The word 'saloon' comes from the French 'salon', which means a large room. The term 'saloon car' was originally used to refer to the luxury carriages on a train. It was adopted by British carmakers in the early part of the 20th Century to describe cars with an enclosed passenger compartment.
There are many slang terms used to describe such cars, such as jalopy, beater, clunker, hooptie, old banger (most commonly used in the UK), but the most popular being junk car.
Strangely, it's called a garage. Garage is a French word. But in England it's pronounced like “GA-ridj”. Americans pronounce it the French way, “ga-râzh”.
A: Yes, “car park” is the usual term in the UK for what is referred to as a “parking lot” in the US, though “car park” is not unknown to Americans, nor “parking lot” to the British. What can you tell me about these two terms?
In Birmingham, the Cockney slang term jam jar is often used to refer to a car. When parking in a vehicle carpark, you might hear locals mention it while discussing parking fees in pounds.
A flat tire (British English: flat tyre) is a deflated pneumatic tire, which can cause the rim of the wheel to ride on the tire tread or the ground potentially resulting in loss of control of the vehicle or irreparable damage to the tire.
Cars are also called automobiles or motor vehicles. Trucks and buses are motor vehicles as well. However, trucks and buses are larger than cars, and they carry heavier loads. It is hard for anyone today to imagine what life was like before there were cars.
The front window of the car is named the windscreen in the UK, while in the USA, they've tweaked it just slightly to read windshield. Both 'screen' and 'shield' suggest protection and so are still quite similar in their meaning, linguistically.
BMW stands for Bayerische Motoren Werke, which is German for Bavarian Motor Works. That's because the birthplace of BMW is located in the financial and industrial powerhouse of Bavaria, which is the southernmost and largest state in Germany.
The reason the British say lorry and Americans say truck, is because each word is part of their terminology. Since the early 20th century, lorry and truck have both described the HGVs that are essential to our society.
United Kingdom. In British English, the word van refers to vehicles that carry goods only, either on roads or on rails. What would be called a "minivan" in American English is called a "people-carrier", "MPV" or multi-purpose vehicle, and larger passenger vehicles are called "minibuses".
In Britain an umbrella is informally known as a 'brolly'. The word comes from the second and third syllable of 'umbrella'. Less common these days, but once in vogue was the word 'gamp' - named for Mrs Sarah Gamp, a character in Dickens' Martin Chuzzlewit, who carried a large umbrella.
Rubbish is the usual word in British English for the things that you throw away because you no longer want or need them. Garbage and trash are both used in North American English.
The British English term, short trousers, is used, only for shorts that are a short version of ordinary trousers (i.e., pants or slacks in American English).
In British English, the metal cover over the engine of a car is called the bonnet. I lifted the bonnet to see what the problem was. In American English, it is called the hood.
Everyone knows that for the Brits, an elevator is a “lift,” an apartment is a “flat,” and those chips you're snacking on are actually called “crisps.” But British people also say some other really weird, confusing things. 1.
You use holiday (or holidays) in British English and vacation in North American English to describe the regular periods of time when you are not at work or school, or time that you spend travelling or resting away from home: I get four weeks' holiday/vacation a year.
