In my cups

Just as I listen to British radio to quell pangs of homesickness for a country I have never visited, so I read the British papers and as I was reading this recently I came across a surprise.  Nothing serious, of the lawks-gawd-help-us variety, but the piece piqued my interest when it alluded in passing to the cup measure being an American thing.

A quick visit to my dictionary confirmed that, according to the people at the OED, the word "cup" as a baking measure is primarily a North American thing.  I can only assume that they haven't a typical Kiwi kitchen on baking day.

Now I was well aware that there was an American cup, and that it was slightly different to the metric cup that I grew up with.  The difference had lulled me into the misconception that the metric cup was therefore of English origin.  But it seems that the cup crept into New Zealand from America and was metricated (if that's the word I want) some time later.

Incidentally the American cup is half an American pint, which is quite a bit smaller than the old English pint.  It's actually very close to the metric cup, close enough that I have had no problem just using American cups where my recipes call for the metric kind.

The cup isn't the only American export that has been embraced by Kiwis but not Britons.  To name just one, in Britain pants are underwear, whereas in the US and New Zealand they are trousers.  And I'm sure there are plenty more where those two came from.