UK Slang EATING AND DINING
afters:
n
dessert. One would imagine that they’re so named because they come
after the main meal, but actually they take their name from their
inventor, Sir George After, the Fat Bastard of Brighton.
aubergine: n large purple pear-shaped vegetable North Americans will recognise as “eggplant.”
baked potato: n
potato. Baked. You can buy a baked potato on either side of the pond,
of course, but in the U.K. you will specify the filling as you buy the
baked potato, while in the U.S. you’ll be brought a small selection of
fillings to plonk in yourself. British fillings tend to constitute more
of a whole meal than American ones.
bangers: n sausages.
Probably most often heard in the name of the dish “bangers and mash”
(the “mash” being mashed potato, but I hope to God you worked that out
yourself). So called because they make popping noises when you cook
them.
Banoffee pie: n A charming dessert pie made of bananas, cream, toffee, condensed milk, sugar, butter, methamphetamine and Soylent Green.
bap: n 1 small bread roll. 2 woman’s breast (modern slang): Get your baps out, love!
bevvy: n alcoholic drink. A contraction of “beverage.”
Bill: n
the police, in the same sort of a way as “Plod.” There are two possible
etymologies: The first, that it’s after William Wilberforce, a Member
of Parliament who first proposed a U.K. police service. The second, that
all police cars originally had the letters “BYL” in their number
plates. The Bill is also a popular U.K. television drama about a police station.
biscuit: n cookie. Has nothing to do with what Americans call a biscuit.
bitter: n
proper beer, made with hops and served at room temperature (not
actually warmed, contrary to popular opinion). The European/American
fizzy lager shite is not real beer.
brew: 1 n cup of tea: Would you like a brew? Northern English but widely understood elsewhere in the U.K. At a stretch it could refer to coffee, too. 2 n pint of beer: Fancy heading out after work for a couple of brews?
brown sauce: n
Steak sauce. A mysterious thick brown sort of savoury sauce. Popularly
added to burgers, chips and other pub-type food, brown sauce is more
than ketchup and less chunky than the American “relish”. I believe it
contains vinegar. And probably some other stuff. Also it is brown.
bubble and squeak: 1 n dish made from boiled vegetables (often cabbage), potatoes, onions and sometimes some leftover meat. 2 n Greek person, usually shortened to “bubble.” From Cockney rhyming slang “bubble and squeak” / “Greek”: Did you hear Harry’s brother’s gone and started dating a bubble?
butty: n
colloquial name for something sold in a chippy that’s served inside a
roll or a folded-over piece of bread. It’s a bit of a northern
English/Scottish thing, and has more recently started being used to
cover pretty much any sort of sandwich. The most popular is a chip
butty, but you can also buy bacon or fish butties without seeming
strange. May be derived from the German “butterbrot” meaning “butter
bread” and referring to a similar sort of dish.
candy floss: n
cotton candy. The revolting foodstuff one can buy at fairgrounds which
resembles a giant blob of fibreglass wrapped around a stick.
chipolata: n small sausage. The term originated in Mexico, but somehow never made it big in the U.S.
chips: n
French fries. However, it’s lately been popular to call thin chips
“fries” in the U.K, so Brits at least know what “fries” are these days.
Classic chips can be obtained from a chip shop (“chippy”) and are a
great deal unhealthier. They also vary quite creatively — if you buy
them at 9 p.m. they are hard, black and crunchy (because they’ve been
cooking since 6:30 p.m., when the dinner rush came through) but if you
buy them at 3 a.m. you will find them very akin to raw potatoes, right
down to the green bits in the middle (because the chippy employees want
all of these drunk punters out of the door so they can go home).
chocolate drops: n
chocolate chips. The idea of “chocolate chips” is enough to turn most
British stomachs. The American candy called a “chocolate drop,” but it
doesn’t have a lot to do with British chocolate drops.
cider: n
alcoholic apple juice. To Brits all cider is alcoholic — there’s no
such thing as “hard cider” in Britain, and any non-alcoholic apple juice
is called simply “apple juice.” Cider is often mixed with a small
amount of blackcurrant syrup to form a drink imaginatively titled “Cider
and black”.
coriander: n cilantro.
The herb that tastes like soap, and redefines the term “edible.”
Americans still call the fruit of the plant “coriander” but not the
leaves.
courgette: n
zucchini. I wonder if there’s anything behind the fact that these words
both look like they ought to be sports cars. I’m sure someone’s written
a thesis on it somewhere.
crisps: n
potato chips, or any of the corn-based equivalents. It’s worth bearing
in mind that crisps in the U.K. cover a wide variety of flavours from
Worcester Sauce to steak, and are not restricted to tasting anything
like a potato. In fact, producing something that tastes anything like a
potato is probably a sacking offence in the crisp factory. This
particular confusion has caused me no end of troubles in the U.S. — I’ve
never been so disappointed with a “bag of chips” in my life.
crumpet: n 1 small teacake made of pancake batter, but with raising agents added to make holes. 2 loose woman. Coming from rhyming slang for “strumpet” (a woman adulterer), crumpet
refers to women in a similar (although a little more old-fashioned) way
to “totty.” Suffice to say that if you were out looking for some crumpet
of an evening, you wouldn’t be intending sleeping alone. In fact, you
may not be intending to sleep at all. Despite it meaning, primarily, a
small teacake, it would be difficult to mention such a teacake in the
U.K. without someone at the table collapsing in fits of giggles.
cuppa: n cup of tea: Surely you have time for a cuppa?
custard: n
sort of yellowy-looking dessert sauce made from egg yolks and milk. It
does sound a little disgusting, but you’ll have to believe me that it’s
not. Brits pour it on top of things like apple crumble and sponge cakes.
cutlery: n silverware. Knives and forks and stuff. Brits therefore do not have the curious American concept of “plastic silverware.”
digestive: n round biscuit that one generally dunks in one’s tea. Whether it aids the digestion or not, who can tell?
dinner: n Northern English mid-day meal. This is a bit of a generalisation — the words dinner,
“tea,” “lunch” and “supper” seem to be assigned to meals spattered
randomly around the day in both American and English regional dialects.
double fisting: v
holding two drinks at once. The double-entendre is not entirely lost on
the Brits and so it’s best not used in overly polite company.
drink driving: n drunk driving. The art of driving a car whilst intoxicated: Sarah’s stuck at home right now, she got done for drink driving last week. Why the Brits chose a phrase that doesn’t make linguistic sense, I am not entirely sure.
elevenses: n mid-morning snack. Rather old-fashioned; clearly derived somehow from eleven o’clock.
entrée: n
appetizer. Only in America does this not mean “appetizer.” Why, in
America, a word that clearly means “enter” or “start” means “main
course” is beyond me. Perhaps it’s because American appetizers are about
the size of everyone else’s main courses.
faggot: 1 n particular variety of meatball. 2 n bundle of sticks. 3 n grumpy old woman (uncommon). 4 n cigarette (uncommon). 5 n
prostitute (uncommon). Brits do not use it as a derisive term for a
homosexual man. In reality, the American definition is well known (if
not really used) U.K.-wide, so most of the jokes involving the various
other meanings have already been made. They all stem from the original
Norse word “fagg,” meaning a bundled-together collection of matter. Do
prostitutes come in bundles, I wonder.
fizzy drink: n carbonated drinks. A generic term much like “soda” or perhaps “pop.”
fry-up: n
meal (almost always breakfast) consisting of mostly fried stuff
(sausage, eggs, bacon and the like). Ideal for those seeking heart
disease.
gobstopper: n jawbreaker. Very hard sweets intended to break the jaw of the consumer, or at least cause severe injury.
haggis: n
small Scottish mammal, known better for the unpleasant-tasting dish it
is often made into. There has been a lot of concern in Scotland lately
that over-farming may endanger the remaining population - if you want to
help, please voice your concerns to The World-Wide Fund for Nature.
Make it clear that you’re an American, and that you were made aware of
the poor creature’s plight by this fine piece of work.
high tea: n
evening meal; dinner. Derives from the fact that the meal was typically
eaten at the dinner table (the “high table”) rather than the tea table.
This usage has become something antiquated recently and the term “high
tea” has morphed to refer to the expensive afternoon teas one can buy at
posh hotels in the U.K.
icing sugar:
n powdered/confectioner’s sugar. The very fine sugar used to make cake icing.
jacket potato: n
baked potato. A potato baked in its skin and usually filled with
something. The term “baked potato” is equally well understood in the
U.K.
jam: n jelly. Sort of. What Americans call “jelly” (fruit preserve without fruity-bits in it), Brits still call jam. What Americans call “jello,” Brits call “jelly.” Oh yes, and what Americans call “jam” is still also called jam in the U.K. I think that’s the jams pretty much covered.
jelly: n
Jell-o. Gelatinous sweet desert. The Jell-o brand doesn’t exist in the
U.K. British jelly is not like American “jelly” – Brits don’t
distinguish between fruit preserves with or without fruit in them –
they’re all “jam”.
joint: n
large side of meat, like a Sunday roast. The Brits, like the Americans,
also use the word to refer to cannabis spliffs, which means that these
days you’d be unlikely to get away with referring to your “Sunday joint”
without someone giggling.
lemonade: n a clear, carbonated drink very similar to Sprite or 7-Up,
but with only lemons instead of limes. In the U.S. (and in the U.K.,
but under the moniker “traditional lemonade”) the word “lemonade” refers
to a variant that, for want of a better description, is a bit more
lemony. It’s darker in colour, not carbonated and often contains bits of
lemon. Nowadays young drinkers on street corners in both the U.K. and
the U.S. enjoy alcopop lemonade (“hard lemonade”), which is carbonated
on both sides of the Atlantic. By that I don’t mean it’s carbonated on
one side of the Atlantic, then flown over and carbonated on the other
prior to sale. But you knew that.
Marmite: n
a sandwich spread based upon yeast extract. Similar to “Bovril,” which
is made from beef extract. Australians have a very similar spread called
“Vegemite,” which is a little less sharp in taste.
marrow: n squash. The vegetable.
mince pie: n
a sweet pie, traditionally served at Christmas, containing suet and
mixed fruit. Not mincemeat. Step away from the mincemeat. No mincemeat
to see here. Traditionally they did contain mincemeat, as the easiest
way to preserve meat was to mince it and then mix it with various
fruits. Actually, that probably isn’t the easiest way at all. The
easiest way is probably to bury it in salt. Anyway - the animals having
been slaughtered prior to the onset of winter, the mince pies were
enjoyed at Christmas because the “preserved” meat was by then pretty
much ready to walk out the door by itself. But it was okay, because
everyone was kinda drunk.
nosh: 1 n food: Right, the pub’s shut, let’s get some nosh. 2 v perform oral sex: Rumour has it she didn’t answer the phone because she was noshing the vicar at the time.
on the lash: adj out drinking: Bob’s in a terrible state since he got divorced – I think he’s been on the lash every night.
peckish: adj
hungry. Absolutely nothing to do with “pecker.” Only a little hungry,
mind, not ravenous - you wouldn’t hear people on the news talking about
refugees who’d tramped across mountains for two weeks and were as a
result a little peckish.
pickle: n 1
a sort of brown, strongly flavoured blobby mass that people put in
sandwiches. I’m really not very sure what it’s made of. Pickled
something, one can only hope. 2 any sort of pickled cucumber or gherkin (universal).
piece: n Scottish packed lunch. Quintessentially Scottish: Will ye be coming for lunch, Willie? / Nah, ah’ve brought ma piece.
pips: n seeds. The little seeds in the middle of fruit guaranteed to get stuck in your teeth.
pissed: adj
drunk. Brits do not use it alone as a contraction of “pissed off,”
which means that Americans saying things like “I was really pissed with
my boss at work today” leaves Brits wide-eyed. go out on the - venture out drinking. taking the - poking fun at someone. May well be a throwback to the U.S. use of the word.
pogged: n Northern English stuffed; full of food. Derivation is anybody’s guess.
Pot Noodle: n
Cup-o-Noodle. Little pots of noodles, upon which you simply pour
boiling water to the “fill level” and lo, all of a sudden you have a
perfectly delicious and nutritious meal for one. One student, one
overworked employee or one neglected pensioner, normally. I don’t think
it mentions that on the pot.
prawn: n the least powerful piece on a chess board. OK, I lied. It’s a shrimp.
pudding: n dessert: If you keep spitting at your grandfather like that you’re going to bed without any pudding! Brits do also use the word in the same sense as Americans do (Christmas pudding, rice pudding,
etc). The word “dessert” is used in the U.K. but really only in
restaurants, never in the home. To complicate things further, the Brits
have main meal dishes which are described as pudding - black pudding and white pudding.
These are revolting subsistence foods from the dark ages made with
offal, ground oatmeal, dried pork and rubbish from the kitchen floor.
The difference between the black and white puddings is that the
black one contains substantial quantities of blood. This, much like
haggis, is one of those foodstuffs that modern life has saved us from
but that people insist on dredging up because it’s a part of their
“cultural heritage.” Bathing once a year and shitting in a bucket was a
part of your cultural heritage too, you know. At least be consistent.
rat-arsed: adj exceedingly drunk. Also abbreviated as simply ratted.
Possibly derived from a time when dead rats would be dangled in cider
vats to give them extra flavour. At least, according to the person who
told me that.
rocket: n arugula.
salad cream: n A mixture of mayonnaise and vinegar often put on salads. Perhaps unsurprisingly.
sarnie: n abbrev
sandwich. A little bit slang-ish - you won’t find a “lightly toasted
roast beef sarnie served on a fresh bed of rocket” in your average poncy
restaurant.
savoury: n non-dessert food. Food such as potatoes, bread and meat are savouries.
Things like ice cream and meringues are “sweets,” which is defined
elsewhere in this fine work. Probably further on, as it’s supposed to be
in alphabetical order.
scone: n pron. “sk-awn,” not “sk-own” biscuit. Sort of. A quintessentially British foodstuff, scones
are somewhere between a cake and a subsistence food. The British word
is creeping into the U.S. via coffee shops. Can a word creep?
Scotch: a contraction of the word “Scottish,” this is now only used in the context of foodstuffs (and even then really just Scotch eggs), and whisky – Brits refer to anything else as being “Scottish.” So those from Scotland aren’t Scotch people; they are Scottish people. If they were Scotch people, they would be made primarily from whisky. Oh, wait…
Scotch egg: n
a somewhat peculiar delicacy - a hard-boiled egg wrapped in sausage
meat and coated in breadcrumbs. My mother used to put them in my packed
lunch every day for school.
scrummy: adj delicious. I believe that this is a childish amalgamation of “yummy” and “scrumptious”: This jelly and ice-cream is scrummy!
Scrumpy: n strong alcoholic cider. While traditionally the word refers to home-brewed cider (scrumping being the stealing of apples), it has more recently become associated with a high-alcohol brand named Scrumpy Jack. Don’t go near the stuff. I drank some at university one evening and all sorts of bad things happened.
serviette: n napkin. The thing you put in your lap to block the path of food falling onto your clothes.
shandy: n
an alcoholic mix of lager and (British) lemonade. Usually 90% lager and
10% lemonade, and generally drunk by people convinced that they can get
as drunk as a skunk on shandy and still be fine to drive the car. Shandy has also given us such retail gems as Top Deck,
a canned drink which contains not only the cheapest lemonade money can
buy, but rounds it off nicely with a dash of the grottiest beer
available west of the Himalaya.
skinfull: n the amount of alcohol necessary to make one clearly inebriated. If you have a skinfull
at lunch, you’ll be less likely to go back to the office and more
likely to see whether you could urinate as high as the top of the “M” in
the McDonalds logo.
smart: 1 adj well dressed: You’re looking very smart today. Job interview? 2 adj intelligent (universal).
Smarties: n small sugar-coated chocolate candies, not entirely dissimilar to chocolate M&Ms. Not related at all to the American candy product of the same name, which in the U.K. is known as Fizzers.
soldiers: n
strips of bread meant for dipping into a boiled egg. And yes, Brits
also use the word to describe people who are in the army. To the best of
my knowledge this duality of meaning has never caused any enormous
problems.
spotted dick: n
a suet pudding with raisins in it, often served on festive occasions
and with custard. And yes, the Brits do use “dick” to mean the same
thing Americans do.
squash: n cordial;
diluted fruit drink. It’s a little outdated - you’d be more likely to
find your grandmother offering you “lemon squash” than you would your
children. The vegetable that Americans call a “squash,” Brits call a
“marrow.”
starter: n appetizer. The dish you eat prior to your main meal.
sultana: n golden raisin. Vine-dried green grape.
supper: n Scottish takeaway meal served with (British) chips. When dish x is served in a Scottish chip shop with chips, it becomes an x supper. What the English call “fish and chips,” the Scots call a fish supper.
swede: n rutabaga.
sweet: 1 n candy: Never take sweets from strangers, or you’ll end up a dismembered corpse, rotting in a ditch like your auntie Jean. 2 n dessert (particularly in restaurants).
swift half: n a half pint of beer, had swiftly before departing. Although quite often it’s not really that. You might propose having a swift half with some people after work, when in reality you know that it probably won’t be just one swift half, it’ll be sixteen swift halves like last Wednesday, when Ernie ended up breaking his arm and you had sex with that homeless person.
take-away: n 1 take-out food: I think we’re just going to get take-away. 2
take-out restaurant. A hot food retailer (personally I think in this
instance “restaurant” is a little too strong) which only sells things
that you can take home and eat or stagger down the street drunkenly
stuffing in your mouth and distributing down your shirt. Blimey, that
tastes good. Damnit, I’ve left my credit card in the pub again. Where
are my keys?
tater: n Northern England potato. Not exactly sure how America ended up calling the greasy French-fry derivatives “tater tots.”
tea: n
evening meal. At the risk of sounding terrible, it’s just a little
“working class.” Maybe that doesn’t sound all that terrible. There are
lots of more terrible things I could say. Ask my parole officer.
tea-break: n coffee-break. A break away from work, ostensibly to have a cup of tea, but perhaps also to have coffee or a sly fag.
the razz: an evening spent out drinking. Both Americans and Brits use the term “razzing” to describe teasing someone.
tipple: n a demure, civilised drink. Usually of sherry, Martini or some other light spirit measure. You grandmother might acquiesce to a tipple before dinner. My grandmother, as it happens, acquiesced to several tipples before dinner, and a few after.
toad in the hole: n
a delicacy consisting of sausages in Yorkshire pudding batter, in a
sort of pie shape. The etymology is a tough one to guess at, as the dish
itself contains no obvious holes and it’s difficult, although not
impossible, to confuse sausages and toads.
tomato sauce: n tomato ketchup. In the U.K. these two terms are interchangeable although “tomato ketchup” is in more common use, as tomato sauce could equally easily refer to the pasta-type sauce in a jar or can.
treacle: n 1 molasses. 2
darling; honey, An affectionate and familiar term of address, not
necessarily implying that there’s a sexual relationship going on, but
sort of hinting that one might be plausible: Afternoon treacle! Haven’t seen you since that party at Mike’s house.
trolleyed: adj extremely drunk. Perhaps the term came from something to do with ending up in hospital. No idea.
tuck in: v eat enthusiastically; dig in: Well, come on, tuck in before it gets cold! This is probably related to the term “tuck shop”, which similarly uses the word “tuck”. Also it might not be related at all.
wetting the baby’s head: n an
evening in the pub celebrating the birth of a new baby. The event
generally involves only the father and his mates, whilst the wife sits
at home in a state of exhaustion surrounded by fresh nappies: Are you coming out on Friday? We’re wetting the baby’s head down at the Four Coachmen.
wholemeal flour: n
whole-wheat/whole-grain flour. I’ve no idea about food; I hope it’s not
apparent. I just type what people tell me like a big unpaid secretary.
wife-beater:
n beer with high-alcohol content: Give me a gin and tonic and a pint of wife beater. Brits do not use the American definition of the term (a ribbed, sleeveless undershirt).
