Dictionaries of British/American English mostly cover well-known variants like truck/lorry and elevator/lift But these are just the tip of the iceberg. What I intend to cover here are words/phrases/pronunciations/grammatical constructions that get me into trouble on a daily basis.

I teach translation from Italian to English to language majors [in Italy]. I am lucky this term to have three women in my class on the Erasmus project [EU student exchange system--ed.] who are from the UK. They told me today that British English for "pick-up truck" is "pick-up truck". I asked them "What about a lorry?" and they told me that a lorry is much bigger.

And to unsimplify a bit more: in Ohio, at least, we always called the big yellow (lorry-sized) moving trucks "moving vans."

Good point. That's more widespread than just Ohio!

U-Haul calls it a "gentle ride van." Van's meaning has shifted over the years in AM/E. Semi-trailer for the huge trucks, double axle for the articulated lorries. The only absolute is that we don't call 'em lorries, and I don't quite know why.

An additional antipodean note: in Australian Engllish, what he US calls a pick-up truck is called a ute, short for utility something (vehicle? truck?)

I meant, of course, English and the US

It took me forever to work out what a minivan was - I kept imagining a small transit van and wondering why people with two or three kids would want one of those.

Also, I think that 'pick up truck' is what's known in Australia as a 'ute' (short for utility truck). This was widely popularised in the UK during the heyday of Neighbours and Home and Away, twenty years ago, so you do occasionally still hear them called by this name too.

When moving possessions in a vehicle, it's a moving van in American English. Even if it looks like a truck.

And to unsimplify from the opposite direction, the definition of lorry as being something for which a special driving licence is required doesn't work either. A UK car driver's licence brings entitlement to drive vehicles up to 7500kg - and at that size, they are definitely lorries, not vans.

I think it is also an iron rule in BrE that vans are for the transportation of goods and so do not have side windows behind the front doors (but, to complicate the complication, 'camper vans' are an exception to that - or were; they are now very rare). The vehicle in your fifth picture might not be called a people carrier in BrE, but it would never be called a van - the 'more likely' in that sentence is literally correct, but risks being misconstrued.

As for moving vans, the splendid word pantechnicon has not altogether died.

Do they still have estate wagons in England (cf. US station wagon)?

And what about (BrE) "HGVs"? (Or was that covered previously?) I know it's supposed to be "Hsomething Goods Vehicles" but I don't think I've ever heard an explanation of what the "something" is. (Hazardous? Heavy? Hungarian?)

In the U.S. there's a legal difference between "hazardous cargoes" and "dangerous cargoes" that I've never managed to figure out. (And there are apparently distinct prohibitions for those two plus "hazardous materials", which presumably means the same thing except that it doesn't matter whether it's a "cargo".)

Etymology of "truck" and "lorry" http://podictionary.com/?p=1916

HGV - Heavy Goods veihcle which are lorries and there are different weight classes which you need different licenses for. And also for the hazardous things like flamable liquids etc.

Hmm - to me (as a New Zealander/Australian) that's not a mini-van, it's a people mover (not people carrier). A mini-van is like the old vw van - it's got to have a flat(ish) front and be taller. If it looks like a car at the front end, it's not a mini-van.

When I saw "people carrier" the first thing I though of was "troop carrier", which is the local term for a vehicle (usually a 4WD) with facing bench seats in the back along each side.

Living in Oklahoma, USA we see lots of pickup trucks, or as we sometimes like to say, "pick'em up" trucks. If it has dual wheels in the rear like the one in your picture, it is a Dually. If it has a back seat it is an Extended Cab. If it has 4 doors it's a Crew Cab The big ones with dual wheels and 4 doors are Cowboy Limousines.

Although it is true that a some people drive big pickup trucks just because they like the way they look. They may feel a big truck gives them a macho image, as in "you may not be a cowboy but you wish you were". I don't know what you can say to justify a Hummer, but that's a different topic.

However, for people who do construction work or need to carry odd sized items, or have enough property to haul brush or move mowing equipment, a pickup is very handy. Even a suburban home owner may choose a small pickup as a second car for those times when nothing else will do.

Remember that the USA has a lot of open spaces. Oklahoma outside of Oklahoma City and Tulsa is largely rural and if you are involved in farming or ranching you gotta have a truck, make that a pick'em up truck.

Thanks for the informative post! Though I have loads of BrE friends and have visited several times, I've never driven there so I really haven't had much occasion to discuss the nuances of lorry/truck.

Just a note on pickup, and on Tulsa Gentleman's comment. I am from central Texas (I currently live in Austin, though I teach in a small farming community). Most of the time I go NUTS seeing all of the people driving around gigantic pick-ups. The vast majority of people just don't need anything like that, and just think it's manly. In smaller towns, especially, women think it's cool as well.

At the same time, I know it's a cultural thing. I am a farmer's daughter, and when I was growing up (30 years ago), every family had a car and a truck. The truck was 'dad's car', which was for working and hauling things. The car was 'mom's car', which was for family trips to town. Now that most people in that town and area work in the city, they no longer really need the truck, but they have it anyway. My dad, who's one of the few farmer's left in the area, has an excuse. ;-)

This is actually something that I constantly argue with my high school students about.... They tell me I'm a wimp for driving a Mazda protege. I tell them they're taking up space and resources with their Ford F350.

I'm Australian, and thus call a pick-up truck a ute - they're a very, very common vehicle in rural areas, and not uncommon in urban areas. I've heard British people say "ute" as well, as Ros says.

Dennis Baron, yes, though they are estate cars rather than estate wagons. They tend to be elderly Volvos.

To me, the typical ute has no side panels along the bed, like some 1940s US pick up, but is also about the height of a car. The typical pick-up in the US has side panels everywhere and is raised. I don't know if the Aussies have different names for these.

My experience from living in the rural UK is that people who actually need pick-up trucks invariably have small Japanese ones.

In the UK, car models are called saloon, estate or hatchback. There is a very old name for estates - "shooting brake" - which is never heard nowadays, but which my mother used to use.

If the estate/van has no windows in the back, I believe the tax authorities will accept it as a working vehicle (from memory, this can help when it comes to assessing any benefits from personal use).

Driving around London and the South East of England, I notice a fair number of white vans with padlocks added to the back doors, and signs saying "no tools kept overnight" or similar. I assume there must be lots of thefts from white vans. I wonder how American tradesmen keep their equipment secure if they have an open-backed truck, which seems to be the US equivalent of the white van.

So maybe the fact that the French call an estate car a 'break' comes from this 'shooting brake' business ? I've been wondering about that for years.

Jane - interesting to hear about French usage (and Wikipedia agrees with you - search shooting brake).

Flat-bed truck: I have heard truck rather than lorry in this phrase, in the UK.

HGV - yes, H = Heavy.

My (standard) driving licence shows the categories of vehicle that I may drive, with images next to each category, and includes an image of what Lynne said was a van in the UK but not in the US - category C1.

I was going to mention that the pictured cab-over is recognizable to my NE American ears as a 'van,' although I don't think I would spontaneously use the term, reserving it for the prototype you provided.

My other thought was that BrE 'lorry' as a semi-tractor/tractor-trailer/18-wheeler must indicate that it references the relatively larger trucks currently on the road, since it seems to me that I've read many older references to lorries which were written before the advent of 18-wheelers, and much smaller trucks (ten wheelers, e.g.) are commonly referenced as lorries in, for example WWII dramas (which, despite all the BrE accents. might be American productions, for all I know).

@marek: Thanks for the details re licen{s/c}es--even if I had looked that up, I probably wouldn't be able to picture the kinds of vehicles that go with that weight.

As for pick-up trucks and the 'need' for them, it's much like SUVs. There are plenty of people who just don't need such a big and wasteful vehicle--the campus I taught at in Texas was full of huge pick-ups and SUVs, not because 18-year-old students need them,* but because they were 'cool', and the students' parents didn't like to think of their children in smaller cars that would lose the battle in an accident with a big pick-up or SUV.

My American family needs to have SUVs and pickups for carting around caskets/coffins and gravestones, respectively. But that doesn't stop them driving the danged things to the supermarket or the mall, even though they do have regular passenger cars too. And that's just hard to forgive in these times...

*Actually, people are very good at rationali{s/z}ing their ownership of large vehicles. E.g. 'I need them for moving my stuff in and out of the dorm(itory) [=BrE res(idence hall)] each semester'. To which I reply (a) take less stuff! or (b) rent a trailer! The cost of renting a trailer a few times a year is far less than the cost of running a behemoth!

And so Lynne gets opinionated again...

Occasionally in British novels I encounter the word Pantechnion, which I have assumed from context is some sort of truck. An archaic term?

@Steve Bowman: See my earlier comment in this thread. It's not totally archaic, but it does have a very specific meaning - a large vehicle for moving furniture, usually but always for the purpose of moving house.

@lynneguist If you want to get a sense of how big a thing you can drive with a UK car driving licence, just search google images for "7.5 tonne"

Yes, pantechnicon is an old-fashioned word for what we (UK) would now call a removal van.

Kate

not to be confused with pandemonium (Paradise Lost)

Interesting. Irish people are less averse to Americanism than the Brits are; or perhaps we are more averse to Briticisms. In any case, "truck" -- which is gaining ground in Britain -- is more common than "lorry" here these days. To me, the picture of which you say "This is a (BrE) van--but never an AmE van" can only be called a truck. It's too big to be a van and too small to be a lorry. I would call the larger things trucks too -- or HGV or articulated truck to be more specific -- but I would recognise them as lorries if some else so described them. I would not recognise the smaller one so described.

I agree with James that "utes" are lower than "pick ups"; a ute shares its chassis with an ordinary car, simply replacing the rear seats and boot/trunk with a flatbed. One can even see low-rider "sports utes" with blacked-out windows and halogen floorlights. sports ute picSimilarly, one can get a "car van", where the rear shell is as for a car, but with no rear seats or side windows. [@marek: I think the seats must be missing as well as the windows. Otherwise Autoglass could abet some nifty dodges.] Ford Fiesta van pic

Also Irish like Molly, and agree with her - I think I'd be more inclined to use "truck" than lorry, though for the really big ones, I'd probably these days refer to them as HGVs (heavy goods vehicles). Though I work in a transport-related field so that may have influenced my usage.

I also agree with Molly that the rigid white truck pictured is definitely not something I would think of as a van. The smaller one shown is about as big as a van could get for me.

On the other hand, "lorry driver" sounds much more natural to me than "truck driver".

I agree totally, Lynne - in BrE, in increasing order of size, truck - van - lorry; but as you indicate, we'd never think of calling a people carrier (or spacewagon) a truck - it's a big car to us, while a truck could either be of the pick-up variety, or look like an estate car but with no windows beyond the wondscreen and those to the side of the driver/passenger.

This has been an interesting post. As an American, I hear and use the following: semi or tractor trailer or 18 wheeler for the really big ones; tandem for a semi cab towing two containers; van or panel van for a working vehicle with an enclosed back-end (don't know why we call the little vehicles the size of vans but selling ice cream "ice cream TRUCKS"); mini-vans (thanks to Chrysler for the term); pick-ups and half-ton pick-ups for the small "Japanese" versions; SUV's - all sizes and not really fair.

I get a bit miffed when we talk of over indulgence in "these times". I seem to remember an oil crisis in the 70's that elicited similar cries. The fact is that we do have a lot of open spaces. I have a one-acre lot, heavily wooded and use larger vehicles to move supplies to and from the lot. Want to put out a bunch of mulch? Get a pick-up. Want to build a shed? Get a pick-up. Want to buy a refrigerator? Get a pick-up (delivery charges are a bite). SUV's can double for a lot of these activities as the back seats fold down. Now you have a covered pick-up. Finally, look at the National Transportation Safety board crash ratings. You won't find too many Smart cars in the list that survive. Many other small cars will go airborne. Big is safer. If we can affort the gas, so be it.

Here in NYC, people who can call themselves movers must be licensed, bonded, insured, etc., etc., so their prices are high. If you don't want to or can't pay those prices, you turn to the man with van, who typically advertises using a flyer attached to a lamppost (or probably on Craigslist nowadays).

The van which he has, however, can be anything from an ordinary passenger car on up. The vast majority of New Yorkers don't have cars; indeed, something like 70% of adults don't even know how to drive, so New York State issues "non-driver's licenses" which are valid for all identification purposes, but don't allow you to drive.