Us vs uk spellings

A romance with sex scenes

 

Ha! Never realised this. Thank you.

 

Yeah, it's not quite right because a bra is also 'underwear.' As is a slip. Or a man's 'vest' which we don't call a vest, but an 'undershirt.' All underwear. And long johns are sometimes referred to as 'long underwear.' A vest is a gillet. Americans don't call anything a gillet!

 

I've just thought of another funny misunderstanding with American pronunciations. Frank Skinner (an English comedian/chat show host) was interviewing Britney Spears. He showed a clip from a film she was making where she was shown jumping up and down on a bed wearing a bra and large pair of men's Y-fronts.

Back in the studio she was laughing at the clip and said, "Oh, man. I can't believe they made me wear those grainy painies."

Frank Skinner looked puzzled. "Those what?"

"Grainy painies," she repeated.

This went on for quite some time until someone in the audience explained she was saying 'Granny panties.'

 

I thought a jumper was someone that jumped off a building to commit suicide.

 

The UK words 'spanner' and 'adjustable spanner' may provoke US readers to reach for their dictionaries, as 'wrench' and 'monkey wrench' would the the US alternatives. I doubt these words would turn up in a romance with sex scenes, but I suppose it depends on how imaginative the sex scenes are.

 

I read a lot of books that come out of the U.K. as well as just like the U.K. more so I find myself always spelling things the English way. Hence the name.

 

But in the movies, they are suspended by cables, possibly also of the jumper variety.

 

'Jumper cables' are used between batteries when a car won't start.

 

In Canada, I've heard both, but 'booster cables' is more common. I'm wondering now if only 'jumpers' is used in Europe. Now I don't know if Lewdog gets my joke or if its intention is clear. Such is life in Canada, building bridges where no gap exists, tearing down walls that aren't walls, our redundancy outmatched by only cable television.

Eta: self-effacing, not self-righteous, tone intended.

 

AHLOOMEENUM has always irritated the hell outta me it's AHLOOMEENEEUM

 

Womens Underwear Names: Thong, Bikini, Hipster, Brief, Boyshort, High Cut, and G-string. Hope this helps, but if you need an idea of what they look like, image search should do the trick.

 

@DancingCorpse : as I understand it, Aluminum is actually the older of the two forms.

@Cave Troll : those are really types/styles of ladies' undies, rather than regional synonyms. "Panties" and "knickers" can both refer to women's thong underwear, but "thong" and "g-string" don't refer to bloomers. Sort of an "all ducks are birds, but not all birds are ducks" thing.

 

Lol, so you're telling me hipsters just want to be women's panties? That explains a lot.

 

@ManOrAstroMan Let's face it panties are just much easier to enjoy visibly. Calling them things in any regional synonyms is just plain hard. I agree that ducks are birds, but not all birds are ducks.
How about these instead: undergarment, underthings, and unmentionables?

 

I hope not. Nor do I want to see a woman in panties that have a beard and act like sophisticated douchebags.

 

Don't forget delicates.
Or, one of my favorites, "bits and pieces."

 

I agree with all the rest of your post, except that in any American dialect that I've been exposed to, men's boxer-style underwear wouldn't be referred to as underpants.

 

Well, as I said, I'm kind of out of the loop. Is there a generic American term for men's underpants?

 

Oh, very droll...

 

That's just shhoolteachers who have told you this.

 

It would be interesting to go through the list of words we 'differ' on and figure out how many of them (in proportion) are for things that were invented since the US won its independence from the UK. In other words, when the countries split, so did the development of the language, to some extent? Just an unproven theory. It's not so much that the Americans got it 'wrong,' but that if they had to slap a word on a new thing, they chose their own. As did the British.

I've listened to lots of Gaelic programmes here in the UK and get a chuckle because so many Gaelic speakers use modern English words for modern objects. Gaelic doesn't have a special word for 'television,' for example. They just say 'television.'

 

Update: The Guy in my house says that referring to boxers as underpants is just fine. Leaving me puzzled. I would have said that there are boxers and briefs (briefs being the knit ones that are cuffed at the legs rather like women's underpants) and that only the briefs could be called underpants. But I may be wrong.

 

Aha! Another case where the Americans are slower to change.

I'm not sure why I call this "aha!" except that I've always had the vibe that Americanizations are seen as newfangled corruptions of the fine old traditional choice, so I always find it entertaining when the Americanization is actually the older option.

 

By generic, I meant 'that garment men wear underneath their pants.' It can be any style, but how do you refer to it generically? As in "Gee, I wonder what kind of underpants he wears?" You know ...when you don't actually KNOW what style he's wearing.