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American English to British English Dictionary - T

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T-Shirt

1. What the British would call a vest (with a rounded neck, not a v-neck).

2. What the British would call a T-shirt - a thin outer shirt for casual use in summer.

Table

A taco consists of a fairly large crisp edible circular corn tortilla shell bent into a U-shape, containing minced beef (or sometimes chicken or steak) at the bottom, topped with shredded lettuce and grated cheese and maybe sauce, sour cream, diced tomato, etc.

Tacos can come in various sizes. At the various Mexican food fast food chains (Taco Bell, Taco Time, Del Taco, etc) for a light snack try one or two tacos. For a meal you'll need maybe three or four. Five tacos would be a very large meal. This means that a party can very conveniently share a number of tacos between them according to their different degrees of hunger.

A taco salad is a very large edible crisp tortilla "bowl" containing lettuce, cheese and multiple other ingredients of the salad. One taco salad is a large meal.

The Taco Bell fast food chain offers both hard (crisp) tacos and soft tacos, but by default tacos are almost always crisp. I guess that soft tacos are made from flour tortillas, but then they would be very similar to gorditas and chalupas.

I'm very grateful to the following visitors to my site who offered information regarding the pronunciation of the word taco:

• John Bottomley:

  Taco is pronounced tack-oh again with even emphasis on both syllables.

• Mary Dee Dawson:

  Taco is pronounced with the "a" sounded as in the American "father" or "bar," and the "o" sounded as in "coke." Another way for me to express this is to say that the "a" is pronounced as the "a" in French "table d'hote." The "a" is open and drawn out. The accent/emphasis is on the first syllable. New England pronounces this "a" completely different from the rest of the country. For them it is short, similar to "a" in "tack."

Taffy

Tag Sale

Taiga is a Russian word, from the name of the forest which covers vast areas of that country. I believe its pronunciation is very similar to "tiger".

Tamale

Tamales are wonderful but hard to describe. They consist of a dough made of corn flour, filled with a small amount of shredded beef in a mild sauce, wrapped in a dried corn husk and steamed. They are generally mild, not spicy. Few fast-food restaurants serve them but almost all sit-down Mexican restaurants serve tamales.

Taps

(By the way, hot and cold water taps are called faucets in American English.)

Taquito

Tardiness

Tarheel State

TBA

TBD

TBS

TCBY

TCM

TCU

Tea

According to an email I received:

In the USA "tea" refers to brewed tea, served cold. In Canada, this tends to be made from artificial "crystals" and is almost always too sweet and gritty. Because iced tea is so popular in the southern parts of the USA, if you want a proper "cuppa" you may need to specify "hot tea". Of course, you still won't get what you want, people in the USA don't really know how to make a proper cup/pot of tea, so you will more than likely just get a tea bag in a cup of hot water.

Teamster

TEB

Teen

Teeter-totter

Teleprompter

Teller

Tent Camper

Territory

According to Microsoft's Encarta CD-ROM encyclopedia the Territories of the USA are the District of Columbia, American Samoa and Guam. Puerto Rico is a commonwealth. Alaska and Hawaii were converted from territories to states in 1959. There is some doubt in my mind as to whether the District of Columbia really is a Territory, but Encarta says it is.

Territories in Canada are the Northwest Territories, Nunavut and the Yukon.

I believe that the qualification for a territory to become a state or province is based largely if not wholly on population figures.

Texas

1. The state of Texas.

2. When spelt without capitalisation, the upper structure of a riverboat. I'm not sure if this is the deck immediately below the wheelhouse, or that deck and the wheelhouse together.

Texas Gate

Texas Red Hots

One recipe for Texas toast says it is made by brushing each side of slices of French bread with Olive oil and cooking as per normal toast. Another recipe uses a mixture of eggs, milk, cinnamon and vanilla instead. Yet another recipe uses a mixture of cheese, butter or margarine, pepper, and mustard.

Michelle Gillie kindly sent me the following comments:

Texas toast is thickly sliced white bread, brushed with butter or oil, and grilled. The butter or oil is sometimes flavoured with various herbs and spices. It's nothing at all like French toast, which in its simplest form is prepared by dipping slices of bread into an egg and milk mixture before frying them. French toast is most often eaten for breakfast and is usually served with butter and maple syrup, powdered sugar, or jam. An online culinary dictionary that I often use says that in England, French toast is called "poor knights of Windsor." I have no idea if that's an accurate statement.

Theatre

Thinking Outside The Box

Third Time's A Charm

Thirty-Second Note

Three Strikes And You're Out

Thrift Store

Thrifts

Through

"Throw A Monkey Wrench In"

Thumbtack

Thunderbird

Tic Tac Toe

Tie

1. A railway sleeper - a transverse block of wood or concrete on which the rails rest. Also called a crosstie.

2. A draw in a sports match.

Tilde

TLC

TN

TNN

TNT

Toad

To make tofu, soy beans (soya beans) are soaked in water, which they absorb to such an extent that they then weigh up to three times their original weight. The beans are then mashed and heated to almost the boiling point of water. Next the mashed soybeans are drained to remove the fibre (called okara - sometimes used to make bread or for animal feed). The remaining soybean "milk" is mixed with calcium and salt and becomes thick. It's then pressed into white-coloured cubes called tofu. The entire process somewhat resembles the production of cheese.

Tofu is therefore a food favoured by many vegetarians and those on a low fat diet, as a replacement for meat and cheese. It is high in protein, cholesterol-free, low in calories, saturated fat and sodium. It contains B-vitamins, iron and calcium. Its natural taste is that of beans but it readily absorbs the flavour of any other food it is cooked with. It is claimed to have the same versatility as potatoes.

Tofu is on sale widely in supermarkets in the USA and Canada.

Tofu is also called bean curd.

The word tofu should not be confused with the very similar word tufa which has a totally different meaning.

Tonic

Toonie, Tooney, Twonie, Twoney

Top-Up Insurance

Toque

Tornado Warning

Tornado Watch

Tortilla chips are rather like potato crisps (called potato chips in the USA) but made from corn instead of potatoes, and therefore much harder. I'm told that tortilla chips are unflavoured whereas nachos are the same thing but with a cheese coating.

The Bancroft Spanish-English dictionary gives the translation for tortilla as omelette.

Tory

1. In the USA, supporters of King George III during the American Revolution.

2. In Canada, historically, United Empire Loyalists or simply Loyalists.

3. In present-day Canada, members of the Progressive Conservative party.

However, another source says that the word is the correct name for nacho chips.

The Bancroft Spanish-English dictionary gives the translation for tostada as toast, which doesn't help much.

Totalled

Tow-head

Townhouse

TPA

TPS

Track and Field

Track Meet

Tractor-Trailer

Traffic Circle

Trailer

Trailhead

Transactions

Transfer

Transit

Transmission

Transmission Tower

Transpeninsular Line

Travel Trailer

TRB

Treasure State

Tri-Cities

Tri-State Regions

Triage

Tribeca

Trimester

1. See separate article.

2. Three months.

3. One of the three periods of three months within the nine months of pregnancy - the first, second or third trimester.

Triple A

Triple Cities

Trolley

Tropical Storm

Truck

1. Lorry (a large road vehicle used to carry freight). This meaning is also increasingly being used in Britain.

2. A pickup (pickup truck). Again, this meaning is generally understood in Britain.

3. Bogie (that part of a railway engine, carriage or other rolling stock item to which the axles and are attached). However, in British railway terminology a truck is a goods wagon.

4. A truck farm is a farm which produces vegetable crops, what might be called a market-garden.

5. In Mark Twain's "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn", Huck uses the word "truck" to refer to goods and small items of any kind. I do not know if the word is still used in this sense.

Truck Camper

Truck Lane

Trunk

TSA

Tsunami

TT

TTC

Tub

Tube

Tubing

1. Floating down a river with the aid of an inflated inner tyre. You occasionally see roadside establishments hiring tyres for tubing and organising transport to or from the starting or finishing place. Tubing can be dangerous.

2. Major Jim Collins of the USA kindly sent me this additional meaning:

   In the Rockies, "Tubing" also refers to using an inner tube to sled down mountains in the winter. Originally just for kids, it's returning to popularity as a family and group activity. I suspect that economics is a factor, as skiing is becoming expensive for families.

   Tim Showalter kindly sent me a comment saying that this latter meaning is now in widespread use throughout the USA.

The word tufa should not to be confused with the very similar word tofu which has a totally different meaning.

TUL

Tuque

1. A description of a restaurant which offers both meat and fish (or seafood) dishes.

2. A dish consisting usually of a steak and a whole lobster, lobster tail and/or shrimps. (Thanks to Tom Wrona for telling me of this meaning.)

Turkey

Turn Signals

Turnaround

1. See Crossover.

2. I think that the word can also refer to any mechanism (such as a turntable) or track layout (such as a loop or reversing points) whereby a railway train, tram, streetcar, etc can turn round at a terminus.

3. "Sarah's off on a turnaround" - Las Vegas Turnaround by Daryl Hall and John Oates (on the Abandoned Luncheonette album). Does this mean a shuttle flight, perhaps?

Turnout

Turnpike

Turtle Neck or Turtle Neck Sweater

TUS

Tuxedo

TVA

See also US And Canadian Government Agencies And Departments Responsible For Recreation Areas.

TVM

TVQ

Twenty-Sixer

Skidoo is generally thought to probably be a variation on "skedaddle" but the origin of "twenty-three" is somewhat of a mystery, with various largely unsubstantiated theories attempting to explain it.

Twin Cities

Twin Ports

Twin Towers

Twister

1. A slang expression meaning 25 cents. Lisa Fournier of Columbus, Ohio, kindly sent me this explanation of how the term came about:

   This refers to a time (in the 1800's, I believe) when dollar coins were common and they were grooved so they could be separated to make change. They could be broken into eight parts or "bits", so a quarter was "two bits".

   However, Tim Showalter sent me this comment:

   I was once told that bits related to the "pirate" usage of "pieces of eight", and corresponded to some non-dollar coin that could be separated. No dollar coins could ever be separated. There were once half-cent coins, and apparently 1/1000th coins called "mils", I believe, but these are long gone.

   Major Jim Collins of the USAF followed up with this additional information:

   The coin concerned was the Spanish Doubloon, in the 18th and early 19th centuries legal tender through out the United States. This coin did in fact have scoring allowing one to break off pieces. Older folks still use "eight bits" to signify one dollar.

2. "Two bits" is also used as an adjective to mean virtually worthless, for example "Are you still driving that two bit car?". Thus a "two bit computer" is a reference to its perceived worth, not its word length <grin>.

Two-Four

Twonie, Twoney

TX

Typos

American English to British English Dictionary

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Most recently modified 14-Oct-05