S. Worthen | Weblog

The Oxford Style Manual (which C. gave me for my birthday!) has the best and most interesting translation list between American and UK English which I have yet encountered. From it, I've learned all sorts of things of which I'd had no idea. Here are some of the most unexpected.

• Chicory and endive mean the exact opposite of each other in American and UK English. Chicory is endive, endive is chicory, but they are still different plants.


• A mezzanine is not a floor up from the ground floor in a UK theater - it's underneath the stage.


• In the UK, a trapezoid has no two sides parallel; in the US (of course!) it has one pair of parallel sides.


• One I knew but hadn't consciously thought about before: a semi is a kind of house in the UK and a kind of truck in the US.