1. Bail — Intransitive verb for
leaving abruptly.
2. Feeling blue; have the
blues — A
feeling of depression or sadness.
3. A buck — Slang term for a the
American dollar.
4. By the skin of
(my/your/his/her) teeth — just barely.
5. Creep (n.)
— An unpleasantly weird/strange person.
6. Couch Potato — A lazy person who
spends the bulk of their time engaged in things that can be done while sitting
on a couch.
7. Cram — To study feverishly
before an exam typically done after neglecting to study consistently.
8. Crash — To abruptly fall
asleep, or to show up without invitation.
9. Down to earth — And adjective for
practicality and lack of pretense.
10. Drive up the wall
— To
irritate.
11. For Real — A proclamation of
honesty.
12. Going Dutch — When each person,
usually in a dating scenario, pays for his/her own meal.
13. The cold shoulder
— A
metaphor for deliberately ignoring someone.
14. Give a ring — To call someone on the
telephone.
15. Hyped (adj.) — A very excited state.
16. Hang out — To casually gather
together or spend time with someone in a social manner.
17. Jack up — An abrupt increase,
typically in the price of something.
18. Knock — To speak negatively,
to disparage, to badmouth.
19. Lighten up — To relax and take
things too seriously. Typically stated as an appeal to someone who is acting
uptight.
20. Pass the buck — To deflect
responsibility onto someone else.
21. Piece of cake — A metaphor to describe
something that is easy or effortless.
22. Pig out — A metaphor for binge
eating.
23. Plead the fifth
— References
the fifth amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which allows a witness in court
to refuse questions on the grounds that they risk self-incrimination.
24. Screw up — To make a mistake,
i.e. mess up.
25. Sweet — An adjective that
describes something that is good, or nice.
26. Tight — An adjective that describes
closeness between competitors, i.e. a tight competition.
27. Trash — Can be used as an
intransitive verb for destruction. e.g. “He trashed the car.”
28. Uptight — Stuffy, persnickety,
the opposite of relaxed.
29. Wrap (something) up
— To
finish or complete something.
30. Zonked — Completely
exhausted.Our next post will cover British slang terms that Americans find
confusing. Until then, here are some of our favorite American slang words:
31. Pants — CLOTHING
RETAILERS TAKE NOTE: The Brits say ‘trousers’ … The American default
word for the article of clothing that covers the legs and pelvic region seems
pretty general and innocuous to English speakers in the U.S. To the actual
English, however, ‘pants’ is the primary word they use for ‘underwear.’ And
while American cinema and television typically writes the word ‘knickers’ for
underwear into the vocabulary of British characters—that’s probably just for
comedic effect since ‘pants’ wouldn’t induce any response—the most common
British word for underwear really is ‘pants.’ Americans tend not to notice how
often they refer to their so-called pants until someone from the U.K. joins
their ranks. Once that happens they begin to notice restrained snickering every
time ‘pants’ are referenced in a polite conversation.
32. For the birds — Imagine how this
phrase must sound to someone who doesn’t understand that it refers to something
that is substandard in some respect. Is it a bag of seeds or some kind of yard
ornament reference? The Brits sometimes use the word ‘bird,’ to refer to women,
in the same way Americans use ‘chicks.’ So, maybe it comes off like reference
to girlishness. Who knows?
33. Bought the farm
— ”I
didn’t know he wanted to move to the country,” is how a British person might
respond to hearing this phrase. At this point ‘bought the farm,’ is a general
reference to untimely death. However, the phrase originates from WWII-era
military accidents involving unreliable aircraft crashing into rural European
countryside properties resulting in damages for which the U.S. government was
responsible to pay, thereby, ‘buying the farm,’ so to speak.
34. Jonesing — To want, crave, or
desire something intensely, and its noun form, ‘joneser,’ (a person who wants
or craves something intensely), isn’t always apparent even to Americans. The
Oxford Dictionary associates this word’s slang usage with Jones Alley in
Manhattan, a haven for drug addicts in the 1960s. The unsavory drug culture
connotations continue today. However the definition of ‘joneser,’ has been
broadened among some circles to include describing a person whose character is
found wanting, i.e. lacking, as opposed to someone who simply wants something
desperately.
35. Take a raincheck
— This
is an Americanism that dates back to the 1880s and references the practice of
giving baseball game ticketholders a pass to a game that must be rescheduled
due to weather. It’s commonly used as a metaphor for postponing or rescheduling
a meeting between people to some later date that is more convenient.
36. Spill the Beans
— British
English speakers might pick up on the use of the word ‘spill,’ as a metaphor
for divulging. But ‘spill the beans,’ might be obscure enough for them to
assume a more specific connotation, which they are not aware of. Needless to
say, ‘spill the beans,’ is an American idiom for divulging secret information
that dates back to the very early 1900s.
37. Shoot the breeze
— An
idiomatic phrase for killing time with idle chit-chat, ‘shoot the breeze
probably stems from old-west imagery, either cinematic or anecdotal in origin,
in which men with nothing but time and ammunition on their hands shot their
guns at no particular target.
38. John Hancock — Although obscure
associative references are a favorite form of Cockney slang, it’s unlikely that
an English person would have any idea who John Hancock was. The reference would
escape them. The name John Hancock became synonymous with a person’s signature
because his was one of the more flamboyant signatures on The Declaration of
Independence.
39. Monday morning
quarterback — Because quarterback is an on-field
leadership position played in American football, which the British have no
interest in, and because Monday morning references the fact that most NFL games
take place on Sundays, this is a doubly obscure metaphor. While American’s
understand that the phrase references the practice of criticizing something
after-fact-with the advantage of hindsight, an English person would find this
phrase totally meaningless.
40. Ride Shotgun — Another phrase taken
from Old-West folklore, riding shotgun is a statement of both position and
status—a sort of second-in-command support position who works from a
preferential vantage. The imagery invoked by the phrase comes from
stagecoaches, specifically the person who rode in the seat next to the driver
whose job was to fend off any would-be bandits with a shotgun.
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