Being able to use the word ‘fortnight’ without people staring blankly at me.  

It took me at least a month (that would be two fortnights) to realize that the vast majority of people in the U.S. don’t know what this word means.  Not only that, they had never heard of this word.  My colleagues thought I was speaking Shakespeare. I still didn’t really believe that a common word in the English language, used everywhere in the world, was completely unknown to most Americans.  So I decided to ask my boss at the time, who is exceptionally smart, if he knew what a fortnight was.

His response was - oh yes, I know this one, um, it’s 10 days, right?

And then I sighed and said no, its 14 days, and I never used the word fortnight at work again.

But seriously, how did this one word not make it across the Atlantic?  It would be like an American going to England and them not understanding what the word ‘month’ means.  That’s how commonly used the word ‘fortnight’ is and hence why I was so astonished by its disappearance in the American vocab.