More about linguistics than aircraft having worked for a US company for ten years (based in the souuth complicated matters further) i often half jokingly said I spoke American as well as English. There really are a lot of alternate meanings and meaning for words and phrases often more subtle than the giggle inducing versions of fanny or thongs but many analogies or phrases cause confusion in both directions, playing straight bats or coming out of left field dont cross the Atlantic at all clearly.
interesting to read about the Nimrod, an ugly duckling in disguise really, turning the lovely elegant comment into we err an ugly duckling but no doubt a functional one. Not a wholly Brit thing when one compares the original lineage and final form of a King air and Beechcraft1900 the later of which seemed to have every imaginable bolt on aerodynamic quick fix added to make it work in its 'airliner' guise