Untranslatables month: the summary

Still buried deep beneath teaching. For your amusement, here are the 'untranslatables of the day' posted on Twitter last month, as promised in my last post. Where there's only a link, it's an expression that I've already written about in some detail. Please click through to see (or take part in) further discussion of those expressions.
  1. BrE punter

  2. AmE pork : "Government funds, appointments, or benefits dispensed or legislated by politicians to gain favor with their constituents" (American Heritage Dictionary, 4th edn)
  3. BrE kettling :  Police practice of surrounding protesters and holding them in a restricted area. Starting to be borrowed into AmE.
  4. AmE trailer trash : Because the social significance of trailers in US is very different from that of static caravans in UK.  (Mentioned in this old post.)
  5. AmE snit : American Heritage 4 says: "state of agitation or irritation', but that's way too imprecise. It's a tiny fit of temper.  (Discussed a bit back here.)
  6. BrE secondment : temporary transfer to work in another part of a company/organi{z/s}ation, e.g. for a special project.  Pronounced with the stress on the second syllable.
  7.  BrE to skive off, skiving.
  8. AmE to jones, jonesing : To suffer withdrawal symptoms and crave. Originally used in relation to heroin. Increasingly heard in BrE. The verb 'to Jones' is from AmE drug slang noun Jones, a drug habit. Then later, a craving: I have a Jones for Reese's peanut butter cups. > I'm jonesing for some Reese's peanut butter cups.
  9. BrE git : Collins English Dictionary says "contemptible person, often a fool". Closest equivalent probably bastard. Git is originally related to bastardy: it comes from beget.
  10. AmE rain check : A promise for something postponed (the check = BrE cheque). For example, I'll have to take a rain check on lunch = 'Although you invited me to lunch, I can't make it today, but I'll take you up on your offer at another time'. Rain check was claimed by Matthew Engel to 'abound' in BrE in his complaints about Americanisms, but it's also the case that it's widely misunderstood in the UK.
  11. BrE jobsworth : "a person who uses their job description in a deliberately uncooperative way, or who seemingly delights in acting in an obstructive or unhelpful manner" (Wikipedia)
  12. AmE potluck : a shared meal (bring a dish to pass), but culturally a different kind of ritual in US and UK.  I discussed it back here.
  13. BrE Oi! : Kind of like hey, you! but with a sense that the addressee is doing something that impinges upon you.  Not to be confused w/ Yiddish oy (vey), heard in AmE.
  14. BrE naff : Means approximately 'uncool' but with particular overtones of 'dorky', 'cheesy' and probably others. Contrary to widespread folk etymology, there's no evidence that naff comes from Not Available For F--ing. Origin is unknown.
  15. AmE nickel-and-dimed : 'Put under strain by lots of little expenses'.  E.g. I thought the house was a bargain, but all the little repairs are nickel-and-diming me to death.
  16. BrE  jammy.
  17. AmE hazing : OED has "A species of brutal horseplay practised on freshmen at some American Colleges".
  18. BrE to come over all queer : to suddenly feel "off"--physically or emotionally. Queer meaning 'feeling odd' (ill or upset) is much more common in BrE than in AmE.  Also: come over all funny, come over all peculiar.
  19. AmE to nix (something) : Generally, to do something decisively negative to something. Specifically: cancel/refute/forbid/refuse/deny (OED).  It's not unheard of in UK, but it's a borrowed AmEism. This is true of many of the AmE 'untranslatables'. They fill a gap.
  20. BrE oo er missus : Humorously marks (maybe unintended) sexual innuendo. See here for some history.
  21. AmE (from) soup to nuts : absolutely inclusive; from absolute start to absolute end or including every related thing.
  22. BrE taking the piss / taking the mickey : Explained at Wikipedia.
  23. AmE inside baseball : requiring rarefied insider knowledge. William Safire discussed it here.
  24. BrE moreish 
  25. BrE ropey or ropy : Of a thing, inferior, unreliable. Of a person, feeling vaguely unwell.
  26. AmE mugwump : Covered recently on World Wide Words.
  27. BrE lurgi or lurgy
  28. AmE 101 (one-oh-one) : the basics of subject. E.g. saying 'please' is Etiquette 101. From the traditional US university course numbering system. The Virtual Linguist wrote about this one.
  29. BrE faff.  See Oxford Dictionaries on this one.
  30. AmE squeaker : Competition or election won by tiny margin.
  31. BrE gutted.

Goodbye Untranslatables month!
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Intralexy

Some readers may be fed up with me for not blogging enough and seeming to spend all my time on Twitter. Those readers will probably not like this post, as it's about what I'm doing on Twitter. But perhaps it might get you interested in joining the party there?

On Twitter, I do a 'Difference of the Day' each day highlighting a small way in which British and American English differ. But since (a) October features Lynneukah, the joyous festival of Lynne, and (b) I'm not going to be able to work in long-form (blogging) much during my Term from Hell, I'm doing something different this month. Each day I will feature an 'untranslatable'--that is, a word or phrase in AmE or BrE that has no true-complete-easy equivalent in the other dialect. The title of this post, intralexy, is my little word for it. Words (that's the -lexy) that exist within (that's the intra-) a particular one of my focal dialects. (These may be very translatable in another dialect or another language...but covering that is not part of my SbaCL shtick. Feel free to point out other equivalents, if you see them.)

Now, I'm sure that people will suggest lots of translations for the things that I present as 'untranslatable'.  So be it.  The expressions I present as 'untranslatable' will be those for which I feel that there is a nuance that cannot be captured by any near-equivalents. That might qualify most of the differences between the dialects. But, again I say: so be it. It's a bit of fun, and if it provides entertainment for people who want to challenge the notion of 'untranslatability', so be it. 

(Hey, you know 'so be it' isn't a bad motto for a Term from Hell. You may hear more of it!)

The first one is going to be BrE punter, which can be translated in lots of ways (click on the link for discussion). Sometimes it means 'bettor', sometimes 'john', sometimes 'person who tries something'. Because all those meanings are joined together in a word that was originally to do with gambling, the other senses carry connotations that aren't found in the AmE version.  In fact, it's one of the words that puzzled me most in my early years in the UK.

So, if you're on Twitter or following my Twitter feed through another means...I hope you enjoy this little diversion! And feel free to suggest more 'intralexis' in the comments!
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both the two of us

Jeremy H wrote me the following:
I have noticed two usages which, in England, seem familiar only to journalists. One was in a headline in the Mail today: "This port ain't big enough for the both of us". I have never heard "the both" uttered in BrE. The other is "You and me both".
Starting with the both: I think of the AmE expression as 'this town ain't big enough for the two of us', and indeed two outnumbers both by about 17:4 in the context [adjective] enough for the ___ of [pronoun] in the Corpus of Contemporary AmE (COCA) (and there's exactly one of these things in British National Corpus [BNC], and it has two too).

The this town... line is usually associated with western films (a variation on it was said by a character named Duke in Bandits of the Badlands (1945)). But there are earlier occurrences (the oldest ones with two), and the earliest one I've found is in Anthony Trollope's The Vicar of Bullhampton (1870)--not a western, unless you count Wiltshire as 'the West' (and apparently some people do consider it to be part of the West Country).  There, the eponymous character says: "Heytesbury isn't big enough for the two of us".  There's also a 1903 "Ostrokov is not big enough to hold the two of us, and that consequently, while I am vicar here, you shall never be rabbi." in the American magazine The Living Age (though the quoted text clearly not set in America, and I don't know who the author is).  So, today's stereotype-busting lesson: it's men of the cloth who deserve the reputation for saying such things, not cowboys or sheriffs.

Comparing just the both of [pronoun] (the both of us, the both of you, the both of them, plus some alternative forms of those pronouns) in the BNC and COCA is kind of interesting. That is, it had better be interesting because I just spent too much of my Friday night looking at it.  (In parentheses are the hits when the is excluded. They're less reliable, since they include contexts with possessive pronouns.)

Instances of the both of [pronoun] and (both of [pronoun]) per 10 million words
dialectspokenwritten
AmE (COCA)  10.8 (97)   5.6 (141)
BrE (BNC)   12  (21)   1.1(123)

Since the both of occurs more in speech than in writing, it looks as though it's considered to be somewhat informal in both dialects, but more so in BrE.  In BrE spoken, the the version is 57% of the total both of [pronoun] hits, versus AmE's 11%.  The other way to use both with a pronoun would be [pronoun] both.  There, we find 311 per 10m in BNC and 296 per 10m in COCA. This looks pretty similar.  (I did find some strange codings in COCA--though not enough to make the figures very different. But since when is coffee a personal pronoun?)

Meanwhile, the two of [pronoun] is about twice as frequent in COCA than in the BNC. I haven't done further analysis of this because I can't seem to weed out the possessive pronouns (none occurred in the both data), but I can look more specifically at particular instantiations of this construction: the two of us and the two of you, and compare it to the equivalent [pronoun] two constructions. (Though, it must be said, this method can't sort out things like I want to give you two puppies. But we'll just have to assume that this kind of "noise" is constant across the dialects. It might not be.)

Instances per 10 million words
dialectthe two
 of us
     we two +
       us two

   the two
    of you  

  you two
AmE (COCA)
     34 

           8.9         37.3         81.6
BrE (BNC)     15.1           10.8         12.6    61.8


That COCA has 20% spoken data and BNC only 10% may go some way toward(s) explaining the differences, since you might need to specify the number of referents of a pronoun more often in a speech context. But I don't think that's the whole story--after all, the numbers have the two of you occurring about three times more often in AmE and just under half of the AmE instances are spoken.   So, the two of [pronoun], like the both of [pronoun], seems more common in AmE than BrE, and BrE doesn't seem to be making up for it by using many more [pronoun] two or [pronoun] both.  So, do Americans just specify numbers of pronoun referents more often than BrE speakers/writers do? Or have I left out another means of sticking a number "on" a pronoun? Probably we need a much more thorough analysis with more comparable corpora (the BNC is 20 years old) before we can tell.

Moving on to Jeremy's second item, [pronoun] and [pronoun] both is much more common in AmE (40 per million words) than BrE (0.26 pmw)--although AmE didn't invent it. The OED says:
Both may follow, instead of preceding (as in A. 1), the two words or phrases connected by and; now only in the case of two ns. (two pronouns, or n. and pronoun) subjects of the same plural verb, but formerly (and still dialectally) in all other cases. In this use both may often be replaced by too or also.
They include the example:
1561    T. Hoby tr. B. Castiglione Courtyer (1577) P vij,   It shalbe good for him and me both.
I wrote this whole entry before remembering to look at John Algeo's British or American English? I approached it with contradictory wishes: (1) If he discusses all this, I'll have wasted hours of my Friday night. I hope he hasn't discussed it. (2) My corpus evidence is pretty shaky. I hope he discusses it.  I got wish (1). Algeo does mention, however, that AmE prefers both of these [plural noun] whereas BrE prefers both those [plural noun]Oddly, though, this preference does not extend to both (of) those, where both varieties prefer the of version.

And before I go: 
Today (wait! it's not today anymore! help!) was my third Twitterversary. If you're not on Twitter, you probably have a rich and interesting life. But you're not on Twitter.  And oh how much I've gained from Twitter!  Forget LinkedIn--this is the way to network. While I have to be very careful about not following too many accounts or trying to read everything that's posted (I could easily make it my full-time job), I learn so so much through it every day. I was interviewed for a film about Twitter this week, and I kept coming back to a similar theme: Twitter helps me appreciate how complex the world is--from the macro level of international affairs to the micro level of people's daily triumphs and struggles. So, hurray for Twitter! And hurray for my followers there, who enrich my understanding of national varieties of English every day. If you'd like to meet me there, you can find me here.
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shoes

So, shoes. Hard to believe I've not blogged about them already!  First slide, please:



[from UK shoe retailer Office] This, in BrE is a court shoeIn AmE it would be a pump.  (Or call them high heels wherever you are.)  Next slide, please!


[also from Office] In AmE this is a flat, more specifically a ballet flat.  In BrE this is a pump. More specifically, a ballet pump.  Very confusing. (And don't forget that ballet is pronounced differently in AmE & BrE.) What BrE & AmE pumps have in common is that they are low-cut--baring the top of the foot--but I think that the AmE definition is now so closely associated with heels that you can probably find AmE 'pumps' that aren't low-cut. (In fact, you can.)  Next slide, please!

[Office] This is a trainer in BrE. (Yes, people who train people are also called trainers in BrE.) In AmE, it's a bit more complicated:

This map from Bert Vaux's Dialect Survey shows the distribution of words for that kind of shoe in the continental US. Red = sneakers, light blue = tennis shoes, green = gym shoes. (Click on the link for the other colo(u)rs.)

These terms for the red shoe above can also be applied to this one:
[From the UK site for the US brand Keds] But in BrE, they can also be called plimsolls, (which Marc L wrote to ask about recently--thanks).

Next slide, please!


These kinds of things can be called flip-flops in BrE or AmE (sidenote: in South Africa, they're slip-slops). But in AmE (and AusE too, I believe), they can also be called thongs. I suspect that that term is being used a lot less these days because usage has mostly shifted to this.


I've had some correspondence with Erin McKean about whether the meaning of kitten heel differs in BrE and AmE. There are definitely two meanings out there, but dictionaries tend not to be very specific about kitten heels, so the AmE definitions are about the same as the BrE ones. Looking at on-line retailers, I have found both senses in both countries. The sense I use (and which I think Erin's agreeing with me about--so definitely an AmE sense) refers to this kind of thing [from Mandarina shoes]:


The heel is very short, very slim and is inset from the end of the shoe. It might also flare out a bit at the bottom.  But one also finds any stiletto with a moderate heel label(l)ed kitten heel in some places, like this one, which comes from (UK retailer) L.K. Bennett's 'History of the Kitten Heel':

I couldn't call this a kitten heel. To me, it's a not-ridiculously-high pump/court shoe with a stiletto heel.  But when I try to research these things on the internet, the clever-clever shoemakers won't let me compare their UK and US sites, forcing me back into the UK ones, so some avenues of research are not available.  I share Erin's feeling that the first sense is AmE and the second one BrE, but I've not been able to ascertain whether it's not so much a difference as a change-in-progress.  Feel free to let us know which sense is more natural in your dialect (please don't forget to tell us what your dialect is!).
 

If you'd like to enjoy some transatlantic shoe shopping, remember, that the sizes are different. Wikipedia has comparison charts and explains what the sizes are based on.

The last shoe-related thing relates to an email from Peregrine in 2008 (*blush*), who wrote:
I was reading (as I do from time to time) an English-Japanese/Japanese-English dictionary yesterday. 
What came up was the Japanese for shoe and variants of it.  What it said was, essentially
Variant a = AmE low shoe, BrE shoe
Variant b = AmE shoe, BrE boot
Variant c = AmE boot, BrE high boot
For reference this was the Sanseido Gem 4th edition.  I can't find a date but it's definitely post-War, I would guess from the '50s. 

[P.S. but see his addition to the comments section to see how I've misinterpreted his note] Low shoe is not something I'd ever heard of, but I did find it in reference to a Rockport shoe on amazon.co.uk. Checking on Rockport's site, though, they didn't use the term. It'd be easy to dismiss the Japanese dictionary as finding differences that native speakers wouldn't, but there is the question of whether boot or shoe really mean the same thing in AmE/BrE even if they refer to the same ranges of things in the two dialects.  This relates to a point that I made months ago on a post about 'prototypical soup', which I quote here so that I can go to bed sooner:
As far as I know, not much work has been done on regional variation in prototypes. The only example I can think of is a small study by Willett Kempton (reported in John Taylor's Linguistic Categorization) on Texan versus British concepts of BOOT, showing that even though both groups considered the same range of things to be boots, there was variation in their ideas of what constituted a central member of the BOOT category, with the Texan prototype extending further above the ankle than the British one.

And undoubtedly I've forgotten or missed some footwear differences. But that's what the comments section is for!

Late addition--thanks Anonymous in the comments! Just a few days ago, this was my Twitter Difference of the Day, but I somehow forgot to mention BrE football boots. In AmE these are cleats or soccer shoes. Perhaps this is what the distinction in the Japanese dictionary was about. In BrE, my Converse Chuck Taylors are referred to as basketball boots, where I would call them (AmE) high-tops.

Another P.S. (13 Sept 11): I forgot mary janes!  This was originally a trademarked term in AmE for  a brand of girls' shoe, which came in patent leather and had a strap like this:

According to the OED, this is still a proprietary term in BrE--so it often has lower-case initials in AmE but should have upper-case (and be more restricted in application) in BrE. I've had to explain the term to BrE speakers a couple of times, making me think it's more common in AmE.  These days, of course, it's used for any shoe with that kind of low-cut front and a strap across--even if it involves a heel, an asymmetrical or double strap, velcro. Mary janes (I kind of want to hyphenate that--some people make it one word) are very, very Lynneguist.

A couple of notes before I go:
  1. I had a great time discussing how English and American folk "do" politeness at The Catalyst Club this week. Great audience, great night out!
  2. I am about to begin The University Term from Hell. The (orig. AmE) upside is that I don't have to teach in the spring. The (orig. AmE) downside is that it's unlikely that I'll get much blogging in. But I will try!
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spunk and spunky

It's our last full day in the US after a (BrE) holiday/(AmE) vacation of nearly a month.  I'd thought I'd catch up on blogging during this downtime, but I started to enjoy actually being on holiday/vacation. Imagine that!

As we rushed to get everything done before leaving my parents' house and my hometown, I asked Better Half to run across the street/road to the (AmE) drug store/(BrE) chemist's to buy a (AmE & BrE) greeting/(BrE) greetings card for my soon-to-be nine-year-old niece. He came back with a very (orig. AmE in this sense*) cute card that was arguably marketed at a younger age group, explaining (with alarm in his voice) that he couldn't bear to buy a (orig. AmE) tweenie-appropriate (not his words) card addressed to 'a spunky girl'.

An hour or so later, we searched with desperation for a place to have lunch with my parents. We'd checked in at the airport, but there is now nowhere in ROC to have anything but a cookie or a pretzel outside (of) the security zone, and our usual diner across the road had closed down. (We found later that JFK is no better--couldn't find a 'proper' restaurant in which to eat after collecting our luggage/before going to our foodless hotel. I blame Homeland Security. And, America, why don't you put sensible things in your airports after security? Like a drug store/chemist's where one could buy baby food and sunscreen in order to get around the 3-oz./100 ml rule? UK airports [orig. AmE i.t.s] rule, oh yeah!)  We ended up at a local (orig. AmE i.t.s) chain restaurant about which the less said, the better. But it thrilled by being in the same (orig./chiefly AmE i.t.s) plaza (i.e. set of retail businesses sharing a [AmE] parking lot/[BrE] car park) as this gym:





And this had BH clamo(u)ring** for a blog post on spunk

Spunk came up, so to speak, in my last post, because the American Heritage Dictionary gave it as a synonym for gumption. And there I had the footnote:
* I've no doubt that some readers will find this definition humorous, as spunk is BrE slang for 'semen'. But the primary meaning in AmE (also found in BrE, and originating from a Scots/northern England dialect for 'spark') is 'Spirit, mettle; courage, pluck' (OED).
In the comments, a couple of US readers claimed familiarity with the 'semen' sense of spunk, but its use in US business names indicates that it is the 'spirit, mettle; courage, pluck' sense that is called to mind first in AmE. (My research has, however, led me to an adult entertainment business in Australia called "Spice and Spunk Strippers". You're welcome.) In BrE, the 'seminal fluid' meaning has been around since at least 1890, and the other meanings (of which there are many) have been around longer, but many of the other meanings (e.g. 'a spark', 'a match', 'a lively person') seem to be more rooted in northern dialects and may not have had much currency down south when the 'semen' meaning took off. Two meanings that aren't marked as dialectal in the OED are 'tinder' and 'One or other of various fungi or fungoid growths on trees, esp. those of the species Polyporus, freq. used in the preparation of tinder'--and perhaps it is that sense from which the 'semen' sense comes (here's a photo of the fungus, you can judge).

Spunky meaning 'Full of spunk or spirit; courageous, mettlesome, spirited' is not marked as dialectal in the OED, but some of the earliest citations seem to be Scottish. (Well the first one, Burns, definitely is, and the second one has the word lassie in it. For some reason the links to the OED sources aren't working for me.) There is no 'semen-y' meaning in the OED, but it certainly exists. The OED does include a 'US & dial' meaning 'Angry, irritable, irascible', but that's not a sense that I hear used, and the citations are all from the 19th century.

At any rate, the semen sense seems to have taken over British minds--or at least the minds of the under-50s, as far as I can tell. I'd be interested to hear whether people in other parts of the UK have the same impression of the spunk(y) situation. Americans, meanwhile, mostly use the word in with positive connotations--and with a definite feminine bias. Here are the top nouns that follow spunky in the Corpus of Contemporary American English:




So, this is yet another example of Americans innocently using words that sound "dirty" in BrE. And before you comment, please note that there is a £5 tax on this blog for typing fanny pack.***



Oh--and before I go:
If you've ever wondered what a Lynneguist sounds like (after 12 years of anglification), wonder no more! Patrick Cox's latest World in Words podcast is an interview with me about all sorts of things, like how my immigrant vowels have shifted, criticism-softening devices in BrE, and language and social class. He promises a part 2 after his holiday. I had a lovely time (that's me all Britified) speaking with him, as we have converse experiences--he's an Englishman living in the US. I hope it might be of interest to some of you too...




*There are several 'in this sense' originally-AmE items here, so henceforth I abbreviate 'in this sense' as 'i.t.s'.
** Quote: "You could blog about that."
*** Payable to: http://www.msf.org/


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nous, gumption, horse sense

I probably unfairly privilege Ben Zimmer when he comes into my blog-suggestions inbox (which is to say, I'm about to cover a suggestion of his only 13 months after he suggested it). As a lexicographer, he knows what counts as an answerable question (so many that I'm sent are not), and, as a language columnist, he has a good sense of which topics might have a bit of (orig. AmE) mileage in them.

The suggestion he sent me last July was BrE use of nous.  And I thought to myself: "Is that British? I just think of it as extremely intellectual." The problem, it seems, is that I don't read the sports pages.

The first definition in the OED is the one that I knew:

1. Ancient Greek Philos. Mind, intellect; intelligence; intuitive apprehension.
As in:
1884    Encycl. Brit. XVII. 336/1   What Plotinus understands by the nous is the highest sphere accessible to the human mind‥, and, along with that, pure thought itself.
But the meaning that Ben was referring to was:
2. colloq. (chiefly Brit.). Common sense, practical intelligence, ‘gumption’.

And he pointed out:
It's surprisingly common in UK sports reporting (search Google News for "have|has|had the nous").
Reading the sports pages would require a level of dedication to this blog that I demonstrably don't have. But I am aware that I miss linguistic riches by not paying attention to them (in any country). Searching have/has/had the nous, I got six hits (half British, the others from South Africa, Australia, New Zealand), four of which were from the sports pages. Here are a couple (bold added):
[About a senior police figure who's resigned in the phone-hacking scandal] “I don’t think any of us would question his integrity. It’s his judgement that has been called into question. But he’s had the nous to realise that if he stays the speculation goes on.” 
and 
[About a cricket player(BrE) cricketer/(AmE) cricket player--T20 is an abbreviated name for an abbreviated form of the game] In many ways du Toit exemplifies the way T20 has gone – he’s hardly a household name in his own household and has played more T20 matches than first class or List A, but he has the nous to get the job done.
The 'common-sense' history of nous is hardly recent. I liked the first OED example for it [though I don't know what Demo-brain'd means here. The only OED entry for Demo is a colloquial name for the US Democratic Party]:
1706    E. Baynard Cold Baths II. 306   A Demo-brain'd Doctor of more Note than Nous.

According to OED, the usual pronunciation of nous in BrE rhymes with mouse, but the AmE pronunciation sounds like noose.


There's another AmE/BrE difference to be found in the OED entry for nous: its definition as 'gumption'. To my AmE mind, gumption (orig. Scots) is an odd synonym for 'common sense'.  We can see the reason for this reflected in US/UK dictionary treatments of the word. The American Heritage Dictionary has:
1. Boldness of enterprise; initiative or aggressiveness.
2.
Guts; spunk.*
3.
Common sense.
Whereas Collins English Dictionary has:
1. Brit common sense or resourcefulness
2. initiative or courage
As the AHD entry reflects, the 'common sense' sense is not the primary sense in American English. A better AmE synonym for gumption is (orig. AmE) get-up-and-go.


What do we have in AmE for 'common sense'?  Well there's horse sense ('strong common sense'), which is originally AmE, but now found in BrE. A more specific kind of common sense is (orig. AmE) street smarts 'the ability to live by one's wits in an urban environment' (OED). But when I think of Americans talking about common sense, I think of the construction X has[n't] [got] the sense God gave Y (or:  X doesn't have the sense God gave Y).  Looking for "the sense God gave" in the Corpus of Contemporary American English, I found:
He's got the sense God gave a fruitfly.
The sense God gave a goose, you might say-except He didn't give it to all the geese
That man ain't got the sense God gave a goat.  
you ain't got the sense God gave a mule.
You don't have the sense God gave crawfish.
Anybody who'd choose to live in Texas hasn't got the sense God gave a squirrel
they'd missed the sign and hadn't had the sense God gave a turnip to stop and look at a map
you don't have the sense God gave you.
You city noodles haven't the sense God gave hedgehogs
If I'd had the sense God gave a horny toad I'd have turned and run

As you can probably tell from the examples, this construction (partially filled-in idiom) has a definite 'rural' feel to it--it's colloquial and very (orig. AmE) folksy and stereotypically very Southern.

But if I've missed some good nouns for 'common sense', I'm sure you'll fill us in in the comments!




* I've no doubt that some readers will find this definition humorous, as spunk is BrE slang for 'semen'. But the primary meaning in AmE (also found in BrE, and originating from a Scots/northern England dialect for 'spark') is 'Spirit, mettle; courage, pluck' (OED).

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bits and pieces

I'll put the little bits before the big piece, just so they don't get lost. Here are a couple of things I've meant to tell you about and another waste of space on a certain journalist's take on Americanisms.


Introduction to British small talk, for Americans
I've done a guest post at the Macmillan Dictionary blog on this topic. Please have a look and share your experiences! 


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Anti-Americanismism, part 3
I see (thank you readers!) that Matthew Engel is at it again complaining about Americanisms in BrE (and using some in order to do so), this time in the Financial Times.  His main point, that BrE is special and that Britons should care about keeping it distinct from AmE, is not without merit.  But since his focus is on vocabulary, he's missing the fact that there's no evidence of BrE and AmE becoming closer in more systematic ways--i.e. grammar and pronunciation.  In fact, the English (in both senses) dialectologist Peter Trudgill has written (in a paper I cited back here) that the two nations are actively diverging in pronunciation and that there is very little evidence of any grammatical changes.  BrE is by its nature a lexical magpie, and that's something worth acknowledging and celebrating too. (Just look at all the Australianisms in it, Mr Engel!)

Engel wisely keeps his FT article at the general-polemical level, since he's (I hope) discovered that getting into details gets him into trouble. But here's his reaction to the linguists reacting to his post:
What did surprise me was the angry reaction to my talk from American bloggers and blowhards – that’s an Americanism, but a useful one – some calling themselves lexicographers, all of whom seem able to study dictionaries but with no sense of the spoken language, certainly not here in Britain. I once got mailbombed over a column by the National Rifle Association, but their members were actually far more civil and sensible than this lot. 
In the aftermath of my programme I am now being regularly abused as anti-American, or worse. Rubbish (or trash). I lived there, have many friends there; I adore baseball.
Wow, we've got it all here.  The hypocrisy: Americanisms in BrE are OK if they're useful (but I get to decide which are useful). The passive-aggressive taunt: "some calling themselves lexicographers". The downgrading of academic research and the failure to acknowledge that some of the critics are British, living in the UK. The "some of my best friends are... and I love their culture" defen{s/c}e". And, best of all, we seem to have here a parallel to Godwin's Law of Nazi Analogies: claiming your critics are worse than the NRA.

But the unforgivable sin in Blogland is not to link to or at least mention the alleged lexicographers (like editor-of-at-least-five-dictionaries, Grant Barrett or Oxford dictionaries/Visual Thesaurus editor Ben Zimmer, or, you know, moi, who's more of a lexicologist, but who has lexicographed every once in a while). And here I am giving Mr Engel more free publicity. What a (orig. AmE) sucker I am.

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anti-Americanismism, part 2

As promised, here's my reaction to the second half of the BBC's list of 'Your most noted Americanisms'. Since part 1, many others have weighed in on that BBC piece, including Stan Carey, Not From Round Here, and on the BBC website (huzzah!!) Grant Barrett. The commenters at the BBC site, you may discern, are not completely taken with Grant's message.

So, back to the list.  And can I ask again:  if you'd like to discuss further any of the items that I've discussed in other blog posts (linked here), please comment at the original post. This is more helpful for people who come this way looking for answers, and it keeps the repetition down. Thanks!

26. As an expat living in New Orleans, it is a very long list but "burglarize" is currently the word that I most dislike. Simon, New Orleans
In the last instal(l)ment, I pointed out that bristling against -ize in AmE was a bit rich coming from a culture in which one can be (BrE) pressuri{s/z}ed to do something (where AmE would pressure them). Another such example is the BrE preference for acclimati{s/z}e in contexts where AmE is likely to use acclimate. In the comments of that blog post, the discussion turned to burgle/burglari{s/z}e, and I responded:
[D]on't be tempted to think that Americans have added syllables to burgle, as both words are derived (burgle by back-formation and burglarize by adding a suffix) from burglar. The two forms seem to have come about simultaneously in the 1870s. Oxford notes that burgle was at first a humorous and colloquial form.

Both burgle and burglarize are heard in the US, though burglarize is more common.

27. "Oftentimes" just makes me shiver with annoyance. Fortunately I've not noticed it over here yet. John, London
You haven't noticed in England because the people who used to say it died out. Or emigrated, perhaps.  This is one of those things that's an archaism in BrE (OED has it going back to the 14th century), but not so much in AmE. Still, you're almost 140 times more likely to hear often in AmE than oftentimes (according to the Corpus of Contemporary American English--henceforth COCA).

28. Eaterie. To use a prevalent phrase, oh my gaad! Alastair, Maidstone (now in Athens, Ohio)
I'm not sure whether Alastair is reacting to the word (also eatery) or the alternative spelling with -ieEatery is informal originally AmE, emphasis on the 'originally'. P.G. Wodehouse used it in Inimitable Jeeves (1923) and the OED has other examples of the UK press using it decades ago.

But the -ie spelling? That's looking more and more BrE to me. Trying to find the source of Alastair's ire, I looked for things called eaterie around Athens, OH--but I could only find things called eatery.  Looking at Wordnik's page for it, I noticed that many of the quotations were from UK-based writers/publications. So, I compared COCA and the British National Corpus. Eatery outnumbers eaterie 464:2 in the US corpus. Compare this to the UK corpus, where there are 7 cases of eaterie versus 4 of eatery.  Conclusion? Eaterie is the preferred (oddly Frenchified) British spelling and almost unknown in AmE. 

29. I'm a Brit living in New York. The one that always gets me is the American need to use the word bi-weekly when fortnightly would suffice just fine. Ami Grewal, New York
Fortnightly would not suffice in the US, since most Americans wouldn't know what you mean. It is generally not found in AmE, so to complain about Americans not using this British word is kind of like complaining about the British saying football when they could be saying soccer.  The adverb fortnightly has only been used in British English since the 19th century--so it's exactly the kind of thing that Americans shouldn't have been expected to preserve.  The noun fortnight is much older. But America hasn't bothered with it. It's a contraction of fourteen nights (or the Old English version of that), but two weeks is more transparent.

30. I hate "alternate" for "alternative". I don't like this as they are two distinct words, both have distinct meanings and it's useful to have both. Using alternate for alternative deprives us of a word. Catherine, London
This is something that people complain about on both sides of the Atlantic, and something my British students do all the time (and that their American (BrE use) tutor corrects).  Here's Grammar Girl's post on it, speaking to an American audience. While the OED marks it as 'chiefly North American', their first quotation containing the form is from a British legal text in 1776. Catherine should note, however, that alternative is in no danger of slipping from the language. The noun meanings of alternate and alternative continue to be separate, and the adjective alternative outnumbers adjectival alternate by about 7:1 in AmE (according to COCA).

31. "Hike" a price. Does that mean people who do that are hikers? No, hikers are ramblers! M Holloway, Accrington
Rambler here is a very BrE word--one that Americans in the UK tend to find amusing, since we only use the verb to ramble with the older meaning (from OED, bold added):

With reference to physical pursuits: to wander or travel in a free, unrestrained manner, without a definite aim or direction.
But the later BrE meaning is somewhat opposite to this, involving:
Now also (chiefly Brit.): to walk for pleasure through the countryside, freq. in company and on a specified route
But back to hike.  Most senses of hike are originally AmE; the word itself is of obscure origin--but probably from a colloquial and dialectal BrE word.


32. Going forward? If I do I shall collide with my keyboard. Ric Allen, Matlock

The OED's first citations of 'go forward' to mean 'make progress' come from Sir Thomas More, the Coverdale Bible and an elliptic use (now forward with your tale) from Shakespeare.  Probably overused in business jargon now, and everybody hates that.


33. I hate the word "deliverable". Used by management consultants for something that they will "deliver" instead of a report. Joseph Wall, Newark-on-Trent, Nottinghamshire

Another bit of jargon. None of the dictionaries I've checked mark it as an Americanism, and some of the American dictionaries I've checked (AHD, M-W.com) don't have it at all. It's just jargon. People don't like jargon, no matter which country they live in. Especially jargon that's used to demand things of people, like this one is.


34. The most annoying Americanism is "a million and a half" when it is clearly one and a half million! A million and a half is 1,000,000.5 where one and a half million is 1,500,000. Gordon Brown, Coventry
If I go somewhere for an hour and a half, I am going for an hour and a half an hour. If a horse wins by a length and a half, it wins by a length and a half a length. On the same analogy, a million and a half is a million and a half a million, rather than a millon and a half of one. If one, for some odd reason, needs to refer to 1,000,000.5, one could say one-million-point-five. [Attempted jokes at the expense of the former Prime Minister deleted.]


35. "Reach out to" when the correct word is "ask". For example: "I will reach out to Kevin and let you know if that timing is convenient". Reach out? Is Kevin stuck in quicksand? Is he teetering on the edge of a cliff? Can't we just ask him? Nerina, London
Really, someone's said this to you in this context? I agree. Obviously the evil doing of the Bell Telephone company. (American cultural education link.)


36. Surely the most irritating is: "You do the Math." Math? It's MATHS. Michael Zealey, London

Not this one again.  Here is the true, muddled story of maths. Short story: it was only maths after it was math. And no, it's not plural.

37. I hate the fact I now have to order a "regular Americano". What ever happened to a medium sized coffee? Marcus Edwards, Hurst Green
Another one that everyone hates because it's just put there by marketing people to fool you. I have seen regular refer to small, medium and large--and that's just in Brighton (England, that is).  And why order an Americano when you could have a strong (BrE) filter coffee? (Yes, I know they're not quite the same, but in the name of patriotism...)

38. My worst horror is expiration, as in "expiration date". Whatever happened to expiry? Christina Vakomies, London
Expiration in the 'ending of something that was meant to last a certain time' sense goes back to the 1500s. First recorded use of expiry is in 1752. So, shouldn't it be Whatever happened to expiration?


39. My favourite one was where Americans claimed their family were "Scotch-Irish". This of course it totally inaccurate, as even if it were possible, it would be "Scots" not "Scotch", which as I pointed out is a drink. James, Somerset
It is completely possible. Scotch-Irish is an American term to refer to a particular immigrant group. It describes a historical group that (AmE) was/(BrE) were in their time referred to (and referring to themselves) by that name. Wikipedia reproduces a number of sources on the early (18th century) use of that name, so I won't do so again here.


40.I am increasingly hearing the phrase "that'll learn you" - when the English (and more correct) version was always "that'll teach you". What a ridiculous phrase! Tabitha, London
This brings us back to the not-recogni{s/z}ing-linguistic-humo(u)r-in-the-other-dialect problem. If you express a 'that'll teach you' message, you're putting yourself above the person you were talking to. If you want to soften that grab for social/moral superiority, you make it a non-standard way of expressing it, in order to humorously put yourself down a (more BrE) peg/(more AmE) notch. To do this in an emphatic way, people who wouldn't usually do so sometimes spell/pronounce this as that'll larn ya.


41. I really hate the phrase: "Where's it at?" This is not more efficient or informative than "where is it?" It just sounds grotesque and is immensely irritating. Adam, London
See the comments thread at this old post: Where I'm at

42. Period instead of full stop. Stuart Oliver, Sunderland
Another case of Americans using a British cast-off. (Now-AmE) period for this .  punctuation mark dates to the 16th century. The first record of (BrE) full stop is from just a few decades later, in 1600. It looks like both terms were introduced around the same time, and a different one won the battle for supremacy in different places.

43. My pet hate is "winningest", used in the context "Michael Schumacher is the winningest driver of all time". I can feel the rage rising even using it here. Gayle, Nottingham
Oh, I could have sworn I'd written about this one before, but it seems I haven't. I haven't much to say about it, except that it fills a gap and demonstrates a willingness to play with the language.


44. My brother now uses the term "season" for a TV series. Hideous. D Henderson, Edinburgh
But I have done this one. The upshot: AmE uses the term season and series for different television-related meanings, but BrE doesn't make that distinction at the lexical (word) level.

45. Having an "issue" instead of a "problem". John, Leicester 
This has been much-maligned in AmE too, but I think it's thrived because it's less negative and confrontational to talk of having an issue with something rather than a problem with it.


46. I hear more and more people pronouncing the letter Z as "zee". Not happy about it! Ross, London
Fair enough, but why has zed come to us from zeta, but beta hasn't turned up in English as bed? (Because it's come from French and they did it that way. But still!) I have two zee-related suspicions: (1) Some BrE speakers prefer zee in the alphabet song because it rhymes better (tee-U-vee/double-u-eks-why-and-zee/now I know my ABCs/next time won't you play with me). (2) Fear of 'zee' is a major reason that Sesame Street is no longer broadcast in most of the UK. Both of those issues (not problems!) are discussed in this old post.


47. To "medal" instead of to win a medal. Sets my teeth on edge with a vengeance. Helen, Martock, Somerset
"Americans have an awful habit of turning nouns into verbs" I'm often told. But in this case, the noun already was a verb. Here are the first two and the most recent OED quotations for to medal in the sense 'to decorate or hono(u)r with a medal':

1822    Byron Let. 4 May (1979) IX. 154   He was medalled.
1860    Thackeray Nil nisi Bonum in Roundabout Papers (1899) 174   Irving went home medalled by the King.  
1985    New Yorker 18 Mar. 125/1   He was eulogized‥and was renowned and medalled for his war record.
But the AmE sense that annoys Helen is different, in that the one who gets the medal is the 'agent', rather than the 'patient' in the sentence. For the sense that Lord Byron used, medal must be in the passive in order for the medal-recipient to be the subject of the sentence (as they are in all of the examples, because one wants to put the most relevant person first). In these cases, the agent of the medal(l)ing is the giver of the medal, and if they're in the sentence at all, they go in a 'by' phrase (the King in the 1860 quote). The sports sense 'to win a medal' makes the athlete the agent--the active getter of a medal, rather than the passive recipient of one, and therefore the verb is in the active voice (She medal(l)ed, rather than She was medal(l)ed). It would be inappropriate to say that a soldier 'medalled', as they did not set out to get a medal, a medal was conferred upon them. (Yes, I'm using singular they. You got a problem with that?) The athlete, on the other hand, was (to use an apparently orig. AusE phrase) in it to win it.

While it may seem confusing to have two senses of the verb with different roles attached to the subject in each case, it's not terrifically uncommon. For example, I hurt. Someone hurt me. I was hurt (by someone).  The ice melted. I melted the ice. The ice was melted by me. And so on and so forth.



48. "I got it for free" is a pet hate. You got it "free" not "for free". You don't get something cheap and say you got it "for cheap" do you? Mark Jones, Plymouth
On this logic, Mark, are we to assume that you say I got it expensive?  Maybe you do. I cannot.

But anyhow, this use of for before an adjective is found in AmE in other contexts as well--notably for real; but the range of contexts in which it's found seems to be narrowing. Some of the early OED examples--from just 1887 and 1900--sound very old-fashioned, if not completely odd: a for-true doctor and goin' to railroad him for fair. So, it looks like for free and for real are fossils of an earlier more general use of for+adjective.

49. "Turn that off already". Oh dear. Darren, Munich
If I were to make a list of BrE peeves, I think the list would have to be topped by The Oh dear of Condescension.

Utterance-final already comes to AmE via Yiddish. It's used to mark exasperation, and it does so very well. William Safire, in this old On Language column, quotes Lillian Feinsilver's book Taste of Yiddish (1970), which suggests now as an alternative. But Turn that off, now is a bit ambiguous and certainly doesn't give me the flavo(u)r of that sentence-final already. I'd be more likely to translate it with some  rather impolite words (e.g. Turn that off for ****'s sake. or Turn that off, you ****ing ****). Isn't it beautiful that we don't have to resort to such language?


50. "I could care less" instead of "I couldn't care less" has to be the worst. Opposite meaning of what they're trying to say. Jonathan, Birmingham
Unless they're trying their hand at irony, of course. But Americans couldn't do that, could they? At any rate: old post on could care less and old guest post on irony.



I know I should probably go back and edit this, but it's late, I'm tired and I've accidentally partially published this twice already today. So, I'll post it already.  Let us know what you think...
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anti-Americanismism, part 1

In my last post, I refrained from saying much about the BBC Magazine piece by Matthew Engel on 'Why do some Americanisms annoy people?', pointing readers instead to Mark Liberman/Language Log's analysis of the so-called Americanisms that annoy at least identified by Matthew Engel. Today the BBC website followed up with '50 of your noted Americanisms', and already Geoff Pullum/Language Log, Johnson, Americans Living in London--and others I've yet to hear about, I'm sure--have posted reasoned replies to this offensive piece.

Why am I offended by this piece? I'll tell you why. Because I've paid for it.

The piece is driving a huge number of people to the BBC News website (as Stan Carey has noted on Twitter). As I type this, it is the 'most shared' piece on the site and the seventh most read (on a very big news day). But it is the journalistic equivalent of (orig. & mostly BrE) piss-poor reality television: let's get people to say things that might be controversial, and then we'll edit it into something that will get people arguing about which words to throw off the island. Two American views are printed as sidebars to the article; both, like the material in the article itself, are from readers who sent in comments. If we can call this journalism, it is completely passive journalism. Perhaps next we can have viewers' thoughts about whether it's going to rain tomorrow, rather than paying all those expensive weather forecasters. (Not to say that viewers' thoughts---or their photos of tornadoes---are never welcome on news program(me)s. That's why we have (mostly BrE) vox pops/(AmE) man-on-the-street interviews** and letters to the editor. But putting up a lightly-moderated forum of people's gripes about language does not constitute news or journalism. We get those for free on the web already. We don't need our public broadcaster for that.)

One could understand commercial television or newspapers doing such things--the more viewers they recruit, the more their advertisers pay them. But this is the BBC. This is what I pay a television licen{s/c}e fee for.* I want its online publications to live up to the organi{s/z}ation's charter to 'inform, educate and entertain'. And when they say 'entertain', I'd like it not to be throwing Christians to the lions or dwarf bowling or just letting people air their prejudices and ignorance with no (orig. AmE) reality check.  As Mark Liberman has demonstrated, many of Engel's pet American peeves were not, in fact, Americanisms. Guess what? Some of the contributors to this piece are not much better at distinguishing things that they don't like and things that are American. Geoff Pullum's piece on Language Log makes the case that this outpouring of anti-Americanismism is also anti-Americanism, and I think that you should read his take on that, since he makes some interesting points from an interesting perspective. But I do want to say something about the title.

It's odd, isn't it? Your most noted Americanisms. Does this sound odd to anyone else? It means, according to the introduction to the piece that they are the fifty that were most mentioned in emails to the BBC in reply to Engel's article. Now first, I'd have liked something more than one person's mention of each. Are they presented in order?  Most noted Americanisms. Sounds odd, odd, odd. But it does bear a certain phonic resemblance to a phrase that doesn't sound odd. Lo and behold, if one searches "50 most hated Americanisms", one finds that that's how some people, at least, have remembered the title.

So, a quick tour of the fifty, starting with the first twenty-five and a (orig. & cheifly AmE) rain check on the rest.  Where I've blogged about them, there's a link. (If you want to comment on the previously blogged topics, please could you do it at the original post? They continue to be read and linked to. I'd like for your comment to be where it can do the most good for people who want to know more about that particular expression.)

1. When people ask for something, I often hear: "Can I get a..." It infuriates me. It's not New York. It's not the 90s. You're not in Central Perk with the rest of the Friends. Really." Steve, Rossendale, Lancashire
This definitely sounds American to those old enough to remember when it wasn't said in the UK. But this battle is lost--it's pervasive.  Back here I did some wondering about why it sounds odd to BrE ears and not to AmE ones.

2. The next time someone tells you something is the "least worst option", tell them that their most best option is learning grammar. Mike Ayres, Bodmin, Cornwall
I liked Guardian columnist (and British expat in Brooklyn) Oliver Burkeman's response to this on Twitter: 

3. The phrase I've watched seep into the language (especially with broadcasters) is "two-time" and "three-time". Have the words double, triple etc, been totally lost? Grammatically it makes no sense, and is even worse when spoken. My pulse rises every time I hear or see it. Which is not healthy as it's almost every day now. Argh! D Rochelle, Bath
This is originally AmE, but noted by the OED in the Guardian as early as 1960. But are double and triple really equivalent to two-time and three-time? Couldn't the double Wimbledon champion mean that they won two prizes (say, in singles and doubles) in the same year? Double means 'twice as much'; two-time means 'at two times'. Grammatically it makes perfect sense, as it is identical to one-time champion, which seems to be originally BrE.

4. Using 24/7 rather than "24 hours, 7 days a week" or even just plain "all day, every day". Simon Ball, Worcester
I'm sure this one annoys some Americans too. Slang does that. I'm more annoyed that the so-called 24-hour stores here (Asda, the UK arm of Walmart) close late-ish on Saturday, re-open for a few hours on Sunday, close again, then open (on) Monday morning (see example opening times here). Does the phrase 24/7 actually crop up in BrE? (she asked, mischievously).

5. The one I can't stand is "deplane", meaning to disembark an aircraft, used in the phrase "you will be able to deplane momentarily". TykeIntheHague, Den Haag, Holland
This is an airlineism. No one says this but flight attendants and pilots, and then only to annoy you. Yes, you.

6. To "wait on" instead of "wait for" when you're not a waiter - once read a friend's comment about being in a station waiting on a train. For him, the train had yet to arrive - I would have thought rather that it had got stuck at the station with the friend on board. T Balinski, Raglan, New Zealand
Johnson's covered this one, and says:
Yes, to "wait on" also means to be a waiter, but writers from Chaucer to Milton to George Eliot used "to wait on" in various senses including "to observe", "to lie in wait for", "to await" and more.

7. "It is what it is". Pity us. Michael Knapp, Chicago, US
Apparently we're supposed/meant to pity people in Chicago who have to hear American English. Six of the fifty people whose 'noted' Americanisms the BBC has noted are in the US. Another four are in countries other than the UK (two of those are in non-Anglophone countries). One can only imagine that the US ones are expatriates from the UK or elsewhere. Engel and others claim that Americanisms are fine in their place (America), but the problem is when they invade British English. But apparently they're not OK in the US either.

8. Dare I even mention the fanny pack? Lisa, Red Deer, Canada
Tisha at Americans Living in London notes (my link added):
Um, fanny doesn't mean the same in the US as it does in the UK.  After all this is a country that uses the term faggot to describe a pork dish.  A Brit could never get away with saying that in the States!
Not to mention bumming a fag.


9. "Touch base" - it makes me cringe no end. Chris, UK
Yeah, that annoyed a lot of us too.  Google "pet peeve" "touch base", if you'd like a show-and-tell.  Is it a baseball metaphor? That'll be especially peevable in the UK.


10. Is "physicality" a real word? Curtis, US
Johnson again (emphasis added for that obnoxious American effect): "Yes, first noted in a book published in London in 1827."


11. Transportation. What's wrong with transport? Greg Porter, Hercules, CA, US
What's wrong with transport in California is that it would be a foreign word. And a newfangled Briticism at that.  To quote the OED, transportation was "Much used in 17th c. down to c1660; afterwards gradually given up for transport, prob. to avoid association with penal transportation".


12. The word I hate to hear is "leverage". Pronounced lev-er-ig rather than lee-ver -ig. It seems to pop up in all aspects of work. And its meaning seems to have changed to "value added". Gareth Wilkins, Leicester
The pronunciation difference, with BrE preferring 'ee' where AmE prefers the "short vowel" is found in a range of words, including evolution. I haven't noticed the meaning change Mr Wilkins claims (though value added might need translation for AmE readers: 'something extra included in the price'). It is used a lot in business jargon, and 90% of any country's population hates business jargon. [Need a made-up statistic? I got'em right here!]

13. Does nobody celebrate a birthday anymore, must we all "turn" 12 or 21 or 40? Even the Duke of Edinburgh was universally described as "turning" 90 last month. When did this begin? I quite like the phrase in itself, but it seems to have obliterated all other ways of speaking about birthdays. Michael McAndrew, Swindon
Really, obliterated?  It means something different from celebrate, certainly. Glad you like it. 

14. I caught myself saying "shopping cart" instead of shopping trolley today and was thoroughly disgusted with myself. I've never lived nor been to the US either. Graham Nicholson, Glasgow
Hey, give our word back!!  (Here's my cart/trolley post.)

15. What kind of word is "gotten"? It makes me shudder. Julie Marrs, Warrington
It's the kind of word that's been in English probably as long as it's been English. (First OED citation, ca. 1380.)  Here's an old post. As I've been heard to say before, if you object to gotten, then it's your duty to object to  forgotten, misbegotten and ill-gotten too.

16. "I'm good" for "I'm well". That'll do for a start. Mike, Bridgend, Wales
I used to take this as an ironic misuse--i.e. being 'incorrect' to give your response a down-home flavo(u)r. If you ever hear me say it, it's ironic. But it's general informal AmE now. (Emphasis on the informal.) An old [and not-quite-relevant! ed.] post on adjectives-as-adverbs.

17. "Bangs" for a fringe of the hair. Philip Hall, Nottingham
Here's an old post.  In AmE bangs and fringe would be somewhat different styles. (Nuance!)

18. Take-out rather than takeaway! Simon Ball, Worcester
Are the Scots still allowed to say carry-out? Old post--the comments are very informative about the regional variations. 

19. I enjoy Americanisms. I suspect even some Americans use them in a tongue-in-cheek manner? "That statement was the height of ridiculosity". Bob, Edinburgh
Oh, Bob! Thank you, Bob! This takes us back to a post called "Language play -- not getting it".

20. "A half hour" instead of "half an hour". EJB, Devon
The OED has citations back to 1420. Needless to say, they're not American.

21. A "heads up". For example, as in a business meeting. Lets do a "heads up" on this issue. I have never been sure of the meaning. R Haworth, Marlborough
Neither am I, in the way Haworth has related it.  To give someone a heads up is to give them a warning. It's informal, figurative. Looking at do a heads up on the web, there's a lot of do a heads up tournament. No idea what that means either. Jargon, or is my AmE too out-of-date?

22. Train station. My teeth are on edge every time I hear it. Who started it? Have they been punished? Chris Capewell, Queens Park, London
A number of BrE speakers commented at an earlier post that they find train station very natural in their dialects. This battle is lost, and one can see why--since BrE has coach station (AmE (long-distance only) bus station--e.g. a Greyhound station) and train station (but not railway station) works on analogy with it.

23. To put a list into alphabetical order is to "alphabetize it" - horrid! Chris Fackrell, York
Do you care to explain this, C Fackrell?  This seems similar to Engel's complaint about 'hospitalize', in that there is some general opposition to using one of English's lovely productive derivational suffixes. Why is this one so bad? And if it's so bad, why do BrE speakers pressuri{z/s}e people to do things where AmE speakers would pressure them?

24. People that say "my bad" after a mistake. I don't know how anything could be as annoying or lazy as that. Simon Williamson, Lymington, Hampshire
Annoys me too. See point about slang, at number 4.  But I don't see how it's any lazier than saying my fault.

25. "Normalcy" instead of "normality" really irritates me. Tom Gabbutt, Huddersfield
 An oldie but a goodie. Here's what the Maven's Word of the Day said about it. For a long time, it was considered non-standard in AmE too, but we've overcome that and it's now nearly twice as common as normality.


Part 2....can now be seen here.


* You probably smell a rat too. The BBC has had its budgets slashed. The people in charge of such things are all co{s/z}y with the people who run a very sleazy news organi{s/z}ation. I wouldn't be surprised if the BBC website puts things up to meet readership targets or some such thing, in hopes that their budgets and services won't be further attacked.

** Thanks to reader 'jb' for noticing/suggesting this difference. In AmE man-on-the-street is about three times more common than man-in-the-street, which is the BrE form.
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milk teeth and baby teeth

Mark Liberman at Language Log has saved you from the rant that this weekend's post was to be. Oh, thank you, Mark! His post from earlier today does what needed to be done about journalist Matthew Engel's BBC piece "Why do some Americanisms irritate people?" (Yes, people.) The Language Log post starts by pointing out that only one of the first five 'Americanisms' cited by Engel is, in fact, American in origin. The only fault I can find with Liberman's piece is that it is not entitled "Why do BBC language features annoy linguists?"*

So, instead of a turgid rant about the BBC's continued knack for employing non-experts** to spout nonsense about language, I give you:

babies!!    kittens!!!   dental maiming!!!!

Today's topic was suggested by American-in-Scotland @dialect and inspired by her (first?) visit to a UK dentist. And, actually, it's rather a simple one. But just to make it more complicated, let me throw in a technical term I've just learn{ed/t}: deciduous teeth. Americans tend to call them baby teeth, and the more common term for them in BrE is milk teethFor those who like numbers, the Corpus of Contemporary American English has 100 baby tooth/baby teeth and 18 milk tooth/milk teeth.  The British National Corpus (which is much smaller) has 15 milk tooth/teeth and 3 baby teeth (two of which should actually be Babyteeth the name of an album by Therapy?) and no baby tooth. When I was a child in the US, I only knew milk teeth as a term for kittens' first teeth.

A milk/baby tooth isn't forever, of course, and before it goes it is a loose tooth, but in BrE one also hears wobbly tooth a lot. As far as my Grover is concerned, this is the only term for a loose tooth, since she was first exposed to the concept through the Charlie and Lola episode "I do not ever, never want my wobbly tooth to fall out".  Checking the corpora for loose/wobbly/wiggly tooth, we get 25/1/1 in COCA (AmE) and 3/1/0 in BNC (BrE).

The tooth fairy tradition is alive and well in both the UK and the US. Reading about how much money the tooth fairy tends to leave these days has left me depressed and fearful for a completely spoil(ed/t) generation.

And as a final public service before I go: Parents, if your (orig. AmE) teenager's dentist ever suggests removing a baby/milk tooth in order to "encourage" the permanent tooth to come forward, say "NO", or else your child may spend most of her most awkward years awkwardly trying to hide the big gap where a bicuspid should be. She will have no chance of being invited to (orig. AmE) the prom and you will endanger her respect for medical/dental/parental authority for evermore.
 


* Very occasionally, the Beeb does allow experts on (rather than just famous users of) language to grace its broadcasts.  For example, I was once on a program(me) about Scrabble. It was good fun, and I thought it great that they involved a Scrabble-playing linguist in the production.  But the best part? They spelled my name wrong.

** At one level, we're all experts on the language(s) we speak--in the sense that we use the language expertly. (This is for the most part subconscious knowledge--and science is only a very small way toward(s) understanding that knowledge.) There are a lot of accomplished users of language out there, and that's who the BBC likes to ask for opinions (God help us, not facts!) about language. I would like to point out that I am an accomplished user of time and space (taking up more of it every year!). Therefore, I would like to be considered for a central role in the BBC's next program(me) on physics.
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Abbr.

AmE = American English
BrE = British English
OED = Oxford English Dictionary (online)