The British National Corpus (BNC) is a larger and much better constructed corpus than the American National Corpus (ANC), and so in terms of frequency lists there are fewer differences between the BNC and Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) than between COCA and the ANC. Yet there is still about a 10% difference between the two lists (see explanation of methodology below), beyond spelling differences (favo(u)rite, program(me), categori[s/z]e, etc).

Some differences are related to culture, society, politics, or current events (e.g. Am Republican, congressional, baseball, Iraqi; Br Tory, parliamentary, Victorian), some are just different words for the "same" concept (e.g. store/shop, attorney/solicitor, apartment/flat, mom/mum), and some words in COCA (1990-2009) refer to things that are too new to have made it into the pre-1993 BNC (e.g. web, Internet, high-tech, online).

+American (COCA) / -British (BNC)

The following are just a sampling of the words that are much more common in COCA than in the BNC. In all cases, the word is at least twice as far down the list in the BNC wordlist as in COCA (e.g. #2000 in COCA, #5000 in BNC).

Verb: call, report, focus, guess, sign, step, figure, roll, fire, hire, file, oppose, wrap, interview, accomplish, testify, bake, track, evolve, violate, target, pitch, flip, ruin, hike, invade

Noun: student, president, percent, kid, guy, nation, photo, arm, American, Republican, phone, movie, store, lawyer, Democrat, professor, expert, senator, break, camera, coach, item, mom, dream, attorney, scientist, web, camp, truck, apartment, bowl, baseball, internet, basketball

Adjective: American, federal, tough, native, Iraqi, crazy, smart, Israeli, Mexican, congressional, elementary, online, gifted, athletic, ongoing, African-american, suburban, Hispanic, scary, high-tech, cute, nonprofit, immigrant, skeptical, aging, low-income, interstate

+British (BNC) / -American (COCA)

The following are just a sampling of the words that are much more common in the BNC than in COCA. In all cases, the word is at least twice as far down the list in the COCA wordlist as in the BNC (e.g. #2000 in the BNC, #5000 in COCA).

Verb: ensure, suppose, regard, voice, bind, retain, undertake, phone, wan, allocate, knit, book, abolish, envisage, incur, fancy, commence, enclose, enquire, sack, adjourn, tidy, query, retort, queue, nick, remand, smelt

Noun: council, minister, union, pound, scheme, shop, principle, village, provision, sector, appeal, parliament, mum, tea, lord, cabinet, pension, flat, expenditure, solicitor, coal, crown, castle, pub, parish, tenant, councillor, countryside, plaintiff, autumn, cottage

Adjective: British, European, English, royal, French, industrial, Scottish, lovely, working, bloody, parliamentary, alright, statutory, keen, Welsh, Tory, socialist, unemployed, delighted, Victorian, liable, superb, working-class, compulsory, splendid, post-war, dreadful, redundant, inland, wee