n moment; very short period of time: I’ll be there in a jiffy! The phrase comes from a time before Jiffy was a popular brand of condom.

n Scottish person. Similar to the use of “Paddy” to mean an Irish person. The people that Americans call “Jocks”, Brits would call “rugger buggers”.

n John Doe; Joe Public. The man in the street. It’s perhaps a little curious that neither Bloggs nor Doe are very common names anywhere.

n the standard U.K. measure of beer – equivalent to 0.568 litres in new money or twenty ounces in American money. It is normally possible to buy a half-pint instead of a pint, but doing so will mar you for life in the eyes of your peers. Drinking half-pints of beer is generally seen as the liquid equivalent of painting your fingernails and mincing. At some point in history (no idea when) a British king (not sure which one) elected to raise tax on beer but upon discovering that he needed an act of parliament to change the tax, he instead changed the size of the pint (which only required a royal edict). The smaller sixteen-ounce American pint, therefore actually represents the original size of the British pint. As you can see I’ve not researched this at all. I just wrote down what someone told me. There are many times in my life when I’m forced to make a simple choice between the real truth and a funny story.

1 n unit of measure (14lbs). Only really used when measuring the weight of people. 2 n pit. The large hard seeds inside fruit (peaches, olives and the like).