When the United States entered WWII the British sent over a high level team to the US to discuss strategy’s to win the war. It was a great advantage to not have to use interpreters during this process. Or was it????? At one point the British were considering a particular topic and told the Americans they wanted to table the discussion on that topic. The Americans vehemently protested and said they did not want to table that issue. A rather testy exchange ensued for a while before they realized they wanted the same thing. The term ‘tabling a topic’ to the British meant bringing it up for discussion while the Americans used the same term to mean dropping discussion of a topic.

(Book – The Second World War Volume III – Winston S, Churchill)