British and American English are the same language, and the differences are mostly harmless. A few dozen words, however, mean something genuinely different, and a small handful will get you into trouble.
The ones that matter most
- Pants — underwear, not trousers. Saying you like someone’s pants is not the compliment you intended. British “pants” also means rubbish: that film was pants.
- Fanny — not the backside. It is vulgar slang for female genitals, and a fanny pack is called a bum bag for that reason.
- Rubber — an eraser. Asking a British colleague for a rubber is a normal stationery request.
- Suspenders — what holds up stockings, not trousers. Trouser suspenders are braces.
- Jumper — a sweater.
- Trainers — sneakers.
- Chips — thick fries. Crisps are chips. See crisps.
Getting about
- Pavement — sidewalk. The British “road” is the bit cars use.
- Car park — parking lot. Motorway — freeway. Lorry — truck.
- Petrol — gasoline. Boot — trunk. Bonnet — hood. Windscreen — windshield. Gearstick — stick shift. Indicator — turn signal.
- Underground / Tube — subway. A British subway is a pedestrian underpass.
- Return ticket — round trip. Single — one way.
In a building
The floor numbering is the classic trap. Ground floor is at street level; the first floor is one flight up, and is the American second floor. Every floor thereafter is one out.
- Lift — elevator. Flat — apartment. Loo or toilet — restroom. British people say toilet plainly and find “bathroom” for a room without a bath faintly odd.
- Queue — line. Torch — flashlight. Cooker — stove. Hoover — vacuum, used as both noun and verb.
Words that sound rude and are not
- Fag — a cigarette. Entirely neutral in that sense, and still in common use.
- Bugger — mild and affectionate in most contexts: silly bugger.
- Bloody — a general intensifier, roughly at the level of “damn”.
- Knackered — exhausted.
- Chuffed — pleased. Gutted — very disappointed.
The polite ones that are not polite
British understatement has its own vocabulary of things that sound mild and are not:
- “Quite good” — mediocre. Note that British quite often means “somewhat”, not “very”.
- “Interesting” — bad.
- “I’ll bear it in mind” — I will not.
- “With all due respect” — none is coming.
- “Not bad” — genuinely good.
For the full spoken-slang version of all this, the rest of this site is a dictionary of exactly that.