More “American words from the British side of the list that do or don’t mean what they mean in British English”:
- Wardrobe: Means either “all the clothes you own” (”her wardrobe consisted of nothing but t-shirts and jeans”) or a piece of furniture that has drawers and a place to hang clothes. A wardrobe can be inserted into a closet, but a closet itself is never a wardrobe.
- Biscuit is not a cookie, but it is a food. It’s a roll with a firm, crisp outside and (ideally) a dense but soft inside. Not sweet, although some (like those with honey butter inside) have a bit of sweetness. Most eat these with butter inserted into the middle, or cut them in half and put something like jelly on them. Delicious when fresh, they turn into rocks when stale.
- Tights: we do have these. Pantyhose is very specific: a sheer, delicate type of tight that runs when you look at it funny. Tights are made of other materials or are woven more tightly to have an almost opaque weave. They’re common as clothing for little girls and come in many colors. We also use “stockings” to refer to these.
- Jumper: this is a thing, but not at all like the British thing, aside from both being clothing. A jumper in American is an overall dress, or a dress made to be worn over a shirt. Sometimes, especially in little boy clothes, a jumper can also be overalls, because overalls have the connotation of work clothes.
- I feel like wash your hands and wash up might have been reversed? All I ever hear is wash your hands, and wash up sounds like something I’ve seen in British fiction. In any case, we absolutely do say wash your hands. (”Wash your hands - It’s the law!” - sign found in public bathrooms at eating establishments to remind employees of the establishment.)
- We say handbag, purse and pocketbook almost interchangeably, at least in my part of the US.
- Mobile is used as part of the construction “on mobile”, meaning that I am not using a desktop or laptop, I’m using a phone or tablet to access the Internet.
- We do say tap, but not as often as faucet.
- Toilet for us is exclusively the thing you sit on. The room it’s in is the restroom or bathroom. (Restrooms are more of a public thing. Possibly because they literally do not have baths. In houses they’re called bathrooms.)
- Makeup is all one word, no dash, but we absolutely do say it, and more often than we say cosmetics. Nobody says “my cosmetics are running” or “Let me just go put on some cosmetics.”
- As I mentioned, coriander is the seeds of the cilantro plant, so we say both, but when we say coriander we very specifically mean the ground seeds of the cilantro plant.
- Spring onion and scallion are interchangeable.
- Soda isn’t the only word for fizzy drink; in some places in this country we say “pop”. (I do not.) Some places say “soda pop” and some weird places say “Coke” to mean any fizzy drink. (Meanwhile if we actually said “fizzy drink”, we would be including champagne, sparkling juice, and seltzer water, none of which are considered soda. Soda is specifically flavored sugar water – or artificially sweetened water – that is carbonated.)
- We do say pavement, but not specifically to mean sidewalk. Any surface paved in concrete is pavement.
- Underground for us, aside from its literal meaning, means “independent, local, not well known” or else “subversive and rebellious.” Usually found in music and comics.
- Holiday means a specific day set aside that everyone, or everyone in a specific group, celebrates. You may go on vacation during a holiday, but you can also go on vacation on normal days as well.
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