What's in a Word 3: Lift. (Caution NSFW)

So we all know weird things about the word lift in America, right. There is the standard understanding of lift in Ireland as being that thing you stand in, push a button and it takes you to another floor.
Just as an aside, I stayed in some hotels in Texas [thanks Paul] and they were many floors up, like 12 and 15 I think. That's the highest bed I have ever slept in. Anyway...

So that's one thing we call a lift, and they call it an elevator here. They have high hopes for technology, it will elevate you... Usually a word I associate with like Dermot O'Mahony's church, rising to new heights in life, not physically but emotionally, mentally or spiritually.

We use lift in another way in Ireland. It means a journey in a car. So if you wanted to go somewhere in Ireland and did not have your own mode of transportation you might ask someone else going in that direction if you can have a lift with them.

Well, in America they say ride.

I'm sure you know how we use ride in Ireland, but just in case you don't remember... There is the generic ride, like riding a horse, but then there is the other meaning, ride like as in sexual intercourse.

So, the very first time one of my roommates turned to another one and asked for a ride I nearly died. I didn't know what to make of it, who in their right mind just out-rightly asks for a ride like that. I imagine it goes on in shady nightclubs and things, but in Bible College? Really?

Not only that, but it was a guy asking a guy... in Bible College.

You remember the time when it turned out loads of trainee priests in the trainee priest school in Ireland were involved in much gay sex... I began to wonder about CCBC for a moment.

Then the response was a very calm and nonchalant 'sure'. I was a little more confused. Whatever about a proposition like that, someone very calmly, in front of about six other people, taking up the offer of homosexual sex was a little unbeliever... the depths of depravity you know?

It was then that I remembered an American friend telling me they made the mistake of asking someone in Ireland for a ride and the weird reaction she got.

So I asked about it! Did they mean they wanted to be brought somewhere in the other roommate's car?

You can imagine the laughter when I told them what I understood by how we use that word in Ireland... It's one of the ones I don't think I'll ever get used to, I still laugh whenever one of the roommates asks someone else for a ride somewhere!

American Words 3, Wavey 0.

But...
American Words 0, Irish ways of saying things 1.