 A part of the forthcoming book, The Septic's Companion. A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O PQ R S T U V W Y Z   These are the last three beers people kinder than you bought me. Click on them to see more or buy me one. Feel guilty? Think of the children I might have, and such like. |
P.A. n personal assistant. There is something of a new vogue in the UK for calling secretaries "personal assistants": "Mr McDonald's secretary? No I certainly am not. Mr McDonald doesn't have a secretary. I am his pee-ay, thank you very much!". pantomine n a light-hearted play, usually performed at Christmas and aimed at children. Pantomimes traditionally feature a man playing one of the lead female parts (the "pantomime dame"). There are a certain repertoire of standard pantomimes ("Jack and the Beanstalk", "Cinderella", "Aladdin" to name a few) and often reparatory groups will make up their own ones, either off the top of their thespian heads or based on other plays. The lead parts are usually played by second-rate soap-opera actors or half-dead theatrical-types. The whole genre is pretty crap, and essentially only exists so that children with special needs can boost the egos of similar adults. pants 1 n underpants. What Americans call pants, Brits call "trousers". 2 interj a general "derogatory word", similar to but marginally more polite than "crap":"We went to see Andy playing in his band but to be honest they were pants". parafin n Kerosene. The fuel used in some lamps, greenhouse heaters and such like. To confuse matters somewhat further, Americans call candle-wax "parafin". Are there two Fs in it? I'm getting confused now. parky 1 adj cold, in a very similar way to "chilly" or "nippy". 2 n an abbreviation for Park-keeper. Despite my cavernous capacity for humour, try as I might I couldn't find any way to tie these in together. pastille n a small candy. I don't know enough about candy to be more specific. A while ago these were usually to treat sore throats like the American "cough drop", but now Brits largely call those "lozenges" or "throat sweets". The main use of the word now is in the branded chewy sweets made by Rowntree called "fruit pastilles". pasty n pron with a short "a", as in "cat" meat or vegetable-filled pastries. Not to be confused with "pasties" (long "a", as in "face"), which in the US are a flat pad designed to be put over the nipple to avoid it being too prominent. Or to attach tassles to, depending on your fancy. Patience n Solitaure. A card game played alone. I once wrote that the Brits would no doubt start calling it "solitaire" eventually, and some bastard half my age wrote to me to tell me that "mainly older people" call it "patience". So sadly I have to add here that this term is used by "mainly older people". This reminds me of the time my mother came home in tears when a boy scout had tried to help her across the road. Rather oddly, we Brits also call another game "Solitaire". Just go and look it up like a man. pavement n sidewalk. Brits call the part that cars drive on "Tarmac". I wonder how many holidaymakers have been run over as a result of this confusion. Well, probably none really. I digress. Historically, "sidewalk" is in fact an old, now-unused British English word meaning exactly what the Americans take it to mean. pear-shaped adj gone wrong. Usually it's meant in a rather jovial sense, in a similar way to the American expression "out of kilter" or "off kilter":"Well, I was supposed to have a civilised dinner with my mates but we had a few drinks and it all went a bit pear-shaped". You would be less likely to see: "Well, she went in for the operation but the transplant organ's been rejected and the doctor says it's all gone a bit pear-shaped". possible derivations involve glass-blowing or hot-air ballooning. Separately. pecker n penis. A common misconception is that, to Brits, this means "chin" - hence the phrase "keep your pecker up". Sorry folks, but in the UK "pecker" means exactly the same thing as it does in the US. The phrase "keep your pecker up" is probably derived from a time when a "pecker" was simply a reference to a bird's beak and encouraged keeping your head held high. I understand that the word became a euphamism for "penis" after the poet Catullus used it to refer to his love Lesbia's pet sparrow in a rather suggestive poem which drew some fairly blatant parallels. peckish adj hungry. Absolutely nothing to do with "pecker". Only a little hungry, mind, not ravenous - you wouldn't hear people on the news talking about refugees who'd tramped across mountains for two weeks and were as a result a little peckish. peculiar adj unique: "these street signs are peculiar to Birmingham". Because Brits also share the more conventional meaning (unusual), it does slightly imply that. If street signs can really be that unusual. Also applies to things other than street signs. Pelican crossing n pedestrian crossings. Areas of the road, marked with black and white stripes, where traffic lights stop cars so that pedestrians can cross. A contraction of "PEdestrian LIght CONtrolled crossing". pensioner n senior. Quite simply someone who is drawing their pension, i.e. over the age of 65. Brits also use the acronym OAP, meaning "Old-Aged Pensioner". Perspex n plexiglass. A sort of plastic equivalent of glass. Perspex is a brand name of the acrylic company Lucite. Their advertising literature probably has all sorts of fancy terms in it about covalent bonds and stress ratings, and perhaps doesn't even use the phrase "a sort of plastic equivalent of glass". Unless maybe they have a Layman's FAQ at the end. petrol n gas. An abbreviation of "petroleum", much like "gas" is an abbreviation of "gasoline". phone box n phone booth. One of those boxes with a telephone in it that used to be commonplace but are dying out somewhat now that everybody 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. phut 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". pickle n 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. Brits, like Americans, also using it to refer to any sort of pickled cucumber or gherkin. piece n. Scot. a packed lunch. Quintessentially Scottish: "will ye be coming for lunch, Willie?" / "nah, ah've got ma piece". pig's ear 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 sow's purse from a pig's ear". pikey n adj white trash. It's an old English word meaning "gipsy", but nowadays "pikey" is also applied to people in posession of track suits, Citroen Saxos with 18-inch wheels and under-car lighting, and pregnant fifteen-year-old girlfriends. pillock 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. "Pikey" is likely a contraction of the 16th century word "pillicock", which was used to refer to the male member. pinch 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. pint n the standard UK measure of beer - apparently equivalent to 0.568 litres in new money. Or 20 fluid ounces in American money. It is normally possible to buy a half-pint instead of a pint, but doing so will marr 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. The smaller American pint actually represents the original size of the British pint - 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). 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. pips n seeds. The little seeds in the middle of fruit guaranteed to get stuck in your teeth. pish n, v Scot. piss. It can be used not only to refer to urine/urination, but also as a mild sort of swear word, similar to "crap". piss-artist n someone who spends most of their time drinking booze. 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. pissed 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 US' use of the word. pitch 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. plaster 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. Plod 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. plonker adj idiot. I'm tempted to write a Dictionary of British Insults. This is also (rarely) used to refer to one's penis. Or someone else's, if you don't have one. Or if you do have one, but you're trying to refer to someone elses and not your own. I'm tempted to also write a Dictionary of British Words For Penis. A future bestseller; keep an eye out. Not that eye. plus-fours n an awful item of clothing which consists of sort-of-dungarees which stop at the knee. Whilst popular in pre-World-War Britain, plus-fours these days are firmly in the realms of brightly-colours golfers or inbreds. po-faced adj glum; long-faced: "I bumped into Sheena in the newsagent this afternoon - she looked mighty po-faced about something". As well as being a useful word for people who want to win at Scrabble by memorising stupid goddamned two-letter words and then sitting there looking all smug about them even thought they don't know what they mean, "Po" is an abbreviation for "chamber pot" (an old-fashioned bed-pan). polo-neck n, adj turtle-neck. A style of sweater in which the neck runs right up to the chin; far enough up to cover even the most adventurous of love-bites. polythene n polyethylene. The plastic-type stuff that plastic bags are made of. ponce 1 n a man who is pretentious in an effeminite manner. "Ponces" (quite often referred to using the phrase "perfume ponce") tend to grown their hair quite long and talk loudly into their mobile phones while sitting at the traffic lights in their convertible Porsche. Describing a place as "poncy" would imply that these sorts of punters made up the bulk of its clientele. 2 v scrounge: "can I ponce a fag off you?". Apparently the word originally meant living off the earnings of prostitution. Please look up "fag" now, before I cause some sort of ghastly mistake. pong n bad smell. My maths teacher at school, Mr Benzies, also taught my uncle, who was fifteen or so years older than me. My uncle told me that in his day Mr Benzies was known unanimously as "Pongo Benzies" because "wherever he goes, the pong goes". If you're reading this, Mr Benzies, please remember that I'm just relating what my uncle said, and I didn't necessarily actually call you that, or try and get the rest of the year to call you it too. poof n homosexual. A mildly derogatory term for a homosexual - mild in the sense that homosexuals might use it themselves. Although based upon that I could easily say that "nigger" was a mildly derogatory term for an African American. poofy effeminate. An episode of Magnum PI, the US detective show, features Magnum himself describing Zeus and Hercules as "poofy names for attack dogs". Whilst in the US this is taken to mean "fancy", in the UK it would quite definitely mean "gay". poofter n a simple derivation of "poof", with exactly the same meaning. porkies n lies. From Cockney rhyming slang "pork pies" / "lies". Portakabin n trailer. A sort of prefabricated hut, most often used as temporary offices on a building-site. Portakabin is a UK trademark. posh adj upper-class. Your aunt Mabel might be "posh" because she lives in a large country house, or your dad's new Mercedes might have seemed a little bit too "posh" for him. It's not rude, but it's not really particularly complimentary either. posh wank is masturbation performed whilst wearing a condom (male-specific, one would imagine). The term originates from the acronym "Port Out, Starboard Home", which referred to customers travelling on boats between the UK and India who had chosen to have the more expensive shaded berths on both the outward and return journeys. post n, v mail. Brits don't mail things, they "post" them. Their mail is delivered by a postman (one word). And, umm, he works for an organisation called the "Royal Mail". You thought this was going to be simple, didn't you. postgraduate n grad student. Someone who's finished their university degree and, on the sudden realisation that they might have to actually get a job, has instead leapt enthusiastically into a PhD, a Masters, or some such other form of extended lunch-break. pot noodle n Cup-o-Noodle. Or at least something very like that. Little pots of noodles, upon which you simply pour boiling water to the "fill level" and lo, all of a sudden you have a perfectly delicious and nutritious meal for one. One student, one overworked employee or neglected pensioner, normally. I don't think it mentions that on the pot. potholing n caving; spelunking. The sport that involves leaping down holes in the ground. I'm sure that, in a special way, it's fun. Brits do still refer to chunks that are missing from the road as "potholes", in the same way as Americans. potplant n a plant in a pot. Not a cannabis plant. Well, it could be, but more than likely it isn't. potty adj loopy; nuts. A fairly lighthearted term for someone who's losing their marbles a bit. Brits do also share the American meaning, where it refers to a plastic child's toilet bowl. Not that plastic children probably ever need the toilet. poxy adj crappy; third-rate. Presumably derived in some way from when horrible things were described as being ridden with a pox. pram n baby carriage. An abbreviation for the rather Victorian and now largely unused "perambulator". prang n minor car accident; fender bender. Normally towards the more sedate end of car accidents - you're unlikely to hear on the news that fourteen people were killed in a multi-car prang on Wednesday. prat n idiot. It's often meant to mean someone's general attitude than concerning one particular incident: "I met my sister's boyfriend the other day and he seems like a complete prat". Derived from a time when the word was slang for your posterior (in a similar way to the more contemporaneous "arse") and interestingly from that came the peculiarly American word "pratfall", a fall on one's behind. prawn n the least powerful piece on a chess board. OK, I lied. It's a shrimp. prefect n school-children who, having done particularly well academically or on the sports field, are allowed to perform such glorious tasks as making sure everyone behaves properly in the lunch queue, tidying up after school events and showing new pupils around at the weekends. As you may have guessed, I was never a prefect. Bitter? Me? prep school n a boarding school for children from ages 8 to 13. presenter n in the UK, presenters of news programmes are known as "presenters" rather than "anchors". Likewise, the Brits have "co-presenters" instead of "co-anchors", a term which almost caused my boss to regurgitate his drink during a US business trip when he heard it as "co-wanker". pub n bar. An abbrevation for "public house". However, in my experience, British pubs are generally far more sociable than American bars. While you would go into a pub to have a pleasant lunch with your family or one or two sociable beers with a couple of friends, you'd only go into a bar in order to get blind drunk and then start a fight or have sex with something. public school n I wrote a whole chapter about this earlier on, and I’m not writing it again. pudding n dessert. Brits do also use the word in the same sense as Americans do (Christmas pudding, rice pudding, etc). The word "dessert" is used in the UK but really only in restaurants, never in the home. To complicate things further, the Brits have main meal dishes which are described as pudding - "black pudding" and "white pudding". These are revolting subsistence foods from the dark ages made with offal, ground oatmeal, dried pork and rubbish from the kitchen floor. The difference between the black and white pudding is that the black one contains substantial quantities of blood. This, much like haggis, is one of those foodstuffs that modern life has saved us from but that people insist on dredging up because it's a part of their "cultural heritage". Bathing once a year and shitting in a bucket was a part of your cultural heritage too, you know. At least be consistent. pukka interj the genuine article; good stuff: "I was a bit dubious when they were selling Levis for twenty quid, but I reckon they're pukka". It is derived from the Hindi word "pakka", meaning "substantial", and made it to the UK via the Colonies. pull v hook up. The art of distracting the opposite sex. on the pull a less proactive version of "sharking". Single males and females are almost all on the pull but will deny it fervently and pretend to be terribly surprised when eventually it pays off. pump n gym shoes. A rather antiquated term. The confusion arises because in the US, it means high heels or stilettos. puncture n flat tyre. The normal meaning of this word (i.e. an infarction) applies on both sides of the pond. punter n guy. A punter is usually a customer of some sort (the word originally meant someone who was placing bets at a racecourse), but this need not be the case. Because of the word's gambling roots, punters are regarded slightly warily and shouldn't necessarily be taken at face value: "when I came out of the tube station there was some punter there saying his car had broken down and he needed five quid to put petrol in it". Because American Football isn't very popular in the UK, Brits are unaware of the role of a punter on a football team (though they do share the everyday definition of the word "punt"). purse n large purse. A little bag that women generally keep money in. Brits call anything larger than a money-purse a "handbag". pushchair n baby buggy; stroller. A device in which a small child is pushed along by an obliging parent. The American term "buggy" is squeezing its way into everyday use in the UK.