It’s a holiday not a ‘vacation’: The Americanisms taking over travel

September 22, 2025 — 5:00am

I say holiday, and you say vacation? And what about store, sidewalk, pants and French fries? Americans speak a language all its own, similar to ours but different in oh so many ways. This can lead to confusion when Americans hit the road on vacation, and find they’re not in Kansas any more.

In Traveller Letters readers have been venting over the American fondness for the word “bathroom” when what they want is the toilet. When they need to go, Americans are curiously prudish when it comes to bodily functions and they have evolved a rich lexicon of words that skirt the realities of what goes on behind the toilet door. “Washroom” is common while saying you’re visiting the powder room might invite suspicious looks thanks to its double meaning. The “little boys’ room” is just twee, but “comfort station”? Please, no.

Passengers “deplane” a flight ... or just leave.Rob Homer

Even Canadians, America’s closest neighbours, don’t understand the same lingo as the folks south of their border. Several years ago, I was enjoying a dinner of grilled salmon at the Dinghy Dock Floating Marine Pub on Protection Island, a satellite of Canada’s Vancouver Island, when the male half of the US couple next to me said to the waitress “Can you check me out?” She was totally nonplussed, but what he wanted was his bill.

So pervasive is American culture that its lingo has infiltrated our own. Do you find yourself saying “cookies”, “dating”, “trash can”, “wildfire”? But when we travel, we’re still worlds apart.

Americans vacation differently

When they pick up their hire car, after dumping their luggage in the trunk (boot), they might rack up some miles (kilometres) on the freeways (highways). After a while, they might look for a gas station (service station) or a parking lot (car park) if they’ve got to where they want to go.

In a restaurant, they might order an entree, and disappointment often follows. While the entree is what most of the world calls a starter, in the US it’s the main course. In 19th century French cuisine, when the toffs might sit down to a five-course dinner, the entree was the dish served between the soup or fish and the main course. Americans with aristocratic notions and wallets fat enough to put multi-course meals on the dinner table adopted the term but as meals shrank, the first course became the appetiser or starter, and the entree became the main dish.

Americans may find themselves sorely disappointed with the size of their meal if they order an entree in France (or just about anywhere else).iStock

Once they get that sorted, the American diner might finish their meal off with a coffee, and they might ask for a serving of cream. What they’re probably after is half milk and half cream. “Cream” can also apply to non-dairy creamer, those little sachets of powder you might find in your hotel room. Outside North America, the milk-cream combo is unknown. Milk will do nicely. But in the US milk has many variations and when their citizens travel, their carry certain expectations. In Paris I once heard an American tourist ask the assistant in a grocery store, “Do you speak English?” “Non” came the reply. American tourist, in a louder voice; “Okay. We want two per cent milk. Do you have that? Two per cent milk?”

When they’re out and about, an American tourist might carry their valuables around in a “fanny pack”, and cue the sniggers from Aussies. Not a Brazilian butt lift but a small pouch attached by a waist belt. We call it a bum bag, but that would suggest a very different apparatus to an American, one best left to the imagination.

When they want to leave their hotel and head out to explore, they might press the number 1 in the elevator, and find themselves not on the ground floor. In the US, what we call the ground floor is their first floor. There’s no sensible explanation for this, it’s just a different way of numbering.

And in the skies

America’s pre-eminence in the aviation industry has given them the right to lumber us with the imperial rather than the oh-so-sensible metric system when we fly. Aircraft speed is often expressed in miles per hour, altitude in feet. Seat width and legroom are measured in inches, as is the size of the in-flight entertainment screen. Instead of reward points, United Airlines wants its customers to join its MileagePlus loyalty program and earn air “miles”, Delta Airlines calls its loyalty program “SkyMiles”. America’s aviation dominance also ensures that English is the lingua franca of the skies. A China Southern airline pilot landing at Charles de Gaulle airport must communicate with air traffic control in English.

“Air rage”, “flightmare”, “jumpseat”, “jetiquette” and “unbundling” – a barebones flight at the lowest possible cost – all originated in the US, as does “deplane”. Is there an uglier term to describe the act of exiting an aircraft? “Deplane” raised its head in the 1990s and while flight crew on Australia’s airlines enjoyed a brief flirtation with the word – “Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for flying with us, we now invite you to deplane via the forward exit” – it quickly lost traction, unlike in the US where it continues to offend my pedantic ears. What’s wrong with “disembark”, or even the no-nonsense “leave”?

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