Here’s another in our series with Super Agent Awesome on British and American English word differences. We’ll look at differences like rain boots and wellies and dumpster and skip and say what we’d call different things in British and American English.
Some of the other words we explore in this video include rain coats and macs, frosting and icing, shaker and pot, drywall and plasterboard, anchors and rawlplugs, dessert and pudding, sherbet and sorbet.
British and American English word differences
Guess who’s here again. Super Agent Awesome, it’s been a long time.
It’s been two years.
Welcome back to Simple English Videos. I’m glad to have you here because I’ve got lots of British and American English words for us to look at again.
Really?
Yeah.
raincoat and mac, rain boots and wellies
So what’s this?
Huh. Looks like a raincoat.
We could call it a raincoat too and we can also call it a Mackintosh.
Isn’t that what… Isn’t that the computer that Apple makes?
Same word. Yes. Or we might call it a mac for short. And what are these?
Oh they’re rain boots.
And I would call them wellington boots. And for short, we might say wellies.
Rellies?
Wellies.
Er, wellies. Raincoat.
Raincoat or mackintosh.
Rain boots.
Wellington boots or wellies.
frosting and icing, shakers and pots
What’s this stuff on top of these cakes?
That’s frosting.
I would call it icing. I could call it frosting too.
You see this very fine sugar here. What would you call that?
Two things. Powdered sugar or confectionary sugar.
We would call it icing sugar.
The one with the ‘s’ is called salt and the one with the ‘p’ is called pepper.
OK, and what would you call the containers that they’re in?
Containers.
What else could you call them. What do you do with them?
Shake it, oh, shakers.
I would call them pots.
There might be a lot of regional variations with these words. There are in England, and I expect there are in the US as well. So if you see any differences, you can write and tell us.
Frosting.
Icing.
Powdered sugar or confectionary sugar.
Icing sugar.
Salt and pepper shaker.
Salt and pepper pot.
dumpster and skip, drywall and plasterboard, anchors and rawlplugs
What’s this thing?
Oh, that’s called a dumpster.
I would call it a skip.
You mean like S-K-I-P, as in ‘skip’?
Yes. We’ve got a house that’s being built here.
And that stuff where the wall is, what is it?
Well we call this drywall or sheetrock.
I would call it plasterboard.
What are these things?
I believe they’re anchors.
But in British English, we would call them rawlplugs.
Wait. Wall plugs or floor plugs?
It’s spelt R-A-W-L. Rawl.
Rawl.
I don’t know if it’s a tradename. Maybe that’s why we call them rawlplugs.
But for us, this is an anchor.
We also call that an anchor.
Dumpster.
Skip.
Drywall or sheetrock.
Plasterboard.
Anchor.
Rawlplug.
Anchor.
Anchor.
dessert and pudding, sherbet and sorbet
At what part of a meal would you eat this?
Dessert,
And we’d call that dessert too, or we might say, ‘Let’s have some pudding’, and we could be talking about this.
Wait. Isn’t pudding like this soft dessert?
Ah yes. Now in American English, what you call pudding, I think we would call cold custard. Is that what you would call pudding?
Yeah. That is so delicious.
OK, as we could call it pudding too, but pudding is a much more generic term in England and it can cover anything you eat at the end of a meal that’s sweet.
What’s this.
Oh we had it for Christmas.
It’s called Christmas pudding. And they don’t have them in America, but we import them. It’s made with dried fruits and, ooo it’s very nice, isn’t it? Suet.
I can see it’s highly flammable.
Yes. So what’s that?
Oh, a sherbet.
We would call it a sorbet. So it’s sort of ice cream without the dairy. It’s just fruit juices and sugar.
This is what I call sherbet in British English.
Wait! That’s just sugar!
It’s a sweet, or a candy, you’d say, and you put it in your mouth and it fizzes.
That’s Pop Rocks.
Oh right. I think Pop Rocks might be a trade name. I don’t know.
Oh yeah.
A brand name.
Oh we usually call that pop candy then.
Dessert.
Pudding or dessert.
Pudding.
Cold custard.
Christmas pudding.
Sherbet.
Sorbet.
Pop candy.
Sherbet.
OK, I think that’s it.
All right. You want me to do the honors?
Yes please.
All right.
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Thank you, Super Agent Awesome, and thank you all for watching. Bye now!
