And whatever you do, donāt ask for a napkin to clean up after youāve eatenā¦
Why not?
Itās fairly common for napkin outside of the US to be understood to mean āsanitary napkinā as in the womenās health item. The alternative in the UK specifically is āservietteā to refer to the hand and face cleaning piece of cloth or paper. I think this distinction is probably falling more and more by the wayside however.
I work with older adults in New Zealand and those aged over 75 or so (at least the women) can use ānapkinā to refer to infant cloth nappies (diapers for you Americanās).
Well Iāve lived in the UK my entire life and have only ever heard napkin and serviette being used completely interchangeably.
Granted, Iām not the target market for them but I think āsanitary towelā is possibly the more common term in the UK? And napkins - usually cloth, serviettes - usually paper?
What Cookie Monster eats is, and to my knowledge has always been, referred to as a cookie in the UK. Cookies are simply one of many different foodstuffs know as a biscuit.
The ālittle tā gag seems much better suited to Fozzy than cookie monster. Of course, when I was a kid watching sesame street back in the 90s, they the muppets never seemed to crack jokes or say anything punny.
Although, Iām pretty sure itās more likely that most of their humor managed to whoosh over my head. The family says I was a precocious child, but I think I just didnāt let on that I was didnāt understand more than half of anything that people told me.
As with many things in the UK, napkin/serviette is a term that allows for subtle distinctions in social āclassā (not to be confused with actual economic class).
Using the term serviette will mark you out as an upwardly-mobile middle class person who wants to be seen to use āpoliteā terms (Think Hyacinth Bucket and youād be spot on), whereas napkin is happily used by both working class and upper class people, the former because they donāt feel the need to use āfancyā terminology to distinguish themselves from working class people, the latter because they donāt need to use such terminology to distinguish themselves from working class people (But also sometimes to distinguish themselves from the sort of people who say āservietteā).
Hey, I didnāt say it was going to make sense.
How very Non-U.
I was told by my home economics teacher many years ago, that biscuit is a legally-defined term, and they must all be of the exact same weight and size, whereas cookies can be more irregular. Whether this is true, or just shit she made up, I dunno (FWIW, this was during the teacherās strike of the 80s, and she was an NAS/UWT scab, so maybe donāt trust her).
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