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33 Briticisms I Don’t Use Anymore
(because I live in America now)
My vocabulary has changed over the seven years I’ve lived in the US. I sound more or less the same — at least to my own ears — but, one word or phrase at a time, I also sound less and less like my old self. Trends in language change, of course, so some of these may have passed out of my daily use even if I’d stayed in the UK — perhaps I’d already stopped saying “basically” and “random” every five minutes, for example, or exclaiming “come on, people” out of frustration on, say, the Tube escalators. But there’s no doubt that my changing vocabulary also has to do with the fact that I live somewhere where a lot of my previously common idioms are not known or understood. Sometimes people laugh at me when I use them, and sometimes people look at me blankly, so I’ve deliberately removed them from my conversation, but with other phrases, it’s been more of a gradual thing. Language is contagious, and if people around me don’t use certain phrases, then eventually neither do I.
Pants!
This used to be my favourite exclamation — somewhere between “oh dear” and “damn it!”. Also can be used as an adjective — it is totally pants that you have to work this weekend. I was trying to remember what I used to say instead of “that sucks” — turns out, it’s this.
