Rubber = eraser in OZ
Condom in Americas
“Smoking a fag” would be another one.
Same in SA and UK.
Is not the American use of “trunk” the odd word, in England the home of English its call the boot ?
Not if you’re American!
That would mean something very different in a rap song… 
That one’s always baffled me.
My ex was from US I used to try and work out what she meant without asking:
A stroller? Took me a day to suss that one. U.K. pushchair.
She always mislaid her pocket book? Hey have you seen my pocket book? Her bag/purse
Do you take a bath in the toilet?
Wait, what? Where do you come from? We definitely use the word “date” in the UK.
I also heard this while studying a linguistics degree. Apparently, because they’re so isolated, Cletus the slack-jawed yokel types speak something close to Elizabethan English and that’s why it sounds so peculiar and backwards to the rest of us.
There’s also the term, less used now, “getting off” with someone.
That’s kissing with tongue.
And a good ol’ fashioned bollocking is received by the boss on a regular basis.
Not odd at all, you see the thing on the back of this car, does it look like it belongs on your feet?
3 Likes
It is an academic and philosophical question, what counts as the most correct? Is the oldest form the most pure, or is it the most modern? Should it be decided on what is most commonly understood (let me axe you a question), or should highly educated expert gatekeepers make the decision?
learnt - I would never use this word. Some A hole at my job edited my document using this word. As an American this word makes my skin crawl.
1 Like
Well, I learnt something today.
3 Likes
Okay, I shouldn’t have said I learnt “this” (i.e. that American-English is more “correct”) from my linguistics degree. No linguistics lecturer or textbook would ever make the claim that one dialect is more “correct” than another (nor would I, unless I was joking). I meant that I heard that American English, and particularly the “Cletus” variety, is closer to the English spoken in Elizabethan England than modern British-English is. That definitely doesn’t make it more “correct”.
2 Likes
Still not as bad as “whilst.” 
“… unless I were joking.” The second conditional.
Ask for your money back, professor.
1 Like