48 Fun Facts About British vs American

'Soccer', mocked in Britain as an Americanism, began as English student slang shortened from which word?

Association football was clipped to 'assoc.' and then, with the jokey '-er' ending that university students also used to turn rugby into 'rugger', became 'soccer' in the late nineteenth century.

Which garment does a Briton mean by 'pants', the word Americans use for trousers?

Underpants are what a Briton hears in 'pants', so an American who praises someone's pants in London is admiring their underwear; the word is also British slang for 'rubbish'.

In Britain, what is a centuries-old fee-charging boarding school such as Eton or Harrow traditionally called?

A public school earned the name by taking paying boarders from anywhere rather than only local boys, the opposite of the American sense of a free school run by the state.

Which Commonwealth country sides with the Americans in saying 'elevator' rather than the British 'lift'?

Canada says 'elevator' like its neighbour, yet it mostly spells the British way, writing 'colour' and 'centre' while siding with America again on 'tire' and 'curb'.

A British pint is roughly how much bigger than an American one, thanks to Britain's 1824 overhaul of its measures?

About 20% bigger: the British pint is 568 ml against the American liquid pint's 473 ml, because Britain redefined its gallon in 1824 while the United States kept an older, smaller one.

In old British usage, a 'billion' was how many times bigger than the American billion?

A thousand times bigger: the old British billion was a million million, the number now called a trillion, until the prime minister told Parliament in 1974 that ministers would use the American billion of a thousand million.

Britain adds 20% VAT nationwide; as of 2025, which of these US states charges no general sales tax at all?

Delaware joins Alaska, Montana, New Hampshire and Oregon in levying no statewide sales tax, while Florida, Texas and Nevada are known for skipping a different tax: none of them levies a personal income tax.

On an American menu, what does 'entrée' mean, the opposite of its sense in Britain and France?

The main dish kept the name in America: in long formal dinners the entrée was a course served before the roast, and Americans went on using the word for the principal dish while the French and British use it for the starter.

'Eggplant', the US name for what Britons call an aubergine, was first applied in 1763 to fruit of which colour?

White cultivars that look like hen's eggs earned the name, which only later stretched to the glossy purple kind most shoppers know.

An American 'biscuit', a soft bready side rather than a sweet snack, is closest to which British bake?

A scone is the closest British cousin of the American biscuit; only the British kind honours the word's origin, since 'biscuit' comes from the Latin for 'twice baked', a hard, dry bread.

What do Britons call the thin fried potato slices that Americans sell in bags as 'chips'?

Crisps are the bagged kind, and the trap runs both ways: order 'chips' in Britain and you get the hot fried kind that Americans call fries, as in fish and chips.

Which word do Australians and New Zealanders use for what Britons call the pavement and Americans the sidewalk?

Footpath spares Australians a transatlantic trap: to an American the 'pavement' is the road surface itself, exactly where a British child told to 'stay on the pavement' should not be.

The British 'nappy', for what Americans call a diaper, is thought to be a diminutive of which word?

Napkin is the likely origin of 'nappy', a colloquial shortening first recorded in 1927; 'diaper', the word America kept, is some six centuries older and began as the name of a costly patterned silk.

The British 'boot' of a car, America's trunk, takes its name from a compartment on what earlier vehicle?

A horse-drawn coach had a 'boot', a low outside compartment for stowing luggage, and the word moved on to the motor car, while 'trunk' recalls the travelling chests strapped to the back of early cars.

Which verb means 'discuss now' in Britain but 'shelve' in America, a clash Churchill saw muddle an Allied meeting?

To table a paper meant 'raise it now' to the British chiefs and 'put it away in a drawer' to the Americans, and Churchill recalled 'a long and even acrimonious argument' before both sides saw they wanted the same thing.

Which British city's underground railway opened in 1896 as the 'District Subway', a word Britons now hear as American?

Glasgow's Subway opened in 1896, the year before Boston opened the oldest subway tunnel in North America, so the 'American' word has been at home under a Scottish city for just as long.

Samuel Johnson's 1755 dictionary gave all four of these words an '-our' ending; which one still has it in Britain?

Favour is the survivor: Johnson also printed emperour, mirrour and terrour, and Britain went on to drop the u from those while keeping it in favour, colour and honour.

Which '-our' word do Americans usually keep the 'u' in, because it comes from Scots rather than Latin?

Glamour kept its u because it never had a Latin '-or' ending: it is said to be a Scots twist on 'grammar', which once took in occult learning, so to 'cast the glamour' was to cast a spell.

The z-spelling house style used by the United Nations and the journal Nature is named after which British publisher?

Oxford University Press gives its name to Oxford spelling, which keeps British forms such as 'colour' and 'defence' but writes 'organize' with a z because the ending descends from the Greek -izo.

American 'defense' and 'offense' keep spellings inherited from which language, rather than being Webster's inventions?

Anglo-French is where defense and offense come from, spellings America kept while Britain settled on defence and offence; the derivatives defensive and offensive take an s everywhere.

Which British chemist coined both 'alumium' and 'aluminum' before his countrymen settled on 'aluminium'?

Humphry Davy called the metal 'alumium' in 1808 and had switched to 'aluminum' by 1812, so the spelling Britons hear as American was an Englishman's own second thought; other writers pushed the '-ium' that Britain kept.

Noah Webster gave Americans 'color' and 'center', but which respelling of 'tongue' did he fail to make stick?

Tung was 'the true spelling', Webster insisted in his 1828 dictionary, and he had history on his side, since the word descends from Old English tunge; Americans went on writing 'tongue' anyway.

To an American, which floor is the one Britons call the 'first floor'?

The second floor: Britons call the street-level storey the ground floor and start counting above it, so a London flat 'on the first floor' is up a flight of stairs.

America's 231-cubic-inch gallon is the survivor of which old English measure, abolished in Britain in the 1820s?

The wine gallon, fixed by statute under Queen Anne, crossed the Atlantic with the colonists and stayed, so the 'American' gallon is the older English one and Britain's larger gallon is the newcomer.

Which US president switched the federal government onto Letter-size paper, America's answer to Britain's A4?

Ronald Reagan ended a long-running oddity: Washington had used its own 8 by 10½ inch sheet, a size dating back to Herbert Hoover's Commerce Department, while the rest of America wrote on Letter.

Which event fell on the date Britons write as 9/11?

Berlin Wall's fall: the border opened on 9 November 1989, which Britain, writing the day first, records as 9/11, while the attacks of September 2001 are 11/9 to a Briton.

A Briton who says 'half four' means which time, an abbreviation of a longer, more formal phrase?

4:30 is 'half four', short for 'half past four', but the phrase trips up German speakers, whose 'halb vier' means half an hour before four: 3:30.

'Cilantro', the American name for the leaves Britons call coriander, is borrowed from which language?

Spanish gave America 'cilantro', but it and Britain's 'coriander' are the same word: both descend from the Latin coriandrum, which the American form reached by way of Spain.

At a Burns supper, the root Britons call a swede and Americans a rutabaga is mashed and served as what?

Neeps are mashed swede, served with tatties beside the haggis; both transatlantic names point to Sweden, 'swede' being short for Swedish turnip and 'rutabaga' a Swedish dialect word.

Which American frozen treat did Frank Epperson say he invented by accident in 1905, aged 11?

The Popsicle, an ice lolly to Britons, began by Epperson's account when he left a cup of soda powder and water on the porch overnight with the stirrer still in it; he first called it the 'Epsicle'.

What do British speakers call the marks " and ', which Americans call quotation marks?

Inverted commas (or speech marks) is the British name, and British style also tends to open with a single mark where Americans reach first for doubles.

Besides 'zed' in Britain and 'zee' in America, the alphabet's last letter has which archaic third name?

Izzard is first recorded in the eighteenth century and was probably borrowed from Occitan izèda or a related form of 'zed'; the tidy old story that it stands for 's hard' has no evidence behind it.

As of 2025, US federal law lets restaurants pay tipped servers a cash wage as low as how much an hour?

$2.13 an hour is the least federal law lets employers pay tipped staff, on condition that tips lift them to the $7.25 minimum, which is why an American tip is part of the pay packet rather than a British-style thank-you.

In British catering, what is the pooled pot of tips and service charges shared out among staff called?

A tronc is run by a 'troncmaster', who may even be the one responsible for deducting income tax on the shares rather than the employer.

Governor William Weld proclaimed 26 December 'Boxing Day' in 1996 in which US state, at British expats' urging?

Massachusetts gave the day a proclamation but not a day off work, and the holiday is otherwise not widely celebrated in the United States.

Britain's Mothering Sunday, far older than America's Mother's Day, falls on the fourth Sunday of which season of the church year?

Lent's fourth Sunday was once the day to return to one's 'mother church', the home parish, and young people working away used the trip to see their own mothers; the cards and flowers came much later.

Which Pacific nation switched in 2009 from American-style driving on the right to British-style driving on the left?

Samoa changed sides so its people could import cheaper used cars from left-driving Australia and New Zealand, and it eased the switch with a two-day holiday and a three-day ban on alcohol sales.

The striped 'zebra crossing' that Americans would call a crosswalk first appeared in 1951 in which English town?

Slough got the first zebra crossing on 31 October 1951, after government trials of two more colourful versions, the first of them blue and yellow, lost out to the easily recognised stripes still painted today.

Britain's first roundabout, whose modern form the US only adopted in 1990, was built in 1909 in which garden city?

Letchworth Garden City's junction of 1909 was a plain traffic circle; what America adopted in 1990 was a later British refinement, in which entering traffic gives way to cars already circling, the reverse of the old rule.

English pupils aged 16 to 18 are in Years 12 and 13, which many schools still call by what older names?

Lower and Upper Sixth survive from the days when secondary years were 'forms' numbered one to five, so the two-year stage on top, the sixth form, had to be split in two.

Legend says rugby, ancestor of American football, began in 1823 when which Rugby School pupil ran with the ball?

William Webb Ellis has his name on the Rugby World Cup, yet the tale first surfaced in 1876, four years after his death, and the school had no written rules until three pupils drafted them in 1845.

Archie Bunker's sitcom All in the Family was Norman Lear's remake of which British comedy written by Johnny Speight?

Till Death Us Do Part gave Lear his family: Alf Garnett, the ranting East End patriarch forever at war with his socialist son-in-law, crossed the Atlantic to become Archie Bunker of Queens.

Redd Foxx's Sanford and Son, the American remake of Steptoe and Son, set its junkyard in which city?

Los Angeles's junk dealer was named after his star's family: Redd Foxx was born John Elroy Sanford and had a brother called Fred, so the British Steptoe and Son became Sanford and Son, set in the Watts district.

The American Office, adapted from Ricky Gervais's BBC original, is set at a paper company in which Pennsylvania city?

Scranton's Dunder Mifflin branch far outlasted its British model: the BBC original stopped after two six-episode series and a Christmas special, while the NBC version ran for nine seasons, from 2005 to 2013.

Which Broadchurch lead reprised his detective role, renamed Emmett Carver, in the 2014 Fox remake Gracepoint?

David Tennant played the same detective again as Emmett Carver, this time in a growling American accent, and Fox promised that its ten-episode remake would not end the way Broadchurch did.

Shark Tank is the US version of Britain's Dragons' Den, a format that was itself remade from a show in which country?

Japan's The Tigers of Money (Manē no Tora) was the original; the Dragons' Den name travelled from Britain and the sharks took over on ABC in 2009.

What do Americans call the garment a Briton would put on as a 'jumper'?

A sweater is the American word, and the mix-up runs both ways: to an American a 'jumper' is a sleeveless dress worn over a blouse, the garment Britons call a pinafore.

The everyday British word 'fortnight' descends from an Old English phrase meaning what?

Fourteen nights is the literal sense of fēowertīene niht, because early English speakers counted time by nights rather than by days.