British Terms

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Oh, hi there. This is Joanna from Carlsbad.

Hi, Joanna. Welcome.

Hey, how are you doing?

I’m good, thanks.

I have a question about the use of words in the English language.

And I am from England, and I’ve been here for 10 years.

And although we speak the same language,

I find that the use of words is very, very different.

And so I often feel a real longing to be able to express,

You know, some nuance or something that makes me laugh,

And I can’t find the words because I find that Americans use words so differently.

And so I have a couple of words that I would love to throw out there

To see if you could help me find the replacement word in America.

Oh, sure. Great.

So I’ve got quite a few words, but I’ll just start with one.

One would be cheeky.

And if I could use that, I’d love to use that more,

But it often just falls completely flat.

Cheeky.

Yeah. Cheeky would be, I would say, oh, she was a cheeky wee thing,

Or I say to my children, don’t be so cheeky, or I was just being cheeky.

And I feel that the American equivalent would be sort of facetious or irreverent,

But it still doesn’t capture the real nuance of the word cheeky.

Well, tell us what you think the real nuance of the word cheeky is.

It’s almost so difficult to describe.

And I’ve put this out to my English friends and my sister, who’s just moved here, and she is, we’re in a pickle.

And my husband, who’s American, and I’ve been married for 10 years, doesn’t have the answer either.

Cheeky would be, I suppose, a little sarcastic, but in a really, in a very endearing or spirited way.

And it’s not completely negative. It’s not something that’s going to get you into big trouble.

Cheeky’s not really negative at all, and I think that’s the connotation.

It’s really more of an endearing way of being.

I think of a schoolboy hitting on an older woman, right?

She might say, oh, you cheeky lad, right?

Yeah, exactly.

So on one hand, he gets a little bit of a reprimand for shooting above his station.

On the other hand, he gets points for bravery.

Exactly.

But it could also, the Americans use words, I think, more literally.

And also we use, in England, we would use cheeky in many ways.

Who would say, you know, he was being a cheeky wee boy,

But you could also say, no, that was just cheeky.

And you could use it in a more, you know,

If somebody was trying to be, you know, a little bit rude

Or somebody in the shop was trying to push in line,

You could say, that’s just cheeky.

Right.

You could be, it’s all, it’s very subtle.

Yes, that is the nature of English, isn’t it?

There’s no, I would agree that there’s no perfect synonym

For cheeky, and I’d also agree that you have zeroed in perfectly on a word that is very

British and hardly American at all. If we know it, we know it from British media.

Yes. Okay. I still try to use it, and I’m not giving up.

No, you should, by all means. It’s got flavor to it. It would make you distinct among Americans,

Won’t it?

Well, yeah, but I would like to know. I do feel a real sense of longing to be able to

Not only to be able to use those types of words,

But to have other people sort of banter with me.

You know, people ask me sometimes, you know,

What do I miss most about England?

And I often think it’s not the rain, it’s not the pubs,

It’s not the English dinners, you know.

And it’s my friends and family, but more than anything,

It’s the language and the use of words, and I miss that chat.

You know, that sort of the bits in between, the gray, the gray areas that I just can’t recreate.

Sometimes I say the word naff.

My husband bought me a little love heart necklace and it had little diamonds around it and it really wasn’t my style.

And he could see in my face that I wasn’t too keen.

And keen is another word that I use a lot.

And he said, do you not like it? Is it not your taste?

And I knew you’d be hurt.

And I said, no, it’s just a little bit twee.

And I could see that he didn’t really get what I was saying.

But there was no other way to describe it.

What would you use for twee?

Well, the other word that you mentioned, naff, N-A-F-F, I know that, but I learned it from two British women when I was traveling in South America like 15 years ago, and it was brand new to me then.

But it’s such a great word.

It is.

It means a little bit like chintzy or cheesy or a little crappy maybe, right?

Chintzy would be a good replacement for naff, but it’s still not.

But twee, I know twee for music reviewers because they love to use it to describe albums that are just a little too precious.

Yeah, precious is a great way to describe Thuy, but Thuy is even more flowery than precious.

Joanna, I appreciate your predicament.

As someone who’s traveled around the world and has lived in countries for a time where people don’t speak like I do, I know what you’re talking about, but I would argue that that kind of conversation can be had.

Really?

You have to keep searching for it.

I would suggest you start in the bookstores and you will find very literate people with big vocabularies who will love to talk to you at length about anything that you choose.

I have to say that I appreciate your novelty and the kind of charm that you have, Joanna.

So thank you so much for calling and sharing some of that with us and our listeners.

Bye-bye.

Thanks for calling.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

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