Americans have a lot of unique expressions.
Some become surprisingly popular overseas. Others leave people scratching their heads, wondering why we say them at all.
And then there are the phrases that people from other countries genuinely dislike—whether because they’re confusing, sound rude, or simply don’t make sense when taken literally.
A couple of months ago, we posted about a bunch of American phrases that people from other countries love. From “couch potato” to “guilty pleasure” to how we can turn almost any noun into a verb (i.e. “you’re bulls**tting me!”), there are some sayings that, not only are uniquely American, but are phrases that people in other countries enjoy. Maybe it’s because of the visual you get with the term “ants in your pants” or how literal “plenty of fish in the sea” actually is. But they’re appreciated.
But not everything we Americans say is automatically gold. There’s the other side of the coin in terms of uniquely American terms and phrases that people in other countries REALLY don’t like. Like these:
“On a weekly basis.”
“Why use such a long phrase to say ‘weekly’? I even told one of my first English teachers that it didn’t make sense to me, but the teacher saw no problem with the expression.” ― Eli S.
“Start a family.”
“I have a visceral negative reaction to ‘to start a family’ which, contrary to the way I interpreted it the first time I heard it, means not moving in together or getting married but having children. My problem with this phrase is, of course, purely ideological: it implies that childless families are not actually families but merely candidates for being one. Because now is a very difficult time for reproductive freedom in the United States (or, to put things bluntly, now is the time when reproductive freedom is actively threatened), every time I hear it I also feel its sharpness, its potential to be weaponized, its meanness.” ― Irina Z.
“It’s not rocket science.”
“The problem is not the phrase itself, the problem is that generally, when someone says it, it is not done in a very nice or gentle way.” ― Grijalva A.
“First floor”
“The first day when I went to work in the U.S., I asked where my desk was located. My manager told me that it was on the third floor. I went all the way up to the third floor but couldn’t find my desk. Later on, I realized that Americans called the ground floor the first floor, and the first floor the second floor, and the second floor the third floor.” ― Sindy C.
“Hand-me-down”
“This can easily be translated but it has such negative connotations attached to it. I prefer just being literal and saying ‘these are my older siblings’ clothes.’ It just sounds better.” ― Akinkugbe
“What?!”
“The word I hate is when Americans say “what!?” instead of “pardon.” Americans are very blunt and seem to blurt out ‘what’ when they don’t hear or don’t understand you. Equally annoying is the word “huh!?” Perhaps that comes back to our ties to England English, but pardon is a much politer way to ask someone to repeat something. We grew up understanding that ‘what?!’ was quite rude.” ― Jules H.
“Bite the bullet.”
“I never really understood this and always took it literally. I always thought it meant shooting someone.”― Ipinmi A.
“I can’t even”
I understood the context when I first heard it in a video. Everything is fine, actually, except the fact that it’s grammatically incorrect. When I still hear the phrase, I expect it to be completed somehow.” ― Firdaus B.
“Sure” or “uh-huh” instead of “you’re welcome.”
“When we study English as a second language, we learn that the correct way to respond to the phrase ‘thank you’ is ‘you’re welcome.’ But in everyday life, Americans rarely say that, am I right? I only hear ‘you’re welcome’ in more formal situations. The most common way to respond to a ‘thank you’ is ‘sure’ or ‘uh-huh,’ in New York at least. When I first moved to New York, I was shocked when people said ‘uh-huh’ to me! I thought people were being rude or that I had done something wrong. But, of course, now I’m used to it.” ― Langhammer (Note from Sharon: Guilty as charged. I say “No worries” MUCH more than “you’re welcome”)
“He/she is a keeper.”
“This phrase gives me the same reaction colors give Wednesday Addams ― I break out in hives and skin starts peeling off my bones, or at least it feels that way. English is not my native language. I learned my basics in the classroom and I am used to consciously performing simple morphological analysis to understand new words and expressions I encounter. ‘Rearrange’? ‘Re’ is a prefix that often means doing something again, so rearrange might mean something like ‘arrange anew, in a different way’. That sort of thing.
This is why I had a lot of trouble processing ‘he/she is a keeper’ when I saw it for the first time. A keeper is someone who is doing the keeping, right? Like a worker is someone who works, and an employer is someone who employs people, and even a zookeeper is someone who keeps a zoo in order! But this interpretation didn’t make sense for the contexts in which I was seeing ‘he/she is a keeper,’ so for a long time I considered the phrase to mean that the person described in it is capable of keeping the relationship in order. I realized that people use it to refer to someone who is worth keeping around much, much later, and it bugs me every time I hear it.” ― Zaykovskaya
Of course, language is one of those things that’s constantly evolving.
Many of these phrases sound perfectly normal to Americans because we’ve heard them our entire lives. We don’t stop to think about how odd they might sound to someone learning English—or someone who grew up speaking a different version of it.
And to be fair, every country has expressions that sound strange to outsiders.
So if someone from another country gives you a funny look after you say “I can’t even” or “it’s not rocket science,” don’t take it personally.
They’re probably just trying to figure out why you’re talking about bullets, rockets, fish, and ants in your pants.
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