My most beloved British slang is Knackered. Fucking knackered! It means very tired, exhausted. But those terms are sterlized of feeling, of life. You know that feeling after you finish moving? That total fucking exhaustion, you’re knackered my friend. I can’t think of a word that feels more accurate to the state of reality it describes. Knackered is a fucking gift.
Chuffed. If youre chuffed i believe that means your excited. I hate it but not for real good reasons. It sounds like a bad thing. Like i don’t want to be chuffed from the sound of it. It sounds like i chafed my lungs from sighing too much cuz I’m miserable.
Ok now for the linguistic crime known as snog or snogging. It means to make out or tongue kiss someone. But it sounds like a fucking sex act involving noses. And not a normal sex act. A fucking depraved dirty sex act, you’d feel shame even googling, but again it involves noses. And honestly it sounds like snot is likely involved with this sex act. Do better Britain stop saying fucking snogged you dirty bastards.
What is your most beloved and hated British slang?
I use “proper” a lot, so that one is inevitably favourite, unless it’s not an exclusive UK slang
These:
Some of those are British versions of American terms and some are slang.
Half of them are total jokes, I’ve just always thought it was hilarious. Cold on a cob!!!
Is calling someone Petal a slang or a regionalism? I, 30-something male, love doing that, petal.
It’s very twee, but it has ironic capabilities.
twee
I have very, very deep voice :)
I like the phrase “tell a lie” used right after you misspeak or remember something to the contrary of what you just said.
I hate clunge and minge. I’m not generally opposed to vulgarity but these are just taking the piss. On a similar note, the cockney rhyme for Eartha Kitt is just distasteful.
Fucking knackered! It means very tired, exhausted. But those terms are sterlized of feeling, of life.
Are you sure that anima you ascribe to “knackered” isn’t coming from the adjective? “Fucking exhausted!” sounds, to my ear, just a full of feeling. Whereas, “I’m knackered” sounds just as lifeless as “I’m exhausted.” I wonder if you’re mis-attributing the vigor from “fucking,” which is, indeed, a potent word.
Your opinion is your own my friend. Knackered resonates with me, but if it don’t with you that cool
The knacker was the person who took your old tired horse and butchered it into meat, leather and glue, so it often carries that connotation too
When it’s raining, and someone inevitably tells me it’s raining, I like to say ‘perfect weather for ducks, innit’
I also like ‘Kuch’ which is Welsh slang for ‘cuddle’
Cwtch - I do like your English spelling though.
Ah, the timeless war of the Welsh against vowels.
We’ve got more vowels than you 😋
Do you use them or are they collectors items?
Yeah, yeah. I know it looks that way but they actually have more vowels than the English… go figure.
Love it gonna steal it the next time it rains!
Innit
Innit is amazing!
I love ‘dreich’ (rhymes with ‘greek’) because it perfectly sums up British weather most of the time.
Also a fan of ‘banging’, as in top, class, right good.
most loved: literally any insult from Gordon Ramsay ever
my most hated: literally any name of food. It’s like they picked one of those huge spinning wheels and chose names at random
I was in Britain for only a handful of days and think I saw at least two meanings for the word bubble and none of them were “air pocket inside a liquid” (or even “fizzy drink” or something related to bubbles). One was mashed potatoes, I can’t remember the other one. You’ll simply need to ask to find out what it is they’re selling!
Chuffed for me is more to do with being pleased with something you have accomplished.
I like how “chuffed” sounds/feels like someone being all pleased with themselves but without the smugness of “smug”.
This meme pretty much defined “chuffed” for me and I think about it every time I hear the word
Chuffed
Yes, very pleased or satisfied. Like, you’d be chuffed if you made a great pavlova, or parents got you a Megadrive for Chrissy.
England has a surfeit of terms for obnoxious people.
- Jobsworth (obstructive clerk or bureaucrat)
- God-botherer (religious fanatic)
- Cockwomble
- Minging cockwomble
- Tremulous bollock-for-lobsters cockwomble
- Sir Æthelbert Plonker Cockwomble of the Drubbing-over-Head Cockwombles
I may have made those last two up.
God-botherer is fantastic, clearly god has better things to do than to keep hearing their complaints.
Not a native speaker. To me it sounds the other way around, like it’s God who’s constantly bothering them? Can it be read both ways?
Por que no los dos?
Think of it like ‘motherfucker’. No one is calling people mothers and accusing them of fucking. I do like your interpretation though. If that hasn’t been the premise for a movie or TV show then it probably should be.
It depends on if the subject of the sentence (the person) is doing the thing (being active) or having the thing done to them (being passive). Think like this:
A helper (help-ER) is someone who is helping/doing the help. A caller (call-ER) is calling someone else. A botherer (bother-ER) is someone who is doing the bothering.
Someone who is recieving bother is being bothered (bother-ED), one who is getting help is being helped (help-ED), or getting calls is being called (call-ED).
God-botherer is someone who is god-bothering (bothering god). God-bothered is someone being bothered by god.
That’s the correct way of reading the structure of the word, but as always with english, there’s how it’s written, and how it’s meant.
Almost universally, this is meant as someone who is bothering people about god, like jehova’s whiteness knocking on your door, or wandering mormons inviting you to their church.
Of course. I was focusing on the doing or recieving part and completely missed the second part: Are you a botherer and bothered OF/BY or ABOUT god?
It can be either one, so I’d say it depends on how religious and/or deranged the speaker is. Like you said - most would say it’s about god, while I was deranged enough to interpret it as being a direct communication with a god.
“Shaking hands with the unemployed”
Just kidding, that one’s a cracker
My most hated is definitely how some (all?) Brits say “Leftenant” instead of “Lieutenant”.
Most beloved is a bit harder… “Blimey” is a nice one though.
Blimey is great!
But we do say Lieutenant!
We just don’t call em Lou-Tennants.
What do you say in lef of that?
Pronunciation with lef- is common in Britain, and spellings to reflect it date back to 14c., but the origin of this is a mystery (OED rejects suggestion that it comes from old confusion of -u- and -v-).
Listen here, you little…
“Wanker” is what I remember most of the time, ya f’in wanker lol
Wanker is great!
