Things Britons say.

This is an account of an actual conversation between me and my British roommate last night. I promise.

My roommate, who I'll call Dave, was thinking of things we needed to get from the store. "Oh," he said, "we need more liquid."

"All right..." I paused. "What kind of liquid?"

"Oh, you know, washing up liquid."

This was a term I'd never heard before, and as he wrote "washing up liquid" on the dry-erase board I had a good chuckle to myself.

"You mean soap?" I asked finally.

"You just call that soap? For washing up?" He gestured to the dishes in the sink.

"Yeah. Or dish soap, at most."

He seemed a bit bothered by the number of things we call soap—from hand soap to dish soap to normal bars of soap, which is the only soap that he calls soap. But "washing up liquid"? Wow. Wow wow wow.

In my own defense, he got a kick out of when I called a portable stereo a "boombox." I'll concede that "boombox" (box go boom!) is about as cool a name as "washing up liquid."