Complex Numbers

They Invented It; We Perfected It

In a twist of cosmic coincidence, today's article is also from Cracked and is also about opposites.

    5 Words That Mean the Exact Opposite If You Go to England  
Jack Reacher makes no sense, and to understand why, you need to understand British English

Clearly meant for an American audience. If a British rag had written this article, it would have been "5 Words Yanks Get Backwards."

England is a strange land, where they speak a language known as English. You might have trouble understanding what anyone there is saying.

Strewth.

For example, you might hear someone described as “mean,” and you think that refers to how they say cruel things. You later realize it really refers to how they’re stingy with money.

In fairness, those traits often go hand in hand.

5. Tabling an Issue

In America, when someone says, “Let’s table that discussion,” they mean, “Let’s stop talking about that for now.”

Except these days, you'd say "let's put a pin in that and circle back later."

In Britain, when someone wants to table something, it instead means they want to discuss it right now.

And this nicely illustrates the hazards of verbing nouns. "Take it off the table" or "put it on the table" would be close equivalents, and less ambiguous.

4. Public School

If you went to public school in the U.S., that means you went for free, in a school set up by your local government.

Generally badly.

In England, however, the term “public schools” refers to the most elite schools in the country, places like Eton and Harrow... They’re run by private institutions and charge fees.

I've known about this difference for a while, and I gotta say, in this case, I'm going to side with the US.

But it's not like either side of the pond is going to change its usage soon, so it's just important to know there's a difference. The way I remember it is that a pub, originally public house, is also privately owned.

3. The Doughnut Effect

One of the few delicacies that doesn't have a different name in the two Englishes. We say cookie; they say biscuit. They say donut too; they just don't use the lazy spelling.

However, this item isn't about delicious treats, but about how cities grow rings around them... differently in each country. Oh, just read it..

2. Luck Out

If you luck out, that means you stumbled into some good luck.

That is, obviously, the US version. As one should expect by now, the UK version is the precise opposite.

Though the character Reacher is American, the author Lee Child is British. It appears here that the author is using “luck out” in the exact opposite way from how Americans do.

I'm mostly just including this because the subhead up there called out Jack Reacher.

And this is not an invitation to discuss the literary merits, or lack thereof, of the Reacher books. Which I've never read, but I've enjoyed the Amazon adaptation so far.

1. A Moot Point

When I was a kid, I read books in both American and British English, which is why I'm largely bilingual now. But I gotta admit, this one confused me for the longest time.

If a British person says a point is moot, they mean it’s up for debate, while when an American says it, they mean it’s closed for debate.

The article actually goes into some of the semantic reasons for that, which is one reason I read Cracked.

This one's similarity to the "table" one is, however, too obvious not to comment on. But the article did that for me, too.