n phone booth. One of those boxes with a telephone in it that used to be commonplace but are dying out somewhat now that everyone has a mobile phone. The government still erect a few to give errant youths have something to vandalise in the long winter evenings and prostitutes somewhere to advertise. Of course, they all do that via email now.

adj pron. “fuht” gone- Something which has breathed its last, expired. It is an ex-something: We ended up stuck watching BBC2 because the television remote control had gone phut.

n physical therapist. The people you go to when you have a mysteriously sore limb that isn’t obviously broken. They pull it around the place until it is excruciatingly painful, explain to you that all you really need is some more exercise and then bill you. Then you go back next week. Often, they are very attractive.

n 1 a sort of brown, strongly flavoured blobby mass that people put in sandwiches. I’m really not very sure what it’s made of. Pickled something, one can only hope. 2 any sort of pickled cucumber or gherkin (universal).

n Scottish packed lunch. Quintessentially Scottish: Will ye be coming for lunch, Willie? / Nah, ah’ve brought ma piece.

n a mess; a poor job: We paid the guy from down the road to come and finish painting the fence, but he made a complete pig’s ear of it. Probably comes from the phrase “you can’t make a silk purse from a sow’s ear.”

n adj white trash. It’s an old English word meaning “gipsy,” but nowadays pikey is also applied to people in possession of track suits, Citroen Saxos with eighteen-inch wheels and under-car lighting, and pregnant fifteen-year-old girlfriends.

n idiot. You could almost decide having read this dictionary that any unknown British word is most likely to mean “idiot.” And you could almost be right. The Brits have so many because different ones sound better in different sentences. Pillock is likely a contraction of the 16th century word “pillicock,” which was used to refer to the male member.

v steal. A contributor of mine told me that her father got anything but the reaction he expected when in New Orleans he asked a friend if he could pinch their date for a dance. The Brits do not share the American usage of “pinch,” to mean arresting someone.

n legs. Always used in the complementary phrase “nice pins!”. You would never hear “my grandmother fell the other day and broke both her pins”.

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.

n seeds. The little seeds in the middle of fruit guaranteed to get stuck in your teeth.

n, v Scottish piss. It can be used not only to refer to urine/urination, but also as a mild sort of swear word, similar to “crap.”

n useless drunk. The .com must have gone, but I’m too scared to check. Have you ever played that game where you pick a .com and bet amongst your friends as to whether it’s a porn site or not? I bet you’re sitting there thinking that sounds like a stupid game, but let me get you started. turkishdelight.com? You’re wondering, aren’t you?

adj drunk. Brits do not use it alone as a contraction of “pissed off,” which means that Americans saying things like “I was really pissed with my boss at work today” leaves Brits wide-eyed. go out on the – venture out drinking. taking the – poking fun at someone. May well be a throwback to the U.S. use of the word.

n an area of land. Almost exclusively used in reference to a playing field (Brits say “football pitch” rather than “football field”), but can also mean an area allocated to a trader, e.g. in a market.

n Band-Aid. sticking – a more old-fashioned word meaning the same. Both British and American English share the term plastered to mean that you are wildly under the influence of alcohol.

n modeling clay. It’s a particular brand in the U.K. but no Brit will ever have heard of any others.

n light canvas shoes with rubber soles. A rather antiquated shoe, and therefore an equally antiquated word. Your grandmother may refer to your trainers as plimsolls, but that doesn’t mean you should too.

n the Police: You climb over the fence and I’ll keep an eye out for Plod. The word derives from a character in Enid Blyton’s Noddy books named PC Plod.