Thread: Illogical American expressions?

Originally Posted by Mick_Marsh

I understand.

My pet annoyance (one of the many, really) is they call autumn fall but don't call spring sprout.
And insist on referring to aluminium as aluminum.
And .............

I actually looked into the aitumn/fall thing once, and it's the English language that changed!
Back when the US was still a colony the English called the session 'fall'

But I agree, we've lost a lot of ism's and expressions, but that's language, ever evolving.
One for me in the trades, and I've mentioned this before is 'tension wrench' vs 'torque wrench'

I'm fighting a rearguard action with tension wrench, but I'm losing!

Originally Posted by Fifth Columnist

A 'billion' used to be 1,000,000,000,000 'til the yanks devalued it.

Yes!

So a Yank billion is 1000 million, not a million million
And a Yank trillon is a million million, not a million million million.

Their foreign debt is so much less than what they make out.