They spell it “kerb.”
At first, I was worried that the British were playing a joke on me. While looking at the Wikipedia page for sidewalks (we’ll come to that another day), I was startled by the following sentence:
“A sidewalk is normally higher than the roadway, and separated from it by a kerb (spelled ‘curb’ in North America).”
A what, now?
As I said, I was worried. So, I did the natural thing one does when confronted with the possibility that a variety of one’s language is playing a joke on oneself.
I googled “kerb stomp.”
To be honest, not a lot came up. It mostly self-corrected to “curb stomp,” and that was gross and scary and said. Curb stomps freak me out. So then I just googled “curb vs. kerb” and found all these British and Australian people saying some version of, “The difference between ‘curb’ and ‘kerb’ is that curb is a verb and kerb is the thing next to the street.” Evidently Larry David is also popular in the Commonwealth. Also, I feel like they could have made it keep rhyming. “Curb is a verb and kerb’s in a ‘burb.” Something like that. I would say, “Kerb protects your herbs,” but you have to make that plural if it isn’t going to be about cannabis, and I think more people are growing parsley in roadside gardens than are growing cannabis, but maybe I’m a sheltered youth.
Bottom line? The British are full of surprises. Some can even be found lying on the side of the road.
