Harry´s Blog

We were staying on the Isle of Wight with my wife’s aunt. There was a scandal at the time which was on page one of the broadsheets, as well as the tabloids. The Chancellor of the Exchequer had been caught in flagranti having an extra-marital affair with a beauty who was outspoken.

She showed no remorse and even went into detail. She related that she had received her lover “wearing suspenders but no knickers.”

I couldn’t figure that one out, so I asked my aunt-in-law what that meant. She, being a primly English, blushed, shyly smiled and sort told me in a roundabout way.

Suspenders weren’t suspenders and knickers weren’t knickers in the American sense; suspenders were not braces and knickers were not golf trousers. Suspenders were garters and knickers were panties.

In other words, the lady in question received the chancellor wearing garters and no panties. The purpose of the suspenders, I gathered, was to hold up the stockings, not the “knickers.”

I know that British English is touted to be more melodious and mellifluous than the American variety, but don’t garters and panties sound sexier than suspenders and knickers?

And doesn’t ass sound more appealing than arse?

“Ass” in the British sense strictly means the long eared beast of burden.

The Germans and Austrians label the translation of a work by an American author as “translated from the American.”

This has always made me fume. But on second thought, could it be that they’re right? Maybe we do really have two languages.

As far as I’m concerned, I’ll take the American every time. Sexual encounters sound much nicer.

-Herbert Kuhner