I spilled some coffee on some light coloured trousers on the way to the London office. The stain was centered right in my lap and I couldn't really go around like that all day, so I stopped and bought some cheap trousers at Gap to sort me out.

Pro-tip: Telling your local UK colleagues that you were running late because you stained your pants and needed to get new pants, and then offering to show people the stained pants is going to lead to some awkward moments.

Ah, wonderfully divided by a common language!!!! :)

"Fanny" is a great cause of transatlantic fun too. And if you are a Brit in the US, never ever say, "Im diving out for a fag". You're gonna get some odd looks.

And British hosts, please don't offer to knock your American houseguests up in the morning, or any other time.

Fascinating fact: the phrase "knock up," as in awaken by knocking, comes from the industrial revolution, after people were having to rise at a certain hour for the first time in history, but before the invention of the alarm clock. The "knocker-upper" was a person who went round with a long wooden pole, knocking on the windows to get people out of bed for their factory shifts.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knocker-up

Unless you're attractive. Then they might appreciate the offer.

My British in-laws always have a good laugh when we go by the "Frugal Fannies" store in the States.

Reading that in British English: coffee, meet keyboard.

My favo(u)rite ambiguous sentence: I'm mad about the flat. What do you think it means? ;-)

Even better is "can I bum a fag?", which wins odd looks on both sides of the pond.

> . UK, where pants is pants and not trousers. ;)

I made this mistake once when I spent a summer in Ireland in high school. (I should add here that the people at this summer program were noticeably more homophobic than I was used to back home[0]) I had borrowed a pair of "trousers" from a friend for a costume for some event.

When asking permission from the RA later that night to go to a different dorm after lights-out, I told him, 'I need to give <friend> his pants back'.

I will never forget the look of horror that he gave me.

[0] Not sure if it's a cultural thing or just the program I happened to be at, but either way, it's relevant.

Confusingly, in the north of england and in scotland, pants means trousers, just like in the US.

Not in any areas of the north I've lived / stayed in. the only people in England who call pants 'underpants' and trousers as 'pants' are those who watch excessive amounts of US TV shows.

I'm from Salford and use pants/trousers interchangeably, have done since I was young. Perhaps this is also due to watching films too, which are mostly from the US over here. I haven't watched that many US programmes in my life time. I don't watch much TV at all really!

As a side note, I saw undies in the original too!

Never heard that in Yorkshire. Possibly a more localised thing?

not in my experience of scotland, though i do know geordies and irish who say pants.