n box cutter. The small retractable knives used for cutting up cardboard boxes and hijacking aircraft. In the U.K., these are mostly manufactured by a company called Stanley. The knives, not aircraft.
The Letter S
interj whoa; hold your horses. Almost always followed by an exclamation mark: OK, that does it, I’m resigning! / Steady on!
n Somewhat antiquated version of “plaster.” See “plaster” for definition. I can’t be bothered copy-pasting.
n tights. I think. I don’t wear a lot of women’s underwear. Well, there was that one time.
adj sticky; reluctant to change. Could apply equally easily to people (Everyone else was very eager except Bob, who was being decidedly stodgy about it) or substances (the soup looked nice but it turned out to be stodgy as hell).
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).
adj enormous: When I finally woke up, I had a stonking hangover and my wallet had vanished. And I appeared not to be in my bed at home, but under a park bench.
interj right now: Once you buy our fine credit card, you can start to make purchases with it straight away!
n Weed-Whacker. A gardening device held at waist level, with a piece of nylon cord near the ground which whips around to slice the stems of errant plants and the toenails of inebriated pensioners.
adj unreasonable; unfairly grumpy. Stroppy people shout at shop assistants who don’t know where the tomato puree is and, because they’re being paid £2/hr, ought not to be expected to.
v removed from a registered position of responsibility, usually the General Medical Council: Well, we were pretty sure she’d get struck off after the whole thing with the electric toothbrush and that poor man in the wheelchair. The term gave its name to the BBC radio medical comedy, Struck Off and Die.
n underground pedestrian walkway. Built to enable you to cross the road safely, urinate or inject heroin. Brits do not call the London underground train system the “subway.” They call it the “underground.”
v give it a try: We changed the suspension for the last two laps – we’ve no real idea whether it’s going to improve his times so he’s just going to have to suck it and see.
n Scottish takeaway meal served with (British) chips. When dish x is served in a Scottish chip shop with chips, it becomes an x supper. What the English call “fish and chips,” the Scots call a fish supper.
n garters. The things used by women to hold up their stockings. They are not used by men to hold up their trousers (Brits call those devices “braces”) or their socks (they call those things, umm, “garters”).
1 v figure out: I was going to try and put it back without him noticing but he sussed. 2 adj dodgy; suspicious: I really wasn’t interested in buying that car… the whole deal seemed a bit suss.