Britishisms and the Britishisation of American English
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There is little that irks British defenders of the English language more than Americanisms, which they see creeping insidiously into newspaper columns and everyday conversation. But bit by bit British English is invading America too.
"Spot on - it's just ludicrous!" snaps Geoffrey Nunberg, a linguist at the University of California at Berkeley.
"You are just impersonating an Englishman when you say spot on. Will do - I hear that from Americans. That should be put into quarantine," he adds.
And don't get him started on the chattering classes - its overtones of a distinctly British class system make him quiver.
Last year Yagoda set up a blog dedicated to spotting the use of British terms in American English.
So far he has found more than 150 - from cheeky to chat-up via sell-by date and the long game - an expression which appears to date back to 1856, and comes not from golf or chess, but the card game whist. President Barack Obama has used it in at least one speech.
Yagoda notices changes in pronunciation too - for example his students sometimes use "that sort of London glottal stop", dropping the T in words like "important" or "Manhattan".
Kory Stamper, associate editor for Merriam-Webster, whose dictionaries are used by many American publishers and news organisations, agrees that more and more British words are entering the American vocabulary.
One new entrant into the Merriam-Webster dictionary in 2012 was gastropub (a gentrified pub serving good food), which was first used, according to Kory Stamper, in London's Evening Standard newspaper in 1996, and was first registered on American shores in 2000.
There has also been "a huge up-tick", says Stamper, in the use of ginger as a way of describing someone with red hair.
"When people put on a British accent [now], we consider it affected and funny - but it doesn't happen very frequently"
She sees this as clearly tied to the publication in the US of the first Harry Potter book. Dozens of words and phrases were changed for the American market, but ginger slipped through, as did snog (meaning "to kiss amorously") - though that has not proved so popular.
We are not seeing a radical change to the American language, says Jesse Sheidlower, American editor at large of the Oxford English Dictionary - rather a "very small, but noticeable" trend.
And it is not so much the masses who use these terms, says Geoffrey Nunberg, as the educated elite. Journalists and other media types, like advertising agencies, are the worst offenders, in his view.
"It sounds trendy - another borrowing we could use without - to use a British term. It just sounds kind of Transatlantic."
British TV shows like Top Gear, Dr Who, and Downton Abbey may be another reason more British words are slipping in, says Yagoda, as well as the popularity (and easy access via the internet) of British news sources, such as The Guardian, The Economist, The Daily Mail - and the BBC.
Yagoda also points to a number of British journalists who have risen to influential positions in the US, including Tina Brown - who has worked as editor of Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, The Daily Beast, and Newsweek - and Anna Wintour, editor in chief of American Vogue.
Some words, often the more formal ones, were once common on both sides of the Atlantic, but dropped out of American English usage while remaining popular in Britain, says Yagoda - amongst (instead of among), trousers (instead of pants), and fortnight (two weeks) are examples.
And some words which Brits regard as typically American - including "candy", "the fall", and "diaper" - were originally British, but dropped out of usage in Britain between about 1850 and the early 1900s, says Kory Stamper.
And though a few people do take umbrage at the use of British words in American English, they are in the minority, says Sheidlower.
"In the UK, the use of Americanisms is seen as a sign that culture is going to hell."
"But Americans think all British people are posh, so - aside from things that are fairly pretentious - no-one would mind."
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DSM 5: Autism Spectrum Disorder, DSM IV: Aspergers Moderate Severity
It is Autism Acceptance Month
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07 Oct 2017, 6:10 pm
And yeh, it means really tired, not drunk. A similar word would be "shattered".
