Handbags and windbreakers

My friend Nigel, who lives in New Zealand, always enjoys pointing out the amusing differences between American English and the King's English (or is it now the Queen's?). In England and its former colonies, a bathroom is a place where people bathe, while a toilet (water closet, loo ...) is where we perform necessary anatomical eliminations.

He has also reminded me that what I refer to as a sweater is in fact called a jumper.

Then, on a blustery day, when I announced that I had forgotten my windbreaker, he chuckled and said that a windbreaker in Britain is someone who suffers from flatulence (and thus might require the loo?). In proper English, my nylon jacket is called a wind cheater.

Most recently, he responded to my purse blog with a more ominous tale of linguistic misinterpretation.

"In the English-speaking world, what you call a purse, we call a handbag," he wrote via email. "A purse is a wallet-like thing in which notes (bills), credit cards, and (more rarely these days) coins are kept. Women keep their purses in their handbags."

He then recounted a story about a New Zealand woman who was held-up at gunpoint in Gotham by a man who demanded that she hand over her purse. She opened her handbag and frantically rummaged around in it for her purse.

"Gimme your f**n purse!" the mugger screamed.

"I'm looking for it," she screamed back.

The thief then snatched her handbag and ran off with it, "leaving it to observers and later the cops to explain to the woman that she was very lucky that this linguistic misunderstanding hadn't got her shot," wrote Nigel, "for it's likely that the thief would have thought she was rummaging in her purse for a gun and not that she was searching for her purse in her handbag!"

Imagine if the thief had demanded her windbreaker.