Why do people call the ground the floor?

KateS Thank you, thank you, thank you! I've been saying/shouting that for the last number of years, particularly when listening to commentators or even newsreaders and even sometimes in the press! I am pleased I am not the only one who gets annoyed. My family cannot understand 'my problem'!

Agree absolutely. The floor is inside, the ground is outside. Simples!

This really annoys me as well, but I hear it used all over the UK, including by TV hosts and politicians.

In British English the ground floor is the one you gain access to from the street or garden and the first floor is up the first flight of stairs and you go on counting every flight of stairs to name the subsequent floors.

American English calls the ground floor the first floor, hence the confusion.

I assumed the use of "floor" for "ground" was a matter of dialect. I am probably wrong, but the first many times I heard it, it was said by people from Birmingham.

And the reason we discuss these sort of things and permit ourselves to feel some usages are wrong is that we care for language and feel that it facilitates understanding if there is some standard form of a language in use.

You're having us on, aren't you, Blossoming?

Pull the other one, it has bells on!

The floor is on top of the ground
The ground is always outside the floor always inside but I am incredible unobservant as I ve never heard it used the other way round perhaps my brain automatically translates it for me ?

I think it may be a Scottish term? I have friends from Aberdeen who call the ceiling the ‘roof’ and the floor the ‘ground’. ?

You’d hate the lift this morning. I had to go to the ‘ground floor’ to get out of the car park.??

I live in a ground floor flat and my neighbour lives upstairs but it's not a shared house. My other neighbours live next door and next door upstairs. It's not a shared/converted house. It's a purpose built block and we each have our own front door at street level.