Perhaps most charmingly, flashlights are called torches in Britain and Ireland. In England, a flashlight is called a torch because the word already meant a handheld source of light long before electricity. British English kept the older term when battery-powered lights arrived, so "electric torch" became the natural label, and "electric" eventually got dropped in everyday speech. The American term "flashlight" came later, and it stuck in the U.S. even as British usage stayed rooted in the older word for a portable light source. Once a word becomes common in everyday speech, speakers often keep it even when the object it describes evolves.