List of American English vs British English words

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Are you SURE about "TV Series/season"????

Here in the states we use both terms but for different things.

A single show that runs continuously (Friends, BigBangTheory,HappyDays) is a "TV series". It can go on for years. In other words "a series" can go for many "seasons". A TV "season" is that part of the year in which the TV industry presents original first run programming (before they go into 'rerun season'). Basically a year of TV is a "TV season". A season has many competing TV series running on competing channels. And a single TV series can run for many seasons. So I suspect that you're confused and wrong think that a series and a season are the same thing.

Trump's granddaddy was an immigrant from Germany named "Drummf". He changed the family name to "Trump" after he got off the boat in the USA, probably partially because a "Trump" card is a good thing in card games. Had he moved to England instead he might not have changed his name to the local slang term for ….passing gas. Lol!

Season and series have the same meanings here as you just described, i.e. They're not the same thing.

When a Brit says "I was mad about the flat" he means "I was delighted with the apartment".

When an American says that he means "I was angry about my car getting a flat tire".

"Mad" originally meant "insane", but in the UK it drifted to mean "insanely happy", and in the US it drifted toward meaning "angry".

Brits also have a cute habit of using "terrible" to mean "extreme (even in a good way)". Something can be "terribly good".

You would be surprised how many people in New York City call apartments "flats."

It's usually used for a relatively small apartment in a walkup. A duplex in a doorman building would never be called a "flat."

Last edited by kraftiekortie on 19 Dec 2019, 6:16 pm, edited 1 time in total.

No Brit I know uses "mad" to mean extremely happy.

They mean "terribly good" in the same way as "awfully good", still using the real meaning of "terrible" and "awful" but...gah, I don't know how to explain it. Not sarcasm exactly.

"Wicked" used to basically mean "really excellent/awesome". "Sick" is used by chavs to mean the same thing.

Last edited by smudge on 19 Dec 2019, 6:09 pm, edited 1 time in total.

"Keeping up Appearances is a TV series. So was "All in the Family." One is British, the other US.

"Seasons," in the US TV sense, correspond to the period from September of a previous year to about June of the next year.

Our TV seasons are very short compared to yours.

"Wicked" is used in the exact same sense in eastern New England----especially Massachusetts.

New Yorkers never use "wicked."

"Sick" is a word used by Millennials in the United States to mean the same thing. Not just "chavish" types.

One time, I got into an argument with my wife's son because I didn't understand what "zed" meant. He thought I should have known what it meant. It was actually the first time I found out that British and Canadian people use "zed" for the letter "z."

Another time, my wife talked about buying "mincemeat." I had no idea what she was talking about. Then, when we got in the store, she pointed out the "ground beef."

The only way I knew "mincemeat" was in a Hanna-Barbara cartoon, where a cat named Jinx used to say, "I'll make mincemeat out of that mouse!"

My wife's son is a UK citizen. My wife is a US citizen, but she comes from Trinidad and frequently uses British terms for things.

TV-Telly

"new wave" as a music genre in the UK means arty or pop versions of punk rock. It has or had a negative connotation of being of watered down punk rock by musicians more interested in profit than authenticity. It is not used to describe much music made after 1980.

"New wave" in America while including the music in the British definition is a catchall term to describe mainly 1980s music that was not heavy metal, rap, or Debbie Gibson type dance music. It is heavily interchangeable with synthpop. It was viewed as both innovative and pop at the same time.
Wikipedia - New Wave Music
Wikipedia - Second British Invasion

Last edited by ASPartOfMe on 19 Dec 2019, 7:34 pm, edited 2 times in total.

Mincemeat used to actually contain meat, which is likely where the name came from. It's sort of weird to us too.

Yep, we call "zee", "zed" here.

"Awefully good"???

LOL! Just as silly as "terribly good". Yeah ..I am aware that Brits use it in a special convoluted....negatively positive way.

They don't say "that's awefully good" or "that's terribly good" when talking about something that they think really IS good. They use it thus: "that will NOT be terribly good", or "that wont go over awefully well".

Yeah …"wicked", or "wicked cool", can be something cool in a kind of bad-ass way.

Have yet to hear "sick" used that way.

And I hope that that doesn't get exported over here. Its like our millennials took the word "gay" (which was already repurposed from meaning "happy" to meaning "homosexual") and further distorted it to mean "uncool", or something.

Come to think of it we Americans did have a TV sitcom here called "Mad About You" about a young married couple. So we sometimes use "mad" t mean "wildly emotional in a good way".

I think we use "awfully/terribly good" when referring to say, a bad joke that's bad enough it's really funny, for example. Like, "terribly amusing".

I've heard "awfully good" used in that sense in the US, too.

Yes I'm sure, you're just confused about what I mean.

"I just watched the second season of my favourite TV series."
vs.
"I just watched the second *series* of my favourite TV series."

We never used the word "season" to describe a TV series (except apparently some Doctor Who fans) until fairly recently.