I’m fascinated by the minute spelling differences between American English and British.
For instance, on the front of the bulletins we hand out at church, it says, “Thank you for worshipping with us today.” A month or two ago, Father brought them to me and asked me to change it to “worshiping.” Brits use 2 p’s; Americans prefer 1.
Or do we?
Between us, I think 2 p’s makes more sense. The “i” is short, so we should double the consonant. Worshiping looks like the root word should “worshipe”. Yeah, no, not a fan.
Then there’s the whinge-whine connection. Brits whinge; Americans whine. In this instance, the words have slightly different meanings. Whinge means “complain persistently and in a peevish or irritating way,” but whine is the actual noise — that high-pitched complaining cry.
So when today’s word for JusJoJan was “pernickety” — whereas I only knew the word “persnickety” — I should have guessed that it was the old Brit-American issue. They both mean a fussy, particular attention to detail. But British English is the older spelling. Americans had to go and change it.
Why? Usually Americans are dropping letters, like the whole worshipping thing. In the case of persnickety, they added a letter!
I like that we dropped that unnecessary ‘u’ from words like color and neighbor. Shorter, more practical, good.
Then there’s biscuit vs cookie, or football vs soccer, torch vs flashlight. (Seriously – a torch has fire leaping from it, right? If a flashlight is a torch, what’s a torch called?)
How about you? What words do you notice that are different?
Hot Dogs and Marmalade 
“Seriously – a torch has fire leaping from it, right? If a flashlight is a torch, what’s a torch called?)” Torch / flashlight and a flaming torch all mean the same thing.
handbag (English) purse (American)
Bonnet hood
Boot Trunk
Tap forcette
pavement sidewalk
Road pavement
and many many more two nations divided by one language.💜💜💜
Oh, the big one for me is whilst/while! I always want to say whilst with a short “ǐ” instead of whilst with a long “ī” which actually rhymes with “while”. Crazy that I would make it harder for myself!
I understand that ‘pudding’ in US English refers only to one sort of blancmange type dessert, whereas here in the UK it can sometimes be used as a generic word to mean any kind of sweet dessert eaten after a meal. Or it may refer to to a steamed savoury suet pastry dish like a steak and kidney pudding, or a sweet steamed syrup sponge pudding, or a rich, booze-soaked, dried-fruit-laden Christmas pudding. Oh, and it can also refer to a large skin-encased savoury boiled sausage like black pudding, red pudding or white pudding… very confusing, I know! 🙂
I was just talking to someone the other day about blood pudding. He said it was delicious; I thought it sounded gross but, to be fair, I’ve never eaten it.
I love this post!! I recently spent hours and hours editing a set of directions only to find out later they were following Brit spelling and all the things. I had no clue the designers were from South Africa and the UK. I was the oddball on the team.
Oh I love this Sally. I think one of the hardest words for me to get my head around was “pants” in UK that’s men’s underwear. I have an Aussie friend who we met on a holiday. She has been to a market and was so excited to have bought some amazing “thongs” she wanted to show me – I was like, oh ok … and she took out some lovely flip-flops – for us thongs are very skimpy undies … 😂
hee hee I enjoy hearing other words for our familiar items. One word tha’s confusing to me is ‘tea’ or ‘tea time’. – ?? Does that mean an evening meal? I mean, we have breakfast, lunch/dinner, and either dinner/supper. I drink iced tea all day long. 🙂
Jumper always throws me when they are talking about a sweater.
Seriously? A jumper is a sweater?! No wonder I’ve misunderstood that word!
In Brit English, yes. I can translate so many of the other terms when reading, but that one throws me every time.