General & Miscellaneous (cont'd)

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Sorry - This is the sort of thing you will hear British people saying almost constantly. Part of the British social phenomenon is that everyone seems to be terribly polite (that isn't to say that there aren't many genuinely polite people in England , just that even those who aren't will often seem to be polite. Part of this is because most non-Brits do not pick up on the very subtle and intelligent ways in which the English can be rude, and I mean this as a compliment (I don't know why I am t rying to make excuses at this point, as Scotland yard probably has a bounty out on my head by now if just for my food comments alone, but here is goes anyway).

For most of my fellow Americans, the most inspired epithet they can come up with is something a long the lines of that ever-so-witty rejoinder, "Oh yeah? Well, fuck you!") Anyway, part of this socially ingrained politeness is the fact that they do say "sorry" an awful lot, and not always in situations in which one would normally be apologizing. A Br itish "sorry" can mean "I didn't hear you," or "I am trying to get off the bus, please let me through," or "You startled me and I believe I now require a medic at once due to an unfortunate attack of cardiac arrest."

And if I have offended any British people with this entry (now don't tell me you didn't see this coming), then I am sorry. You must realize that my deadline for finishing this dictionary is tomorrow morning, and I am not even close to getting all the aspects of it done (actually sitting down and drawing some illustrations comes to mind...), so any broad anthropological social commentary of the nature displayed above was done totally on the fly without much time to mull it all over and go back and edit. Sorry.

Ta - Slang for "thanks," often in a kind of good-bye sort of situation, like what you'd say to the cashier after getting your change and you're leaving the store (therefore, kind of similar to Cheers, but not nearly as widely used). Also as in: "Ta for actually sitting there and reading this whole dictionary all the way through." (actually, it is not usually used in a sentence like that, but more often as a single word rejoinder). This is assuming, of course, that you didn't just skip ahead to read the entry for "sorry," in which case, bugger off and Jack's a Biscuit. Cheers!