Courgette or Zucchini English zucchini goes by courgette in England, the French word for the green gourd. The United States inherited the Italian name, and both terms reference the summer squash. Note that the word squash refers to a fruity drink in Britain, and a mature version of the courgette fruit becomes marrow.
The name zucchini is used in American, Australian, Canadian and New Zealand English. It is loaned from Italian, where zucchini is the plural masculine diminutive of zucca, 'marrow' (Italian pronunciation: [ˈtsukka]).
Aubergine (UK) / Eggplant (US)
The word aubergine, used in the UK, comes from French. The word eggplant, which Americans use, was popular in different parts of Europe because they were more used to seeing small, round, white versions that looked a bit like goose eggs.
Courgette & Zucchini – Basically, both are edible forms of the cucurbit plant. The word 'courgette' is used among British and New Zealand people, while that of 'zucchini' is used in North America and Australia.
Between 1880-1920, a great surge of Italian immigrants (more than four million of them) came to start a new life in America, bringing their zucchini with them. Because “zucchini” was easy for non-Italian speakers to say, nobody tried to Anglicize it, and the name stuck.
Did you know? Americans call some types of winter pumpkin 'squash' but Australians use the term squash for what Americans call 'summer squash'.
The British word for eggplant is aubergine, which has French, Catalan, and Arabic origins. Some say the less common white varieties of the typically purple plant led to the name used in the United States, but the terms are generally interchangeable regardless of color or shape.
If you want a bag of what Americans call 'chips' in the UK, just ask for crisps.
Coriander + Cilantro = Ciliander The British know this Mediterranean herb as coriander, but the Americans know it as cilantro, together we get ciliander. Cilantro is also the term used by the Spanish. While generally both terms refer to the same food product, there is a difference.
It's also known as yellow turnip, Swedish turnip and Russian turnip and, in America, rutabaga.
Also, a US sidewalk is a British pavement, and curb is spelled kerb (curb in UK English is a verb i.e. to “curb your enthusiasm”).
Australians use a couple of other colloquial words for a hen's egg. The Australian English word googie or goog is an informal term that dates from the 1880s. It derives from British dialect goggy, a child's word for an egg. A closer parallel to the jocular bum nut, however, is the word cackleberry.
Aussie Word of the Week
Aussies have a plethora of names for sausages and the ways and contexts in which we eat them. Snag is perhaps the most famous slang term for sausages, followed closely by banger. Many of us grab a sausage sanga down at the local hardware store.
chook. A domestic fowl; a chicken. Chook comes from British dialect chuck(y) 'a chicken; a fowl' which is a variant of chick. Chook is the common term for the live bird, although chook raffles, held in Australian clubs and pubs, have ready-to-cook chooks as prizes.
'Dead horse' is Australian rhyming slang for 'tomato sauce'.
Contributor's comments: In Central Qld we still call Lunch "Dinner" and Dinner "Tea". Also, morning and afternoon tea is "Smoko". Contributor's comments: This was the same for me growing up in the sixties in SW WA.
bub (plural bubs) (Australia, slang) A baby.
In British English, crackers are sometimes called water biscuits, or savoury biscuits.
A Biscuit (U.S.) Is a Scone (U.K.)
The main differences are that scones tend to have less butter (because you'll add butter to it when you eating it — or else, clotted cream or jam) while American biscuits tend to have more butter and light layers.
Yankee is sometimes abbreviated as “Yank.” People from all over the world, including Great Britain, Australia, and South America, use the term to describe Americans.
In Australia, "biscuits" are what Americans call "cookies," and these traditional treats date back to World War I. It's said that wives and mothers of soldiers in the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps—abbreviated to "Anzac"—baked these treats to send to their men overseas.
Butternut squash (Cucurbita moschata), known in Australia and New Zealand as butternut pumpkin or gramma, is a type of winter squash that grows on a vine.
Squash (sometimes known as cordial in British English, dilute in Hiberno English, and diluting juice in Scottish English) is a non-alcoholic beverage with concentrated syrup used in beverage making.