Off-topic I know, but...
All these things depend on context, and the receiver of the term. I remember calling a friend from NZ a Kiwi - and she was not impressed! I meant it in a friendly way, but she saw it as an insult. Possibly from previous experience?
pom
A British person, especially one from England. (Originally applied to an immigrant from the British Isles.) The wordpomhas its origin in wordplay. An early, derisory term for an immigrant in Australia was the rhyming slangjimmygrant(sometimes written asJimmy Grant), recorded in 1844.Jimmygrantwas further abbreviated in the 1870s tojimmy:
By 1912 another rhyming slang term for ‘immigrant’ had appeared:pomegranate(also written aspommygranateandPommy Grant). In the same year the first evidence for two abbreviations ofpomegranate—pomandpommy—can also be found.Pomegranate(along with its variants) andjimmygrantcoexisted for some time
Today the use ofpomandpommyto refer to an English person is common and widespread. These words can be used with good humour or in a derogatory way, but at the core they still imply a degree of ‘us and them’ mentality. The termwhingeing pom, first recorded in 1962, embodies this. It refers to an English person, especially a migrant, who is regarded as a habitual complainer.
