Slang in England Part Deux

Chip Butty

So when I wrote Hot Mess Asks About Slang In England, I never dreamt of all the additional slang in the U.K. I was still not privy to. It came about by accident when messaging a question to Suzi from Suzie Speaks and Em from  Em Linthorpe. If you haven’t checked out their blogs, I highly recommend both! It turns out that both are British and opened my eyes to a whole other realm of slang. I printed off our conversation, I am gonna type it up and we can all learn together!

Fortnight- Thanks to the gals, I now know that it means 2 weeks. I thought it either meant last night or the next night, so did my husband and son. Apparently it means 2 weeks. I told them the last time I heard this term was probably when we were studying Shakespeare in high school.

Name Calling

Wanker: I thought this meant to jack off because it’s used a few times in my book from an English author. I think he used it like, “go ahead and have a wank.” But I guess wanker is an offensive way to call someone an idiot.

Knobhead: I thought it meant someone stupid. Apparently it means idiot.

Bellend: According to Suzie, it’s another offensive term for an idiot. To me, it just sounds like a town.

Bugger Off: Go away. I usually just say, “go away.”

 

Food and Drink

Butty: Suzie put it in an example for me, “I want a bacon butty”. That’s a sandwich! It reminds me of the word buddy. I would love to have a bacon buddy. I love bacon and I love buddies. I think they should change it to bacon buddies. Ladies, can you please take that up with your queen and possibly change it to bacon buddies?

Chips = fries. Now this is getting personal. Nobody messes with my French fries. So when you go to McDonalds, do you ask for chips or do you ask for fries? Again, I need to know this before I someday visit England.

Crisps: potato chips. So if I go to a Mexican restaurant do I ask for tortilla crisps instead of tortilla chips?  I’m sure we would figure it out but still.

Aubergine: eggplant. Why? Do you still call it eggplant sometimes?

Pop: I was over the moon to learn pop in England means soda. I am happy about this because there is always a debate on if you should say pop or soda. Being in the midwest, I say pop and I’m proud of that. At least I could order a coke in England and not be shot glares if I call it pop!

Off-license: This to me sounds like the black market in obtaining your drivers license. It means liquor store.

pub

Going Somewhere?

Nippin: Now I’ve heard of taking a nip of an alcoholic beverage but I’ve never heard of it used this way. Nippin means going somewhere for a short amount of time. Here is Suzie’s example: ” I’m just nippin to the shop.” My ADD is kicking in and I have to call out how funny it is when an American Southerner announces they are “Fixin’ to go somewhere”. It just means they are preparing to go somewhere. All people from England, you are welcome for that English lesson. I’m sure you wonder how we are civilized after all of these decades.

Popping: Em offered this one up. It too means a quick trip. My son currently uses “poppin” to describe anything he thinks is cool. Did popping come from Mary Poppins? Don’t judge me based on that question. It could have. Didn’t she just “pop” into places by flying around?

Miscellaneous

Fanny: This one is the most shocking and brought up in the last post in the comments. It’s not referring to a hipsack or your ass. It’s referring to a vagina! Yes, a vagina! So I posed the question in the comments, if I occasionally nickname vagina, vajaja, does this mean in England they nickname it a fanaynay? Just asking as I need to know this stuff.

Bog roll: Toilet paper! How in the hell do you get toilet paper out of bog roll? Yes, my American readers, bog roll actually means TP!! Can you believe that? So is the toilet the bog? I have to use the bog? Is that what you say? I want to know where bog came from.

Chinwag: To me this sounds like shaking your head no but apparently it means chat. So when my kids are in trouble I can say to them, “Let’s go have a little chinwag”.

 

Thank you to these lovely ladies that gave me a whole new set of terms to use. I have a feeling that there are a lot more out there I have to learn. Perhaps we could make another post!

So knobheads (did I use the word right?), what are some other terms that we didn’t go over? What makes these posts awesome is all the feedback of other terms!

Cheers!!

 

 

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