British-isms.

The American's Guide to BritSpeak

By: assorted British folk
with examples by actual Brits



"Are you alright?"
phrase. Hey, what's up? How are you doing?


pants
n. underwear
"I'm not wearing any pants today. And you can't even tell!"


"I can't be bothered." or "I can't be asked."
phrase. I don't feel like it; It doesn't matter enough to me to ..
"Oh, I can't be bothered to decorate my house for Christmas."
"Oh pff, I can't be asked to study for my supervision."


"Have you got ____?"
phrase. Do you have _____?
"Have you got football boots for tomorrow?"


"Have you gone ____?"
phrase. Did you go ____?
"Have you just gone to the grocery?"


washing up (liquid)
n. dishwashing (liquid)
"Well, since I cooked, you should do the washing up tonight."


fortnight
n. two weeks
"See you again in a fortnight for our semi-monthly pub crawl."


toilet
n. bathroom
"Where's the toilet? I seriously drank too much wine tonight."


buttery, canteen
n. cafeteria
"The canteen's closed tonight, so we'll have to go to Nandos for dinner!"


"sort it out" or "(get it) sorted"
phrase. get it figured out, get it organized/fixed
"New phone is a twat. Why does it automatically type 'ame' instead of 'and'? Non-word vs. most common word in the English language ... sort it out Samsung, seriously."


mental
adj. ridiculous, crazy, off the sheezy
"Mate, that concert tonight was absolutely mental!"


lash/pre-lash
n. big drinking night/pre-game
"Yeah the morning was rush cause we'd been out on a lash the night before."
"Let's hit the club at 10, but pre-lash at my place at 8!"


supper
n. dinner or snack
"Let's go to the dining hall for supper."


eggy bread
n. french toast
"Mm, delicious, eggy bread! That just sounds so delicious .. and descriptive."


custard
n. pudding
"This gooey, yellow, viscous custard will be served for dessert."

pudding
n. cake
"X: For dessert tonight, I'm making pudding.
Y: ooh, delicious, viscous gelatinous sweetness.
X: actually, no. that's custard. this is pudding.
Y: huh?
X: seriously. pudding. it's like, dough, and baked, and sweet. get with the program."


fringe
n. bangs
"I kept the fringe with my new haircut!"

football boots
n. soccer cleats
"did you see that midfield wearing the bright yellow boots on the field at the football match today?

kick-about
n. scrimmage
"the football team is having a kick-about on the back fields."

Facebook Statuses: MIT vs. CAM

[Cambridge Facebook statuses]

i wish more than anything that the coffee shop delivered to our rooms, i cant move...and am still in yesterday's clothes -ST

sign of a ridiculous hangover: light of laptop screen hurts to look at. oouuuch. -LB

doesn't remember anything after the port -JDF

I wish we had guitar hero in the library. -NH

You know Monday night was bad when you have a hangover Wednesday morning -PW

is too drunk to go to a supervision

is practising using his gown

really can't be bothered to go to his supervision

The hardest part of Cambridge is having to put on cufflinks every week

Plan for tonight; Formal, back up to room for a homemade southend special, cocktails at the union then on to Emma (wednesday)

is an exhausted, hungover mess, but SO excited about tonight! [another formal] -JDF

is well chuffed with the discovery of her wonderful array of drunken facial expressions -HB

loves the fact that she got wrecked last night but still made it to lectures and labs, while her mother drank a few too many bacardis with her mate and, as a result, is wagging work.

5:46am. Did Tiananmen make the Chinese intellectual community more independent and vocal? Joseph Fewsmith says 'no', Xu Youyu says 'yes'. -JDF

Entered the library at 7.30pm... it's now 5.30am and I've nearly finished the introduction. I'm the Usain Bolt of essay writing. -KK

Working from bed with mint tea and Yemen books. Lovely. -LL

post-ball motivation fail.

To remove the HAMMER & SICKLE FLAG or not. This is the subject of tonight's controversial OPEN MEETING. Come speak at 6pm tonight!

rihanna.rwanda.coffee.

music, food, alcohol and friends - it's like the fun of a nightclub but in the warmth and comfort of King's library :) -MM

is an exhausted, hungover mess, but SO excited about tonight!

£5... 13 glasses of wine... can't be bad.

has been in the library for nearly 4 hours, and is only just starting her work.. -NH

[MIT Facebook statuses]

I just downloaded 3 gb in 3 minutes on the MIT network :) -JL

gallons of coffee and 12+ hours of various labwork to do? must be friday! -SF

So, maybe my grad student and I get a little overexcited about dorky things. but in our defense, that interface, and those grain boundaries, were absolutely gorgeous. mmm.

3 exams and 4 psets in one week? Really? -SW

haha! The dude that invented the happy meal and the cabbage patch doll (as well as pop rocks) wants to talk to me about Electroplushies. Hilarious! -MS

downloading at 5 Mb/s via wi-fi. Mmmmmmm.

wants better a better metadata UI than _KB.txt files. -KH

got into 24.900 and CMS.100 and has a UROP in CVCL! Which means that he'll be dropping 4.351

feels surprisingly prepared for doomsday tomorrow. Bring it on. -VH

bounce like ya got hydraulics in yo' g-string? hahahaha. -MYL

just found out that laundry view only works for the building you're actually in... I was trying to see if anyone was doing laundry in BC right now. -KB

excerpt from the BEST DESK CALL EVER guy: Can you connect me to the science department? me: This is a dorm, I don't really know how to do that. MIT has multiple science departments, so you'd need to call the main number and be more specific. guy: I was calling to settle a bet between me and my stepdaughter. We wanted to know if the moon is a planet or not. -EJ

is trapped in an infinite potential well. (it's like The Ring, but with more sine functions.) -SF

Op-amps are my new favorite circuit element... especially when they look like little insects. (They even look adorable in circuit diagrams.)

I've finally reached the point where it takes me much longer to format something in Word than it does when I just use Latex. Another questionable MIT milestone.

Dear fluids class - you have made me confuse upper case gamma with the capital letter F. Now the notes from all of my classes are super hard to decipher. -VH

all I want for Christmas is a stream function.

will have time for basic human needs at the end of the week.

is a sine wave for Purim! -DB

spent 3 hours figuring out android virtual machines instead of doing computation theory work. well, at least now today's refactoring nightmare is resolved....