4/21/08

Brit' Word of the Day....

Today's BWOTD is one I have caused confusion with at school, when I asked some students one day if they needed to revise!

"The kids have exams next week and need to revise"

'Revise' = study

So if you're child is studying for an exam, they would be revising in the UK.

We also have another word for the same things - swot! Not to be confused with highly armed SWAT teams or swatting a fly. Again we sometimes say we are 'swotting up' for exams and I have no idea where this comes from?

You may also have noted me using 'exams' instead of 'tests/testing'. We use test for things like eye test, driving test and you seem to use exam for these - it's all arse backwards!

So there you go 3 BWOTD's for the price of 1 today :-)

5 comments:

Expat mum said...

I thought the spelling was "swot"? But since I never did much, what would I know?
And thanks for the Water Horse recommendation. I was just thinking how good that looked.

Almost American said...

Other school words that threw me for a loop at first:
Supervising kids taking an exam: (American) proctoring = (UK) invigilating
(American)quiz = a small test
(UK) quiz = fun game played to kill time, or as part revising for exams

Unknown said...

expatmum - you're right! Off to edit now...lol TVM

Biddie said...

My step father is from Manchester, so I am not as easily confused as I may look :)
I have never heard of 'swot' before, though. When I was a kid, I thought that my step father was just making stuff up.
I loved The Waterhorse, too. We took the kids to see it during the Christmas break. It was on the only day that Jessica was home from the hospital. I'm glad that we all went out.
My kids are older - 13, 17, and 20, and they all liked it. Maybe not as much as my Hubby, though.

Pam said...

yep, this one took me a long time to sort out in my head. to us "revise" or "revising" means doing it all over again and again. finally got it to mean something similar to reviewing and then it started clicking.