Someone mentioned pudding. I have had much confusion with the nature and meaning of puddings in recent months as I am currently in a situation with much multinational contact. For some ethnic groups, pudding seems to mean one thing and one thing only: those very cheap milk based deserts that are sold in tall, single-serving plastic containers with foil lids, whose volume is mostly made up of a gelatinous sweet goo, then there is some cream on the top.
As an Englishman, I consider pudding to be the sweet dish which is eaten after the savoury dish. Although there is some overlap between pudding and desert, and very often the words are wholly interchangeable, I would say that pudding is hot, very filling and often cooked in the oven. Examples would be rice pudding, bread and butter pudding, semolina, crumble, fruit sponges, spotted dick, fruit cobblers, queen of pudding etc. Deserts tend to be found in the fridge, and therefore include trifle, banoffee pie, yoghurts and mousses. In some instances Sunday's pudding can be Mondays desert (think of the lemon meringue who begins life in the oven but spends its last days in the fridge).
My question: what do you consider pudding to be?