The one clear and sensible conclusion to draw from this is that if you live in the Anglophone world, whoever or wherever you are, if you talk to someone from a different part of that world about a garden or a yard, the other person will get the wrong end of the stick. They will assume you mean something different from what you think you are talking about.
I still call the entire area at the back of the house the "back garden" - which includes grass, veg and fruit plots, flowers etc. If I am talking to a Canadian, I will try to say "backyard" but don't always succeed.
One of the other differences I noticed when I first came here was that the shops sell "kabobs" rather than "kebabs".
I had always assumed "mac and cheese" is just the worn-from-use version, as "TV" or "telly" are of "television".
Or “veg” for vegetables, as I’ve learned on the Ship people from the UK say.
(In my experience in the American South, “veg” is short for “vegetate,” in the slang sense of avoiding any requirement of thought or effort—“I’m so tired, I just want to veg in front of the TV tonight.”)
I had always assumed "mac and cheese" is just the worn-from-use version, as "TV" or "telly" are of "television".
Or “veg” for vegetables, as I’ve learned on the Ship people from the UK say.
(In my experience in the American South, “veg” is short for “vegetate,” in the slang sense of avoiding any requirement of thought or effort—“I’m so tired, I just want to veg in front of the TV tonight.”)
That's the case here as well. Often with "out" -- let's not go clubbing tonight, let's just stay at home and veg out.
I had always assumed "mac and cheese" is just the worn-from-use version, as "TV" or "telly" are of "television".
Or “veg” for vegetables, as I’ve learned on the Ship people from the UK say.
(In my experience in the American South, “veg” is short for “vegetate,” in the slang sense of avoiding any requirement of thought or effort—“I’m so tired, I just want to veg in front of the TV tonight.”)
That's the case here as well. Often with "out" -- let's not go clubbing tonight, let's just stay at home and veg out.
Certainly used here in that sense. Veg(s) can be used as an abbreviation for vegetable(s), as can veggies - "Eat your veggies or no ice-cream for you".
I had always assumed "mac and cheese" is just the worn-from-use version, as "TV" or "telly" are of "television".
Or “veg” for vegetables, as I’ve learned on the Ship people from the UK say.
(In my experience in the American South, “veg” is short for “vegetate,” in the slang sense of avoiding any requirement of thought or effort—“I’m so tired, I just want to veg in front of the TV tonight.”)
That's the case here as well. Often with "out" -- let's not go clubbing tonight, let's just stay at home and veg out.
I had always assumed "mac and cheese" is just the worn-from-use version, as "TV" or "telly" are of "television".
Or “veg” for vegetables, as I’ve learned on the Ship people from the UK say.
(In my experience in the American South, “veg” is short for “vegetate,” in the slang sense of avoiding any requirement of thought or effort—“I’m so tired, I just want to veg in front of the TV tonight.”)
That's the case here as well. Often with "out" -- let's not go clubbing tonight, let's just stay at home and veg out.
I'm in the UK. Both those senses of 'veg' are used in the areas I've lived/spent time in. I'd normally rely on the context to tell me which was meant.
The verb 'to veg' or 'veg out crossed the Pond some time during the '80s. I first heard it then and it sounded terribly American and quirky. I remember laughing about it with friends.
It's still not that common here I submit, but it wouldn't raise eyebrows if you said or heard it. The same with many Americanisms that have taken root here, of course, whether in gardens, plots or back yards.
Talking of which, that dastardly Englishman Enoch left Wales out of the equation when referring to English, Scottish and Irish usage when it comes to gardens and such.
Although there is no widespread Welsh term for a garden or back yard - other than in the Welsh language of course - a term that was relatively common in the South Wales Valleys when I was growing up was a 'bailey'.
Yes, as in 'motte and bailey'.
It always used to amuse me how a small patch of concrete or cinder outside a terraced house (row house to our North American friends) has the same name as part of a medieval Norman fortification.
Going back to the first comment about about garden and/or yard, I remembered that the minister who used the phrase is named Herb. It must, of course, have been a herb garden to which he was referring.
Herb has a voiced h whether the name or some plant stuff. Said "erb" grates on my ears. Herb is not a common name any more for a person.
A community garden plot in my part of Canada may be equivalent to the UK allotment. They are almost all cooperatively run here for the 100 days we get to grow things.
3 other things came up recently. One is we proof bread (or yeast), which may be "proved" elsewhere"
Insurance provides coverage which may be "cover" in other places.
Bap is apparently a bun in UK? Which may also be a roll here if small.
Bap is apparently a bun in UK? Which may also be a roll here if small.
As far as I'm concerned buns are sweet, while baps and rolls are not. But I believe most UK people would have trouble sort out regional distinctions between baps, rolls, etc.
Not heard bap used here for close on 50 years, perhaps longer. Even then, it was not common - more an attempt to make a humble bread roll sound more upmarket.
A bakery of my youth had emblazoned on its vans - 'Famous for Baps'. The Belfast Bap is a fearsome thing; the size of half a loaf, crusty and filled with fried things (The Pan being the other Ulster culinary mainstay).
The one clear and sensible conclusion to draw from this is that if you live in the Anglophone world, whoever or wherever you are, if you talk to someone from a different part of that world about a garden or a yard, the other person will get the wrong end of the stick. They will assume you mean something different from what you think you are talking about.
Except that Australians, in our usual bidialect way, will probably quite happily use either 'garden' or 'yard' to mean much the same thing. Only half-satisfying both Brits and Americans.
EDIT: We do a similar thing with "chips". Only in that case we use it to mean 2 completely different things, one in common with Brits and the other in common with Americans.
Herb has a voiced h whether the name or some plant stuff. Said "erb" grates on my ears.
The plants are “erbs” here (American South)—the h is not voiced, and it’s the voiced h that sounds very odd to my ears.
As I understand it, the voiced h is the more recent pronunciation, the word having come into English through French. My understanding is that the shift to a voiced h in British pronunciation happened in the 19th Century, so this is an instance where the American usage is the older one. Perhaps Canadians get a mix of the two?
Karl mentioned oven bottom cakes, well, round Manchester you get oven bottom muffins, baked at the bottom of the commercial oven, quite large and flat, and delicious. Some big companies try to make them, horrible.
I've no idea what a teacake and a fair number of these other things are. We get:
-buns (usually for putting something in, like a hamburger patty),
-rolls (smaller and not sweet, intended to be eaten along with other food)
-doughnuts
-muffins
-English muffins, which may actually not be English, don't know (thinking french fries, which are frenched potatoes not from France)
- things that are distinctly unmemorable, like scones
-various flat breads, like nan, tortillas, pitas and thicker ones like bannock.
-various other things which would have another word in front, e.g., cinnamon buns. Which is actually a roll of dough with cinnamon and brown sugar.
(not suggesting this is exhaustive, but it may be close?)
But I believe most UK people would have trouble sort out regional distinctions between baps, rolls, etc.
Yes - words for bread products are very regional, and there can be fierce arguments about what defines each particular product.
Personally, I'd expect a bap to be large, fairly flat, and probably floury, whereas a roll is smaller and probably not floury. A bun is definitely sweet (and might be a sticky bun if it's got icing on it).
Baps are also, of course, one of the many slang terms for female breasts.
A teacake in my usage is a large bun in which somebody has put insufficient currants et al.
The US usage in which a muffin is an oversized cupcake has made inroads via coffee shops, but a proper muffin is a flat circular roll meant to be cut in half and toasted. (I have heard conflicting rumours on whether it is or isn't the same as an English muffin.)
A scone is a tallish sweetish bread product often with either cheese (why?) or currants. It is raised, but unpleasantly dry unless used as an excuse for eating jam and clotted cream, which is its real purpose.
I have never heard the anatomy definition for bap either. Breasts normally. Tits in less formal company and depending on how said, rude.
There are a huge number of slang terms for breasts, many of which found frequent use by the comedians of a generation ago. I'm quite certain that, for example, Ronnie Barker as Arkwright in "Open all Hours" made any number of "nice baps" jokes whilst clutching bread products.
I think "baps" has a little of an air of lads in the pub talking about particular women with "massive baps" to it, and carries the implication that the breasts in question are of above average size. Whether it's more or less rude than "tits" is rather context-dependent.
(At the more polite end of the spectrum, boobs and boobies are common, and significantly more polite that tits. Very few people say "bosom" any more.)
I have never heard the anatomy definition for bap either. Breasts normally. Tits in less formal company and depending on how said, rude.
On the euphemistic scale, baps is towards the "inoffensive" end, similar to boobs. It's the kind of thing women might say to their friends: "Hey! Your baps are looking good today!"
Stotties are, apparently, similar to the sort of bread the Romans might have eaten at the east end of Hadrian's Wall, where they are to be found. The pubs between Sunderland and Newcastle serve filled stotties as their sandwich equivalent. Personally I suspect that the flour would have been just a tad more wholemeal than any I ate in the region, but that's just me carping.
@Dafyd cheese scones are for eating with soup or a savoury dish. You can have my share of the sultana version, but the local Tesco's occasionally sell cherry scones and them I like. I'd agree the plain is only worth eating with cream and jam (or jam and cream).
Did anyone add butty to the bread options? Chip or crisp butties are a standard in some areas.
Stotting is what antelope do. They stott by jumping in the air. Pronghorn, native the the Canadian prairies will stott.
What is "butty". Is it butter?
Do you eat bannock? Fried baking powder dough flatbread. I make it periodically at home, it's a staple on canoe trips cooked over a fire. You can put it around a fat stick and roast it too.
'cause chips go with everything. They've got to be proper chunky chips, though - not the spindly things that McDonalds sells. You've probably never had a crisp sandwich either.
Thick, hot chips with salt and vinegar on a slice of dense white bread and a layer of cold butter deep enough to show the teeth marks. What's not to like?
And paps rather than baps. You don't hear reference to the Baps of Jura.
Barm being yeast.
Teacakes are a sweet dough flattish bun with dried fruit. They are intended to be split open, toasted and buttered. Possibly then having jam on, but we never did.
Crumpets are made from a yeasted batter cooked in a ring on a griddle. Bubbles form and rise up forming tubes through the structure. They are later toasted and buttered - the butter running down into the tubes. Like muffins (our sort), they used to be toasted on a toasting fork against an open fire. Now, under the grill. Muffins were split before toasting.
I would class any bread product used for holding a burger as more like a roll than a bun - buns being made from sweet dough in my life experience.
I haven't see a bridge roll for ages. They were small, about 3 inches long, and narrow, like mini sub rolls, and used as party food with interesting (?) toppings.
Not in my area there are thin things like crumpets called pikelets.
Scones are a baking powder raised dough, made with a very light hand, cut out of rolled dough, about an inch thick, and cooked quickly. They should be eaten the day of baking, still warm, buttered and jammed, and if possible clotted creamed. Unless made with a cheese dough. Shop scones are bigger and do not go dry and inedible quickly. I gather that scones are what are called biscuits in America. Scone dough can be used as a topping of a meat dish, if savoury, or of a fruit filling is with sugar. These dishes are called cobblers.*
There are other teacakes, nothing whatever to do with yeast. They are a biscuit - a flat dry cookie - on which is a dab of jam and a dome of marshmallow, the whole thing then coated in chocolate. In a factory.
*Do not enter discussion about the pronounciation of scones. It varies with region, but everyone claims fiercely that their way is the only correct one.
Welsh cakes. With currants and a little sugar in top for tea. Withou currants, sorinkled with salt and eaten alone or part of a "proper" breakfast - delicious.
EDIT: We do a similar thing with "chips". Only in that case we use it to mean 2 completely different things, one in common with Brits and the other in common with Americans.
Americans will use "chips" to mean pommes frites when in context of a dish containing fried fish: fish and chips. Some restaurants have alternative versions which will keep the word, such as clam and chips or shrimp and chips. Once you leave that context, and especially if preceded with the word "potato", "chips" refers to what the Brits call "crisps".
Comments
One of the other differences I noticed when I first came here was that the shops sell "kabobs" rather than "kebabs".
(In my experience in the American South, “veg” is short for “vegetate,” in the slang sense of avoiding any requirement of thought or effort—“I’m so tired, I just want to veg in front of the TV tonight.”)
That's the case here as well. Often with "out" -- let's not go clubbing tonight, let's just stay at home and veg out.
Certainly used here in that sense. Veg(s) can be used as an abbreviation for vegetable(s), as can veggies - "Eat your veggies or no ice-cream for you".
While getting (French) fried?
I'm in the UK. Both those senses of 'veg' are used in the areas I've lived/spent time in. I'd normally rely on the context to tell me which was meant.
And I met her in the garden
Where the praties grow
It's still not that common here I submit, but it wouldn't raise eyebrows if you said or heard it. The same with many Americanisms that have taken root here, of course, whether in gardens, plots or back yards.
Talking of which, that dastardly Englishman Enoch left Wales out of the equation when referring to English, Scottish and Irish usage when it comes to gardens and such.
Although there is no widespread Welsh term for a garden or back yard - other than in the Welsh language of course - a term that was relatively common in the South Wales Valleys when I was growing up was a 'bailey'.
Yes, as in 'motte and bailey'.
It always used to amuse me how a small patch of concrete or cinder outside a terraced house (row house to our North American friends) has the same name as part of a medieval Norman fortification.
A community garden plot in my part of Canada may be equivalent to the UK allotment. They are almost all cooperatively run here for the 100 days we get to grow things.
3 other things came up recently. One is we proof bread (or yeast), which may be "proved" elsewhere"
Insurance provides coverage which may be "cover" in other places.
Bap is apparently a bun in UK? Which may also be a roll here if small.
Except that Australians, in our usual bidialect way, will probably quite happily use either 'garden' or 'yard' to mean much the same thing. Only half-satisfying both Brits and Americans.
EDIT: We do a similar thing with "chips". Only in that case we use it to mean 2 completely different things, one in common with Brits and the other in common with Americans.
As I understand it, the voiced h is the more recent pronunciation, the word having come into English through French. My understanding is that the shift to a voiced h in British pronunciation happened in the 19th Century, so this is an instance where the American usage is the older one. Perhaps Canadians get a mix of the two?
Can they? You learn something new every day
In the North East of England they also have stotties, which are the size of a medium dinner plate.
-buns (usually for putting something in, like a hamburger patty),
-rolls (smaller and not sweet, intended to be eaten along with other food)
-doughnuts
-muffins
-English muffins, which may actually not be English, don't know (thinking french fries, which are frenched potatoes not from France)
- things that are distinctly unmemorable, like scones
-various flat breads, like nan, tortillas, pitas and thicker ones like bannock.
-various other things which would have another word in front, e.g., cinnamon buns. Which is actually a roll of dough with cinnamon and brown sugar.
(not suggesting this is exhaustive, but it may be close?)
Yes - words for bread products are very regional, and there can be fierce arguments about what defines each particular product.
Personally, I'd expect a bap to be large, fairly flat, and probably floury, whereas a roll is smaller and probably not floury. A bun is definitely sweet (and might be a sticky bun if it's got icing on it).
Baps are also, of course, one of the many slang terms for female breasts.
The US usage in which a muffin is an oversized cupcake has made inroads via coffee shops, but a proper muffin is a flat circular roll meant to be cut in half and toasted. (I have heard conflicting rumours on whether it is or isn't the same as an English muffin.)
A scone is a tallish sweetish bread product often with either cheese (why?) or currants. It is raised, but unpleasantly dry unless used as an excuse for eating jam and clotted cream, which is its real purpose.
There are a huge number of slang terms for breasts, many of which found frequent use by the comedians of a generation ago. I'm quite certain that, for example, Ronnie Barker as Arkwright in "Open all Hours" made any number of "nice baps" jokes whilst clutching bread products.
I think "baps" has a little of an air of lads in the pub talking about particular women with "massive baps" to it, and carries the implication that the breasts in question are of above average size. Whether it's more or less rude than "tits" is rather context-dependent.
(At the more polite end of the spectrum, boobs and boobies are common, and significantly more polite that tits. Very few people say "bosom" any more.)
On the euphemistic scale, baps is towards the "inoffensive" end, similar to boobs. It's the kind of thing women might say to their friends: "Hey! Your baps are looking good today!"
@Dafyd cheese scones are for eating with soup or a savoury dish. You can have my share of the sultana version, but the local Tesco's occasionally sell cherry scones and them I like. I'd agree the plain is only worth eating with cream and jam (or jam and cream).
Did anyone add butty to the bread options? Chip or crisp butties are a standard in some areas.
What is "butty". Is it butter?
Do you eat bannock? Fried baking powder dough flatbread. I make it periodically at home, it's a staple on canoe trips cooked over a fire. You can put it around a fat stick and roast it too.
A chip butty is therefore chips (UK sense) in a sandwich, preferably a breadcake/cob/balm.
I live about six miles south of the cob/breadcake isogloss.
'cause chips go with everything. They've got to be proper chunky chips, though - not the spindly things that McDonalds sells. You've probably never had a crisp sandwich either.
Thick, hot chips with salt and vinegar on a slice of dense white bread and a layer of cold butter deep enough to show the teeth marks. What's not to like?
And paps rather than baps. You don't hear reference to the Baps of Jura.
Teacakes are a sweet dough flattish bun with dried fruit. They are intended to be split open, toasted and buttered. Possibly then having jam on, but we never did.
Crumpets are made from a yeasted batter cooked in a ring on a griddle. Bubbles form and rise up forming tubes through the structure. They are later toasted and buttered - the butter running down into the tubes. Like muffins (our sort), they used to be toasted on a toasting fork against an open fire. Now, under the grill. Muffins were split before toasting.
I would class any bread product used for holding a burger as more like a roll than a bun - buns being made from sweet dough in my life experience.
I haven't see a bridge roll for ages. They were small, about 3 inches long, and narrow, like mini sub rolls, and used as party food with interesting (?) toppings.
Scones are a baking powder raised dough, made with a very light hand, cut out of rolled dough, about an inch thick, and cooked quickly. They should be eaten the day of baking, still warm, buttered and jammed, and if possible clotted creamed. Unless made with a cheese dough. Shop scones are bigger and do not go dry and inedible quickly. I gather that scones are what are called biscuits in America. Scone dough can be used as a topping of a meat dish, if savoury, or of a fruit filling is with sugar. These dishes are called cobblers.*
There are other teacakes, nothing whatever to do with yeast. They are a biscuit - a flat dry cookie - on which is a dab of jam and a dome of marshmallow, the whole thing then coated in chocolate. In a factory.
*Do not enter discussion about the pronounciation of scones. It varies with region, but everyone claims fiercely that their way is the only correct one.
If you'd been paying attention you'd know a cob is a bread roll.
Why wouldn't you want chips in a sandwich?
Boobs and boobies are common here, also. Most post-pubescent women have them to some degree or other.
Americans will use "chips" to mean pommes frites when in context of a dish containing fried fish: fish and chips. Some restaurants have alternative versions which will keep the word, such as clam and chips or shrimp and chips. Once you leave that context, and especially if preceded with the word "potato", "chips" refers to what the Brits call "crisps".