American Reacts Top 20 Americanisms That Really Annoy British People 

I don’t mind us using different words, but Winningest sounds like something a child would say.

They should have mentioned that 'Fanny' means vagina over here, because most US viewers wouldn't get why Brits find 'Fannypack' so amusing and/or cringey...

Never heard of winningest before today, and I don’t want to hear it again after today.

Winningest doesn’t sound like a real word 😂

I have many American friends and visit often. One thing that I find very strange is when I hear them say. “I just love your accent” they simply don’t understand that I don’t have an accent, it is they who have the accent.Poor things.

I think a big part of why British people find certain "Americanisms" irritating is that there's often no obvious etymological origin or meaning to the words... Fringe vs bangs is a good example, as fringe has an obvious, descriptive meaning whereas "bangs" just seems completely made up. The other annoying thing is when perfectly good words are sanitised, either by replacing them with cutesy, childish sounding words, or do the opposite and use unnecessarily complicated words to skirt around things people find embarrassing or uncomfortable. Take a baby's dummy for example... It makes sense, it's a dummy teat or nipple to comfort the baby between feeding times. But in America it's called a "pacifier", which sounds more like some kind of psychoactive drug. Just to get away from the association with nipples and breasts. 😂

So funny hearing you say, 'I don't get annoyed'. Then 'I'm really pissed off'. hahaha loved it.

I was appalled to learn, a few years ago, that a JUDGE in a Court of Law ruled that it was legally permissible to paraphrase what someone had written or said, and then put the paraphrase in quotation marks, attributing it to the person. This is an atrocity which beggars description.

There is a difference between using different words (bangs - fringe), which I don't mind either, and being grammatically incorrect, as in 'Could care less', which is irritating!

Still not as bad a "Normalcy". NORMALITY!!!

Lmao. I was once texting my US friend who lives in Portland Oregon and in the text I typed something like, "I do that job once a fortnight". He text me back. "What the heck is a fortnight?" He had no clue what it was.

I really hope accents don't disappear they are individual to us and make us who we are. I'm proud of being from Yorkshire and therefore love my accent x

If you were to chip bits off a huge boulder, what kind of shape chips of stone would you get? They wouldn't be slices, would they? They would be more chunk shaped, which is the reason we in the UK call chips (fries) chips. And crisps are named crisps because the name perfectly describes their texture in your gob 😅

Says chips are short for potato chips Immediately says Doritos are the best chip 🤔🤔🤔

Legos. 😂 It's Lego bricks or pieces. Lego is derived from danish for "let's play"...."let's plays" makes no sense. There, I got it off my chest.

Soccer was a perfectly respectable word for Association Football, until the US started to use it as the alternative to their Rugby-like game. Football means to kick the ball, not carry it. Call the US game American football, & British football just Football. Bangs was originally a hairpiece of curls pinned to the front of the hair & hanging over the forehead. These were plural, hence bangs. Chips are not the same as fries. Fries are very thin, chips are solid pieces of potato.

The first time my wife and I visited family in the US, my wife bought pencil and crayon sets for the children. As they were busy drawing, one of the children said she had made a mistake. My wife, being English advised the girl that is was OK as there was a 'rubber' on the end of her pencil. This caused a mixture of shock, embarrassment and hilarity. In the UK a 'rubber' is what we call an eraser, she was completely unaware that it had a different meaning in the US!

Soccer is an English acronym of 'Association Football' which was used to differentiate it from Rugger 'Rugby football'. American football is Rugger with Lots and lots and lots of Protection!

Trust me, "I could care less" annoys most of the world. With "I was shook" being up there. Also/to and it's variations is a vorthy mention (I was also there too) But "should of"... Og dear Dawg. Tonight we dine in hell! :)

"Soccer" derives from Association Football, it's a nickname that the UK came up with. There have been long running Football shows in the UK that are/were very popular, like Soccer AM and Soccer Saturday. People need to relax 😂

95% of the world call football football, only USA-ian's call it soccer to differentiate it from USA-ian handball.

I've never heard that word winningest, it's not exactly easy to say

Britain and America two countries separated by a common language, my most reviled phrase mostly used by Americans but I have heard it here too is :- "Very unique", unique is the only one of a kind you can't have degrees of unique.

If the basement floor, just below ground is floor '-1' in a lift, the ground floor cannot be anything other than floor zero as it is mathematically one floor above; and the floor above the ground floor is floor '1'. So if floor '1' in the USA is called the second floor, that is a recipe for confusion. Of course, I am assuming that floors below ground are given negative numbers in lifts (elevators) in the USA. Are they?

I recently found your channel. I appreciate your intelligence and your tastes. Now I appreciate you even more for the "I could care less" rant. Yes!! If you haven't watched David Mitchell' Soap box on the subject - for your own sake, please do 😊

As an OLD Brit. I have to smile at a lot of the things we get annoyed at, given how many dialects we have, and how much we butcher our own language. Having said that, there are many words and phrases that have been corrupted on both sides of the Atlantic, in just my lifetime. There was a period in the late 90s when young people referred to 'bad' things as 'pants'. That one used to work me up a LOT. "that song was 'pants' ", would have me slapping my forehead. So, now I would 'axe' you to remain calm, till we all learn to speak Chinese.

Don't know if it's only americans that do this, but saying "could of, should of, and would of," instead of "could've, should've and would've," is definitely on my list.

It's nice seeing Americans on youtube actually curious about the UK, and not just doing Mary Poppins accents at us :)

Why don't Americans start using debus, decar, detrain, deboat, if they find deplane acceptable?

It’s definitely Football. Yours is eggball. 😉

The best way of saying "least worst option" is "least bad option". If you only have bad options available, then you need to choose the least bad option.

People being annoyed by how things are pronounced, makes as much sense as you being annoyed by them. 😜🤣

Disembark means getting off a vehicle. Embark means to get on one. Or to start a journey.

I’ve never heard “winningest” before, but I’m immediately repulsed by it

9:00 The worst I've ever heard is: "I'am litterally dead". Where "litterally" means the opposite of what it normally means.

As has been mentioned in comments in many similar videos, "pants" does not mean underwear in some parts of England, at the very least (e.g. places mainly in the northern counties of England), and has for decades, since the invention of pantaloons (from which the word derives as an abbreviation), been used in line with its derivation as a slang/dialect word for a waist-height outer garment with long legs: in other words "trousers" just as in the USA (with the undergarment worn beneath them being termed "underpants").

Along the same line as "irregardless" meaning "regardless" I feel the word "over-exaggerate" (used on both sides of the pond) is also superfluous when "exaggerate" will do on it's own.

A thin slice of potatoe cannot be a chip as it is a thin slice not a chip, if u used a hammer to break a piece of a stone you will get a chip not a thin slice. You cant have it both ways. Also chips are not french fries, quite different.

Ironically 'Soccer' was a British term which was invented to match the 'Rugger' term for Rugby. It came from Association Football. It never caught on in Britain.

In the UK we make a "queue" when we wait for something in the US they make a "line".

My pet peeve on the 'have a nice day' front is when recipes for _anything_ end with "enjoy!" No, fuggit. I'll decide if I enjoy it or not.

I moved to Canada and started 5th Grade in Jan '82 where the classroom had cursive letter guides stuck on each desk. It was like going back to Victorian times! Capital E looks like a backward 3, then capital F, I J and T look near identical as do capital K and R, then capital G looks like nothing even recognisable and the capital Q looks like a 2. My mum learnt cursive writing as she went to school in Scotland the '50s, only there are some significant differences between the cursive writing she learnt and the cursive writing taught in US and Canadian schools.

The absolute biggest is '...like...' every other word. Another is 'off of', e.g. 'He fell off of the roof'. Yet another, which has come into far too frequent use in the UK recently, is the use of 'So,...' as a discourse marker to start sentences. Prevalent amongst younger people when placing an order: 'Can I get...?', instead of 'May/Could I have...?'. Pehaps I'm simply being too picky/pedantic/old-fashioned, etc. I'm sure there are things Brits say that Americans find irritating, irksome, or downright annoying; there's no reason why it shouldn't work both ways.

Friends was a TV “Series” which ran over several “seasons”

How can 'disembark' mean taking off? If you 'embark' on something that means about to start something (embark on a journey), so disembark means the opposite. 'Deplane' sounds 🤮 you don't decar, or deboat, or debus, or detrain. You don't 'plane' when getting on a plane.

Im just disappointed that aluminum/aluminium wasnt there. Being a minute since i saw you meltdown over that! Think I'm alone in not giving one single hoot what another country calls a sport. I understand why they came to the name and find the rage about it cringeworthy in the extreme.

When you say “ I could care less,” it implies you care to some degree. it’s so dumb. It’s “couldn’t care less.” it’s just the correct way of saying it.

Ah yes that famous song from Oklohoma, "the Surrey with the bangs on top".

We spent nearly 2000 years developing the English language, only for Americans to screw it up in less than 200 . My gripe is the phrase British English . English is ENGLISH . In the UK we had a TV show in the 1960s called " Star Soccer " that presented weekly recorded football matches . This is the likely origin of the American use of the term from the decade that perked American interest to the eventual rise of professional teams in the 1970s . Soccer is an English term for football , so we can lay off on that one .

The one that annoys me is envision. We say visualise. I want to scream at the tv whenI hear it. I blame George W Bush for making up his own words.

My American gf said "On accident" once. It stopped me in my tracks, but I've since noticed that most Americans say that (rather than "By accident"). I've made peace with it though, because we do say "On purpose", and I think the criticism would have to apply to both.

One embarks when taking off,you disembark if you are leaving an aeroplane, train bus or boat!

"Unironically" pisses me off... what they mean to say is "genuinely"...

Literally is the word that we should be getting our knickers in a twist about. I know it's not relevant to this video, but it's been turned on its head because of popular usage. My head Literally exploded when i found out about this deeply disturbing new trend.

I'm Irish (close enough to British): Things that annoy me..... St Patty's Day.....Who is Patty and why is she a saint? Patty and Paddy sound exactly the same in an American accent but a lot of make sure to pronounce the T's in Patty. It's Paddy's Day not Patty. On Accident - When did By Accident become On Accident? I thought it was a young person thing but i've heard people in their mid-late 40's saying it. I don't get annoyed at Americans and Aussies saying Soccer, you have your own "football" so it would get confusing. 7:40 "Oh football, you don't even use your feet, so what, why does that bother you?" Think Basketball without baskets or Baseball without bases (or rarely used in some way)

The only one that genuinely irks me is the 'I could care less', because it's not about different cultures or phrases, its just incorrect lol

Re "bang" - comes from "bang-tail", a method of cutting the hair on a horse's tail "bang across" or "exactly across". The common expression "bang-on", to mean "exactly correct", uses the same meaning of "bang". (Source: Oxford English Dictionary)

Personally, "write/wrote me" instead of " write/wrote to me", and "on accident" instead of "by accident"

6:43 It already *is* “World War Z” and “ZZ Top”. The mad people who incorrectly say “World War Zee” or “Zee Zee Top” are the insane ones.

"I've gotten new clothes." "Did you lose them already? Or do you got new clothes"

I think "I could care less" grates on me the most.

"Bi-weekly." OK, if it means "two times per week". then "TWICE weekly" is the unambiguous way of saying so. Whereas if it means "once every two weeks" then the term "FORTNIGHTLY" is what all Brits of my age would say. Er???? ... Yet DO Americans know what a "fortnight" is? Oops! A bit embarrassing if not, as I've used the term often enough to S.Ts without it ever occurring to me that it may be a bit opaque to them... and I don't recall any asking for elucidation. 🤣🤣🤣

This is the first time I've ever heard the 'word' winningest 😂 wtf is that? 'I'm the winningest' sounds like something my 3 year old niece would say when she beats her brother in a game. I'm so surprised adults say that as a serious word. Learn something new everyday.

"I could care less" is certainly both wrong and annoying. Sorry, I can't accept that a chip IS a 'chip' from a potato....each one is surely a thin SLICE of a potato, so I think a 'crisp' is more descriptive. Also, I can see why 'bangs' - the word in itself - has a nice ring to it but, to me, never has a word seemed LESS like its meaning. Apart from the fact that the word is a PLURAL anyway, there is nothing in that word that would describe how a FRINGE of hair might look..! (sorry for the caps...I am not annoyed, I just find it difficult to write without the emphasis of italics... 🙄)

Fanny in America is a person's buttocks but in the UK it's women's genitals

I’m British and find it frustrating when my countrymen don’t understand that in many areas of American English their language stopped developing along the same lines of British English in 1776. So many words and phrases were the same on that date, it diverged after their Independence. You can see it in words such as “pants”, from Pantaloons, what men wore in the 1700’s. As British English went with the development of Trousers in the early 1800’s, the US adopted Trousers many years later keeping the “Pants” name.

That's why every time someone says "I could care less" my response is "how much less could you care?" They always respond with classic "Are you stupid? That's not what it means." *Facepalm*

And fanny pack/bum bag, I already knew that one 🤣 your channel is brilliant

enjoy yer handegg😜, thanks for the video

Soccer is an originally British term for association football so I don't get why Brits have a problem with it. We've got football magazines about football with the word soccer. Even boardgames like Table Soccer.

As a confirmed and card-carrying British people, I can attest that EVERYTHING annoys British people. We don’t need a reason, we just need to be mildly bothered and moderately inconvenienced by trivial matters. It’s in our DNA 😂

American football is basically Rugby, which is called rugby football in the UK.

The term, “fake news,” describes something very real and not a joke, as you say. The fact that you think it’s a joke probably proves the point that the MSM wants that to be your take on it. One day you will hopefully come to realise that they are lying to you, on a regular basis.

You wonder why people get in a state over calling Football 'Soccer', well think how you would feel if YOU had to use 'soccer' as the word to call NFL Football. You wouldn't like it either!

If i asked you to Slice a Rock or Chip a Rock, Which one looks more like what you pull out of a Bag? The vast majority of what you called "Chips" are "Slices"

I’m Australian and have had an online wonderful American friend for, um, over 20 years. We still translate for each other, but laugh about it. I’ve made friends with her friends and family and she’s made friends with my friends and family. We’ve never been annoyed at different words, we just have so much fun translating. And talking time differences I tell them I’m in your tomorrow, anything you want to know? . They usually ask for lottery numbers as a joke 😂

A crisp is not a ‘chip’ of a potato. It is a very thin slice of a potato, which is deep fried to the point it becomes crispy. ‘Crisp’ is far closer to what it is than ‘chip’.

A crisp is a slice of a potato, a chip is a chip of a potato.

I am fully with you on the chips. Perfectly describes the shape of the snack. It is the word we use for it in swedish too.

Before I even watch what the top ten list is: I hate pissed instead of pissed off [pissed is drunk in the UK]; Math instead of Maths; Happy New Year[']s instead of Happy New Year; restroom [where DID that come from? And who's resting in there?] instead of loo, toilet or bathroom; probably more...

I used to work for the British branch of an American Bank. We confused the Americans even more on the floor numbering thing. You see we had what in the UK is called a Mezzanine (a floor that only covers a proportion of the space available). So what the Americans would refer to as the third floor was actually the first floor!

Always great to see your reactions McJibbin! As a brit, I feel like WatchMojo was reeaally reaching with some of these examples, but I will forever be with you when it comes to "I could care less" :D

2:00 Did he just say fanny means backside? Wrong hole, my man. 13:20 Interesting, didn't expect that. I hear the term bi-weekly all the time, always meaning every other week. Funny that, as I'm no native. Also funny that I never heard of the term fortnightly but just went "hm, what would I call that to make it make sense?" and came up with fortnightly ^^

Please, someone end the insufferable "excited FOR." You're starting college - I'm excited for you (excited on your behalf)" ✅ I'm excited for the concert ❌ .. no, I'm excited about the concert.

One of the few word differences that annoys me is "solder" and it only irritates me because Americans sound like they're trying to say solder but without a tongue, it comes our sawder

Who the hell is annoyed that they call it soccer? Its engrained in my memory and it doesn't matter, i have grown up in England and just telly alone has taught me the differences and it just doesn't matter. The word winningest is bloody annoying to hear though haha. *edit and deplane lol. AND lol, i meet a lot of European's and they all use American English, including chips. I work in a supermarket and the amount of times European's ask where the chips are and I automatically point them to the freezers. They use all the American words, bangs, sidewalks, chips, band aid, sneakers and more. All of them lol, because of TV and YT.

Have one major peeve " let's see if we can't " what? Lol like " let's see if we can't solve this for you " irritates me beyond belief

I don't quite agree on the "quite" discussion. It can, at least in Britain, mean "totally", depending on your tone.

I'm a Brit and I've been saying 'season' for decades, even since the 1990s. It makes sense, in my opinion because if you have two or more series within a franchise (for example, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Star Trek Voyager) it makes sense to call them different series, and the years within those series are seasons. A bit like how you'd put seconds into minutes. For example: Star Trek: Enterprise is a series, and has 4 seasons. I could say to one of my Trek buddies "Hey, they're bringing out a new series", there'd be no confusion over what I'd just said. Yes, could have used different franchises but I thought keeping it to just ST would be less messy to simply explain a point. I also say soccer, mainly to annoy fans of soccer 😂😂

Brits get a lot of criticism for saying "Innit", and I personally don't like it, but I would argue that Americans say "Like" twice as much, without noticing it. It's like, quite annoying.

Can I get ? No ! I will serve you. Can I get = I'll help myself.

Plaster is short for Elastoplast which is a brand of originally UK owned 'band aids'. And though the word plaster is often used as a verb in the UK when referring to the act of plastering a wall, it's never ever used as a verb when applying a plaster to a wound. You would never plaster your finger, but you would put a plaster on it. Of course one can also get plastered as well after drinking too much alcohol!

Any Brit protesting at the use of the word "soccer" really should do some research before moaning about it. The term "soccer" is a British invention, and was widely used throughout the UK until fairly recently. It still is used in my (British) neck of the woods.

When you said they're called chips because it's a chip off a potato and then said Doritos are the best chip ! But Doritos are not made from potatoes!!!

So, by your rationale, crisps should be chips because they are chipped off a potato (even though chips ARE chipped while crisps are sliced, but whatever), and therefore a dorito is a chip because it has been chipped off a corn kernel? Anyway, chips and fries are different. Even French fries are different to Belgian fries. It's all about the size.

Ha! I've finally found out what "bangs" are!! Didn't know they meant my fringe!!!! Only taken me about 5 years! 🤣

Doritos have no potato, therefore they are neither 'chips' nor 'crisps', they are corn (or maize) snacks.

Something cut off thinly such as potato's, meat ect are slices not chips, word crisp refers to texture. A chip is long square potato fried or small piece broken off mug or plate, pottery ect.

In regards to TV, America called them seasons because new shows were launched during the spring and fall since Summer and Winter was low for television viewing due to winter holidays and summer vacation. So 1 year is 2 seasons.

I’m glad you asked. First let me give an example I can empirically demonstrate to be incorrect and then explain why soccer is similar. It doesn’t in and of itself bother me, but it means football gets used for (again demonstrably) the wrong sport: Aluminum is used in the US. This is simply incorrect because the Latin suffix “ium” goes onto the end of any element that is a metal precisely to denote it as a metal. Not all metals use this convention but Aluminium does! Likewise, Soccer is an abbreviation from the games full name “Association Football” (‘SOC’er) probably at first as a quick way to distinguish it from other sports that also descended from Football. For example, thanks to William Web Eliss we have Rugby and the full sport name is Rugby Football Union or Rugby Football League (two different versions) and we know American football came out of Rugby Football Union - that’s why the word football is even associated with it after all you wouldn’t pick it at random to describe the sport would you - especially in a world where a game already existed that specifically involved only using your feet to kick a ball! My argument is that because America is the only one to play a sport directly descended from Football through Rugby and call it Football despite the fact the rest of the world already has a game more appropriately called football but you insist we change and call it Soccer is patently ridiculous. Call it football, that’s fine because of its roots but only amongst yourselves. Call it American football or something else when referring to it globally. Don’t try and change the name of the original sport that is its ancestor and is the most popular game in the world. Baseball is actually also a descendant of an English game called rounders (and possibly some cricket influence). In that case I have no complaints. The name is fine and I think you improved on the original. It’s a shame you don’t also play Cricket too though (the world’s second most popular sport) as once you get past the terms it’s an excellent game - probably the best attempt to make a ball game heavily strategic. Anyway…