What exactly does gazump mean? Or tippex? Or quango?
I have no idea. I’ve never heard these words before. And for the sake of this email, I decided not to obey my curiosity and not to look them up.
Odds are, you also don’t know what these words mean, unless you are from the UK.
If you are from the UK, you you almost certainly know them. That’s according to a data analysis I just looked at, about differences in word familiarity between the UK and US.
80% of people from the UK knew gazump, tippex, and quango. But only 10% of Americans did. (My guess is that the rest of the world, maybe excluding Australians, are equally clueless.)
What about the other direction?
Well, less than 20% of UK people, and at least 75% of Americans, knew such all-American words as ziti, manicotti, and albuterol. The word conniption also had a big spread.
But wait, there’s more.
Because I got one more interesting data set for you. This one is about differences between men and women.
Fewer than 20% of men, and more than 50% of women, knew the following words:
* peplum
* boucle
* rouche
(True enough, I don’t know what any of these words mean. And I’m afraid to look them up.)
There’s nothing comparably interesting in the other direction, because words known by fewer than 20% of women, such as femtosecond and thermistor, are also known by fewer than half of men.
But there is something very interesting at the highest end of the men-women data set.
There is a certain provocative word, which is known by 88% of men… but only 54% of women.
That word is shemale.
Draw your own conclusions.
I really mean that. Because while I thought this word data was interesting, I couldn’t come up with any smart marketing point to draw out of it.
So today, I will just risk it and guess that maybe you’re like me, and maybe you find words interesting.
And since I found this stuff fun, maybe you will too.
Thinking about it now, that might be a marketing point in itself.
In any case, if you like strange or disgusting words that women know and men don’t, and vice versa, you might like my email newsletter. Or you might not. If you want to give it a try, click here and fill out the form.