n highest-achieving pupil – synonymous with Dux.

n New Zealander: We tried this other bar but it was full of drunk Kiwis. Also an abbreviated name for a Kiwifruit.

n 1 young boy. 2 bloke doing blokey things, generally including but not limited to getting pissed (in the U.K. sense); trying to pull birds; making a lot of noise and causing some good wholesome criminal damage. Various derivations have sprung up, with “laddish” covering this type of behaviour and “laddettes” being girls doing much the same thing.

adj noisy, and perhaps a bit abusive: It was all going fine until Ian’s cousin had a couple of drinks too many and started getting lairy. As usual when it comes to Brits being noisy, it generally involves drinking. They’re pretty quiet the rest of the time.

n renter. A person who rents a room in your home. They help pay the bills, provide a little human company on those long, lonely evenings and are a perfect vehicle for your perverted sexual fantasies. A bit like a flatmate but on a less equal footing ownership-wise.

n honey; darlin’. A term of endearing address used predominantly by shop staff. You’d hear “that’ll be four fifty, luv” in very similar circumstances to those in which you’d hear “that’ll be four fifty, honey” in the U.S. It doesn’t mean they love you, in either case.

n rather over exuberant (and almost invariably gay) thespian. Referring to actors as “luvvies” or “luvvie darlings” is rather scornful and demeaning – it’s true, though, that a few of the older, camper actors do indeed refer to each other as “luvvie.”

adj crazy. Brits do not use the term “mad” to refer to people who are pissed off. Describing something as mad (a party, or a weekend away or something) generally means it was riotous fun.

n good friend; buddy. It’s in very common use in the U.K. and doesn’t have any implication that you might want to mate with the person in question. It is derived from “shipmate.”

adj cheap; tight; stingy with money. Brits do not use the word to mean “nasty.” So when a Brit talks about his auntie Enid being “mean,” he’s more likely to mean mean mean what a useful word this is that she’s sitting on a million pounds under her mattress rather than she tweaks his ears every time he goes to visit.

adj insane; crazy: It was kind of romantic to start with, but as soon as I turned on the electric toothbrush he went mental.

n ground beef.

adj overly looked-after. Spoiled in a sort of possessive way: He seemed very nice to start with but I think he’s been rather molly-coddled by his mother.

n unattractive woman. Most often heard in post-drinking assessments: Yeah, was a great night – we all got completely pissed and Bob ended up snogging a complete moose!

n mom. Brits do also use the word in the American sense of “quiet” (as in “keep mum about that”) though maybe not as much in everyday speech as Americans. They’d probably say “schtum” instead.

adj a bit annoyed; peeved. Brits do not use the word to refer to the act of reporting someone to the narcotics authorities.

n manual worker on roads or railways. It comes from the word “navigator,” which was used to refer to people who dug canals, which were once called “navigations.”

n Scottish unruly layabout youth. It is most likely derived from an acronym, “non-educated delinquent.”

adj 1 irritating and irritable. Very similar to “stroppy.” 2 cold. In a similar sort of a way to the word “chilly.” 3 fast. Particularly in relation to cars. You might test-drive a car and relate back to your chums how nippy it was. Of course, if the salesman was a bit nippy you’d probably not drive it at all, or if it was a convertible and it was nippy outside.

n child-molester. The term may originate from when sex offenders were admitted as “non-specified offenders” (thereby “non-specified” and thence “nonce”) in the hope that they might not get the harsh treatment metered out to such convicts. It may also stand for “Not On Normal Courtyard Exercise” (meaning prisoners intended to keep separate from the rest). Either way, it featured prominently in the fine “Brasseye” spoof TV news programme where popular celebrities were duped into wearing T-shirts advocating “nonce-sense.”