7 American Words That Are Catching on in Britain 

That would be hilarious. I’d love it

I bet it sounds so cute w a British accent.

It would be disappointing! Texans expect the English to keep up their specific cultural appropriations!

I think it's awesome. We are winning!

I need a good sound bite lol

I like how the southern "fixin to" morphed into "finna" as far out as the west coast.

​@@rumo1086It's crazy that I never even connected with the two. From Cali and I cannot imagine a world without finna

Won’t you be so kind and serve me a fixin of that fine apple pie. And while y’all are at it could you get me a cup of water also, cheers.

I was just fixin to comment on that,y'all.

@@OAT86 Yeah I know where it comes from I was just surprised that some of that culture and dialect made its way all the way to California with us being so damn different but I don't know maybe it's just the fact that the most attractive thing in the world to me is black women from the south maybe I just somehow adopted some of the slang.

@@harveywallbanger3123 *Y'all, unless what you're abbreviating is "ya (a)ll" as opposed to "y(ou) all"

I was ahead of my peers up here in the north. I don't know how or why I picked it up but I've been saying it for over 20 years now.

Trousers are what grandpa's wear

It's weird cause most Northern phrases are virtually identical in Northern England and the true North of the British Isles in Scotland. Bairn, eejit, to name a few. I know there's a lot more but can't think of them offhand. Pants has definitely the one that never made it to Scotland. Pants are your underwear but trousers, troosers, breeks and kegs are all the same thing here. Nowadays it's jeans, joggies, leggings, jeggings, joggers, bootcut trousers or pair of trousers or jumpsuit and onesies.

Those are slacks

Also a northerner and have never used pants instead of trousers or heard anyone use pants for anything other than underwear the closest is sweatpants instead of joggers.

@@AC-pm3lx you must be from a posh part

I think "cinema" vs "theater" works like that too

It's crazy that superhero movies have taken the place for the bottom of the barrel worst movies of every year.

Film is film because that's what it was, a physical piece of media printed upon it a series of moving pictures on a strip of film. No major cinema or movie theater play any physical media any longer. Film is archaic like rewind. Now we scroll or scrub back on clips

They were referring to classist connotations of the words used by different people to describe different types of movie, or film if you will. @@Rickydiculus

I know film means movie but to me, I picture an old movie when someone says film. Like the kind recorded not digitally but on actual film/moving pictures. The type you use a projector with reel to play

East Texan here, I use those all the time. Lol.

When I, a "cosmopolitan" Yankee moved to Florida I learned that the singular and plural form of the second person article was "y'all" and that the possessive form was "y'all's." As in, "are y'all trying to pick a fight with me? I'm telling y'all; I don't want to fight with y'all but if you start this fight, I'm going to kick y'all's ass."

​@@roberttrott5259it's funny when you consider that y'all is really just you all and southerners are lazy

Correct. "We gonna kick all y'all's asses", if there's more than two.

all y'all is emphatic as much as plural.

Yaal is so funny to me (:

Those are fascinating etymologies!

I've got my doubts about that anecdote, I'm afraid. I may be wrong, but it doesn't really pass the smell test. It's true that 'artificial' has more negative connotations today than it did in the past, but it's always been used to describe something that's been made by people, and doesn't automatically imply quality. in fact 'artisan' has more positive connotations today than it did in the past- historically it usually just meant someone who made things for a living, regardless of competence. 'Awful' does indeed mean 'full of awe' in a literal sense, but the negative use goes back a long way, too. People certainly did use 'awful' to mean bad in 1710, along with the older usage. Also, George I was from the Duchy of Hanover, lived there most of his life, spoke German as his first language and notoriously didn't learn to speak English well until quite late in his reign as king of England. Which didn't begin until 1714, so the date you gave is DEFINITELY off. Queen Anne was still British monarch in 1710, and in 1711 when the Cathedral was officially consecrated although William and Mary were still co-monarchs in 1697 when the unfinished Cathedral was first re-opened for worship after its destruction in the Great Fire of London. The quote you gave might have been intended as a joke about George I's poor English skills, or a joke about manners and deference to authority, or people choosing to hear what they want to hear but the meaning's been confused. Either way, I don't think it's something that should be taken literally.

In the movie The Duke of New York, the writer had a 19th century German architect use the term erection in referring to a large structure. It was the designer of the Brooklyn Bridge. Fun Fact: he first designed & built the Cincinnati Suspension Bridge.

Artificial meant full of art and design, therefore clever . Rather than done by an artisan

​@@CaseytifyI don't know why you think that's so strange. erection is a perfectly normal word to use in referring to a building or other structure.

I'm from South Carolina and if you pissed someone off your ass is in for it

I got a stereotypically southern accent and I say British and Australian slang all the time having been around a lot of em.

This is super fascinating. As someone who has never done online gaming, I haven’t ever thought about the widespread socialization effect it has on the English speaking world. It seems American phrases are winning out, probably due to shear numbers. Hopefully we’ll see some interesting mixing of words between cultures

But we say pissed off to mean angry, somebody shortening it wouldn’t be weird

Pissed, to me, as a British guy, primarily means "angry". It can also mean "drunk" depending on context though. Some American terms, spellings, and pronunciations have become the norm in my generation, with the British ones considered weird and archaic. Wrath and schedule are the best examples.

From living semi-adjacent to the south, I actually don't think "y'all" will ever properly replace the plural you, but that's because of words like "you'uns". "Y'all" is, at the end of the day, _not_ really a simple plural, but instead either an "abstract aggregate" if it occurs without a leading "all", or a "concrete aggregate" if it occurs with a leading "all". For the "simple plural" or "simple aggregate" case, _other_ derivatives of "you" are normally used, and I honestly suspect it'll remain that way.

Appatently Y'all has been common in India for a long time

When I learned German, the lack of an "Ihr" in English annoyed me to the point where I started occasionally using "Y'all".

Exactly!

I'd say American "homely" is closer to calling something "plain" which usually taken as an insult the same way calling someone "mid" is taken as an insult even if it technically just means average.

Homely means ugly in America.

@@PenitusVox Yeah, it's like a way to dodge saying "ugly". Similar to what I once heard a mom say to her daughter's attempted dance moves: "Let's just keep that special for us"

Americans use homely for ugly. Get to know your fellow Americans, doood.

The real question is why are you going round telling little girls you love her pants?

But an Australian would haves interpreted pants as her jeans. Are you sure she was Australian?

@@Purplegreen45 So normal humans just go up to a random little girl they dont know and just open with, hey love your pants? to a little girl they have never met, i dont think that is normal fam.

​@@Long-Horsehe never said it was a random person. Also complimenting strangers isn't uncommon

@@Long-Horse you’re obviously not female because I’ve been the recipient and giver of multiple comments like this. Also her mother was right there. There’s nothing nefarious.

Probably horse

@jabehauber. We used to have just a couple of TV channels in UK until 1970s a lot of content was from US, much of which was Westerns at that time. Funny though, the first Western film was made in Lancashire. Look up Catherine Warr for evidence. As a northerner, much of the stuff on US TV was more in common with everyday life than some of the posh southern English output on British TV. I imagine folk outside England found this even more.

Gunsmoke and all the western TV series were shown on British TV. How long ago was this as only I’m 60 and I’ve never heard anyone my age use it. What is anglophallic? 🤔

@@nicolad8822 I only just remember the later Western TV series, but folk I now said the phrase, though they would be in their 70s now. It sounds to me like someone picked it up from their parents.

@@nicolad8822 I am close to your age, and I heard it amongst British bankers and lawyers in HK, Sydney and London with frequency starting about 20 years back. I heard a British acquaintance use it recently, which transported me to those days (...and of course this channel reminds me as well!)

Yeah, "film" sounds a little fancier to me for some reason.

Exactly right! Except, more nuanced, the meaning of film is indistinguishable from movie in certain combinations like “film studio”.

A lady is a higher class of woman, and a film is a higher class of movie.

@@robertveith6383 excellent description of the two.

Every film is a movie, but not every movie is a film.

I'm thinking the use of bin started when we used those wheeled plastic bins instead of trash cans or a dumpster.

Yeah actually comes from the Old English 'gea' which is pronounced more or less the same and is an alternative to 'yes' and 'giesse'. It's been around for a thousand years at least.

@@haffoc The Old English(Anglo-Saxon) Gea, and German(Duetsche) Ja, are closely related. A lot of the root words in English were given birth in Germanic dialects.

Hee. Really a lot of American accent things actually come from British (and sometimes Irish) regional ones that faded out in their original country with the railroads and such but stayed with us at least regionally over here. The Internet now means that much more sharing/at least familiarization even internationally. I've noticed a lot of us in the car community now understand a lot more of each others' jargon for auto parts and tools and such just since the last fifteen, twenty years ago.

Yeah-yeah music was the term in Norway in the 60s for US pop music 😂

Hello? Wastebasket. I'm from the west coast and have grown up using garbage, trash and waste with can interchangeably.

Nobody ever calls it refuse anymore.

Do we still have The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"[12]

Here in the US when waste is used it usually refers to excrement.

Americans use waste as a euphemism, much how we "go to the bathroom" or, formerly, women would "visit the powder room". It encompasses the much larger meaning, giving deniability to the listener as to what activity is/will happen.

Sorted! That is the dogs bollocks, mate.

@@TomGB-81 Oy! Only a tosser would think otherwise!

Just don't ever say 'You've got a load of spunk, buddy' to a Briton cos he'll probably piss himself laughing!

I’ve hardly been South, but I really like the word.

Canadian here and I have to consiously stop myself from using y'all and an ironic 'howdy' during polite conversation.

9:39

How, do, y-all?❤😊

North east here and for some reason it always comes out as "chall" what chall doin? 😂 I've never set foot in the south😂

Psst, you’re not to suppose to give away our “secret” words for pants. 😁 ✌🏻

Yes, like ‘getting too big for your britches’ would mean you were misbehaving, not listening to adults and doing what you’re told.

@@joerudnik9290 yeah buddy! 😎

But in England, originally, breeches were the sort of pants worn by gentlemen, elegant pants stopping at the knee, below which stockings (or "hose," if you want to be really snooty) would be worn. Not children's pants or pants in an "everyday use" sense. An interesting change.

A++

I think underpants are a variety of pants that go under other pants. You're right though, both require overpants to exist.

@@ethelmini Underpants refers to under-wear and while you are correct, more often than not refers to boxers/knickers

Yeah we call them pants in Cumbria and boxers, knickers or undies for your underware, also here we say you's never you lot or y'all and if someone said trash instead of rubbish around here your asking to be filled in. Another that people constantly say is zero, where that just sounds pure yank, to me its nought.

do you have opies?

"Unmentionables", per my late great-aunt. I still call them that (to be cute).

Like it was saying, “Peasant! Pay me homage and worship me!” 😂

Until it isn't. It's VERY versatile. Example: All a y'all are fitting to get y'all's asses whipped if you don't turn down the volume. The "A" in between "all" and "y'all" may or may not be silent depending on accent and mental state.

@@ChrisBl33pIt's not an "a", you're just pronouncing "of" as "uh".

@@Texan_BoyKisser obviously.

@@ChrisBl33p"A" indicates to me the word. Why'd you capitalize it if you're just spelling out a sound.

In the west we say “you guys” and that includes everyone doesn’t matter the gender

😆 why not try it. Maybe you'll start something new.

“Y’alt”= Y’all lot? 😂

the plural form of "y'all" is "all y'all" Basically, "Y'all" is a contraction of "you all" and "all y'all" is "all of you"

In New York they would say, "Yizzle", which is a contraction of "Youse all", but that old NY accent is pretty much extinct. I think my father's generation was about the last that spoke that way.

@@mudleydatthews Waiting for the day when The Doctor is regenerated into a Tennessee hillbilly

Yep please fuss the moggie!!! (enjoy those words from the UK for petting a cat)

I grew up in Dayton, OH in the 80's, where white kids said "you guys" and black kids said "y'all", generally. So when I moved to Atlanta in the 90's, switching to "y'all" exclusively was pretty easy. I think it works fine with my fairly neutral accent, and also thought it sounded great when the Beastie Boys rocked "yall" with the NY accent.

"Guys" actually also serves the same purpose of being a plural version of "you", we just don't think of it much as it isn't related to the word "you". "Hey guys, what's up?" Is the same as "hey y'all, what's up?"

I have heard Scottish people say it that way. My daughter loves Britspeak, but she refuses to say "shedule" and it's the hill she's willing to die on. 😂

​@@Mick_Ts_ChickBritspeak? Don't you just mean British?

Coming out of a Northerner sounds funny and fake to this Northern guy.

As a southerner with a neutral accent I don't even say y'all because it sounds wrong in my accent. British people saying it is just awful to the ears. DW my dad's English so I can ridicule both sides however I want. 😅

In the west we say y’all when we are trying to sound intentionally ignorant 😬 that’s sad now that I think about it for people who actually say y’all

I'm a New Yorker who lived in North Carolina for like a year, I use y'all often and I swear people think it's cute.

I don't like the term at all, in any area or accent.

My car was acting up last week and I took it to my mechanic in Liverpool and asked him to look under the hood and check the gas pump. He looked at me like I was speaking Klingon. I was born in Merseyside but lived half my life in the USA and learned to drive there, so I use American terms for anything to do with the car and driving.

You just reminded me that, in American English at least, "truck" can be used as a verb, e.g. "truck back and forth." Haven't heard it in a while, though. I think that maybe "shuttle" is more common now.

Also mid sixties to mid seventies 'trucking' for 'walking'. 'Keep on trucking' @@anthonyspall

In American English a small wheeled platform like that is sometimes called a "hand truck."

Northern Wisconsin used youse guys, mostly.

It's only common in certain parts of NY, though.

​@@jaxxon98In WNY it's pronounced "yiz", as in Good to see yiz! Singular is "yih" as in How are yih?

Youse is also common in the North East of England.

Bloody is a great word! Fills the gap perfectly, especially since its meaning in America is milder than in Britain.

Nowadays it's just what edgy young people say instead of "gonna"

@@nthgthIDK Fixin’ to and the shorter version finna have been around forever in the South. I think preparing to or about to in the immediate future is a better interpretation of fixin’ to than gonna. Someone might say I’m gonna leave at dawn tomorrow but not likely say that they are fixin’ to leave at dawn tomorrow because that is too far off.

"fixing to" from "preparing to", via prepare = repair.

I'm from the West. It's usually "you guys". But I spent some time in the South, and "y'all " is much easier .

born and bred New Yorker, I use y'all all the time

​@@celticsfan1554Don't do it unless you want to sound like a poser!😮

I'm Scottish. I've never heard anyone in Britain say y'all except when they're mimicking a Southern accent. I would say you lot but mostly youse which is our version of y'all. I used it today actually.

@@slightlySuperior In American popular usage, "film" has a highbrow connotation; it's what critics and aficionadoes and pretentious types go to see. Everyone else goes to see "movies."

Fascinating!

Oh, thank god. I heard my dad say pants the other day and was worried he was going American. I’m glad to know it’s just him being Scouse.

It seems to be the nature of English to have the second person plural ever doomed to become used for both singular and plural. "You" was the plural a long time ago and "thou" was the singular equivalent. Now people even use "y'all" as both.

I've been making an effort to adopt it even though it feels unnatural to me because of a strong belief that it's a word for which we have dire need.

I think it's actually an African American creation.

"Y'all" (pron. "yawl") is an informal, colloquial contraction for "you all." Northern US East Coast immigrant ports have donated the now Mob-connoting "youse" (pro. "yooz").

One of the first things they taught us in Spanish class was the singular and plural of "you" (both familiar and formal). Familiar: tu' vosotros Formal: usted ustedes It took a while for me to catch onto what they were doing but verb conjugation in Spanish helped me understand it in English.

Yes, in that context, to American usage, it would mean to ‘watch over it, take care of it, like ‘mind the kids/children’. Or I ‘don’t mind’, meaning you are ‘OK’ with a request or an action that is occurring. Americans would say BEWARE or BE AWARE of the gap. ‘Watch out’ for the gap.

@@joerudnik9290 It was just that we had heard the announcement so much in the London Underground that it was burned into our heads. Ha! American’s get the “mind” as reference to being careful/paying attention to something (as in “mind your manners”, or “mind now, . . .”). But minding the “gap” without knowing the specific derivation of the expression would leave people trying to understand what they were missing. 👍🏻

There is a British saying Lawrence may have mentioned, to say someone is "Happy as Larry." Larry who? No idea.

@@BrianONEILL-qf2cs I'd never heard that phrase. After a bit of futzing around on the Interwebs, the only answers I found are that 1)it referred to an Australian boxer named Larry Foley who never lost a fight or 2)is derived from "larrikin," Australian slang for an "uncultivated, rowdy but good hearted person" or "a happy, boisterous, drunk." I can't buy the first because there is a use of "happy as Larry" in print in an Australian newspaper in 1857 in a manner that indicates it's a common phrase - at which time Foley was no older than 10. The second is doubtful because "larrikin" didn't become common in Australia until the 1860s, which would hint that if there's any connection, "larrikin" came from "larry" rather than the other way around. Two other ideas offered were "larry" ("a confused noise, as a group of people all talking at the same time" ) and "larrance" ("the genius of idle people") - but those date from more than 20 years after the first printed reference to "happy as Larry." So every suggestion for the origin of the phrase postdates its use. So I guess the OED got it right: "Etymology uncertain."

What you chatting fam, there is loads of people called Larry in and around England and Scotland, how is your name the first time they have encountered it? aint no jock gonna be embarred how they say it because to them it sounds fine, so either you pointed it out and corrected them or your story is just weirdly made up.

@@Long-Horse The acted as if the name "Larry" was very unusual, and they were the ones who pointed out it sound the same as "lorry." The fact is, they did try to pronounce it with an American accent but couldn't. I just shrugged joked about having a new nickname. I suppose any embarrassment was from thinking that I thought they were saying it wrong, which never occurred to me. No, I did not correct them and you are a jerk for suggesting otherwise.

@@whoviating haha

I bet you were well confused 🤣

As a boomer living in Illinois , growing up we referred to a man's suit as having trousers , a sport coat was worn w/ dress pants or dress slacks , & when not worn w/ a suit or sport coat , the catch-all term was pants or khakis . Corduroy pants were simply called " cords " , worn w/ or w/out a sport coat . My father's job required dressing well & appropriately plus our whole family was always " dressed to the nines " for church ! 🥰

I don't really talk to that many people, but i usually use, "you guys" yeah

In the Northeast, semi is pronounced semee, and it's never used to describe a tractor-trailer truck 😉

To me, a truck is something which looks like a smaller lorry but is all one piece, with 4-6 wheels. The big ones with the separate cabin & trailer are lorries, or artics (articulated lorries), ie what most films call 18 wheelers (& they can often literally have that many wheels). When it comes ton the pick-ups or SUVs, I call them Yank Tanks, because we only recently started seeing them anywhere outside North America (I think they may be a thing in Canada as well as the US)

But in New York you always preface "you guys" with either "look" or "see here", as in, "Look, you guys" or ":see here, you guys, see?" Or at least we used to. Probably not so much anymore.

As a southerner, I think I would find it a bit odd to hear a New Yorker saying y'all, so that makes sense to me.

I you wanna sound even more high falutin' you say "cinema". If you want to sound even more low grade than "movies" you say "pictures", "movin' pictures" or "picture show" as in, "we're goin' to a picture show". I don't know how common these are nowadays, but they were very common when I was a kid (1970's).

​@@RRaquelloor "pitchers" 😅

Why are y'all putting an apostrophe at the end of highfalutin?

Way back, like during WWII, I think the word "slacks" was used for women's pants/trousers. WAC's in slacks?

Im from the USA and I still say jeans 👖, or pants , sweat pants , or joggers lol 😂 just depends who I’m talking to , here’s a interesting thing my dad is from Mexico and my mom is native from Canada

I'm a millennial and slacks just refers to dress pants.

Slacks, trousers, britches (if you're about to get a beating)

dungarees.

Sometimes I say britches just too p people off.

Yes, women wear "slacks", men wear "trousers". Back in the day when slacks started to become more common vs skirts or a dress in the 50s. As kids, we had to wear skirts or dresses to school until 1970. Our Public school at that. We wore tights or knee socks. And to think we wore "nylons", before pantyhose became common.

I'm sorry you live there, where ever *that* is. Join the rest of us, and just say truck. 😮

@@derekwalker4622 It's a specific kind of truck, a large articulated one.

@@derekwalker4622 That would be 70-80% of the US according to the heat map, lol. With the rest using 18-wheeler or Tractor Trailer.

@@derekwalker4622 When you say "truck", do you mean pickup or big-rig? Distinction is important. That's why more than one word for a thing isn't actually a bad thing.

Plus, in the Northeast it's pronounced "semee", not semeye, but we'd never call a tractor -trailer that 😊

"Cool" has been used in America going back to the 1920's. It comes from Jazz music. Cool Cat was very popular in the 1940's. Cool Jazz was a genre of music born in the late 1940's. Miles Davis had an album called Birth of the Cool. By the 1960's it was in common use among just about everybody in America. I don't get how anybody could think of Cool as a negative word.

Is that still the case? Seems 90s to me.

"Hey dude, I need some awesome food in my bowl, don't make me bitch slap y'all"

@hastingsisgood. I reckon they are too busy blessing cotton socks. I used to work in Hastings now and then, which was a blooming long way from my home in Yorkshire. Ask King Harold from 1066, though I imagine it took him days and I did once manage it in three hours to get to a meeting.

They do use "bless" / "bless him" in the same way, I believe. But I've never heard them add the "heart" part.

Yep, that's used in Britain.

​@mydixiewrecked2 Yes, I get that.

Over here, we're more likely to say "bless" than "bless your heart," and much like its American cousin, it can be used as a compliment, term of endearment, or sly insult. .

As a 42m Brit from near Birmingham, for me it depends on whatever rolls off the tongue, dependant on the context or sentance of speech. Typically though, mostly used: truck, lorry, HGV (heavy goods vehicle), work horse.

I'm old. I'm greatly insulted when the son-in-law calls me "dude".

@@ltcajh Me too. I grew up on a cattle ranch, I ain't no "dude"!