Which of the following is more common in British English vs American English?
- Power cut
- Power outage
- Power failure
- Blackout
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4Power 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.– MickCommented Dec 9, 2017 at 14:54
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2'...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.– Jeff ZeitlinCommented Dec 9, 2017 at 16:03
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2If 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.– Jim MacKenzieCommented Dec 9, 2017 at 17:00
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5The 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.– Hot LicksCommented Mar 22, 2018 at 1:14
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2Blackout 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"– Phil SweetCommented Mar 23, 2018 at 15:40
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4 Answers
"Power cut" is certainly the most common in the UK, as seen in the comments. Lexico Oxford Dictionaries gives the phrase the "British" tag.
On Google News, almost all of the news is UK stories, and it's the same story ;-) for power outage in the US.
As for blackout being used as a term for a mass outage in the UK, the fairly recent mass power cut that affected the nation is indeed referred to as a blackout more often than power cut.
"Power outage" is often used to refer to a more local failure, whereas "Power failure" is almost never heard, clearly shown on NGrams:
"Blackout" is also seemingly used to mean a wide-scale outage in the US, as shown in News as well.
"Power failure" doesn't seem that popular either, and as it's a UK term, "power cut" is close to nonexistent. (where "cut" is used, it's usually published by a UK news site).
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The inverted commas should not be used. Compare the results with and without inverted commas. Commented Jul 20 at 11:30
I heard "outage" being used in a film set in 1940s England - which led me here. I never heard the term "outage" before this millennium. I have only used and heard "power cut" before, whether the cause was accidental or planned.
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1Your answer could be improved with additional supporting information. Please edit to add further details, such as citations or documentation, so that others can confirm that your answer is correct. You can find more information on how to write good answers in the help center.– Community BotCommented Nov 23, 2021 at 19:30
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This does not really answer the question. If you have a different question, you can ask it by clicking Ask Question. To get notified when this question gets new answers, you can follow this question. Once you have enough reputation, you can also add a bounty to draw more attention to this question. - From Review Commented Nov 23, 2021 at 20:48
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The fact that a film is set in England does not necessarily mean that it is faithful to English idiom (take, for instance, "War, war! That's all you ever think about, Dick Plantagenet! ..." [Virginia Mayo as Lady Edith, in King Richard and the Crusaders]). Nor for a film set in a certain era that it is faithful to the language of the time (Boudica!>) Commented Jul 20 at 11:18
Years later, but still (I think) relevant. I'm increasingly seeing "outage" in UK news reports, but to me it's still an Americanism. One reason I think so is that only Americans say power is "out" (Brits would say it is "off"). When I stayed in San Francisco in 1979 I remember someone saying "BART is out", meaning that the local Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) system was not running for some reason (I think it was a strike). The whole phrase "BART is out" struck me as one that few Brits could even begin to understand. And so "outage" would also have been quite meaningless to Brits - at least back then.
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In Greater Manchester, one would probably say "The trams aren't running [between Shaw and Rochdale]." The system [Metro] wouldn't usually be named. For the tube in London, one would probably start with "Services on the Underground ...". Commented Jul 20 at 11:23
The Google NGrams corpus search on all four, for UK and US separately are shown here:
Blackout seems to be by far the most popular in both the UK and US, then 'power failure'. 'Power outage' and 'power cut' both seem to be rare in the US.
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3As a Br.E. speaker, this feels wrong ("power cut" is the term I'd use/have most often heard). Does this graph exclude, say, blackout used for someone fainting, or power failure used for individual pieces of equipment rather than the whole mains supply failing? Commented Mar 23, 2018 at 15:37
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2I think this is misleading; here in the D-M-V I hear blackout mainly to reference large-scale grid failures, fainting episodes, spans of lost memory during a night of heavy drinking, or the curtains you vow to install while recovering from that night. If the transformer blows on a street, it's just a power outage.– chosterCommented Mar 23, 2018 at 15:41
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Context is everything. "Resistance is futile". This thing of looking up single words without taking context into account is a fool's errand, in my opinion.– LambieCommented Mar 23, 2018 at 15:49
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1This is interesting in this context. I just googled "power cut" and "Massachusetts" and the top results included power cut and Massachusetts in The Guardian and the BBC, whereas among those same top "local" results "power cut" became "power outage" and Massachusetts. So, that immediately told me that yes, power cut is indeed BrE. (Well, told me because I know how to "read that"? Dunno). :)– LambieCommented Mar 23, 2018 at 16:06
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1@choster there's also 'blackout dates' for times in a schedule that are not allowed to be used, like airlines do for use of frequent flyer miles.– MitchCommented Mar 23, 2018 at 16:39