British English has many ways to disagree without saying so.
I take your point, but: I disagree.
I’m not sure that’s quite right: That is wrong.
Correct me if I’m wrong: I am sure I am right.
I might be missing something: This makes no sense.
That’s one way of looking at it: That is the wrong way.
Fair enough: I do not agree, but I will stop arguing.
On 14 June 1978, in a debate on the economy, the chancellor Denis Healey answered an attack from Geoffrey Howe. He said: “That part of his speech was rather like being savaged by a dead sheep.”
On 13 November 1990, Howe explained to the House of Commons why he had resigned from Margaret Thatcher’s cabinet. He used a cricket image: “It is rather like sending your opening batsmen to the crease only for them to find, the moment the first balls are bowled, that their bats have been broken before the game by the team captain.”
Thatcher announced her resignation nine days later.
In a YouGov survey published in January 2018, 39 percent of British adults said they would feel uncomfortable sending food back in a restaurant. Thirty-four percent said they rarely or never send food back.
In a separate poll of 2,000 consumers in the United Kingdom, commissioned by the customer feedback firm Customer First Solutions, 47 percent said they would insist that everything was fine when asked about their meal, even if they had not enjoyed it.
In the BBC political comedy The Thick of It, first broadcast in 2005, Peter Capaldi plays Malcolm Tucker, described by the British Comedy Guide as “Number 10’s foul-mouthed policy enforcer.” The guide notes that the show possibly holds the record for the most use of the F word in a British comedy.
In the case of Medcalf v Mardell, Mr. Justice Wilson, later a justice of the Supreme Court, disagreed with the two other judges hearing the appeal. He began his dissent: “Notwithstanding my profound respect for the two senior members of this court.”
On 28 April 2010, during the general election campaign, Prime Minister Gordon Brown met Gillian Duffy, a lifelong Labour supporter, in Rochdale. She questioned him about debt, education and immigration. The conversation ended warmly: “Good. Good to see you, take care.”
In his car, still wearing a television microphone, Brown told an aide: “That was a disaster.” He described Duffy as “a sort of bigoted woman.” When the recording was broadcast, he apologized and went to her home to apologize in person.
Until 2012, Ofsted, the inspectorate for schools in England, used four grades: outstanding, good, satisfactory and inadequate. A school graded satisfactory did not provide a good standard of education.
In September 2012, the chief inspector, Sir Michael Wilshaw, replaced satisfactory with requires improvement. Ofsted said: “Satisfactory should never have been more than a staging post on a school’s journey towards providing a good or outstanding education for all children.”
In Jane Austen’s novel Emma, published in 1815, Emma Woodhouse joins a picnic on Box Hill. During a game of wit, she makes a joke at the expense of Miss Bates, a poor, talkative older woman, in front of the whole party.
As the party breaks up, Mr. Knightley takes Emma aside and rebukes her: “It was badly done, indeed!” Emma cries almost all the way home.
In May 1984, at a gala for the 150th anniversary of the Royal Institute of British Architects, Prince Charles criticized a proposed extension to the National Gallery in London, designed by the firm Ahrends, Burton and Koralek. He called it “a monstrous carbuncle on the face of a much-loved and elegant friend.”
The design was later abandoned.
An anonymous table called the Anglo-EU Translation Guide has circulated widely by email and online. It lists what the British say, what they mean, and what others understand. In one row, “With the greatest respect” means “I think you are an idiot,” and the listener understands “He is listening to me.”
The linguistics blog Language Log found that the table seems to come from the same source as a 2004 column in The Economist. That column credited the joke to the Dutch, trying to do business with the British.