I'm afraid to say that this is more of me not getting around to blogging. So many things on the list, but my day job has been taking over my nights.
But several people have asked to hear the interview with me and Ben Yagoda from Radio 4's Today Programme (AmE program, of course), aired earlier today. Though I'd thought you could to listen to radio (but not TV) from abroad on BBC iPlayer, apparently you cannot (or cannot anymore). It's here as a video, as social media makes it easier to post videos than to post mp3s, and is a .mov file. I hope your computer's media player can play it. The title's rather biased representation of who's on is courtesy of Better Half, who originally posted this on his Facebook feed. Since we're in different time zones at the moment, I haven't got the power to wake him up and make him change it.
By the way, after these years of protecting BH's privacy by giving him a pseudonym, I find I don't want to any more. Instead I want to introduce you to him. His first novel is released in the UK in September and in the US in October, and you can click through those places to read (a little) more about it. Yay, Phil!
Trying to check usage of epilog(ue) and prolog(ue) in US spelling. Seen suggestion that "ue" forms still more widely used. True?
And I felt the need to blog this immediately, since this is something
that niggles me about British understanding of US spelling sometimes. I
am often being told that Americans don't write catalogue, they write catalog. The same for dialogue/dialog. But, the thing is, I've always (or at least since I was a grown-up) used the -ue
in all of them. Because the shorter forms are only American, from the
British perspective, the shorter forms are "the American spelling". But
from the American perspective, most wouldn't consider the longer forms
to be "the British spelling" in the same way that we'd consider colour or centre
as British spellings. They're just alternative spellings, listed in
American dictionaries without any dialect marking. Noah Webster is
generally credited/blamed for these kinds of 'shortenings' in AmE, but
he used dialogue in at least the earliest edition of his Blue-Backed Speller. The move for this change seems to have come later, in the period when Melvil(le) Dewey (he of the Dewey Decimal System) was a leading spelling-reform advocate. In an article in Verbatim on The American Spelling Reform Movement, Richard Whelan
writes:
During the 1890s, a few state legislatures passed bills calling for
simplified spelling to be taught in public schools, and the prestigious
American dictionaries began to acknowledge the call for reform, first by
listing simplifications in appendices, and eventually transferring some
to the main entries as acceptable alternatives.
The turning point came in February 1897, when the National
Education Association (NEA) resolved that all of its official
correspondence and publications would thenceforth use simplified
spellings for twelve words: catalog, decalog, demagog, pedagog, prolog,
program, tho, altho, thoro, thorofare, thru, and thruout. This move
brought the issue of spelling reform to wide public attention and forced
even many conservatives to take seriously what they had previously
dismissed as the folly of cranks
But note that the ue-less forms have pre-American precedent. For instance, the OED notes that from Middle English to the 16th century dialogue was mostly dialoge (as it was in the French of the time), and sometimes dialog. The spelling dialogue is really only seen after this, following a spelling change in French.
So, for fun, here's how some of these spellings fare in the Corpus of Contemporary American English and Noah Webster's namesake, the Merriam-Webster (online) Dictionary. The
middle two columns give the raw numbers of how many of each spelling is
found for the singular noun form of each of these words. The last
column says which spelling is given first by Merriam-Webster.
So THE ONLY ONE that is more frequently used in the shorter form in AmE is catalog(ue),
and even then, the longer form is well represented. In other words, the
most commercial term is the most likely to use the shorter form. [And, afterthought: also the one that is closest to Dewey's heart, as a library term.]
Despite the National Education Association's example, this spelling
reform has not been wholly successful.
Some footnotes to the table:
*The case of dialogue is interesting because of dialog box, which is spelled/spelt without the -ue in computer jargon in both countries. This is like the case of program, which is longer (programme) in most senses in BrE, but which uses the shorter (AmE) form for the computer sense. (And color
in html and so forth. One could say that America runs computing jargon,
or one could say that programmers prefer shorter and consistent forms.
Or one could say it's a bit of both.) Anyhow, 375 (53%) of the 702
cases of dialog here are in the phrase dialog box and its variants (dialog boxes, dialog box-in). (There are also 18 cases of dialogue box[es].) So, this means that outside this two-word compound, dialogue outnumbers dialog in AmE by 38:1.
** There was one case of pedagogs in COCA. There were 0 cases of demagog or demagogs. So, while M-W lists these as variants, they don't seem to have made deep inroads into the written language.
*** I meant to do analog(ue) too, and was reminded of it when commenters started asking for it, so here it is, several hours later. This one is noteworthy because M-W says for the adjective that analogue is a 'chiefly British variant' of analog, rather than just listing it as an alternative spelling, but for the noun sense it has analogue as the preferred spelling for the noun--which is in contrast with the numbers from COCA [thanks to @empty in the comments for pointing out my error]. Like catalog and dialog box, its "technological" senses are more common. So we have a general pattern here of literary words keeping the -ue and more techie stuff dropping it.
My to-do list says that I'm (BrE) marking/(AmE) grading this morning. Please don't tell my to-do list that I was here.
I've just come out from under several painful deadlines and am ready to do some blogging. And the note that I've written to myself is: crosswords. I wrote this note on 11 January, the day that one of the most famous British crossword compilers announced, via his puzzle, that he had terminal cancer. This is why the other deadlines were painful. I could have been writing about crossword puzzles, but I had other stuff to do. Oh, the misery.
But more to the point: crossword(puzzle).This word/expression can refer to the same thing in BrE and AmE, but it usually doesn't.
In the UK, the bare term crossword most usually refers to cryptic crossword puzzles. These exist in the US, but not as much as in the UK, where each of the (mainly BrE) broadsheetnewspapers has a daily cryptic crossword. Now, these were not the original type of crossword puzzles, and everyone here knows they are cryptic crosswords, but if we look at the adjectives that come before crossword in the British National Corpus, cryptic crossword only occurs once in 100 million words. The most frequent adjective before crossword in the BNC is quick, which names the other kind of crossword that's found in the UK. The reason why quick crosswordoccurs more than cryptic crossword is not because people write about cryptic crosswords less. It's because when they do write about them, they tend to just say crossword. (Take for example, theGuardian'sCrossword Blog, cited again below, which pretty much only discusses the cryptic sort.)
In the US, the word crossword tends to refer to a different animal than is seen in the UK. If one were to talk about those ones in the UK, they'd have to be called American-style crosswords or something like that. If a puzzle is a cryptic one, Americans will call it a cryptic crossword or sometimes a British-style crossword puzzle. Among those in the know, though, British-style crossword refers to a grid style, as opposed to American-style grids. This picture comes from an eHow page on how to make crossword grids. The one on the left, with less white space is British-style. The one on the right is American-style.
Both cryptic crosswords and quick crosswords in the UK are in the British-style grid. (In the US, you might see British-style grids in school exercises, but not usually in newspapers.) The British-style grid means that you pretty much need to be able to determine the answer for every clue. If you don't know the answer for one of the across items in the leftmost puzzle above, knowing all the other answers will get you just a small proportion of the letters in the one you don't know. If all you've figured out is that they want a five-letter musical instrument whose second letter is I, you won't know until the answer is published whether it's a PIANO or a VIOLA (or some other instrument I haven't thought of).
In the American-style one, you can get the answer in a roundabout way. Since each of the letters of the five-letter musical instrument intersects with another word, you can build the word one letter at a time from other clues. But because of this, American clues are much more ambiguous than British ones. For instance, the clues in British crosswords of both types tell you how many
letters are in the answer, and how the string breaks down into words.
American ones don't give you that information, though the easiest ones might tell you that the
answer has multiple words. American clues are sometime jokey (more so than UK Quick ones) and the puzzle itself often has a running theme (so can the other types, but this is a [mostly AmE in this figurative sense] calling card of American puzzles). Because there are so many short words in an American-style puzzle (and they need to line up nicely), any American puzzle-solver has a good vocabulary of three-letter combinations that somehow mean something--including compass points and acronyms.
A quick tour of clues--which won't do any of the puzzles justice:
Cryptic (The Independent Cryptic Crossword 7768 by ANAX as discussed in the Guardian Crossword blog):
26ac What can you get for 20p?Oddly, silver key (4)
The answer is ISLE
(as in the Florida Keys); the first bit of the wordplay is a plug for
the Independent's sister paper i, which belatedly started including a
cryptic crossword - one that's as good as any broadsheet's and which
we'll look at here in more detail before long.
The Guardian blogger saw fit to explain the I, but have you got the SLE? Oddly is the clue to tell you to look for--the odd-numbered letters in the following word, silver. (The keyis there to make it rhyme. is the definition, of course--see Owen's comment correcting my original mistake! But it's still true that UK cryptics are more likely to allow extraneous words: SeeWikipediatells me that this kind of thing is more allowable in British cryptic crosswords than in North American ones. Click on the link to seefor more UK/North American differences.) A guide to types of cryptic clues can be found here.)
The last of these was part of a theme (left for the solver to discover) of songs with eye colo(u)rs in their titles.
I love to do the New York Times crossword whenever I get the chance (which isn't much, because when I visit the US all the crossword puzzles in the newspaper are spoken for, and you do NOT do someone ELSE's crossword puzzle. Not if you know what's good for you).*
But I am a fan of the British cryptics--by which I mean that I admire them and like to read about them, but I don't do them myself. (Whenever I convince myself I've got the patience for the clues, I become undone by the inclusion of bits of British cultural knowledge that I don't have--such as anything to do with cricket.) I'm not sure if anyone else sees crossword puzzles as a spectator sport, but it's a good one. And so when Araucaria's cancer puzzle came to light, I was saddened and appreciative [that he wanted to communicate with his fans in this way] as a long-time spectator-fan. As far as I can tell (there's not a lot of data in the corpora), the term crossword compileris used in both US and UK, but perhaps more in the US, since in the UK crossword setterseems more common. (Recall our discussion of exam-setting too.)
Finally if, like me, you're an crossword-spectating expatriate in the UK with South African connections, I recommend Pretty Girl in Crimson Rose [8], South-African-expat-in-UK Sandy Balfour's memoir of falling in love over puzzles. You might even like it if you're just some of those things.
*Yes, yes, I could download an app or something. But have I mentioned that I have a job with DEADLINES?! In my life crossword puzzles are for (BrE) holidays/(AmE) vacations or hospital stays. And now that my holidays/vacations involve a child, they're not really for those either.
P.S. (the next day): @MagdalenB sent me this on Twitter. A British crossword setter explains the differences between British and American crosswords (after 2 long minutes of introduction, which can be skipped). I'm right about the cricket!!
So, there I was, enjoying a nice evening of nothing while on (AmE) vacation/(BrE) holiday, when Dave Summers of Ohio tweeted me to ask:
Heard "disentangle" the other day. Is that perhaps BrE for "untangle"?
To which I replied, "No, it's AmE too". But then I wondered whether the rates of their use were different and I found that they were. Voilà! A Difference of the Day for my Twitter feed (which has been very sporadically updated while I've been on holiday/vacation as it gets hard to tell where one day starts and another ends). So, I tweeted:
AmE and BrE have both 'disentangle' and 'untangle'. But disentangle:untangle ratio = 2:3 in AmE and 3:1 in BrE. (Source = COCA and BNC at Mark Davies' Corpora site.)
And I was all ready to call it a night when Gordon Hemsley of Georgia tweeted to say:
I actually think those words mean different things to me. Disentangle implies more than one thing; untangle can be 1.
...and while I thought he was probably right, I also know that it's very often the case that the stories we tell ourselves about how the differences between synonyms are often very different from how we actually use them. So, here I am researching this little thing at 1 in the morning instead of any of the other two things I have to do before bed or the opportunity to sleep that I really should take before restarting the academic term. Sigh-di-sigh-sigh-sigh.
Dictionaries don't tell us of any dialectal differences between these words, nor do they really mark Gordon's division of labo(u)r for the two words. The dictionaries I've looked at give two meanings for disentangle (or if not two meanings, then examples of both of these meanings): (1) to free something from its entanglement with something else, (2) to bring out of a tangled state, unravel.
I've started my investigation by looking at cases where the word from occurs within five words after the base forms of the verbs (untangle, disentangle). If you're removing the tangle in one thing, you probably wouldn't have a from--we don't untangle a knot from itself, we just untangle a knot. So the from examples can be assumed to involve removing a tangle of two things (the first sense of the word, above). An example from COCA:
He managed to disentangle himself from his kayak before it was pulled into the hole.
In both dialects, there is a strong preference for using disentangle with from. So, more than 1/3 of disentangles are closely followed by a from, and far fewer untangles have a from after them.
COCA (AmE)
BNC (BrE)
disentangle ... from
36% [76/210]
37% [28/103]
untangle... from
11% [35/319]
15% [4/26]
So far AmE and BrE aren't looking very different. The next question is how they act when only one thing is involved, and a tangle is removed from it. To look at that, I've looked at all the forms of each verb (i.e. untangle, untangled, untangling, etc.) followed by a/an/the and then a singular noun.
per 100 million words
COCA (AmE)
BNC (BrE)
disentangl* a(n)/the sg-N
8
20
untangl* a(n)/the sg-N
26
12
This is far from a thorough investigation of these two words, but what the numbers here seem to be saying is that AmE has a strong preference for untangle with singulars and that this isn't shared by BrE. This is to say that Gordon's hunch was right in terms of how these words work in AmE and that the BrE use that Dave heard probably struck him as strange because it wasn't obeying the untangle-goes-with-singularspreference. Note that these differences are about preferences and probabilities of the uses of two senses of the words, not about one word (or even one sense of a word) being 'British' or 'American'. But they're still differences.
You know, this was an awful lot like work! I've only got three more days off.* Enough of this!**
* Vacation/holiday is, of course, irrelevant, since the blog isn't part of the job that I'm taking a break from. As my hobby, the blog is, I suppose, what I should be doing on my holiday/vacation. You know, instead of getting sleep or spending time with my family. Priorities, eh?
** Except to tell you that the 'fight with' sense of tangle is originally AmE. Just because I can't stop telling you things.
As I noted in the UK-to-US WotY post, this hasn't been a particularly 'big' year for American imports to Britain. Those that were nominated were mostly things that were not clearly American before they were British; that is (in many cases), though an American may have been first to use them, they immediately entered general English. Other nominations didn't seem to have anything particularly "2012" about them--they'd been steadily climbing in BrE for 10 or 20 years, with no particular notice or peak in 2012. But one nomination, by reader Joe, stood out for me. Ladies and germs, the 2012 US-to-UK Word of the Year is
wonk
...as in policy wonk. I'll let Joe's nomination start the talking:
My nomination for AmE to BrE WOTY is "Wonk" as in "Policy Wonk".
Google
searches of pages from the UK show a number of examples, and Oxford and
Cambridge dictionaries online both list the AmE sense of the word (the
Oxford also has the British Naval slang sense).
The clincher for me though was to hear “(Policy) Wonk” used on BBC Radio 4 by Jane Garvey during the 12 November broadcast of “Woman’s Hour”
in a segment where she was debating “who are the women who matter in UK
politics?” with Allegra Stratton, the political editor of BBC Two’s
“Newsnight”. If it's on "Woman's Hour", surely that's a sign it's
moving out from the "Chattering Classes / West Wing fans" and into the
mainstream?
The American Heritage entry for wonk marks it as slang and defines it as:
1. A student
who studies excessively; a grind.
2. One who
studies an issue or a topic thoroughly or excessively
I have not seen the first meaning in BrE, which has its equivalent in the BrE noun swot. It's the second meaning that has been imported (showing once again that borrowings from one language/dialect to another are rarely "complete" or "faithful").
In addition to Joe's noticing it on Woman's Hour, the thing that makes this a word for 2012 is the fact that Ed Miliband (the leader of the Labour Party) flew his wonk flag at the Labour Party Conference:
That the newspaper had to provide a footnote translation of wonk (using another Americanism that's come into BrE, geek) is evidence of its relative newness in BrE.*
Wonk's entry into BrE is complicated a bit by the BrE word wonky (which is currently making inroads in AmE), which means 'unsteady; apt to malfunction; not quite right'. But that doesn't seem to be holding it back. Hail to the wonks! And to wonk!
* This recency is not necessarily the picture you'll get if you try to find evidence of wonk's use in BrE. Collins English Dictionary doesn't bother marking wonk as AmE and includes two Sunday Times examples from 2002. Other early examples seem more tricky to identify as BrE.
There's one policy wonk in the British
National Corpus, way back in 1990, but it's from The Economist, in an article
about US politics--so it was probably written by someone in the US, and perhaps
someone American. Google
Ngram viewer shows an increase in policy wonk in "British
English" books since the 1990s, but click on the link to the books, and
you'll find that most seem to be American books by American authors,
including
the Oxford Dictionary of American Political Slang (by Grant Barrett) and a collection of William Safire's 'On
Language' columns from the New York Times Magazine. I've
said before that Google Ngram Viewer is not to be trusted as a source on
AmE/BrE differences, and I feel the need to say it again: Google Ngram Viewer
is bad at identifying American English versus British English, even
though it gives you the option of choosing between them. Lastly, when I do a
custom search on plain old Google, searching for the word on sites last updated in a
particular period, it doesn't given me the number of hits, for some reason.
(What's up with that, Google?)
For the first time in six years, I feel spoil{t/ed} for
choice in deciding on a UK-to-US Word of the Year, but have a hard time
thinking of even one good candidate for US-to-UK. After the 2011 UK mediafrenzy of anti-Americanismism, 2012
was the year of hoopla about Britishisms in America.
There were many to choose from, and before announcing my less printable choice,
I’d like to give special mention to stockist, which Nancy Friedman (Fritinancy), an excellent observer of commercial
language, has noted on the rise in US contexts.
In many
ways, I regret my choice of UK-to-US Word of the Year. In other ways, I felt I
didn’t have a choice: the word kept coming up in American contexts this year. And it is:
bollocks
…which has a good AmE equivalent in bullshit. At least, the use that has come into AmE has that
equivalent. In BrE the word means ‘testicles’, and by some extension it is used to
mean ‘nonsense’. But as is often the case for
loanwords, the people borrowing it are not always aware of its other meanings, including the anatomical one. Another use that doesn't seem to be making its
way across is the phrase the dog’s bollocks, which means something good—a
cruder, stronger and less dated version of other animal metaphors like (orig. AmE) the bee’s knees
or (now AmE) thecat’s meow.
We also have Richard Hammond of Top Gear
promoting its use in the US, before admitting that it’s already started making
its way into AmE:
Sightings in AmE start before 2012, of course. The Corpus of Historical American English, which has materials from 1810 to 2009 shows this trend in the last few decades (each column stands for a decade and each number is per approximately 25 million words).
The reason I’m
not too excited about having bollocks as my WotY, despite feeling compelled to have it,
is that it joins 2006’s wanker
on my list of WotYs, which means that now one third of my UK-to-US WotYs are
rather crude. SbaCL continues to secure its place in the list of websites
banned in schools.
Are Americans
really so crude that all we want is vulgar words from the UK? Absolutely not.
But if you’ve ever been around exchange students, you’ll have discovered that
it’s much easier to swear in one’s second language. British vulgarities are
perceived as fun and quaint in American English. They are also perceived as fun
and enjoyable by many British English speakers—swearing is a major British
pastime.
But it’s not seen as quaint, and the British are more aware of
contexts in which these words should not be used. As I noted in a previous post, The Advertising Standards Authority's 'Deleting Expletives' [link is pdf] report of 2000 put bollocks as the 8th most offensive word
according to the British public. Words lower in the 'severity of offence' list than bollocks include arsehole, twat and shit. Most British people I know would contest that ordering of offensiveness, with bollocks feeling pretty mild these days. But still, it's not something that would easily make its way onto a billboard.
So, the
UK-to-US WotY for 2012 is bollocks.
In so many ways. There’s still a little time to get a last-minute US-to-UK word
nomination in. I hope to post it tomorrow.
Two matters for this belated blog post: Words of the Year nominations and the Untranslatables Month summary.
WotY Nominations
Long-term readers will know that we have (at least) two Words of the
Year here at SbaCL, and nominations are open for both categories as of
now:
1. Best AmE-to-BrE import
2. Best BrE-to-AmE import
The word doesn’t have to have
been imported into the other dialect in 2012, but it should have come
into its own in some way in the (popular culture of the) other dialect
this year. I retain the editor's privilege of giving other random
awards on a whim.
Please nominate your favo(u)rites and give arguments for their
WotY-worthiness in the comments to this post. It might be helpful to see
my reasoning on why past words were WotY worthy and other nominations
weren't. Click on the WotY tag in order to
visit times gone by.
Vote early and often! I plan to announce the winners in the week before Christmas.
Untranslatables II
Last year, as a birthday treat to myself, I declared October to be Untranslatables Month, which meant that I tweeted an expression that was unique to one dialect or another, in that its meaning was not captured by an expression in the other dialect. This year, I did it again, but made the job easier on myself by deciding not to tweet on weekends. Here's a summary of the 'untranslatables' I tweeted. In some cases, you can follow links to places where I (or someone) have discussed them in more detail.
BrE lie-in (noun). The act of staying in bed later in the morning than usual. Sleeping not required, but lazing is. Example: 'The family was away, so I had a lie-in on Saturday as an early birthday treat.' (AmE & BrE both have sleeping infor when one sleeps late.)
AmE cater-corner, kitty-corner, catty-corner (regional variations), adj & adv, meaning 'diagonally opposite to'. Example: 'I live kitty-corner to the bordello'.
BrE builder's tea. Very strong (hot, of course), basic (i.e. not a special cultivar/flavo[u]r) tea with milk and lots of sugar. The 'lots of sugar' part is in most definitions for it, but some of my correspondents don't consider 'sweet' to be a necessary feature.
AmE Nielsen rating. The television rating system that determines advertising rates, used figuratively as a measure of popularity. Example: 'When you give babies a choice of what to listen to, a kind of baby Nielsen rating, they choose to listen to mothers talking to infants' (from The Scientist in the Crib).
BrE It's not cricket. 'It shouldn't happen because it's not fair/proper'. Occasionally heard in AmE too.
AmE poster child. Figuratively, an emblematic case of something, esp. a cause. Originally a child on posters promoting a charity. This one has come into BrE--as untranslatables often do (because they're useful). In the US, it's especially associated w/the (US) Muscular Dystrophy Association, which is also responsible for the US's longest-running charity telethon. It's interesting how different diseases are 'big' in terms of fundraising in different countries...
BrE overegged describes something that is ruined by too much effort to improve it. From the expression to overegg the pudding.
AmE hump day. Wednesday, but with the recognition that it's a milestone on the way to the weekend. Though it's heard a bit on the radio in the UK, I'm not sure it'd work well in BrE because of interference from BrE get the hump (='get annoyed, grumpy'). (The sexual meaning of hump is present in both dialects.)
BrE bumf = a collective term for loose printed material/paperwork (forms, pamphlets, letters) that's deemed to be unnecessary. It comes from old slang for 'toilet paper': bumfodder. Example: 'The hallway is littered with election bumf that's come through the door.'
AmE earthy-crunchy (noun or adj), Having 'hippie', 'tree-hugging' tendencies. Synonym = granola.
BrE white van man. I mentioned it on the blog here, but there's more about it here. Though I've read of white van man making it to the US, white vans are much more common and much more associated with skilled manual trade in UK. Some American correspondents had assumed it meant serial killer or child molester, which is not usually the intended meaning in BrE.
AmE antsy. 1. fidgety and impatient, 2. nervous, apprehensive. Has been imported to UK somewhat, but mostly in sense 1.
AmE visit with. To chat with someone, especially if you're having a good catch-up.
BrE for England. To a great extent. Example: 'He can talk for England'. There's no for America in this sense, but in South Africa, for Africa is used in the same way. And perhaps elsewhere. So, 'untranslatable' to AmE.
AmE soccer mom or hockey mom (regional). A (middle-class) mother who spends much time ferrying kids to practice.
BrE sorted (adj & interjection): Most basically, it means something like it's all sorted out. 'My blog post? It's sorted!' But its meaning has extended so that can mean, of a person, basically 'having one's shit together'. Example: 'With all my new year('s) resolutions, I'm certain I'll be fit and sorted by April'. Collins also has it as meaning 'possessing the desired recreational drugs'. Deserves a blog post of its own.
AmE freshman/sophomore/junior/senior. Names of the people in the 1st/2nd/3rd/4th years of secondary (high) school and undergraduate degrees. Fresher is used somewhat for university 1st years in UK, but generally the university years do not have (universally applied) special names in the UK.
AmE to tailgate. To have a party where food/drink served frm a vehicle's tailgate. Mentioned in this old post. (Both dialects have the meaning 'to drive too closely behind a car'.)
BrE for my sins = 'as if it were a punishment'. Often used to mark a 'humblebrag'. Example (from the British National Corpus): 'I happen for my sins to have been shadow Chancellor since the last election in 1987.'
AmE the (academic) honor code. Ethical guidelines that students must follow. Of course, UK univeristies have ethical guidelines for students, but there's not really a term that covers them all, like honor code does. Also, US honor codes typically require that students turn in other students whom they know to be cheating. This does not seem to be as frequently found in UK academic conduct rules.
BrE locum. Someone who stands in for someone else in a professional context, particularly doctor or clergy member. This is a shortened form of locum tenens, which one does see a bit in AmE medical jargon these days (but not just locum, and not in general use).
Whether I do Untranslatables Month again next year remains to be seen...
Don't forget to leave your WotY nominations in the comments!
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