A tale of two cities
Friday, January 20th, 2006When friends of mine from New York City visit me in London, they often refer to our city-wide underground rail system as “the subway”. I explain to them that here in England, we have subways — but the word has a completely different meaning. (A subway here is an underground passageway.) Here, we call our underground rail system — “the underground” or, more usually, “the tube”.
The difference between New York’s subway and London’s tube was highlighted over the Christmas break when short strikes broke out in both cities.