Blimey. American English is even barmier than I thought.

In my post here, I ask whether you can get a decent pint in America. The answer is definitely not, if this online British-American dictionary is accurate:

pint n. The standard UK measure of beer - apparently equivalent to 0.568 litres in new money. It is possible to buy a half-pint instead but doing so will marr you for life in the eyes of your peers. Drinking half-pints of beer is generally seen as the liquid equivalent of painting your fingernails and mincing. However, it's not quite as bad as drinking American pints of beer. Whilst pretending that a pint really is a pint, Americans managed to get away with putting 16 fluid ounces in theirs while ours contain 20. My source tells me that the issue is compounded further by the fact that an American fluid ounce is also 4% smaller than ours. Ah, but that's never the end of the story, is it. Yet another contributor tells me that the reason American pints are different sizes is actually our fault. Prior to American independence a British king (not sure which one) elected to raise tax on beer but upon discovering that he needed an act of parliament to change the tax, he instead changed the size of the pint (which only required a royal edict).

There are lots of other useful words in this dictionary. For example:

pillock n. Idiot. You could almost decide having read this dictionary that any unknown British word is most likely to mean "idiot". And you could almost be right. We have so many because different ones sound better in different sentences. On the subject of the word in hand, I am told by a contributor that it's a contraction of the 16th century word "pillicock" (describing the male member) and by another (who admits to not being completely sure) that this may be a male animal with one lone testicle and derived from "bullock". It's funny, even if it's not true...