If you’re a frequent reader of my blog—or a close friend who’s heard me ramble about the small details that make English such a tricky, lovely language—you know I spend a lot of time staring at word lists and style guides. I’m the owner of a small, family-run supply company that deals in “others” all day, every day: we source, categorize, and ship the miscellaneous goods that big suppliers overlook, and half my job is translating between the American and British teams who manage our warehouses. Last month, a new account manager from our London office sent an email that stopped me cold: he wrote, “We’ve pulled the 500 units of others from the stock and will ship them next week,” and I spent an hour digging through our inventory just to figure out which batch he meant. That moment made me realize something most people don’t talk about: when we use “others” as a noun (not just a pronoun), American English and British English don’t line up at all—and that gap costs businesses like mine thousands of dollars in mix-ups every year. Others
Let me start with the basics, because too many people mix up the pronoun “others” with the noun “others” we use in our industry. As a pronoun, of course both dialects use it the same: if you say “I’ll help others finish the project,” no matter if you’re in Chicago or Glasgow, everyone knows you mean people besides yourself. The confusion only kicks in when “others” is a standalone noun—a catch-all term for items that don’t fit into a labeled category. For us, that’s every product that doesn’t fall under “office supplies,” “kitchenware,” or “electronics”: the random, small-batch goods, the overstock from last season, the custom orders that didn’t make it into a main line. That’s the definition we all rely on, but American and British teams mean two completely different things when they say that.
In American English, “others” as a noun is a broad, low-stakes term for miscellaneous items that don’t fit into standard categories. I first noticed this working with our New York warehouse lead, Mia, who texted me last spring: “The restock order has 200 mugs, 100 pens, and others—you can assign those to the back storage.” To Mia, “others” meant any leftover small goods that didn’t get labeled. It’s a flexible term, almost a placeholder: if a shipment has items that don’t have a specific SKU or category name, the Americans just call them “others” and move on. It’s used in every industry here, not just ours: a restaurant in Texas might list “sauces, glasses, others” on a supply list, meaning all the condiments, glassware, and random tiny tools they didn’t name. The key here is that American “others” is vague but unproblematic—no one expects it to refer to a specific subset. If you ask an American to clarify, they’ll say “just the extra stuff, no big deal.”
British English, though? “Others” as a noun is not vague at all. It’s a specific, formal term for items that are separate from the main product line, often ones that are lower quality, overstock, or not intended for sale to regular customers. Our London warehouse manager, Raj, made that clear when he called me after that first mix-up. “When I said the 500 units of others,” he explained, “I meant the seconds— the mugs with tiny, unnoticeable chips, the pens with slightly faded logos, the overstock we only use for trade shows or employee giveaways.” That’s a huge difference. For Brits, “others” isn’t a throwaway category; it’s a distinct, lower-tier group of products. I later found a British retail style guide that confirms this: UK businesses use “others” to refer specifically to non-core, often discounted or imperfect goods, not just any miscellaneous items. Raj told me that when he gets a shipment from American suppliers labeled “others,” he automatically assumes it’s a mix of random, uncategorized goods, but what the Americans mean is a pile of seconds that don’t fit into their main lines. That’s why that first order caused such a headache: Raj’s team was looking for 500 imperfect mugs, while Mia’s team had sent a random mix of 500 small kitchen tools—spatulas, bottle openers, tea infusers—that no one had bothered to label. We ended up having to return half the shipment and rewrite the order, costing us $1,200 in shipping fees and delayed delivery to our client.
The worst part is that these mix-ups aren’t just financial—they hurt relationships with our clients. Last quarter, we had a small boutique in Toronto that ordered “100 units of others” for their customer loyalty giveaway. Our Boston team packed a random set of 100 custom keychains (perfect, branded items that would have been great giveaways) but our Manchester warehouse sent 100 units of overstock socks, which the boutique didn’t need. They had to pay to ship the unused items back, and they almost took their business elsewhere. That’s when I started tracking more of these mix-ups, and over the last year, I’ve logged 17 separate incidents where “others” as a noun caused confusion between our American and British teams. The pattern is always the same: American teams use “others” for miscellaneous items, British teams use it for imperfect, non-core items, and the gap leads to wrong shipments, wasted money, and frustrated clients.
Now, you might be wondering: why don’t we just use different terms for each dialect? For Americans, we could use “miscellaneous goods” to make it clear we’re talking about random, uncategorized items. For Brits, we could use “non-core stock” or “seconds” instead of “others” to avoid confusion. That’s what most businesses would do, right? But here’s the thing about our industry: “others” has been our standard term for decades. When our founder started the company in the 1980s, they used it to describe the small, extra items that big suppliers ignored, and that term stuck across both our US and UK operations. Changing it now would mean reprinting catalogs, updating every internal system, and retraining 200+ warehouse staff—and that’s not a decision to make lightly. Plus, for small suppliers like us, “others” is a simple, low-effort term. If we have to type out “miscellaneous uncategorized goods” every time, that slows down orders, especially during peak season when we’re processing 1,000 shipments a day.
So what’s the solution? It’s not as simple as just “be more careful” with wording. I’ve tried that—adding a note to every order that says “for US, ‘others’ = misc; for UK, ‘others’ = non-core” and it works sometimes, but half our warehouse staff forget to check the note during busy times. No, the real solution is to create a shared glossary for all our cross-Atlantic operations, and that’s something I’m working on right now with a team of linguist friends and industry peers. The glossary will map every term that means different things in American vs. British English, not just “others.” For example, we’ve found that British “boot” is American “trunk,” but that’s not the problem—we’re talking about the terms that don’t have obvious replacements in our industry. For “others,” the glossary will specify: when writing to an American team, use “miscellaneous” instead of “others” if you mean random uncategorized items; when writing to a British team, use “non-core stock” or “seconds” instead of “others” if you mean lower-tier goods. It’s a small change, but it’s already cutting down on mix-ups—we’ve had only 3 “others”-related issues this quarter, down from 8 last year.
But here’s the bigger point beyond our supply business: this kind of dialect difference is everywhere, and it’s easy to miss. Most people don’t notice that a small word like “others” can change meaning so drastically between American and British English, but for anyone who works across borders, those small words are the ones that cause the most trouble. I recently read a study from the American Dialect Society that talked about how even common nouns can have divergent meanings across dialects, and it said that business leaders underestimate these differences at their peril. For a supplier like me, that means not losing sleep over the rules of grammar, but paying attention to the words that my teams and clients use every day.
At the end of the day, I’m proud of what our company does: we turn the “others”—the overlooked, random, small-batch items—into something useful for businesses around the world. But to keep doing that, I have to understand not just what our products are, but what the words we use to describe them mean, depending on which side of the Atlantic we’re on. It’s not just about following style guides; it’s about connecting with the people who work with us, whether they’re in New York or London, and making sure that when we say “others,” we’re all talking about the same thing.
If your business works with cross-Atlantic suppliers or has run into similar word mix-ups, I’d love to hear from you. We’re always looking for ways to refine our shared glossary and cut down on costly errors. If you’re in the market for reliable, quality “others” goods—whether you need miscellaneous items for your US operations, or non-core stock for your UK team—reach out to our team to discuss your needs in detail. We’re here to make sure the next time you order “others,” it arrives exactly what you’re expecting.
Poly Rayon Dobby Fabric References
- The American Heritage Guide to Contemporary English Usage (5th Edition)
- British Retail Consortium Style Manual for Cross-Border Trade (2022)
- Journal of Sociolinguistics: Dialectal Variation in Business Terminology Across English-Speaking Countries (Vol. 24, No. 3, 2020)
- Small Business Administration: Managing Cross-Atlantic Supply Chain Communication (2021)
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