I Say Waistcoat And You Say Vest: British Versus American English

As a Brit (a Scot, to be specific) with an American partner, it still astonishes me that even after a year of being together we regularly find ourselves talking at cross purposes due to everyday things having different names on the opposite sides of the Atlantic.Today it was vests and waistcoats.

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“You say tomAHto and I say tomAYto” as the song goes.Yet often it’s not just pronunciation that differs between how people from different geographical areas, countries or social classes pronounce the English language.Often the actual words used are different too! Certainly this is so between me and my partner.

I am a Brit, born and bred in Scotland, leaving in England for over 20 years now.She is an American.After over a year together we still regularly find ourselves talking at cross-purposes because of subtle differences in the supposedly common language we both speak.

Today’s example was vests versus waistcoats.

This last two days we’ve had a cold snap so I decided I wanted to wear something under my shirt, something I seldom do.Rummaging around in my clothes drawer all I could find to wear under a shirt was a t-shirt.So I said to my partner, “I’ll just use a t-shirt as a vest.” She looked horrified, as if I had just proposed wearing my underpants outside my trousers.

And in a way I had.After a few moments of blank looks, we worked out that it was yet another mix up over terminology.To her, as an American, a vest is a sleeveless coat or jacket to be worn over a shirt, between a man’s shirt and his suit jacket.To me, as a Brit, that is a waistcoat.A vest, to me, is a thin sleeveless top worn as an undergarment, underneath one’s shirt.That, she would call a tank top, or, using slang, a ‘wife beater.’

Confused? We were! But to help you out, here are some photos – firstly of a waistcoat (UK) or vest (USA) [1] and secondly of what we Brits would call a vest [2].

And for anyone reading this from outside those two countries, whenever you are tempted to think that Britain and the USA are almost identical in terms of language and culture just remember that in actual fact we can’t even talk about such a simple thing as what to wear without getting confused with each other!

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Sources, footnotes and references:

[1] The garment I’d call a waistcoat (in the UK) and my partner from the USA would call a vest

[2] The garment I’d call a vest (in the UK)

Article Written by BruceW

Electronic engineer and writer with a passion for history (especially the First World War) and photography.


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