General Chat

My cousin served pokes of chips when she turned 40 back in 2016. Another word used is drouth usually in a pub setting and it means thirsty. Mr Owls grandmother confused people after moving to Windsor though and saying she was going for messages.

Crikey! You're taking me back to my youth!
We moved from Malta to Lossiemouth just before I started school.
I had to learn the local 'lingo' pretty quick, to fit in. :-(

I still use 'outwith', and a few other Scottish expressions, but then I also use Cornish, Devon and Hampshire ones, too.
Ingrained due to 'survival mode' kicking in, every time I changed schools.

That's one I haven't heard before.

Yes the word "piece" confused me. At school we called it a snack, kids here call it their "play piece." Not heard of a Poke before.

Also an expression I think is not correct is "amn't I". meaning Am I not. I think that's awful saying that or is it just me?

Florence, almost the first question I was asked when I started in my new office was "where do you stay?" and I said I wasn't staying anywhere as we had bought a house!!! That caused a bit of confusion and a good laugh.

I have got used to "messages" and also, very common round here, is "poke" for paper bag and "piece" for a sandwich, usually a packed lunch. ("Poke" of course is the origin of the expression "a pig in a poke").

Andy's mum, they also ask up here "where do you stay" as opposed to where do you live? Taken me years to get use to many sayings I never heard of.

They call groceries, "The messages." That confused me loads!!

I use the word Apparently but here they say "seemingly." I have never used that word before.

As for "gotten." That sounds like someone being lazy with language and bad grammar. Like someone saying I aint gotten it instead of I have forgotten it if that makes sense.

As far as I can tell, editors no longer edit! They seem to rely on spelling and grammar checkers, which are often set to American English instead of British English.

Scots still use quite a lot of expressions that are marked "obsolete" in the OED. I found them quite strange when we first moved here, but now I don't notice any more, although I don't use them myself. A couple of examples are "outwith" and "uplift" and, where English folk ask how old you are, Scots say "what age are you?"

I responded to a 'Daily Mirror' article that had used 'AI' to expand the online article - they'd asked for feedback.
I pointed out how repetative it was, and how the headline didn't make sense.

They responded by saying the headlines weren't 'AI'.
I replied by asking if they wanted a proof reader, as at least 3 of their headlines didn't make sense, or had a spelling mistake!

For some reason, they didn't reply!
:-D :-D :-D

Maybe we could add in a thesaurus.

Not only a dictionary but a book on correct punctuation! Journalists and editors don’t seem to realise that punctuation can change the meaning of a sentence.

Btw, gotten is not an Americanism. It’s an old English word but, as language changes all the time, we seldom use it now. There’s a theory that Americans speak the purest form of English. I won’t comment on that ;-)

. I’m getting fed up with the badly written articles.

If you have been ignored, forgotten, left out, omitted, removed, you have all been ‘snubbed’.

‘Gotten’ is American it is not used in the English English language.