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Food (cont'd)

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Carry-out - Take-out food, as if you'd really want to take British food with you anywhere.

Chicory - Endive (See: "Endive.")

Chips - French fries (why we seem so keen on attributing this food to the French is beyond me. The French themselves call this snack "fried potatoes." Well, actually they technically call it "fried apples," which gets me a bit worried about the French as well.) You will often find your "chips" accompanied by batter-fried "fish," in which case the most prudent move might be to run away screaming. (See: "Fish 'n' Chips")

Clotted Cream - Although it sounds positively disgusting, like some freak cross between a medical ailment of the arteries and milk that has been sitting out long enough to produce its own new lifeforms, this is actually an excellent topping to smear upon your scones. (See "Scones.")

Courgettes - Another term borrow from across the Channel, "courgettes" are zucchini. I have nothing funny to say about zucchini, as they are rather a passive vegetable.

Cream Tea - Tea, crumpets, jam & clotted cream. Some argue that it is served with scones instead of crumpets. Just one of the myriad versions of that quintessentially British of phenomena: the Tea. (NOTE: I have now officially used up all my Big Words. We will be relying on simple sentences and small words for the remainder of this dictionary.)

Crisps - Potato chips. There, that was easy.

Cuppa - Very simply, a cup of tea (it's logical thinking like this that allowed the British to found their great Empire, in between cups of tea, that is).

Digestives - (See: "Biscuits")

Elevenses - Only with a British accent can you make this word come out sounding semi-dignified and not like the attempt of a six-year-old to tell time. This is a mid-morning tea, as opposed to your morning tea, your your afternoon tea, your after-dinner tea, and your I-can't-sleep-and-it's-the-middle-of-the-night-so-I-might-as-well-get-up-and-have-some-tea tea. And let's not forget about drinking some Earl Grey at breakfast, dinner, and supper. The English have higher levels of insomnia and spend more time, per capita, going to the bathroom than the people of any other industrialized nation in the world.

Endive - Chicory (See: "Chicory." Confusing, isn't it?)

Faggot - Meat ball (made with oatmeal). This North England specialty has made for more than one interesting exchange between Americans and Brits at restaurants, as in:

American: "I'm not sure what to eat tonight."
British waiter:
"Perhaps you'd enjoy a faggot?"

Note that "fag", which in American is an abbreviation of faggot, in British means a cigarette butt. Or, for even more entertaining linguistic crossed wires, a "fag" can (in British) mean a younger boy at a British public school (which , just to confuse things further, Americans call a private school) who has to play servant to an older boy, though this meaning — and practice — has pretty much fallen out of use.

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