polo-necks and turtlenecks

Following up on the recent jumper/sweater post, I should answer a question from Linda, who wrote months and months ago to ask:
I was wondering whether a turtleneck is the strict equivalent of a poloneck? I seem to have a vague recollection when I was younger that a turtleneck in the UK was slightly lower and the turnover was sewn together, as opposed to you actually rolling it over yourself, but I may be wrong and things may have changed.
The trick here is that both AmE and BrE have the term turtle(-)neck, but it means something slightly different in the two dialects. Turtleneck was originally AmE, and, like many compounds, it is these days more likely in BrE than in AmE to have a hyphen or be spelt as two words. AmE turtleneck is a close, high neck of a garment that is typically folded over (although when I was a teen, the [orig. and chiefly AmE] preppy fashion was to not fold, but to let them appear squashed under the chin). In BrE, such a thing is called polo-neck. So, AmE turtleneck = BrE polo-neck. But BrE turtle-neck is (according to the OED):
A close-fitting roll or band collar, now usu. one intermediate in height between a crew-neck and a polo-neck; formerly also = polo-neck.
So, BrE turtle-neck is sometimes used to refer to things that I'd call roll-neck in AmE, and sometimes to things that I'd call (AmE) mock turtlenecks (photo here). But roll-neck seems to provide other problems--which may be dialectal, or just idiolectal (individual). I'd only use it for something that has a neck that has no border (knitters will have to remind me what to call these things)--it's just knit-purled and finished off, and because there's nothing to stop it doing so, it rolls tightly in on itself--as in this photo. But a lot of people seem to be using it to mean a thicker, looser (but not really loose) turtle/polo-neck (not quite a cowl-neck--see below).

Now, I expect that lots of BrE speakers* will comment that they use polo-neck for any of these things--and the OED definition covers that possibility. It may also be the case that the omnipresence of US chain retailers may have also more recently re-introduced the AmE meaning for turtleneck. I don't imagine that one hears polo-neck much in AmE for high necklines, though. When I first heard it here, it misled me, since I assumed that a polo-neck would surely be the type of collar that one would find on a polo shirt--a term that is found in both AmE and BrE for meaning (a) below, but with an additional meaning (b) in BrE:
polo shirt n. (a) a shirt of the kind worn by polo players; (hence) a short-sleeved casual shirt with a collar and buttons at the neck. (b) a shirt with a polo neck. (OED 2007 draft entry)
Finally, while the OED doesn't record it (yet), the term cowl-neck describes necklines that are tall and folded-over like a turtle/polo-neck, but which are wide enough that they flop over, rather than covering the neck closely. Now, although I can find cowl-necks on UK sites nowadays, I don't know how far back this term goes in BrE, since it is in AmE dictionaries (Merriam-Webster, American Heritage), but not in the Oxford ones (I'm not at the office with my bigger dictionary collection). So, BrE-speaking women who wore floppy high-necked jumpers/sweaters in the 1970s, what did you call them?


*Don't forget that no one can hear your accent when you type a comment. It's helpful if you always identify your dialect or homeland, or else comments like "well, I always say xyz" aren't very enlightening! (I may have come to know where you're from, but occasional readers won't have.)
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lefties and righties

Joe e-mailed to ask:
I understand that in Great Britain the terms lefty and righty refer to people's political leanings and not their handedness as in the U.S. Is this true, and if so how do the British refer to a left-handed or right-handed person, especially in the context of sports (which is where the issue most often arises here)?
That's mostly true, Joe. Better Half, an avid cricket fan, reports that left-handed batsmen (NB: batter, as in baseball, is AmE, though it's gaining frequency in the UK to refer to cricket players--much to many fans' horror) are referred to as left-handed batsmen. One can also in BrE and AmE call such a person a left-hander. (There are much more derogatory/slang terms--see below.) Most AmE speakers wouldn't think of the diminutive lefty as derogative; in fact, they may consider it to be affectionate. While lefty/righty as handedness labels are found in BrE as well as AmE, they are not used so freely in that way.

Originally from AmE in reference to baseball, we get the slang term southpaw, which has been populari{s/z}ed world-wide through boxing. (Northpaw for right-handers is markedly less common.) It's sometimes considered to be a bit derogatory, particularly since it refers to a human by the name of an animal body part. But as derogatory epithets go, it's got nothing on some of those listed for BrE here. (I'm sure there must be a similar list for AmE, but I'm not finding it--might any of you lefties know?)

As BrE political terms, lefty (also leftie) and the less-common righty (or rightie) are not particularly derogatory either--though, like any epithet, they could be used with belittling intent. Better Half asked me how an American would refer to a socialist, if not by lefty. An awful lot of Americans would probably answer pinko, which is rarely used without derogatory intent and is frequently used in phrases like pinko-commie bastard. The fact of the matter is, while it would be unsurprising and not insulting in the UK to refer to some (certainly not all!) members of the current party in power (Labour) as 'good old socialists', there are few localities in America (Vermont comes to mind) where one could publicly use the word good to modify socialist and not start a fight. Most AmE nicknames for political positions are derogatory or extreme. The most neutral terms are probably left-winger and right-winger, but of course these days almost everyone likes to claim to be 'moderate' or 'middle-of-the-road', etc. Twenty years ago, liberal became a word that was considered a label of shame or an accusation for even the "non-conservative" candidates in the US. (That was back in my student-politico days. The Young Republicans --one of whom recently went to prison in the Abramoff scandal [so there!]-- used to do the L-for-Loser sign on their foreheads while chanting "Liberal" at my colleagues and me.) Conservative has not suffered the same fate in the States. Nor should it--it's a useful word, which makes the 'loss' of liberal as a usable political description all the more sad.
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jumpers, sweaters and the like

Sorry for my week of silence (if you noticed). It was just too hard to entertain out-of-towners in my hometown while also being on-line. Somehow they thought hikes and malls and museums and restaurants were more interesting than watching me type. But among those visitors to my little American hometown were ten British English speakers. Predictably, there were lots of linguistic discussions. Unpredictably, the weather took an unwelcome turn and the most discussed words (in August!) were jumper, sweater and terms for related items of clothing.

Most BrE-AmE dictionaries will tell you that BrE jumper = AmE sweater, but this is a little misleading and far from the whole story. When referring to knit(ted) garments, AmE sweater has much broader application than BrE jumper, which refers only to (generally long-sleeved) pullovers--that is, they are donned by pulling them over the head. In BrE, jumper stands in contrast to cardigan, a word that is used in AmE, but sweater is used frequently in AmE to refer to cardigans as well. So, AmE sweater is a superordinate term or hyper(o)nym, which includes cardigans and pullover sweaters. In BrE, jumper is not the hyperonym of cardigan, but kind of its 'opposite'.

Jumper in AmE is a kind of dress, called a pinafore (dress) in BrE. (Both dialects have the 'apron' sense of pinafore.) In other words, it's a sleeveless dress that's made to be worn over a blouse or other top. Thus my mother, who finds cross-dressing unexpected and hilarious, always has something to say when Better Half says he's going to put on his jumper.

Another sweater that is not a jumper is the (AmE) sweater vest (illustration from this catalog(ue) site). Now, there are two reasons why this isn't called sweater vest in BrE: (1) sweater is AmE (as already established!), and (2) in BrE vest is generally used to refer to (more typically AmE) undershirts (with or without sleeves) or sleeveless undershirt-like things worn by sports players. In AmE, on the other hand, a vest is a sleeveless garment for the upper body that's typically worn over a shirt. This includes the kind that one finds in three-piece suits, which have buttons up the front, and which BrE speakers call a waistcoat. Vest was once used in BrE for what are now called waistcoats--originally the term for a more complicated garment:
The earliest waistcoats, intended to show through the slashings and other openings of the doublet, were often extremely elaborate and costly. They were sometimes provided with sleeves, and appear to have reached to or below the hips. (OED)
So, Americans kept an old (but certainly not the original) meaning of vest, while the British adjusted the meaning of another term. A related term that I've only heard in the UK is gillet (also gilet), for a type of furry waistcoat/vest that became fashionable a couple of years ago. (Here's a photo.) I was questioning whether I've only heard it in BrE because it's only been fashionable since I moved here, but most of Google results for gillet + fur are from the UK, so I'm suspecting that it's a far more common term in BrE these days. On an American catalog(ue) site, I find similar items described as fur vests.

But I've got(ten) away from the question: what is the BrE for (AmE) sweater vest? It is, in my confused experience, tank top. Here's a so-label(l)ed photo from a UK retailer. The experience [of hearing of a dean coming to work in a tank top!] was confusing for me because of the AmE meaning of tank top: a sleeveless undershirt (nowadays often worn as an only-shirt). I was wearing one of those today, so had the opportunity to ask Better Half what he'd call such a thing, and his (sorry, honey) rather unsatisfying answer was 't-shirt', later adapted to 'sleeveless t-shirt'. A more precise BrE term is singlet (as one can see here), but it's not a term one hears a lot these days. Such undershirty things are likely to be called vests, as one can see when searching 'vest' on the Next [UK clothing retailer] website.

This brings to mind another (colo[u]rful but unfortunate) Americanism: wife-beater, which is a slang term for the type of tank top/vest that Marlon Brando wore in Streetcar Named Desire. Slangcity.com claims (I've never heard it) that wife-beater is also BrE slang for Stella Artois beer--which brings one back to Brando and Streetcar (Steeelllllaaaaa!).

Getting back to sweater and jumper, there are more ways in which the former is more general than the latter. For example, I have fine-gauge, short-sleeved knit(ted) tops (like this one on Knit Sisters) that I'd only wear on their own--not over another shirt/blouse--and that I'd call sweaters. I'd not feel comfy calling such things jumpers in BrE, though. Searching summer-sweater on Google Images brings up images of both short-sleeved and sleeveless tops and lightweight, long-sleeved sweaters/jumpers, but searching summer-jumper just results in lightweight, long-sleeved jumpers/sweaters and AmE jumpers (the one short-sleeved one is a red herring: it's on the same page as a long-sleeved one that has the 'summer jumper' label). What would one call a 'summer' sweater in BrE? My best guess is that it's just a top. (BrE-speaking 'summer sweater' wearers, what do you think?)

And speaking of top (once I get going, I just can't shut up, can I?), I find that it's used much more often in BrE than in AmE. And in AmE, one is more likely than in BrE to call a woman's blouse or top a shirt. I'm not saying that these terms aren't used in both dialects, but just that their frequency/commonality seems to be different--at least in the forms of BrE and AmE I've been exposed to. But on that intuitional note, I've got to go bed...
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yard sales, car boot sales and other sales

Getting back to Kelley of Delaware's queries (which I started answering here):
Every weekend this time of year there are dozens of yard/garage sales in my town. Do such things exist in the rest of the English-speaking world, and, if so, what are they called?
I can't speak for the rest of the English-speaking world, but similar things do exist (to some degree) in England, though not by the names yard sale or garage sale. These things are allegedly named after the locations in which they occur, however the ones I've passed by this week (in NY state) that have been advertised as 'yard sales' or 'garage sales' were mostly actually in (chiefly AmE) driveways (BrE drives) next to (AmE) yards or garages. AmE has other terms for such kinds of sales, including tag sale (popular in New England). Many of these terms can be seen at the Dialect Survey map here.

(Side note: The pronunciation of garage was a point of discussion at dinner tonight. Better Half's mum said it in her normal way, so that it rhymed with HAIR ridge carriage, and my mom expressed her admiration of BHM's unfamiliar pronunciation. BHM countered that the AmE (and sometimes preferred BrE) pronunciation gər-RAZH was nicer. Garage is one of the few words (maybe the only word?) that BrE speakers have complimented my (AmE) pronunciation of. This is another case in which the AmE pronunciation is closer to the original [French] pronunciation than the BrE--which only matters if you're one of those people who think 'older' means 'better'.)

Of course, part of the reason that people don't have yard sales in Britain is that they would not call the un-built-upon fronts of their properties yards. That would instead be the front garden (at least, if it's planted). (This was a point of contention between an American and an English friend this summer. The American kept calling the Englishwoman's garden a yard, and the Englishwoman kept letting the American know that she felt insulted by this description.) Nevertheless, there is nothing called a front garden sale either. I've not seen many sales of household merchandise on/in residential properties in the UK, but those that I have seen have been advertised as moving sales. Obviously, that term only applies to certain situations, when people are trying to get rid of things that they don't want to cart to their new abode. There may be a term for non-moving household sales that I've not come across. (Answers in the comments, please!) But these kinds of things are pretty rare--at least in my neck of the English woods.

What the UK does have (and the US generally doesn't) are car boot sales. These take place in public spaces, usually a (BrE) car park/(AmE) parking lot [or a field--see comments]. People put the things that they want to sell into their car's (BrE) boot/(AmE) trunk, then set up a little stall of their wares (often using a folding table, etc.) by their car in the car park/parking lot (typically paying a fee to the organi{s/z}er/landowner). These happen all year round--there is one that happens every week, for example, at Brighton station. Big ones like that often have professional sellers, who may be selling new or used goods (so they resemble flea markets). Others, like the one at a school near our house, are more geared toward(s) the occasional seller.

Both countries have other types of sales in which people donate their used goods for a one-off sale (and possibly social event) to benefit a charity--for example a church. In the greater part of the US, these are called rummage sales, although they may have other regional names. In the UK, they are jumble sales. White elephant sale is a term that I heard as a child in the US (and it was already old-fashioned at that time), but that I've seen more often in the UK.

When I asked Better Half if he knew of any BrE equivalent of yard sale, he drew a blank and noted that such things are a rarity in Britain. One reason for this is that most British homeowners wouldn't have the space for such things. Front gardens/yards tend to be very small, drive(way)s are quite short, and garages are a luxury in town cent{er/re}s. Another reason is that most British homeowners just don't have the space to store as much unwanted junk for as long as American homeowners can--and thus they can't store up a sale's worth of merchandise. BH's mum, for example, has a good-sized three-bedroom house. But as is typical of a post-war London home, she has no basement, no attic to speak of, no garage, and no walk-in closets. In that situation, one doesn't wait long to get rid of clothes that don't fit, gifts that didn't hit the mark, and decorations that have been replaced. People have various ways to get rid of unwanted stuff (and, it must be said, they tend to buy less junk in the first place), with charity shops (AmE: thrift stores) playing a major part in the second-hand economy.
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crossing the street/road

My father and Brother Number 2 were giving Better Half walking directions to somewhere or other today, when they said that he'd have to cross the street. BH replied that if he were to do it, it'd be (BrE) crossing the road. Which led Dad and BN2 to expatiate on the AmE difference between streets and roads. They agreed that they could cross the street in town, but would cross the road in the country. In general, the term road is found much more often for street names in towns in the UK than it is in the US, where it tends to be reserved for either country roads or sometimes biggish thoroughfares in cities (e.g. Rochester, NY has a Winton Road within the city, but I don't think there are any streets named road within the village limits of my hometown). This led me to create a new joke:
-Why did the chicken cross the street? -Because she lived in town.

You're not going to tell me that jokes have to be funny, are you?

 

P.S. for more on this topic, see this more recent post: Talking about streets and roads


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corn, sweetcorn, maize

Hello from Upstate New York, where Better Half and I are stationed for our second wedding reception. You should try this bi-continental couple thing, you get more parties than regular ol' couples. On our second day here, BH and I went out for a Mexican meal (BH: "Look at how cheap this is! How do they sell food for so little? Look at how much this costs!"). BH asked for "a glass of water", and true to my past story-telling, the waiter asked him to repeat that three times, after which the waiter gave up and asked "Could you explain to me what that is?"

But being here, barbecuing, eating fresh peaches from down the road, and fighting the mosquitos puts me in the mood to answer an old message from Kelley in Delaware, starting with its second half (to be continued...):
Another seasonal phenomenon [...] is corn on the cob. I understand that BrE calls this vegetable “maize,” in which case the alliteration is lost. What is it called when corn/maize is sold and eaten as an entire ear? Furthermore, the process of removing the husk and silk is called “shucking” in AmE; is there a BrE equivalent?
In BrE, corn on the cob is called (surprise, surprise!) corn on the cob. BrE names for (AmE) corn have come up in the comments for another post, where it was pointed out that it's not so simple as corn=maize. In BrE corn retained for longer the earlier meaning of 'grain' (this is present in both dialects still in compounds like barley(-)corn, and pepper(-)corn), whereas in AmE, it came to refer specifially to a certain kind of grain. Because BrE didn't until recently generali{s/z}e the meaning of corn in this way, it used Indian corn or maize (from Taíno via Spanish mahiz, later maíz) for this particular plant. Maize refers to corn as a grain, rather than in its use as a vegetable (though you might see maize on ingredients lists in vegetably-things like this). So the term sweetcorn is used in BrE to refer to corn kernels eaten as a vegetable. Eaten very differently than in the US. In the UK, one may be served (sweet)corn cold as a part of a salad (or not), and it is a popular pizza topping. One of my favo(u)rite restaurant pastimes is to check out the ingredients of the "American pizza" or "American omelet(te)" etc. While American pizzas are usually pepperoni pizzas, sometimes they come with (sweet)corn, to which most Americans say (AmE) YUCK! (v. BrE yuk). Here are a few others:

Americano pizza, Locatelli, Exeter: mozzarella, tomato, pineapple & ham
(that's what Americans and many UK restaurants would call a Hawaiian pizza; Some Americans, including me, think that there is something seriously wrong with anyone who orders/eats this.)
Pizza Americana, La Vita Pizzeria, Glasgow: Smoked sausage and caramalised [sic] onions on a tomato base topped with Mozzarella cheese.
(not overwhelmingly American, but sounds much nicer...)
American Chicken Pizza, from American Fried Chicken and Pizza, Poole: Cheese, Tomato, Chicken, Sweetcorn, Mushrooms & Pineapple
(Ugh.)
For more pizza fun, see the Dial-a-Pizza menu from St Helens, Merseyside. They have pizzas named for many American states and cities. The match-up between names and ingredients is fairly mysterious....

But back to Kelley's questions... Shuck is listed as 'orig. and chiefly U.S.' in the OED. BH learned the word from me when I first brought unshucked corn home from Waitrose [supermarket]. But unshucked corn is a rarity in the UK, so one doesn't have much of a need for a speciali{s/z}ed verb for husk-removal. The usual way to buy corn-on-the-cob in the UK is to find it shucked, de-silked and with the pointy end cut off, sitting on a (BrE) polystyrene/(AmE) styrofoam bed, wrapped in plastic. In the 7+ years that I've lived in the UK, the quality of corn-on-the-cob has improved drastically. When I first tried it there, I remarked that it seemed to be the kind of corn that we give to livestock (feedcorn), rather than the kind we give to people. It was generally picked way too late. These days, we're getting some beautiful c-on-the-c from Spain that is almost as good as the stuff we buy from farmers on the roadside here. (BH rises to defend Spanish (sweet)corn and revises that to "every bit as good".)
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Brit

We're finally going on our honeymoon, so there will be no posts here for at least 10 days. So, here's something for you to entertain yourselves and each other with...

If you are a (native, not like me!) British citizen (or 'subject', if you prefer), would you call yourself or any one of your fellow citizens a Brit? Do you think of the noun Brit as a term used mostly by foreigners?

I've polled three people today, and these are my results so far:

Better Half says it's not a noun he'd use, but he doesn't find it offensive when foreigners use it about him. So, for him Brit is neutral and foreign. (As opposed to pom and limey, which are foreign and insulting. The former of these is fairly unknown in the US, but well-known in the Antipodes.)

The Syntactician says "I don't use it and wouldn't like to be called one because to me it conjures up ex-pats of the worst kind."

And the friend who puts a B in BOMB (she'll know what that means, at least!) says that it can be neutral or insulting, depending on the context, and 'when abroad' is a time when she'd be likely to use it.

The thing that one notices when writing a blog like this is that the AmE speakers use the term a lot more than the BrE speakers. When referring to themselves individually, of course, BrE speakers are more likely to use a more specific term, relating to their country of origin (England, Scotland, Wales, or Northern Ireland--but let's not get into the problem of whether that's British or not--it's in Greater Britain, if not Great Britain!). I suppose BrE speakers are less likely than AmE speakers to want to (or need to) generali{s/z}e about the British.

I have noticed that use of Brit as a noun modifier is more common (Brit wit, Britblogs, etc.). I'm not as interested in that. Nor is it particularly interesting that there are music awards called The Brits. No, what's interesting to me is what we call people and how they feel about it. So, native Britishers, what do you think?
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Harry Potter language

Unsurprisingly, I've had a few requests lately to cover terms from Harry Potter. (Thanks Bill and Mrs Peel!) Since I'm four books behind in the series --and since I only have the UK editions, and therefore don't know what's made it through to the US editions dialect-wise-- I don't feel particularly well placed to write about it. So, instead, and as my nod to Pottermania, I direct you to some sites that might help.

Although not updated since 2002, Arabella Figg's Hogwarts Express has a Dictionary Page, which includes a glossary of BrE words that have been left in the AmE editions--from at least the earlier books.

The Harry Potter Word Wizard includes various reference tools, including pronunciations of words from the Potter world, and a shorter list of BrE words in the American editions. They also have a way to contact them and make requests for additional terms. (If they need help, they can ask me!)

There's a quiz on differences between the US and UK editions of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban at this site, much of which depends on BrE/AmE knowledge. Good luck!

Update, 23 July 2012:  Since one of those sites is no more, I direct you to the Harry Potter Lexicon.
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making head(s) or tail(s)

Continuing on my backlog of old requests: a colleague who's involved in a Catalan-English dictionary project forwarded (back in March) part of a conversation arising from an unfamiliar translation in the project. The Catalan phrase in question was apparently (no) trobar ni caps ni peus, and the lexicographer was questioning the translation of it as (not) to make heads or tails (of something), because she, a BrE speaker, would have said (not) to make head or tail (of something). Indeed, the plural version is the AmE version, and the singular the BrE version. (This is backed up by John Algeo in British or American English. He found only the singular in BrE texts in his corpus, and only plural in AmE texts.)

I suppose the reason I didn't write about that earlier is because there's not a lot more to say about it! It's unclear why the AmE version gained the plural markers. The phrase head or tail is defined by the OED as 'one thing or another', so etymologically speaking, the singular makes some sense. Growing up with the AmE version, I visuali{s/z}ed the things that one 'could not make heads or tails of' to be chaotic things--sort of like a Breughel painting as done by Jackson Pollock, where you wouldn't be able to find the heads or the tails of the beings in it. The BrE version lends it self to a visual that is imprecise, but not necessarily chaotic. But then, how one pictures such things must be a highly individual experience...
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patroni{s/z}e

Onward and upward in my quest to reduce the number of unanswered requests in my e-mail inbox. Some of them I've put off answering because the answers are long and complicated and require actual work. This one is the other kind. I've delayed answering it because I don't have any cute stories to tell about it. (Protests that none of my stories are cute should be written up in triplicate and submitted to your local authority figure.)

It comes from Paul of The Beer Card. Or, rather, it came from Paul (in March--forgive me!):
I subscribe to Bridge World, an American magazine, that exhorts its readers to 'please patronize our advertisers'. Every time I see this my instinctive reaction is to send them a sarcastic or condescending e-mail. Is this form of the verb less common in the US?

I did notice that Chambers and American Heritage Dictionary give the meanings in reverse order.
Points to Paul for the dictionary research!

Rather than saying that the 'condescend' sense of patroni{s/z}e is less common in AmE, I'd venture that the 'give financial support to' sense is more common in AmE than in BrE. One reads the please patronize our advertisers/sponsors admonition often in the newsletters of small organi{s/z}ations--charities, churches and the like--whose advertisers are typically small businesses with small advertising budgets. But since patroni{s/z}e is ambiguous (and probably also because it's a 'hard' word), one more often sees please support our advertisers/sponsors-- about four times more often with advertisers and 40 times more often with sponsors, if we can take the Google results as representative.

Trying to test this out further on Google, one is a bit hampered by the fact that Google doesn't allow for US-only searches. So, the below is a comparison of patroni{s/z}e our advertisers on the web in general versus the UK:


UKWorld
patronise our advertisers124
patronize our advertisers180,700


As opposed to support, which is seen more in the UK.


UKWorld
support our advertisers12,200323,000


In other words, a site that exhorts you to support advertisers has a 3.7% chance of being a UK-based site (at least as far as Google can tell), whereas a site that encourages you to patroni{s/z}e advertisers has only a .002% chance of being UK-based. So, since BrE readers are less likely to have come across this use of patroni{s/z}e regularly, it's more likely to strike them as odd, and to bring up the other possible meaning, as is Paul's experience. AmE readers, on the other hand, are more accustomed to relying on the object of the verb (in this case advertisers/sponsors) to tell them that it's probably the 'financially support' sense and not the 'condescend' sense that's intended. We (all dialects) do that kind of thing all the time. For instance, we know that different senses of book are at play if a police officer books a massage therapist or books a suspect. (Of course, we can overcome those interpretations with more context--the officer could book a massage therapist for assault or book a suspect (who happens to be a clown) for his daughter's birthday party. But I just raise this example to defend myself against the hordes who might claim that AmE is irresponsible for having a verb with two senses. Most verbs have at least that many!)

Postscript, later that evening: Describing this entry to my friend the Poet this evening, I reali{s/z}ed, of course, that the two senses are not so confusing in speech. For the 'condescend' meaning I (and Better Half, so maybe this is universal) pronounce the first syllable like the word pat, and for the 'financially support' sense, I pronounce it with the same vowel as in pay. The Concise Oxford (what I have at home) only lists the pat pronunciation. American Heritage lists both, starting with pay, but doesn't specify that they go with different senses. Do you have two pronunciations, and are they sense-specific?
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directly

Continuing to make my way through ancient requests, Susie wrote back in January (oh, the neglect!) to request coverage of directly. She's probably given up on reading this blog by now, but at least I hadn't promised to discuss it directly.

The word directly, of course, is found in both AmE and BrE, as in:
Try to involve everyone, not just those directly in front of you. [University of Kent Careers Advisory Service, Tips on Making Presentations]
But the use of directly to mean 'shortly' or 'very soon', is mostly AmE--though the OED indicates that it's also BrE dialectal (but which dialects? do you know?). It's that sense of the word that's used when a (AmE) salesclerk/(BrE) shop assistant says:
I'll be with you directly.
...before they ignore you in order to deal with another customer.

For this meaning, shortly works in BrE (as well as AmE), but when I asked Better Half what he'd say instead of I'll do that directly, he said that he'd say I'll do that later. When I countered that that doesn't mean the same thing, he claimed that as a British person, he was less likely than an American to want to tie himself down to anything more specific. I think he was joking (he's rarely not joking), but if you'd like to protest or support his contention, feel free to do so in the comments!

Afterthought (the next morning): A good South African equivalent is just now, which confused (or maybe annoyed) me to no end when I first arrived there and went to a party with a co-worker. He kept saying We'll leave just now and so I'd fetched my bag or whatever and found myself waiting while he drank another drink, and another, and had another conversation...

Note that the dialectal differences involving directly and just now are not about whether they are used to talk about time, which they generally are in a lot of dialects, but whether they're used to mean 'not immediately, but soonish', which tends to be more dialect-specific. Just now in my native AmE dialect can mean 'in the very recent past' and directly can mean 'immediately' in most dialects.
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different from/than/to

The last post, on numbers, is currently number 2 on the list of most-commented upon posts, second only to toilet. This probably has something to do with the fact that it was posted shortly after this site was chosen as a Yahoo pick. (Yahoo!) It probably also has something to do with the fact that the subject got changed in the comments section (probably more than once). One of the topic-changing culprits was Howard, of the UK-US Forum. (For one of my rants on topic-changing, see this post. Hey, I'm a Libra with Virgo (AmE-preferred) rising/(BrE-preferred) ascendant. I can't help my need for order.)

In spite of the hard time I've given Howard (or, as I've started referring to him, Naughty Howard) about topic-changing, I must admit that it's a topic I've meant to cover. So, most is forgiven, Howard--but I'm still going to think of you as Naughty Howard, due to my naturally stubborn and sadistic nature (which can't be too serious, considering the Libra factor).

So, readers, fill in the blank in the following sentence:
British English is different ____ American English in many ways.
If you answered from, then congratulations! You are a citizen of the world, who uses the only variant on this phrase that is said around the Anglophonic world and the only variant that is universally considered to be "correct" by the people who make declarations about such things.

If you said than, then you're most likely North American. Note that objections to this form have softened through the years. For instance:
Different than has been much criticized by commentators but is nonetheless Standard [in American English--L.] at most levels except for some Edited English. Consider She looks different than [she did] yesterday. He’s different than me (some additional purist discomfort may arise here). You look different than he [him]. The problem lies in the assumption that than should be only a subordinating conjunction (requiring the pronouns that follow to be the nominative case subjects of their clauses), and not a preposition (requiring the pronouns that follow to be the objective case objects of the preposition). But Standard English does use than as both preposition and conjunction: She looks different than me is Standard and so is She looks different than I [do]. And with comparative forms of adjectives, than occurs with great frequency: She looks taller [older, better, thinner, etc.] than me [than I do]. Still, best advice for Formal and Oratorical levels: stick with different from. --Kenneth G. Wilson, The Columbia Guide to Standard American English, 1993.

If you said to, then you're probably British, although you might be from a Commonwealth country. Or you could be me. For some reason, different to entered my grammar quite soon after I moved here. I thought I was being really "native" when I used it in a draft of a document for students. But my fellow American (and BrE pundit), the late, great Larry Trask, took me to task for it, saying that it was non-standard BrE. I can't find anyone else who feels so strongly about this as Larry did, but then again, there are fewer British style guides on the web---and I'm not in my office with Fowler's and Oxford Style at the moment. My Concise Oxford only says that different to is "less common [than different from] in formal use". Someone in a forum at this site reports:

Fowler's Modern English Usage, Second Edition
different. 1. That d. can only be followed by from and not by to is a SUPERSTITION.

But someone else on the forum (not citing which edition of Fowler's--and that matters a lot!), claims that Fowler's is completely intolerant of different than, claiming that if one needs to have a than there, then different must be acting as an adverb, and therefore should be differently, as in This soup tastes differently than it did last night. Now, since taste is a sense verb that acts as a linking verb, it can occur with an adjective (you wouldn't say This soup tastes spicily, would you?), so I'm not sure that commentator had his/her facts right. If I were a responsible blogger, I'd wait until Monday to post this, so I could look it up myself. But instead, I'll be lazy and hope that one of you will do it! The 3rd edition, please!
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numbers, numbers and more numbers

Eric in Chicago wrote to ask about some numbers, and there are other numbers that I've been meaning to write about too. So let's have a numberfest!

Let's start with Eric's question:
I just read that the term "billion" in AmE is different than BrE. In AmE it refers to a one with nine zeros following or 1,000,000,000 but in BrE it refers to a one with twelve zeros following or 1,000,000,000,000, or a "trillion" in AmE. Do they not have a trillion in BrE? and what do they say for 1,000,000,000? one thousand million?
Historically yes, Eric: AmE billion = BrE thousand million = 1,000,000,000. However, the effect of AmE and AmE media
is definitely beinghas been felt in BrE, and the use of billion to mean 1,000,000,000 is
becoming more prevalentnow widespread. For most people, these numbers are so hard to imagine that they probably just think of it as a one followed by lots and lots of zeros. Or, as one is more apt to say in BrE (than in AmE), a one followed by lots and lots of noughts.
About trillion, the OED says:
The third power of a million; a million billions, i.e. millions of millions. Also, orig. in France and local U.S., a thousand ‘billions’, or 1012 (i.e. the traditional English billion: see BILLION): this sense is now standard in the U.S. and is increasingly common in British usage.
Of the less definite -illions, OED lists zillion as 'chiefly U.S.' (although the Wikipedia article on such numbers uses a Terry Pratchett quotation in order to attest the word's existence). Squillion is not marked as U.S., although the OED's earliest citations for it are by Americans. Nevertheless, it sounds a little more BrE to me. Then there are lots of other variations (I tend to say kajillion, but that's not in the OED yet)--see the Wikipedia link for more on that subject.

Shifting to smaller numbers, there are (as we've seen before) differences in how BrE and AmE speakers express multi-digit numbers. It's definitely a more AmE trait to express four-digit numbers in hundreds:
2300 =
two
thousand, three hundred (BrE or AmE)
or
twenty-three
hundred (chiefly AmE)
Often, when I say things like 23 hundred, I can see the cogs turning behind my BrE-speaking interlocutors' eyes as they try to visuali{s/z}e what that expression means. Sometimes they ask for a translation. Sometimes they express annoyance! And other times, they marvel at the fact that American addresses sometimes involve four-digit house numbers. Meanwhile, my family used to think it curious that I used to live at number 7. You see, where I come from, there are no house numbers with fewer than three digits. The first house on the street is number 100. Don't ask me why. (Then, there's the fact that British streets sometimes, like in America, have odd house numbers on one side of the street and even numbers on the opposite side. But other times --like on my current street-- they start at 1, continue 2, 3, 4, up one side of the road, then when it gets to the end, the numbers continue down the other side of the road, so that a road with 50 houses would have number 50 directly across from number 1, and on the other end 25 across from 26. But I'm getting away from language, am I not?)

Another number difference that Better Half often remarks upon is the expression of the years of this decade. BrE speakers tend to include an and between the two thousand and the unit number, while AmE speakers tend not to:
2007 =
BrE typical: two thousand and seven
AmE typical: two thousand seven
Because these tend to be written as Arabic numerals instead of words, it's difficult to 'prove' the extent of these tendencies without access to a recent, well-transcribed spoken corpus of both dialects, which I don't have. However, it has been noted elsewhere. If anyone else has any facts and figures to back up these observations, by all means, let us know about them!


Postscript: I've now had the chance to discuss this on camera!

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collective noun agreement

Sorry for the unexplained gap in posts. I was busy making an honest man of Better Half. I also reali{s/z}e that I've been somewhat selfish lately, just writing about things that I want to write about. Me, me, me. But now I that I'm a responsible member of the venerable institution of marriage, I guess it's all supposed to be about selflessness and compromise and all that jazz. So, back, finally, to responding to some of your requests.

Let's go way back. To November! How neglectful I've been! (Well, kind of--I responded to this correspondent's first question here. And this issue has been mentioned a little before, most recently in the comments for this post.) Jackie, an American who briefly lived in London, wrote to say:
I found British English atrocious. [...] Brits [...] have a strong tendency to use singular nouns with the plural form of verbs, e.g., "The gang are going to have a tough time protecting their patch," and "MIA are looking into terrorist links."
Now, Jackie, I have to say that I'm surprised that a graduate of UCLA's linguistics program(me) would use the word atrocious to refer to another variety of English! Let's all recite together now the descriptive linguists' mantra: Different dialects are different, but that doesn't make them better or worse than your dialect! Both AmE and BrE have 'logical' subject-verb agreement systems, they're just a bit different in the assumptions/preferences behind them.

Let's start with the nouns that are concerned here. It's not just any singular noun that can go with a plural verb form in BrE; it's specifically collective nouns--that is, nouns that refer to collections or collectivities (particularly, in the BrE examples, collections of people). These kinds of nouns are a bit funny. Let's look at Jackie's first example:
BrE: The gang are going to have a tough time protecting their patch.

...which in (most, standard) AmE would be:
AmE: The gang is going to have a tough time protecting its/their patch.
Notice here that while AmE strongly prefers a singular verb with a noun like gang or committee or team, it's a bit looser when it comes to pronoun agreement with such collective nouns. Thus, we can find lots of examples with a singular verb and a singular pronoun, but also examples in which the plurality of a committee (i.e. the fact that it's made up of individuals) comes through in the pronoun, but not the verb:
After questions are concluded, you and any guests will be asked to leave while the committee makes its decision. [From a University of Oregon document]

[A]ll will be notified once the committee makes their decision. [From the Westchester (NY) County Board of Legislators]
The indecision about pronoun agreement (and contrast in pronoun and verb agreement) indicates that the case of collective nouns is complicated. Grammatically, they have singular form. Semantically (i.e. in meaning), they refer to things that are inherently plural. For most nouns, the grammatical and the semantic match up--so it's hard to say whether the agreement between subject noun and verb is being triggered by the word's semantic or grammatical status. But in the case of collective nouns, we can see different varieties of English taking different strategies. BrE prefers semantic agreement (when the collective refers to animate beings, at least), and AmE prefers grammatical agreement--most of the time.

It's not really that simple, though. There are times when AmE speakers use plural agreement, in order to emphasi{s/z}e the individuality of the members of the collective (and this gets some discussion over at Language Log). So, take for example the following:
The jury disagree. [plural verb]
versus
The jury disagrees.
[singular verb]
The City University of New York's Writing Centre guide states strongly that the plural verb must be used in this case:
Some words you might not realize are plural:
[...]
Collective nouns that represent a group of individuals who are acting independently. Whereas, for example, the word “jury” would take a singular verb when the jurors act in concert (“the jury decided that ... ”), it would take a plural verb when differences between the group are emphasized.

Wrong: “The jury disagrees [among themselves] on this issue.”

Right: “The jury disagree on this issue.”
And in BrE, when it's very clear that the collective is to be thought of as a unit, not as individuals, then a singular verb is perfectly acceptable, as in the book title:
My Family Is All I Have: A British Woman's Story of Escaping the Nazis and Surviving the Communists
Thus BrE allows a distinction between (a) and (b) below, while (b) would sound more awkward in AmE:
(a) My family is big. [i.e. there are 10 of us]
(b) My family are big. [i.e. the individuals are super-size]
Thus, AmE speakers tend to avoid sentences like (b) and to rephrase them as something like The members of my family are all big.

The moral of the story is: collective noun agreement is tricky. A semantic strategy is probably more flexible than a grammatical strategy, but people can communicate just fine with either strategy!
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what's so difficult about water?

As mentioned in my last post, an American ordering water in a British restaurant often amounts to a verbal slapstick scene. (But if you want to read some real verbal slapstick, see my dear friend lazybrain's most recent post.) American visitors to these shores typically have to ask for water at least three times before communication is achieved--and there is similar difficulty for some BrE speakers ordering water in the US. One commenter back at the last entry presumes that this is because of the (southern) BrE lack of post-vocalic /r/s (i.e. 'r' after a vowel sound). That is to say, many AmE dialects pronounce a distinct /r/ at the end of water, whereas some prominent BrE dialects don't.

I don't think that's the problem, though. Firstly, when (mostly [r]-ful) northern Americans order water in the (mostly [r]-less) southern states, we don't get that slapstick, and vice versa. Second, there's a lot more going on in water.

I think the biggest problem is the pronunciation of the /t/. In most standard forms of BrE, it's pronounced [t]--like the [t] in tiger. (In some non-standard forms of BrE, it can be pronounced as a glottal stop--i.e. an interruption to the flow of sound that is made by closing the glottis, in the throat. Many Americans (like me) use a glottal stop instead of a [t] before a syllabic (pronounced on its own) /n/, as in mitten. It's also the sound between the vowels in uh-oh!) In AmE, a /t/ between two vowels is typically pronounced as an alveolar flap. Alveolar refers to the gum ridge behind the top front teeth. In a flap (or 'tap'), the tongue passes very quickly over that point. When BrE speakers parody this sound, they often use a [d], but a flap is not a [d], as described in this tutorial:
Flaps are abbreviated forms of the alveolar plosives /t/ and /d/ and the alveolar nasal /n/. In a normal alveolar plosive closure, the vocal tract is blocked for some 50 ms, but in the flap, produced by one rapid tap of the tongue against the alveolar ridge, the duration is very short, on the order of 10-20 ms. The flap is very common in American English. [From Center for Spoken Language Understanding, Oregon School of Science & Engineering, Spectrogram-reading tutorial]
When I lecture, the two things I try to be careful about are: (a) pronouncing my /t/s, and (b) saying cannot instead of can't (I cannot say that I always succeed), since I discovered quickly that these were the American pronunciations that most impeded my communication to BrE speakers.

But wait! There are more differences between BrE and AmE pronunciations of water. The /a/ vowel differs quite a bit, with the BrE version being (in my amateur-phonetician estimation) longer than the AmE version, giving the word a different rhythm in the two dialects. The standard southern BrE vowel is also quite a bit rounder than the very open standard AmE vowel.

So, there are two differences in the rhythmic profile of water that differ quite a bit cross-Atlantically, plus two vowel differences (the quality of the /a/ and what happens with the /r/). It's amazing that anyone ever quenches their thirst in another country. (Unless it's with beer. My brothers mastered the ordering of a pint almost immediately.)

A tip for travel(l)ers: modify your water. If you want the free stuff, say tap water in Britain and iced water in America. (If you don't want the ice, ask for iced water without the ice--just modify your water with a word that the waiter will be expecting to hear!) I don't recommend slowing down your pronunciation--that only exaggerates the differences. If you're American, using a fully pronounced [t] should be all it takes to make your water comprehensible. I don't recommend that BrE speakers take on a flap, since a badly executed flap may make it sound like you're mocking the American you're speaking to. Just say water as many times as necessary, then accept the compliments on how intelligent your accent sounds.
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eating faggots

My family (AmE) is/(BrE) are here this week, so I haven't a lot of time for blogging. You'd think that there would be a lot to blog about, with six Americans clashing with English culture constantly, but the linguistic conversations are mostly of the "Chips are French fries!" variety, and the miscommunications mostly occur when asking waiters for water (OK, I'll blog about that next).

Most menus need a fair amount of translation, both for the dishes that are not eaten as much in America and for the food names that are different. So far, the one that's caused the most raised eyebrows was beef and herb faggots. Better Half described these as English meatballs, which seemed like a reasonable description, but all of the recipes I've found this morning (for beef or pork faggots) involve a fair amount of offal--which is not what comes to mind when I think 'meatballs'. Here is a recipe for the curious.
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tutor

I told my friend The Poet about the RateMyProfessors.com site and its complement, the blog RateYourStudents. Some days later, she e-mailed me to say that she'd found RateMyTutor.com, but didn't think it did what I said it did. What had happened, you see, was that she unconsciously translated the American name of the site into something that made more sense for a BrE speaker--then found that it didn't mean the same thing in AmE.

While RateMyProfessors is used in the UK, the name doesn't quite work, since at most UK universities, only a small proportion of the faculty is/are professors. The full range of academic ranks varies some from university to university, but typically the entry-level position for an academic on a permanent teaching/research contract is Lecturer, and Professor is the highest rank. In between my university has Senior Lecturer and Reader. But whoever takes the teaching role for a course is the course's tutor. Another role one can take is that of personal tutor, a term which is being replaced at my university by academic advisor, and which at my US undergraduate university was simply called advisor: the role in which one gives guidance (and pastoral care) to a student with respect to their overall academic development, rather than just for a particular course/class/module (whatever you want to call it).

In most American universities, the entry level for academics is Assistant Professor, then there's Associate Professor, then full Professor. All of these people are called Professor. So, in the US, I was Professor Lynneguist, but in the UK, I'm just Doctor Lynneguist. In the US, a student might ask another Who's your biology professor? But in the UK, one would ask Who's your tutor for biology?

In AmE, a tutor is generally understood to provide private tuition. (That sounds ambiguous in AmE, since tuition in America usually refers to (BrE) school/university fees. Tutors provide tutoring or tutelage--not fees!) When I was a (BrE) postgrad/(AmE) grad student, I was a logic tutor for student athletes--meaning I helped them understand the lectures that had gone over their heads. In the UK I am a tutor in that I am the person getting paid and doing most of the talking in the classroom--the one whose lectures might go over the students' heads. The (American) RateMyTutor site is about people who provide private lessons to school children.

That reminds me of another thing... Lesson in AmE most often refers to the kind of thing that a private tutor might do. One has piano lessons and flying lessons, etc. School teachers make lesson plans, and may refer to the mathematical part of the day as the math(s) lesson, but once the (AmE) students/(BrE) pupils are old enough to have different teachers for different lessons, the lessons tend not to be referred to as lessons in AmE, but instead are called classes. (This ends up being ambiguous, as the class could be the activity or the group of students.) I thus find it strange when my BrE-speaking students refer to my lectures or seminars as lessons (as in: Could you send me the notes from yesterday's lesson? I had to miss it because my housemate was having her poodle dyed and the bath flooded and ruined my bus ticket so I had to stay at home and watch Countdown instead.). It sounds oddly childish to my ear.

As of this moment, no one has bothered to rate me on that professor-rating site. I simultaneously consider myself lucky and feel a little hurt.

P.S. A second-hand addition to the Canadian count: someone else wondered to Better Half whether I was Canadian. We're now into double-digit Canadian count.
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flannel and washcloth

Recyclist continues to let me know about bits of BrE that have confused her during her stay here. A recent one was flannel (in its longer form, face flannel), which is the BrE translation for AmE washcloth. Face flannels are so-called because they were once made from flannel fabric, but these days they're (AmE) terrycloth/(BrE) terry. If you stay in European (including UK) hotels or bed-and-breakfasts, you are less likely to be supplied with a washcloth/flannel than you would be in an American hotel (where I've never not been given a washcloth/flannel). You will, of course, be given towels. My understanding (though you can read other understandings here) is that this is because facecloths are considered too personal to share. People who use them bring their own when they stay away from home. Cotton flannel fabric (originally flannel was wool(l)en) is sometimes called flannelette--moreso (in my experience) in BrE than in AmE. So, Better Half talks about our flannelette sheets, and I talk about our flannel sheets.

It was a couple of weeks ago that Recyclist encouraged me to write about flannel, and she's asked me since if I've covered it yet. I replied that the stated mission of my blog was to cover the bits of cross-Atlantic English that everyone wouldn't already know about, and that flannel/washcloth is kind of like elevator/lift--the kind of difference that anyone with the slightest bit of cross-cultural knowledge would know. She insisted that it wasn't. I figured out later, when I discovered that Recyclist also hadn't heard of Brixton, that I just assume that any (slightly Anglophilic) American of my generation would know certain BrE words from certain songs. I must have learned flannel from Squeeze's 'Tempted':
I bought a toothbrush, some toothpaste, a flannel for my face
Pyjamas*, a hairbrush, new shoes and a case
I said to my reflection
Let's get out of this place
*This site spells it pyjamas, most other music-lyric sites spell it pajamas. I don't know how Chris Difford spelled it, but it was probably with the y.

So, for those of you who didn't listen to Squeeze, I've now done flannel/washcloth. Now go and download Eastside Story to complete your education.

(Brixton I knew about from the Clash--but I've got(ten) to know it better because BH used to live there. Not as scary as the song.)
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recuse

The spellchecker will out me. I was writing an e-mail about Examination Board procedures. (Exam boards are a blight on British academic life, and unheard of in the US. I've mentioned them before, here.) In doing so, I typed the word recuse, as in Anyone with a personal relationship with a student should recuse him/herself from discussions of that student. My mail program didn't like recuse. Thinking 'how am I spelling that wrong?', I went to the Oxford Dictionary of English (not to be confused with the Oxford English Dictionary!), where I found the word, spelt as I had spelt it, but with the note: Chiefly U.S. and South African (or something like that--I'm away from that particular dictionary now). I think "Aha! So that's why my British spellchecker didn't like it."* (Although it must be said that it's a pretty pathetic BrE spellchecker, since it insists on one 'l' in travelling.) The OED only lists it as Now rare, but it's not particularly rare in American legalistic settings. The American Heritage definition of it goes:
To disqualify or seek to disqualify from participation in a decision on grounds such as prejudice or personal involvement.
Wondering how one would say this in British English, I had a look in the University's Handbook for Examiners, where they simply instruct the interested party to "leave the meeting while the student in question is being considered." Of course, one could say disqualify in this setting (albeit a little awkwardly), as in I disqualified myself from the discussion of that student. But where's the fun in that?

*Eek! Spellchecking update! Blogger's (American--sort of) spellchecker doesn't like recuse either! Weird, weird, weird. I started to think that my vocabulary is too rarefied for spellchecking. So I googled recuse. It gets over a million hits. Ten times as many hits as uxorious, but the spellchecker has no problem with uxorious (a word that's not in my active vocabulary). Weird.
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Abbr.

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