Americanisms!

Just as well that on both sides of the Atlantic it's most often just referred to as a 'lab'.

Sir Humphry, pleeeease! He must just have been pretty busy inventing all these things - never a ditherer.
phoenix I always felt the American pronunciation of laboratory was perilously close to lavatory!

No, not to rhyme with cattery!

Lab ra tory

Instead of Lab ora tory.

What about cupcakes instead of fairy cakes?

gracesmum I read Bags's post - bit of a ditherer, Mr Davy. I will present this definitive information to OH tonight and claim trans Altlantic supremacy - thank you.

Meant to add, confirmed by OED - aluminium

Have you not read my post, Sel? It clearly states that Davy renamed it in 1812.

Bags oh no, this means OH was right. I won't tell him.

Crossed posts Bags - 1812 it appears.

sorry about "who who"

gm

Humphrey Davy named it alumium. Then it changed to aluminum, as it still is in N america. Don,t know when we decided on aluminium.

I have googled it and find that it was named by Sir Humphry Davy (who who, you may recall, “abominated gravy, and lived in the odium of having discovered sodium”), and read that :
"Sir Humphry made a bit of a mess of naming this new element, at first spelling it alumium (this was in 1807) then changing it to aluminum, and finally settling on aluminium in 1812. His classically educated scientific colleagues preferred aluminium right from the start, because it had more of a classical ring, and chimed harmoniously with many other elements whose names ended in –ium, like potassium, sodium, and magnesium, all of which had been named by Davy."
So it appears that aluminium is *right.

Hmm, yes. Somehow I made labrattory sound right in my head (well, acceptable) but it's not working any more. Brain fuzz moment

Perhaps I was thinking LABrattry ???

Anyway, another explanation could be never having heard the word before. DD is coming across new words all the time in her reading, but if she hasn't heard them spoken before and doesn't know their derivation, she sometimes gets them wrong interesting.

Likewise, DH pronounces many scientific words the American way because that's how he heard them first.

Forget the double a my laptop is developing a stammer

Why is aaluminum right and aluminium not?

#Phoenix - Crumbs - I never heard anyone say that! To rhyme with 'cattery'? Bizarre.

Mind you some things they get right, and we don't - 'aluminum' instead of our 'aluminium' for example.

Waitress in Denny's, Palo Alto, to me: "Do you speak English?"
Me: "Speak it? Madam, I AM it!'

Well, it isn't really totally different. They are just shortening the o rather extremely and putting the stress on a different syllable. So what? We understand the word. There are similar 'sized' differences in pronunciation of various words even within our own country. Of course people in a different country will pronounce many things differently, and use different words for the same thing.

Why complain? Just enjoy it.

No feetlebaum , I mean the way they say LabRAtory, not a different stress on a syllable, a totally different word!

i had a penpal in my teens who talked about her bangs - it was only by the context that I understood what she meant. Interesting origin, absent.

I first came across the use of bangs for fringes in Laura Ingalls Wilder's books when I was a kid. Although I understood what it meant I've never knownw where it came from. Thanks, absent.

Not an Americanism but when I was visiting my brother in Australia he mentioned he was going to put on his thongs - it took me a while to realise he meant his flip flops! A mental image I could have done without!

#phoenix - "Some Americanisms really grate. For example the stretching of words, like "burglarise" instead of "burgle". And the way laboratory is always mispronounced!"

As LABoratory, you mean? While we sa LaBORatrie - many American English words are stressed differently from the same word in British English, e.g., AdverTISEment.

Apart from 'awesome' already mentioned - 'totally', as in 'I'll totally buy one of those' is assuming the proportions of a bête noir, especially when pronounced 'toadalley'!

Bangs, meaning a fringe (hairstyle, not soft furnishing) comes from bang-tail, a racehorse with a docked tail.

There aren't many American words that Brits won't understand and vice versa, but there are a few pitfalls. In the US, nursing a baby doesn't just mean cuddling but breastfeeding. Fanny and fag are two other obvious minefields.