Why do people call the ground the floor?

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.

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

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

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 ?

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

Pull the other one, it has bells on!

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.

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

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

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'!

Ro60

I think I use either.
I've not really ever thought about what's correct.
It's not as if I'm a surveyor.

It’s a Cheshire thing.
Our English mistress at school, who was in fact Scottish, would occasionally have a little rant about it, wondering why Cheshire people referred to the ground as the ‘floor’, as she’d never come across that usage anywhere else.
But why would it annoy anyone?

On architectural drawings you may see floor plans - labelled ground floor, first floor, second floor etc and you may also see a ground plan, which will include the outside space beyond the ground floor. It is helpful to be precise.

They grow in the ground ???

I want to know where ground almonds come from. Have they been on the floor?

I’m more ranty about a pack of cheese that just hit the floor (kitchen, hope that’s allowed) after I’d tried to ‘tear here’.
I don’t care if people say floor or ground and use deck too.

It annoys Mumsnetters too. Their thread has more posts than ours. Come on GN.

I find it really annoying. Floor is inside. Ground is outside. Why not just use the correct word?

EllenVannin our French apartment was on the first floor, the floor beneath was called Rez-de-chaussée-at street level.
It’s as confusing as school years in the UK. In your second year in school, you go into Year 1.

I often correct myself as I find myself doing that.

And I heard a politician saying it this morning on TV. My feeling is that it's fine to say first floor or third floor, when you are describing the level of a building, as it's inside. I've got my full pedant hat on about using the word floor for something outside, it just grates with me so much that I'm looking for it now.

My flat is on the "ground floor" but advertised as first floor ? A first floor is above the ground ?-----but it isn't !
So which is it, ground floor or first floor ?
Ground floor in buildings gives me a picture of the cellar . Obviously it's on a level with the ground and not beneath.

Oh dear, I’m one of those bad people.?
If my DGS’s drops a sweet outside, I say, “Don’t eat that, it’s been in the floor!”Riverwalk I use ocean floor and forest floor, or even bed instead of ground and have heard ? people say, “Hit the deck!” when there’s no decking there and the weren’t intending violence to the deck anyway.

The voice in the lift of my John Lewis says both, "Ground Floor".

'Floor' instead of 'ground' irritates me, too.

Using the wrong word by accident is a different matter, but on a lot of the police programmes it's deliberate.