta

• Sellotape
  • Scotch tape (both being proprietary trademarks)

• Joe Bloggs
  • John Doe

• noughts-and-crosses
  • tic-tac-toe

• number plate (= car registration plate)
  • license plate (tag)

• license (verb), licence (noun)
  • license (verb), license (noun)

• ring someone on telephone number
  • call someone at telephone number

• chips
  • French fries

• courgette
  • zucchini

• mange-tout
  • snowpeas

• abattoir
  • slaughterhouse

• centre (same as in other European languages)
  • downtown

• nought (digit and number), zero (number)
  • zero (both digit and number)

• brackets () -- cf. square brackets []
  • parenthesis () -- cf. square brackets []

• stroke (/) (see [Wikipedia: Derry]/Londonderry?, Stroke City)
  • slash (/)

• value for money (also international English)
  • bang for the buck

• e-science (with tendency to equate with grid technologies)
  • computational science (with collaboration aided by computer networking/grid computing)

• information technology (IT)
  • computing; computers

• film, pictures; but 'movie' is appropriate when talking about a video clip on a computer screen
  • movie

• cash machine ('Cashpoint' appears to be a proprietary trademark)
  • automatic teller machine (ATM)

• flat ('apartment' is sometimes used in formal written documents)
  • apartment

• loves doubling consonants in foreign loan words (and taking away where there should be one): e.g., chilli con carni, Haille Sellasie, pannini
  • chili con carne, Haile Selassie, panini (if ever used)

• to table = to add to consideration
  • to table = to remove from consideration