British vs American Trivia
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48 free British vs American trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Two countries divided by a common language, and the divide is stranger than lift versus elevator. A British 'public school' costs money, an American 'entrée' is the big plate, and the word Britons mock as the ugliest Americanism was coined by English schoolboys. These 48 questions cover the everyday words that mean different things on each side of the Atlantic, the spellings Webster did and did not manage to change, the measures and dates that still trip up travellers, school years, driving rules, tipping and tax, and the sitcoms and game shows that were remade for the other audience. It suits a pub quiz, an English lesson with a transatlantic twist, or anyone who has ever been handed the wrong kind of chips. Play it on your phone with instant answers and explanations, or print it for the table.
30 of 48 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01'Soccer', mocked in Britain as an Americanism, began as English student slang shortened from which word?
Association
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.
Q 02Which garment does a Briton mean by 'pants', the word Americans use for trousers?
Underpants
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'.
Q 03In Britain, what is a centuries-old fee-charging boarding school such as Eton or Harrow traditionally called?
A public school
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.
Q 04Which Commonwealth country sides with the Americans in saying 'elevator' rather than the British 'lift'?
Canada
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'.
Q 05A British pint is roughly how much bigger than an American one, thanks to Britain's 1824 overhaul of its measures?
About 20%
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.
Q 06In old British usage, a 'billion' was how many times bigger than the American billion?
A thousand times
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.
Q 07Britain adds 20% VAT nationwide; as of 2025, which of these US states charges no general sales tax at all?
Delaware
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.
Q 08On an American menu, what does 'entrée' mean, the opposite of its sense in Britain and France?
The main dish
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.
Q 09'Eggplant', the US name for what Britons call an aubergine, was first applied in 1763 to fruit of which colour?
White
White cultivars that look like hen's eggs earned the name, which only later stretched to the glossy purple kind most shoppers know.
Q 10An American 'biscuit', a soft bready side rather than a sweet snack, is closest to which British bake?
A scone
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.
Q 11What do Britons call the thin fried potato slices that Americans sell in bags as 'chips'?
Crisps
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.
Q 12Which word do Australians and New Zealanders use for what Britons call the pavement and Americans the sidewalk?
Footpath
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.
Q 13The British 'nappy', for what Americans call a diaper, is thought to be a diminutive of which word?
Napkin
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.
Q 21Which British chemist coined both 'alumium' and 'aluminum' before his countrymen settled on 'aluminium'?
Humphry Davy
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.
Q 22Noah Webster gave Americans 'color' and 'center', but which respelling of 'tongue' did he fail to make stick?
Tung
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.
Q 23To an American, which floor is the one Britons call the 'first floor'?
The second floor
Q 14The British 'boot' of a car, America's trunk, takes its name from a compartment on what earlier vehicle?
A horse-drawn coach
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.
Q 15Which verb means 'discuss now' in Britain but 'shelve' in America, a clash Churchill saw muddle an Allied meeting?
To table
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.
Q 16Which British city's underground railway opened in 1896 as the 'District Subway', a word Britons now hear as American?
Glasgow
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.
Q 17Samuel Johnson's 1755 dictionary gave all four of these words an '-our' ending; which one still has it in Britain?
Favour
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.
Q 18Which '-our' word do Americans usually keep the 'u' in, because it comes from Scots rather than Latin?
Glamour
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.
Q 19The z-spelling house style used by the United Nations and the journal Nature is named after which British publisher?
Oxford University Press
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.
Q 20American 'defense' and 'offense' keep spellings inherited from which language, rather than being Webster's inventions?
Anglo-French
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.
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.
Q 24America's 231-cubic-inch gallon is the survivor of which old English measure, abolished in Britain in the 1820s?
The wine gallon
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.
Q 25Which US president switched the federal government onto Letter-size paper, America's answer to Britain's A4?
Ronald Reagan
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.
Q 26Which event fell on the date Britons write as 9/11?
Berlin Wall's fall
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.
Q 27A Briton who says 'half four' means which time, an abbreviation of a longer, more formal phrase?
4:30
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.
Q 28'Cilantro', the American name for the leaves Britons call coriander, is borrowed from which language?
Spanish
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.
Q 29At a Burns supper, the root Britons call a swede and Americans a rutabaga is mashed and served as what?
Neeps
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.
Q 30Which American frozen treat did Frank Epperson say he invented by accident in 1905, aged 11?
The Popsicle
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'.