Here's another set of synomyms for your next round. Pint and pint. Here in Boston, when one orders a pint, 16 oz of beer are delivered. In the UK, when one orders a pint, over comes 20 oz of beer.

UK win

US 2 - UK 1

I too like and admire the Americans, though I think we have their use of English wrong when we think it is pithier and crisper than ours. My experience is that American English is usually more pompous, long-winded, and ambiguous than ours.

But an example each way.

The US term jackhammer is not only fewer syllables than pneumatic drill (UK), but it is more accurate. The thing men cut the sidewalk up with (above point noted and agreed with already!) is clearly not a drill. There is no screw motion. On the other hand it is not a hammer either, though this gets closer. 'Jackchisel' is closer still to what it is.

But lift (UK) and elevator (US)? Elevator? How prissy can you get? No contest. I think lift - shorter and clearer - wins easily.

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Another one each way.

The American TV 'show' is far better and crisper than Britain's TV 'programme'.

However, many people in Britain now spell computer programs the US way, keeping other programmes with the Frencher spelling - a useful distinction in print the Americans lack.

Shaun

But is it such a clear cut victory? Are we sure Imperial fluid ounces are the same as US fluid ounces? I was looking into this the other day - trying to work out the difference between the US and Imperial gallon and I think I ought to have another look at it unless you beat me to it.

Patrick

Pondering: how do you guys feel about "meet up with," then? :-) (informal usage, usually referring to a casual meeting with a friend, with a connotation of the time of meeting being up in the air.)

> though I think we have their use of English wrong when we think it is pithier and crisper than ours. My experience is that American English is usually more pompous, long-winded, and ambiguous than ours.

I thought that too! (Compare UK "lift" and US "elevator," for starters. Or "way in" and "way out" vs. "entrance" and "exit.") I was very surprised by that, actually, when I was over there (I studied in London for about a year). But just compare our cold-medicine commercials. :-) In a US commercial, not only will you get a complete rundown of the entire physical process of the drug -- where it goes, what it does, complete with graphics and nine-syllable technical terms -- you also come away with the impression that you'll not only feel completely cured, but also be suddenly able to ride horses, run marathons, and close five business deals before noon. Plus ten minutes of legal disclaimers at the end.

In a British commercial, you get the simple (and more honest!) message that " your head hurts and your throat feels scratchy and yucky," this stuff will help you function and get through your day.

I exaggerate, but only a little.

My poor mom was incredibly nervous about coming to my graduation -- after years of British sitcoms, she was convinced she wouldn't be able to have a casual conversation with English people without constant pressure to be witty and multisyllabic... :-)

1. American English certainly seems more pompous and stilted to me, and I'm an American. One major source of stilted language and euphemism is the Pentagon; but it must be understood than when the military people talk in circles they are using precisely- and officially-defined jargon terms to describe precise situations. Large companies and, of course, the rest of the government do the same thing. Thus the average 'expert' being interviewed on American TV news is generally spouting some minimally-comprehensible garbage full of fifty-cent words and complicated official jargon. My theory is that, gradually, people in America have come to think that such language is a mark of expertise and sophistication, rather than of press-flack-hood. American TV, therefore, is full of things like the 19-year-old hoodlum being asked why he robbed that gas station and responding with something that sounds like a sharply ungrammatical corporate press release.

2. The thing they use to chop up roads is in fact a drill; the bit does rotate between bounces, though this is hard to see. Historically, a 'drill' was something that looked much like a chisel that you hit with a hammer, turning the drill 90 degrees between blows and very gradually making a hole in a piece of stone. The drill (in the modern noisy machine) itself is not pneumatic, though; the mechanical hammer that is the machine's raison d'etre is.

3. The Imperial/US volumetric measure issue is more complicated than you'd expect because we use the same words to mean different things.

The ounces are very slightly different sizes, and the gallons have different numbers of ounces in them -- 128 oz. in the U.S. and 160 oz. everywhere else. Thus Imperial quarts and pints have 40 and 20 ounces in them respectively, rather than 32 and 16 as in the USA.

An American ounce is 1.04092 Imperial ounces. (In those zany French units, an American ounce is 29.5753 ml, and an Imperial ounce is 28.4128 ml.)

All this means that an Imperial pint is 20 Imperial ounces, but only 19.2138 American ounces -- or 568.256 ml, vs. the American pint's 473.206 ml. Looking on the bright side, though, that's ove 95 ml less Bud Light to choke down. (Bars in America that specialize in British beers use imported 568.256-ml glasses with crowns and mysterious numbers on them.)

4. Meet with/meet up with/meet:

'Meet with' really has almost exactly the same meaning as 'have a meeting with'. I'm just going by my observations, but I think that if I had to articulate this as a rule, I'd say that you only really 'meet with' someone for a stated or strongly implied purpose (e.g. 'We're meeting with the marketing department at 3' [to discuss marketing]) in a static, usually unstated location. Examples:

'We'll meet with the marketing department.' --We're going to have a business meeting.

'I'm going to meet with Joe at Macy's.' --'Joe at Macy's' becomes a prepositional phrase. Implies that Joe works for Macy's, and you are going to conduct some kind of business. If the speaker and Joe are going to do some shopping together, he'd 'meet Joe' or 'meet *up* with Joe' at Macy's. 'Meet up with' implies that the meeting will be somewhat amorphous in nature, and it emphasizes the locational, rather than the institutional, nature of 'Macy's'.

'We'll meet with Joe in Times Square before the Knicks game.' --Implies that Joe is not going to the game. But:

'We'll meet *up* with Joe in Times Square before the Knicks game.' --Implies that the speaker's and Joe's routes will intersect at some point, after which they will continue on together to a common destination, even if that destination is unstated. 'We'll meet Joe in Times Square before the Knicks game' has much the same meaning, but with less of an implication that Joe will be going to the game.