If your English is good but not British, the words that catch you out are not the colourful ones. They are ordinary nouns: pants, subway, chemist, single, first floor, half seven. This is a list of the words that will actually change what you buy, where you walk or which floor you get out on.
Most of this vocabulary is not slang at all. It is standard British English that happens to differ from American, Australian, Indian or international English, and nobody here thinks of it as unusual. The problems come when a word exists in both varieties and means two different things.
We have kept the food and drink vocabulary separate, because there is a lot of it: see what British food words mean on a menu. For the unwritten rules of behaviour rather than vocabulary, including what British understatement is doing, read our guide to British etiquette for visitors. This page is only about the words.
Twelve words to learn before you land
- Single / return
- One-way / round trip
- Toilet
- The normal, neutral word. Not restroom or washroom
- Chemist
- Pharmacy or drugstore
- Pavement
- The footpath beside the road
- Subway
- A pedestrian tunnel under a road, never the Underground
- First floor
- One flight above street level
- Queue
- A line of people waiting
- Till
- The checkout or cash register
- Pants
- Underwear. Trousers are trousers
- Jumper
- A sweater or pullover
- Half seven
- 7:30, not 6:30
- Quid
- One pound
Buying a ticket without getting the wrong one
Rail vocabulary is where most visitors lose money. A single takes you one way. A return brings you back, and on many routes a day return costs barely more than a single. Off-Peak and Super Off-Peak are ticket types with time restrictions, not vague descriptions of when the train is quiet, and Anytime is the expensive one with no restrictions. An Advance ticket is tied to one specific train on one specific date.
On the train itself, a coach is a carriage, lettered A, B, C and so on. Away from the railway, a coach is a long-distance bus. A platform is what an American would call a track. The guard is the member of staff on board. Our guide to buying UK train tickets explains which type to choose.
On the Underground, signs say Way Out, not Exit. Mind the gap is a warning about the space between train and platform. The network is the Tube or the Underground; nobody in London calls it the subway. A Travelcard is a paper or Oyster product, not a generic term, and capping is the automatic limit on what pay as you go can charge you in a day. Our guide to the Underground covers how all of that works.
"Half seven" means 7:30 pm, not half an hour before seven. British English drops the "past": half seven, half eight, half twelve. Speakers of German, Dutch, Danish and several other languages hear the opposite. If you are arranging to meet someone, repeat the time back as a number to be sure.
Asking for the toilet
Toilet is the ordinary, polite word, and it is the word on public signs. Asking "where are the toilets?" in a pub, museum or shop is completely normal and nobody will find it crude. Loo is the everyday informal alternative and is also fine in almost any situation.
The words that do not work are restroom, washroom and bathroom. Restroom and washroom are simply not used, and people may not understand them at all. Bathroom in British English means a room with a bath in it, so asking for the bathroom in a restaurant can produce a confused pause before the penny drops.
Signs on the doors say Ladies and Gents. A lock that reads Engaged means occupied; Vacant means free. A cubicle is what you would call a stall. Some station and shopping-centre toilets charge, and some are behind ticket barriers; our guide to finding a public toilet in London has the details.
In a shop
You join a queue and pay at the till. In a supermarket you take a trolley or a basket, and you will be asked whether you want a carrier bag, which is charged for. Cashback is a service, not a reward scheme: at many supermarket tills you can ask for cash to be added to your card payment and handed to you, which saves finding a machine.
A chemist is a pharmacy. The two large chains you will see everywhere are chemists, and they sell medicine, toiletries and cosmetics. An off-licence is a shop licensed to sell alcohol for drinking somewhere else; a corner shop or newsagent is the small local shop that sells newspapers, milk and everything else. A charity shop sells donated second-hand goods for a charity, and they are worth browsing: see our guide to London's charity shops.
Staff will greet you with "Are you alright there?" or "Can I help at all?" Both mean "do you need help?" and "no thanks, just looking" is a complete answer. When you pay, "that's fine" or "lovely" from the cashier means the transaction worked. Cheers and ta both mean thank you. Shop hours are shorter than many visitors expect, particularly on Sundays, which we explain in opening hours and Sunday trading.
Money words
A pound is a quid, and quid does not take an s: three quid, twenty quid. A five-pound note is a fiver and a ten-pound note a tenner. Pence are said as p, pronounced "pee": fifty p, twenty p. A grand is a thousand pounds.
"Do you take card?" is understood everywhere, and in London the answer is nearly always yes. Contactless means tapping rather than inserting. Chip and PIN means inserting the card and typing your number. If a machine asks whether you want to pay in your own currency, that is dynamic currency conversion, and it usually costs you; our guide to money in London explains why.
Service charge on a restaurant bill is not the same as a tip you choose to add, and the difference matters. See tipping in London for what to do about it. In a pub you pay when you order, and the vocabulary of ordering is covered in pub etiquette for visitors.
Streets, floors and buildings
You walk on the pavement, at the edge of which is the kerb. A subway is a tunnel that takes pedestrians under a road. A flyover carries a road over another one. Roadworks are construction; a diversion is a detour.
A zebra crossing has black and white stripes and flashing orange globes on poles, and drivers must give way to anyone on it. A crossing controlled by lights, where you press a button and wait, is a pelican or puffin crossing; wait for the green figure.
Building floors are numbered from zero. The ground floor is at street level, the first floor is one flight up, and lift buttons usually read G, 1, 2 with B or LG below for basement and lower ground. Booking a hotel room "on the first floor" gets you a room above the street, not at it.
A high street is the main shopping street of any town or district, so every part of London has one. A flat is an apartment, a terrace is a row of joined houses, and a lift is an elevator. A postcode is the alphanumeric code at the end of an address, and it is the single most useful thing to have when asking for directions or ordering a taxi: our guide to London postcodes explains the format.
Health words, which are worth knowing in advance
These are the ones to memorise before you need them. A&E, short for accident and emergency, is the hospital emergency department. A surgery is a doctor's practice, not an operation: "the doctor's surgery" is the building you go to. A GP is a family doctor.
A plaster is an adhesive bandage. Paracetamol is the drug sold as acetaminophen or Tylenol elsewhere, and it is the most common painkiller in British shops. A jab is an injection. To feel poorly is to be unwell. Our guide to healthcare for visitors explains what is free and what is charged.
Words to avoid, and one that means the opposite
A short list, offered plainly rather than for laughs.
- Fanny is a crude word for female genitals in British English. The waist bag is a bum bag.
- Pissed means drunk, not annoyed. Annoyed is "annoyed" or "cross".
- Pants is underwear, and calling someone's clothes "nice pants" will raise an eyebrow.
- Rubber is an eraser. Ask for one in a stationery shop without hesitation.
- Homely is a compliment here, meaning warm and comfortable, not plain-looking.
Two more that are about people rather than things. Do not imitate a British accent, even affectionately; it lands badly. And avoid commenting on someone's class, which in Britain is read from accent and vocabulary and is a genuinely sensitive subject.
"He's had enough" is a legal phrase, not an opinion. Under the Licensing Act 2003 it is an offence for staff to sell alcohol to someone who is drunk, and an offence for you to buy a drink for a drunk friend on the premises. So a refusal at the bar is the barman obeying the law, not judging you, and arguing about it will not work. Our guide to alcohol laws and drinking in public sets out the rest.
England, Britain and the UK are not interchangeable
This is the one error that reliably irritates people, and it is easy to get right. The government's own style guide is clear: Great Britain means England, Scotland and Wales, and does not include Northern Ireland. The United Kingdom, or UK, is those three plus Northern Ireland. England is one country within it.
So London is in England, in Great Britain, and in the United Kingdom. A Scottish or Welsh person is British but not English, and saying "England" when you mean the whole country will be corrected, politely but firmly. The safe general word is British, and the safe name for the state is the UK.
The British Isles is a geographical term that includes Ireland, which is a separate country; avoid it unless you mean the geography. And Londoners will tell you that London is not England either, which is a joke about the rest of the country rather than a constitutional claim.
Words London borrowed
London has spoken more than one language for centuries, and a lot of everyday vocabulary here came from elsewhere. Nosh (food) and schlep (a tiring journey) came from Yiddish through the East End. Ends for a local area, and safe as a greeting or an expression of approval, come from Caribbean English by way of south and east London. Chuffed (pleased) and knackered (exhausted) are old English dialect words that never went away.
You do not need to use any of these, and using them self-consciously sounds odd. Knowing them means you will follow a conversation on a bus. You will also hear an enormous range of accents: London's English is not one accent, and staff in shops, restaurants and hotels frequently speak English as a second language themselves, which tends to make everyone more patient rather than less. If you need to look a word up on the spot, a data connection helps; see SIM cards and eSIMs for the UK.
One last one for drivers. A petrol station sells petrol and diesel, a car park is a parking lot, a boot is the trunk and a bonnet the hood. All of that, and the road signs, are in our guide to driving in the UK as a foreign visitor.
Frequently asked questions
Is it rude to say "toilet" in Britain?
No. Toilet is the standard, neutral word and it is what public signs say. Loo is the common informal alternative. The words that do not work are restroom and washroom, which are not used, and bathroom, which in British English means a room containing a bath.
What is the difference between a single and a return ticket?
A single takes you one way only. A return covers the outward and the homeward journey. On many British rail routes a day return costs only slightly more than a single, so it is usually worth checking both before you buy, even if you are not certain you will come back the same day.
What does "half seven" mean?
It means 7:30, half an hour after seven. British English shortens "half past seven" by dropping the "past". Speakers of German, Dutch and the Scandinavian languages should be careful here, because the same construction in those languages means half an hour before the hour.
Should I say England, Britain or the UK?
Use the UK for the country as a whole and British for its people in general. Great Britain means England, Scotland and Wales only, and the United Kingdom adds Northern Ireland. England is one part of it, so calling a Scottish or Welsh person English is a common and easily avoided mistake.
Do Londoners really speak cockney rhyming slang?
Very rarely, and almost never with strangers. A handful of phrases survive in general use, but you will not need to decode rhyming slang to order a coffee, buy a ticket or ask for directions. The vocabulary on this page is far more useful.
Sources
- GOV.UK - Style guide: A to Z, entries for Britain and Great Britain (checked September 2026)
- National Rail - Ticket types (checked September 2026)
- NHS - Pharmacies and what they can help with (checked September 2026)
- legislation.gov.uk - Licensing Act 2003, section 141 (sale of alcohol to a person who is drunk) (checked September 2026)
- legislation.gov.uk - Licensing Act 2003, section 142 (obtaining alcohol for a person who is drunk) (checked September 2026)
- Transport for London - How capping works (checked September 2026)
- Cambridge Dictionary - English (British usage entries) (checked September 2026)