I don't even know what's American, Canadian, British, Aussie, or Kiwi anymore, since I work with all of them. My immediate colleagues include one Kiwi, about six Australians, two Englishmen and one Englishwoman (is that a word?), one Scotsman, five or six Canadians, and three or four Americans. Plus, we all live and work in Japan, so we get sentences like: "Dude, I went to this tabehoudai the other night, really nice yakiniku, but the nomihoudai was only chu-hai and tanre, no real beer. Anyway, it was only like ni sen yen per person, y'all should try it sometime." "Cheers, will do."
Sounds exactly like how my mom speaks at home; casual English with a splattering of foreign words or phrases (maybe with a full dependent clause or two)
That's how we native speakers of English talk to each other, you should hear the way Mrs. A and I converse. But she'd kill me if I gave an example, sorry.
@jannert, maybe it's because those misusing these words have grown accustomed all their lives to being told they're incredible. So everything that's not them must be incredulous. (Well, I tried.)
As usual, Chicken Freak comes up with the best examples. A puzzled pie. The bit about requiring a metaphorical brain is precisely right. That's it. If it doesn't have a brain, it can't be puzzled or incredulous. As to a wedding being happy or the affair being sad ...I suspect that's a personification of what the wedding or the affair does to the people with brains who have witnessed it. I've never heard of a car being happy or a shower being happy. I think 'happy wedding' is one of those kinds of expressions that gets picked up and used to where it sounds normal—when, grammatically, it's not. I'll look up that book.
Its also slang for going to the toilet ... I often start the day with a nice cup of tea and a sit down
The pie was puzzled. Why had it been removed from the nice warm oven ? Why was a big pink creature sniffing it's hot breath ? puzzlement changed to trepidation as the largest of the pink things lifted a vicious spoon from its rest and lent forward. The pie screamed in terror a gout of steam bursting through its crust as it was slowly disemboweled, vomiting its brown internal juices across the cold ceramic surface.... The quiche watched incredulous, it had a bad feeling that it might be next.
In gangster circles we prefer 'The Kray Twins.' ...tho' if you were referring to the entire clan @Iain - you might say 'The Kray Brothers...' Also I disagree with Moose about 'sitting down' meaning taking a shit. The nation would disintegrate under such bizarre terms/conditions. When I 'sit down' I am not shitting. Just to make that clear to America [and Japan].
You always eat the pie first so it doesn't run away ... the only exception is if there's a haggis in the building, when it is necessary to subdue that first as they prefer to fight rather than flee. You also have to be careful if there's a collection of sponge fingers, caned fruit , jelly and cream - they aren't to be trifled with
I have to echo the sentiment of Superman doing good, and not things being good (meaning nice). Could be a British thing, or it could be the ever-growing vagueness of words that have been attributed by teenagers and gas-bags who want words for every season. "Oh Mabel, thats nice isn't it?" Honestly, I think things are lovely or fantastic, but I do have a habit or throwing around WONDERFUL and/or EXCELLENT for things that are actually quite dull.
