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rahimnathwani 4 hours ago

I agree in general, but there's one exception: use of the word 'tabled'. This means roughly the opposite in British and US English, and there's often insufficient surrounding context to alert the reader to their error.

(OTOH I don't think you should suppress 'false friends' like biscuits, pants etc.)

mrob 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

>there's one exception: use of the word 'tabled'.

Another exception: "moot", as in "moot point". In the UK it means "subject to debate", while in the US it means "inconsequential and therefore not subject to debate".

lbriner 3 hours ago | parent [-]

I'm British but I always understood it as the second meaning. e.g. "We were going to consider XYZ but now it's a moot point because the project is cancelled."

mrob 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I've heard it used that way in the UK too, but the first meaning is traditional. Wiktionary has some examples:

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/moot

I expect the US meaning will eventually become standard everywhere.

dofm 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

It sort of means both simultaneously, doesn't it (we could discuss it but it's inconsequential), but we do tend to use it in that formulation most.

jwatzman 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

There are a few others. “Quite” comes to mind — “I am quite hungry” or “that meal was quite good” can mean opposite things, depending on the speaker region and even voice inflexion if spoken.

MrJohz 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Once you start going in that direction, a lot of things that British people say can require some amount of translation, see e.g. this table: https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:640/format:webp/0*0Fs1...

seszett 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Honestly it's not the first time I read such comments, and... they're not about the British as much as they are about the Americans, I'd say.

I think almost all of the expressions in the left-hand side have direct, almost literal equivalents in French for example, with the same meaning as they have for the British, including being very context-dependent.

Also works for Flemish by the way, although the Dutch are supposed to be more literal so maybe Flemish/Dutch is to be seen the same way as British/American.

dofm 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Quite, indeed, has no simple meaning in British English. Any non-British attempt to assign one meaning that is different to their regional meaning is doomed to failure :-)

I use it in different senses all the time.