Re: why do British say a battery goes flat?

Why do North Americans say it's dead? It wasn't alive in the first place.

Dan

Dan_Thomas snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@n10g2000vbl.googlegroups.com:

And once you recharge it, isn't it then...Un-Dead?

Beware the evil zombie battery.

How about , "Flat Line"

Sorry, should be one word: Flatline

and what's a pair of pants? if you have 2 pair of pants, is that 4 items? if I was foreigner trying to learn English I would be unable to stop laughing.

English is a bit harder to master than many of the world's languages, but some manage it quite well.

I have said things that caused eruptions of peals of laughter. That is just part of the process.

I don't like most of the British terms for cars, but I think gearbox is a better term than transmission. Heck, a driveshaft transmits power. A "transmission" has gears in it!

Whilst "flat" is a very odd term to describe a battery that is discharged, "dead" is also not very accurate. "Dead" tends to imply "irreparably broken", whereas a discharged battery can be (usually) restored to perfect condition merely by charging it again.

I suppose the use of "flat" tends to be an allusion to a balloon which is "flat" when all the air in it (the equivalent of the charge in a battery) has escaped from it.

In the UK, a distinction is made between spanner which is a precision implement with parallel jaws that are an exact distance apart (5/16", 7 mm etc), whereas a wrench is a much cruder device such as a Mole grip where the jaws are spring loaded and become roughly parallel when locked into place by squeezing two handle together. A spanner will turn a nut or bolt without damaging the corners between the flat surfaces of the nut/bolt head, whereas a wrench may occasionally slip because the non-parallel jaws may sometimes slip round the nut/bolt head.

The use of "rasher" is not confined to Ireland. I'd say that it's fairly widespread throughout the UK as well to describe a single slice of bacon - usually after it has been cooked by shallow-frying or by grilling (which I think you tend to call "broiling").

Whether they are flat/dead/fully discharged/completely or partially discharged, There is never any electricity inside of any batteries. cuhulin

I once asked an elderly guy, Where does this road gp? He said, It doesn't go anywhere, it just lays right there. cuhulin

"Mortimer" wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@posted.plusnet:

Don't know about the UK, but in North America...

"Broiling" is the cooking of something on a shallow tray in an oven with heat applied only from the top. Many kitchen ovens have a "broil" setting.

"Grilling" is done on a slatted grille with direct heat applied from the bottom, usually from heated coals or ceramic briquettes, but can be from open flame as well. "Barbecuing" is cooking on a slatted grille within a closed vessel, indirect heat being applied from the bottom.

"Grilling" is what North American men do on the backyard barbecue. The men do this instead of the women because it's too smelly, greasy and smoky for most women to stand. Plus it often requires the concurrent consumption of vast quantities of beer for best results. Women tend to prefer wine, which is not conducive to proper grilling.

Women (and some men) are often a bit scared of the temperatures it takes to properly grill as well. If the preheated grill grate isn't glowing dull red and the radiant heat doesn't burn the hair off your knuckles when flipping the steak with 12" long tongs, it isn't hot enough. Gas grills are not actually capable of grilling properly unless they are the IR models.

Yes, looks as if I was right. In the UK we use the words slightly differently...

"Grilling" is used for the heating from above in a gas or electric cooker, and "barbecuing" for the heating from below by coals; we don't seem to distinguish between heating the object directly or heating it indirectly within a vessel. In fact, come to think of it, I've never seen a barbecue used to heat things indirectly in a closed vessel - unless it's something like fish being heated in alumin(i)um foil!

"Mortimer" wrote in news:GuednYsPN snipped-for-privacy@posted.plusnet:

Then you have never had the sublime experience of genuine Southern barbecue (that would be the south-eastern USA). Genuine barbecue is always low, indirect heat for very long periods of time (8-12 hours or so) in a closed, smoky vessel. Pork ribs are a favorite.

Rasher is a perfectly good word in the American variant of English as well.

oof a poon o' booter means, half a pound of butter, in Ireland.I have some books here about Ireland. Heh, today I went across the highway to the shopping mall.I wanted to see if the book store could order a Gaelic to English Language/English to Gaelic language Dictionary/book for me.But that store has closed down.There are some more book stores around here.I will check them out. cuhulin