The Words That Are Most Known To Only Brits And Americans

The U.K. contrasts with the U.S. in quite a few ways.

Even though the two countries technically share a language, British English and American English have major differences. For one thing, the British place punctuation marks outside quotation marks (gasp). The Brits also have their own vocabulary.

In fact, people in the U.S. don’t even recognize some words in the U.K.’s lexicon, and vice versa, according to the Center for Reading Research.

To get a better sense of these unfamiliar words, Center director Marc Brysbaert looked at the first 600,000 results of the Ghent University’s online vocabulary test, focusing on differences in location. In the test, 100 letter sequences — which may or may not be real English words — flash across the takers’ screens. Pressing the “j” (instead of “f”) key indicates the participants know the word exists in English, even if they don’t understand it. The test strongly penalizes participants for marking they know a word that doesn’t exist. 

With the 40 words below, a margin of 50% or more existed between the U.K. and U.S. respondents who reported knowing the terms. 

The U.K. knows these 20 words better than the U.S. (with U.K. percentages shown second in parentheses):

• tippex (7, 91)


• biro (17, 99)


• tombola (17, 97)


• chipolata (16, 93)


• dodgem (17, 94)


• korma (20, 97)


• yob (22, 97)


• judder (19, 94)


• naff (19, 94)


• kerbside (23, 98)


• plaice (16, 91)


• escalope (17, 91)


• chiropody (20, 93)


• perspex (22, 94)


• brolly (24, 96)


• abseil (15, 87)


• bodge (18, 89)


• invigilator (22, 92)


• gunge (19, 89)


• gormless (26, 96)

And the U.S. recognizes these 20 more often (with the U.S. percentages shown first in parentheses):

• garbanzo (91, 16)


• manicotti (90, 15)


• kabob (98, 29)


• kwanza (91, 24)


• crawdad (86, 20)


• sandlot (97, 32)


• hibachi (89, 27)


• provolone (97, 36)


• staph (86, 25)


• boondocks (96, 37)


• goober (96, 37)


• cilantro (99, 40)


• arugula (88, 29)


• charbroil (97, 39)


• tamale (92, 35)


• coonskin (88, 31)


• flub (89, 31)


• sassafras (92, 35)


• acetaminophen (92, 36)


• rutabaga (85, 30)

I recognized only two U.K. words: “dodgem” and “tombola.” I knew all the American ones. In all fairness, many of the words on both lists are either informal slang, which originated within the country, or various types of foreign food that popular in that country.

Take the online test here for yourself.

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The Words That Are Most Known To Only Brits And Americans