johneccles Loc: Leyland UK

Thank you Mr Brown for you complementary remark! I have been considering staying in Bognor when I return from France in May instead of Portsmouth but now I will probably go to Salisbury instead and visit the cathedral.
If ever you visit the Preston area and go into any Wetherspoons you will soon realise how true your statement is.

I am joking by the way, not about Wetherspoons though!

foathog Loc: Greensboro, NC

leery |ˈlirē|
adjective (leerier, leeriest) informal
cautious or wary due to realistic suspicions: a city leery of gang violence.

jaymatt Loc: Alexandria, Indiana

The words are basically synonymous--it's a matter of the user's choice.

leery=suspicious, distrustful
wary=on guard, cautious

Someone asked me the other day if I carried a dictionary around with me (I took it as a compliment, though I don' think it was meant that way), so, once again, I took the time to look the words up.

Architect1776 Loc: In my mind

leery
English

Adjective
(er)
Cautious, hesitant, or nervous about something; having reservations or concerns.
:Since he was bitten by a dog when he was young, he has always been leery of animals.

wary
English

(Webster 1913)
Adjective
(er)
Cautious of danger; carefully watching and guarding against deception, artifices, and dangers; timorously or suspiciously prudent; circumspect; scrupulous; careful.
He is wary of dogs.
Characterized by caution; guarded; careful.
Synonyms
* cautious, guarded, careful, chary
Derived terms
* unwary * warily * wariness

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

Leery and wary mean about the same things to me, and I use them interchangeably. From the dictionary on my Mac:

leery |ˈli(ə)rē|
adjective (leerier, leeriest) informal
cautious or wary due to realistic suspicions: a city leery of gang violence.

Funny thing is, unless you never travel outside your local community, or never watch TV, movies, or stage plays, or read, you probably have heard and read enough variations on your own language to understand the colloquial and regional terms and usages. I was born in the Midwest (Michigan), and moved South at age 5 (North Carolina). I moved to South Carolina at 12. Each has a different regional accent set, dialect, and a VERY different pot of colloquialisms. Yet it's all (American) English.

Americans see a lot of Australian and British television on our Public Broadcasting System. My wife and I watch several of these "foreign" shows each week. She majored in English, and I minored in it in college, so we've internalized a lot of the word choices and phrasing from those countries, as we had to read some of their literature. Listening to another accent or dialect is second nature.

English is a huge melting pot of words, with countless word origins and evolutions of concepts. Yet we all seem to understand most of what others are saying, whether we're from the UK, USA, Australia, India, Canada... and only occasionally do we need to inquire about a word choice or regional spelling. It wasn't always that way.

When I was in college in the early 1970s, I worked two summers for a British company that manufactured textile machinery. They had just bought the company my Dad worked for, and I had a summer job there, repairing and retrofitting some of the British machines in a mill in an isolated town in South Carolina.

In our work group, we had the local mill "fixers," (mechanics) who were descendants of Irish potato famine escapees (1845-1852). Most of them rarely ventured outside their own community. We had a few Brits, from Accrington and Oldham, England (also mechanics). We had an Indian technician (mechanic) from New Delhi, via Accrington.

I became sort of the translator. I quickly figured out that the Brits and the Indian could not understand the locals, because they all used different words that meant the same things. But they could all understand me! "Ah dowah lak that; 'and me that spannah" (British working class brogue) became "Gimme dat dare wree-unch!" (SC redneck twang). Of course, both meant, "Please hand me that wrench, sir." Several times a day, I would help them "understand" each other, because I could listen to each dialect and make sense of it, asking questions to clarify if needed.

Of course, behind their initial inability to understand each other was an undercurrent of mistrust and dislike. The locals were used to American machines that had lasted 70 to 100 years with very little maintenance. The Brits had a different philosophy of machine manufacturing... Make the lowest cost machine, to get the sale, and make their money by selling a never-ending stream of high-priced replacement parts. The mill owners had sued our company for performance misrepresentation and won, and we were working out the terms of the settlement... We were there to retrofit better-made American parts onto the open-end spinning frames. By the end of the summer, machines were working better, and the crew were understanding each other — even joking about their language differences and comparing speech patterns at lunch.

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

If you have a smartphone, you can use multiple dictionaries and thesauruses by downloading apps. I keep a couple on my iPhone.

Words are tools... I like to use the right tool for the job. If you ever watched a redneck carpenter use a hammer to pound in wood screws, you know why.

Martino Loc: Northwest Florida

Having been born English, lived there for most of my life, traveled pretty widely (being in the tourism industry) and for the past 10 years have been an American and living in the south, I can say I've heard and used both terms almost interchangeably. I'd agree there are subtle differences, but I think most people would understand either.

jaymatt Loc: Alexandria, Indiana

Really? I never thought of that!

John_F Loc: Minneapolis, MN

One of my iPad dictionary apps defines "leery" as "wary, suspicious" archaic as "alert." I, as a upper midwesterner, prefer "wary" as is close in form to "aware." As "leery" is close in form to "lear" I would sense that "leery" is to be "suspicious with a smirk on one face."

rmalarz Loc: Tempe, Arizona

I'm leery of using wary on this side of the pond.

I think the meaning is quite similar regardless of location. One could easily substitute cautious.
--Bob

jaymatt Loc: Alexandria, Indiana

speters Loc: Grangeville/Idaho

Cricky, that's bloody marvelous!!

billnikon Loc: Pennsylvania/Ohio/Florida/Maui/Oregon/Vermont

We say Aluminum, you so Al U Minimum.

oldtigger Loc: Roanoke Virginia-USA

the two words cannot be substituted, one for the other.
They do not represent the same concept at all.
Common usage does not make it right, it just makes it common.

Bushpilot Loc: Minnesota

This has been an interesting discussion of things I never seem to think about in the course of the day.