Timeline for Losing power in the UK vs US: what's more common?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
24 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Jul 20 at 15:39 | comment | added | Lambie | You can look this up: site:.uk versus no site designated. | |
| Jul 20 at 10:49 | answer | added | Kevin | timeline score: 0 | |
| Nov 23, 2021 at 19:13 | answer | added | Estuaryenglishman | timeline score: 0 | |
| Nov 13, 2019 at 16:02 | history | bumped | CommunityBot | This question has answers that may be good or bad; the system has marked it active so that they can be reviewed. | |
| Oct 14, 2019 at 17:06 | comment | added | WS2 | @HotLicks I guess what I am saying is that there is no clear distinction between a "blackout" and a "cut" - since both involve an interruption of power. And most times the consumer is "totally in the dark" (excuse the pun) as to what the cause was. | |
| Oct 14, 2019 at 16:57 | comment | added | Hot Licks | @WS2 - Tripping a breaker to prevent a transformer from exploding may be the intended cause/effect action, but it is not "intentional" in the sense that someone intended the power to go out at 3:06PM. | |
| Oct 14, 2019 at 16:53 | comment | added | WS2 | @HotLicks Are not nearly all such blackouts "intentional", in that the system gets shut down either automatically or manually when there is a problem, or overload? So the underlying reason may well be accidental, but the immediate cause is because someone or some computer has thrown a switch. After WW2 in Britain it took a number of years to build up generation capacity to required levels. So it was often the case that there were overloads. Hence the origin of the term "power cut". | |
| Oct 14, 2019 at 15:53 | answer | added | Lordology | timeline score: 1 | |
| Mar 23, 2018 at 20:35 | history | tweeted | twitter.com/StackEnglish/status/977282679958843393 | ||
| Mar 23, 2018 at 15:41 | comment | added | TripeHound | In my Br.E experience, while a "power cut" could be intentional, the term doesn't imply intentionality. | |
| Mar 23, 2018 at 15:40 | comment | added | Phil Sweet | Blackout implies a large-scale outage, as when a power plant drops off line or entire grid sections get isolated. It isn't used when a transformer on your street blows. Personally, I don't associate it with daytime or nighttime in any way. I wouldn't use it for outages smaller than 50,000 people. MW seems to agree. "c : a period of darkness (as in a city) caused by a failure of electrical power" | |
| Mar 23, 2018 at 15:28 | history | edited | Mitch | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
formatting, title, tag
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| Mar 22, 2018 at 1:15 | comment | added | 1006a | Yes, I distinguish between all of these. Power outage is most general; power cut is intentional; blackout happens at (or continues into) nighttime; power failure is usually localized, like in a single building or car or machine. | |
| Mar 22, 2018 at 1:14 | comment | added | Hot Licks | The problem is that these are all used in different contexts. "Power cut" would the least common (in the US) but only because it's mainly reserved for an intentional disconnection. | |
| Mar 22, 2018 at 1:12 | comment | added | lbf | in the states ... 'the power is out' or shorter ... powers out. | |
| Mar 22, 2018 at 1:08 | answer | added | Mitch | timeline score: -1 | |
| Dec 9, 2017 at 17:00 | comment | added | Jim MacKenzie | If anyone cares, in Canadian English you hear all these terms, but "power cut" is quite uncommon and refers specifically to an intentional interruption in power (e.g. a service disconnection due to cancellation of service or for non-payment). It wouldn't describe an ordinary temporary disruption. | |
| Dec 9, 2017 at 16:03 | comment | added | Jeff Zeitlin | '...outage' and '... failure' seem to be equally common in the NYC area, anecdotally, but both are less common than 'blackout'. '... cut' is vanishingly rare, and would only be used if it was a deliberate action by the provider. | |
| Dec 9, 2017 at 14:54 | comment | added | Mick | Power cut is the usual term in the UK, and the one most commonly used in news bulletins. If a widespread power cut (an entire city, say,) occurs during the night, it might be called a total blackout (especially by the more sensational newspapers), since it harks back to the blackouts that were enforced during World War 2. | |
| Dec 9, 2017 at 13:48 | comment | added | Peter Shor | I hear both blackout and power outage in AmE, and they're both reasonably common. | |
| Dec 9, 2017 at 13:47 | comment | added | A playgoer | Thank you, Peter. But I'd be more grateful if you'd tell me about your own experience of the words. Which one do you use or hear most? | |
| Dec 9, 2017 at 13:43 | comment | added | Peter Shor | Actually, Google Ngrams shows that blackout is by far the most common in both BrE and AmE. This might be a false positive, because blackout has other meanings. See Ngram. | |
| Dec 9, 2017 at 13:05 | comment | added | user 66974 | Power outage appears to be more common in AmE as shown in Google Books books.google.com/ngrams/… | |
| Dec 9, 2017 at 12:48 | history | asked | A playgoer | CC BY-SA 3.0 |