Potato, potahto

It is English, but is it American English? 10 unique terms

English is the official language of more than 50 nations across the world, so it’s not surprising that English speakers from different parts of the world have developed dialectal variations with unique vocabulary. But, being English —especially American English— used as an international common language, one would think that American vocabulary would have spread to foreign English speakers. While it has in some cases, certain terms are still unique to American English. Let’s have a look at some of them!

This might be the best example of a uniquely American term, though it is technically derived from the original name of the sport. Internationally known as football, soccer was originally called ‘association football’ to distinguish it from ‘Gaelic football’. With time, the popularity of the sport became associated with the term football, except in the U.S., where Gridiron or American football was more popular. So, for Americans, American football became just ‘football’, and association football became ‘soccer’.

Eggs are an integral element of American diners, where a specific vocabulary was developed to quickly explain the type of egg desired in the least amount of time. Where other English speakers would simply ask for a fried egg, Americans know that there are several ways to fry an egg: over easy is just one of them.

Have you ever wondered why the U.S. has a Postal Service but not postal codes? It’s not that they don’t exist; they just have a different name. The ‘Zone Improvement Plan’, or ZIP, was created to make mail services more efficient, but nowadays it’s key for analyzing demographics, sales, and the types of data. While the name ‘Zone Improvement Plan’ might sound strange, it was chosen with the ZIP acronym in mind to suggest that mail would zip along using the system.

Whether you use condo to mean an owned apartment of any kind or as a certain type of building, both are terms mainly used in America. Other English speakers would just say flat or apartment, and would use the term commonhold (UK), strata (Australia and parts of Canada), or divided co-ownership (Francophone Canada) for a building with common areas and services.

Let’s address the obvious first: yes, bodega is a Spanish word. However, it has a unique meaning in American English. While for Spanish speakers it means a winery, in the U.S., it refers to a specific type of convenience store or deli, traditionally owned by Hispanics.

If you hear the word ‘silverware’ in the UK, it won’t mean what you think it means. Kind of. For Americans, the term ‘silverware’ encompasses all eating utensils, including forks, knives, spoons, and even chopsticks. Outside of the U.S., it is more common to say ‘cutlery’, while silverware is used for cutlery actually made from silver.

While words such as ‘university’ or ‘school’ are typical when discussing higher education, ‘college’ is the more commonly used term in the U.S., even present in the names of famous institutions. In other English variants, ‘college’ can be used to talk about trade schools, vocational training, or a university’s residential hall.

If we consider that Canadians also use the term ‘period’ for the punctuation mark, we could say that this term is uniquely North American, but it’s a term other English speakers commonly associate with the U.S. In other parts of the world, ‘full stop’ is the preferred name. What a mouthful!

Again, why do we have a Postal Service but prefer the term ‘mailman’? It’s just a matter of use. Originally, ‘post’ was used for domestic letters, while ‘mail’ was used for letters sent abroad. While the term ‘postal service’ is common to all English variants, mail and its derivatives, such as mailman, are now the norm in American English, while other English dialects tend to use post.

Although Canadians might sometimes use ‘nightstand’ to talk about this piece of furniture, outside of American English, it is common to use the term ‘bedside table’. Originally, the word nightstand implied a furniture piece with built-in storage, while a bedside table was simpler, but nowadays they are equivalent terms.

Even art has to explain things sometimes

Why Dadaism? 10 artistic movement’s names decoded

Image: Amauri Mejía

While some names can be self-explanatory, there are countless art movements with names that only make sense when put in context. What is Abstract Expressionism? Or Dadaism? In the following lines, we attempt to shed light on the origins of some of these names. Scroll down and learn a thing or two about the world of art!

Image: TE LUN OU YANG

The Renaissance was a period of history and a European cultural movement covering the 15th and 16th centuries that marked the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and was characterized by an effort to revive and surpass the ideas and achievements of classical antiquity.

The movement's name comes from the Italian word rinascita, which translates to "rebirth." The corresponding French word renaissance was adopted into English for this period during the 1830s.

Image: Daniel Posthuma

A movement that came after the Renaissance, Baroque was very much influenced by the former. So much so that many scholars argue that Baroque art was simply the end of the Renaissance and never existed as a cultural or historical phenomenon.

The term "Baroque" itself is derived from the Portuguese barocco which means "irregular pearl or stone." Due to its exuberant irregularities, Baroque art has often been defined as being bizarre, or uneven.

Image: Igor Shalyminov

As it happened with the Baroque and the Renaissance, Rococo has often been described as the final expression of the Baroque movement. It was exceptionally ornamental and theatrical, and it was seen as superficial, degenerate, and illogical.

Rococo takes its name from the French word rocaille, which means "rock" or "broken shell", both natural motifs that often formed part of the designs, along with fish and other marine decorations.

Image: Alina Grubnyak

An art movement characterized by relatively small, thin, yet visible brush strokes, open composition, and emphasis on accurate depiction of light, Impressionism originated with a group of Paris-based artists whose independent exhibitions brought them to prominence during the late 1800s.

The style’s name comes from the title of a Claude Monet work, Impression, soleil levant (Impression, Sunrise), which caused the critic Louis Leroy to coin the term in a satirical review of the First Impressionist Exhibition.

Image: Brands&People

Dadaism was created as an artistic response to the undoing of many social, scientific, and artistic notions. In 1916, German writer Hugo Ball reflected on the state of contemporary art: "The image of the human form is gradually disappearing from the painting of these times and all objects appear only in fragments… The next step is for poetry to decide to do away with language."

This new, irrational art movement would be named "Dada." It got its name, according to Richard Huelsenbeck, a German artist living in Zurich when he and Ball came upon the word in a French-German dictionary. "Dada is ‘yes, yes’ in Rumanian, ‘rocking horse’ and ‘hobby horse’ in French," he wrote in his diary.

Image: Birmingham Museums Trust

One of the most influential styles of the twentieth century, Cubism is generally agreed to have begun with Picasso’s painting Demoiselles D’Avignon which included elements of Cubist style.

The name "Cubism" seems to have originated in a comment made by the critic Louis Vauxcelles who, after seeing some of Georges Braque’s paintings exhibited in Paris in 1908, described them as reducing everything to "geometric outlines, to cubes."

Image: Birmingham Museums Trust

A country filled with museums, like Italy, gave birth to a movement that rejected the past, in favor of the future. Futurism was launched by the Italian poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti in 1909.

What the Futurists proposed instead was an art that celebrated the modern world of industry and technology: "We declare… a new beauty, the beauty of speed. A racing motor car… is more beautiful than the Victory of Samothrace."

Image: Conmongt

Abstract and austere, Constructivism aimed to reflect modern industrial society and urban space. Being associated with Soviet socialism, the Bolsheviks, and the Russian avant-garde, Constructivists were in favor of art for propaganda and social purposes.

The term itself was invented by the sculptors Antoine Pevsner and Naum Gabo, who developed an industrial, angular style of work. "Constructivism" first appears as a term in Gabo's Realistic Manifesto of 1920.

Image: the blowup

Abstract Expressionism originated as a distinct art movement after World War II and gained mainstream acceptance in the 1950s. Abstract Expressionism was influenced by the spontaneous and subconscious creation methods of Surrealist artists.

The term "abstract expressionism" is believed to have first been used in Germany in 1919 in the magazine Der Sturm about German Expressionism. It was first applied to American art in 1946 by the art critic Robert Coates.

Image: engin akyurt

As the name implies, "Postmodernism" is a term used to mark a break with Modernism. What both these movements have in common is the conviction that it is no longer possible to rely upon previous ways of representing reality.

The term began to acquire its current range of meanings during the 1950s. In opposition to Modernism's alleged self-seriousness, Postmodernism is characterized by its playful use of irony and pastiche, among other features. Critics claim it supplants moral, political, and aesthetic ideals with mere style and spectacle.