'Oy tink': Primer on British English for Americans

[twinblade]

Who do you Soc in Soccer?

Not many, hence its called football.

[Connaught Ranger]

Ha! You Brits think you know how to use an electric kettle. Alton Brown, the demigod of The Food Channel has a use for it you never thought of.

Which after 1 egg breaks in the kettle you cant use it to boil water for tea

as the egg-white and yoke congeals around the electric element.

[Navel Lint]

TT calling someone dumb.

[DPM_Sheep]

Who do you Soc in Soccer?

Don't ask me. Google says soccer is an American diminutive for association.

[Spartan10k]

The rules of association football were codified in the United Kingdom by the Football Association in 1863, and the name association football was coined to distinguish the game from the other versions of football played at the time, such as rugby football. The word soccer is a colloquial abbreviation of association (from assoc.) and first appeared in the 1880s. An early usage can be found in an English 1892 periodical.^[1] The word is sometimes credited to Charles Wreford Brown, an Oxford University student said to have been fond of shortened forms such as brekkers for breakfast and rugger for rugby football. (See Oxford -er) Clive Toye noted "A quirk of British culture is the permanent need to familiarize names by shortening them. ... Toye [said] 'They took the third, fourth and fifth letters of Association and called it SOCcer.'”^[2]

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names...ation_football

Looks like it was first used in England,

[welshmann]

Which after 1 egg breaks in the kettle you cant use it to boil water for tea

as the egg-white and yoke congeals around the electric element.

thats why we put BV in our tank and IFV,but kills the batterys

[Ought Six]

Which after 1 egg breaks in the kettle you cant use it to boil water for tea

as the egg-white and yoke congeals around the electric element.

You have an exposed element coil in your kettle? It must be an old one. Neither of mine, nor any of the others that I have seen here have that. I agree, one designed like that would not be good for boiling eggs.

[Connaught Ranger]

You have an exposed element coil in your kettle? It must be an old one. Neither of mine, nor any of the others that I have seen here have that. I agree, one designed like that would not be good for boiling eggs.

Standard type here in Romania, probably made in Chi-Com Land.

[Corrupt]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-19093328

There was a huge response to our collection of 12 guides of 212 words each for Olympic visitors to the UK.
The piece prompted more than 800 of you to submit your own mini-essays on British quirks and customs.
Excluding talking about the weather, here is a selection of 12. All in 212 words, of course.

[Atlantic Friend]

Never mind a can of sealed scotch mist

If it's Irish mist I'm game. Preferably in a bottle.

[kevlar308]

Best served cold too; not hot. Cold glass of sweet ice tea.....better than cold beer on a hot summer day.

Now, Spartan, you know that the barbarians cannot even understand the idea of sweet tea, much less appreciate it.

[Ought Six]

Now, Spartan, you know that the barbarians cannot even understand the idea of sweet tea, much less appreciate it.

I understand they still paint their bodies blue, live in mud huts and sacrifice children to their gods.

Oh, wait... that is just Wales.

[Corrupt]

Oh, wait... that is just Wales.

And Scotland. They have their uses. Putting them in red coasts, giving them bayonets and pointing them in the general direction of the enemy was generally a winning strategy.