i have to say that ive never heard blagged used in reference to theivery, but whatever i just noticed that my sole purpose in this thread appears to be to disagree with others
O~B - sorry, but lots of people in the US have seen "Snatch". And agreed with the American character, who, after hearing a diatribe in gangland-inflected Cockney, yells out "WHY DON'T YOU SPEAK ENGLISH?"
The hell with yer..... Anyhoo I'm trying to see if I can get a panto up and running this side of the pond. It'll be like playing RHPS to an entire room full of Rocky Horror virgins, but so what...
The one I found had a section of American words in English. But this one's close enough (Edit) Found it. I'd saved it in my bookmarks http://cgi.peak.org/~jeremy/retort.cgi?British=guinea Although I reckon TC's find is better, since it goes into more detail...
haha yeah TC's is really funny... the guy writing it has a sense of humour certainly! --- plonker adj. Yet another word for calling someone an idiot. I'm tempted to write a Dictionary of British Insults. This is also (rarely) used to refer to one's penis (or someone else's, if you don't have one). I'm tempted to also write a Dictionary of British Words For Penis. A future bestseller; keep an eye out. Not that eye. haha!
i have been reading the whole list i don't actually have anything better to do at the moment... they're ALL funny... that was the first one that was really funny that i read... ahhh haha
I think it confuses our yankee chums when we say we're pissed. They're always like, why are you pissed? And even more more confused when we say, because i've had a skin full! Pissed = Drunk, steaming, ratted. Oh and blag, does mean, to get something for free, hence 'armed blag' meaning robbery.
yes but that's a derivation for a specific usage. Rather like when the americans try to pass off smart to mean intelligent or mad to mean angry.
I have always thought of smart as another way of referring to intellegence, It's the same as having a tidy mind. And i think when Americans say Mad, they also mean crazy. It's like, there's no need to get mad over it, its just a gage of angriness. As in, if you get too angry about something, all rational thought goes out the window, leaving you on the edge of insanity, its all the bloody same. Even though nothing is actually bloody, I'm sure you knew what i meant. There isn't a great barrier between our English. Just a few subtle differences.
actually that's incorrect, re bloody. bloody derives from the expression by the lady (as in Mary). if you say smart with reference to the mind means a tidy mind, then well smart still means tidy, well organised, efficient etc. To apply it to the mind is a single application - and yet in america it's the principle meaning of the word. Same with mad. You might be mad BECAUSE you're angry, but that doesn't mean you have to be angry to be mad. They're two different things. What about a Mad Scientist? What really divides the two languages though is not spelling or accents or pronunciation or vocabulary, it's actually the way phrases are used. In america they say "I could care less" when what they really mean is "I couldn't care less" - I've never understood how that came about. Another pet hate of mine is "Like I said" - don't they know the difference between "as" and "like"? Having said that there are a few things about pronunciation where the yanks have just got it wrong. As well as spelling a lot of things they way they sound, they tend to pronounce a lot of words they way they're spelt. Derby, clerk, strawberry, lieutenant and privace are all examples.
