Separated by a Common Language

Here's a quick topical one.Picky writes today to ask about a New York Times headline:Clinton Urges Hewing to Irish Peace Process Picky asks:Hewing? What means she "hewing"? The text doesn't seem to help.It's unclear to me that Clinton actually said hewing. In the text of the article, the meaning...

Ben Zimmer, the man responsible for my blogging about shit, has sent me a number of BrE sentences over the past few months. Each of these did not contain the word like where an American like Ben might've expected it. And, really, that was the point of the scatological post that Ben inspired too....

I am often asked to cover the differences between AmE and BrE use of quite as an intensifier (i.e. a modifier of adjectives that tells you 'how much'). When asked, I point people to this post. When they write back and say "I meant how it means opposite things in BrE and AmE", I reply "Read the post....

Ooh, I'm cruising through the backlog of requests now. We're in June now, with Simon writing to request treatment of the verb table, an example of a Janus word in BrE and AmE meeting lingo.In the US, meetings are often held according to Robert's Rules of Order, a popular guide to 'parliamentary...

Mark Liberman over on Language Log has blogged about the following sentence, which appeared in the Guardian today: Quite who Fatah al-Islam are, or where they came from, is a matter of dispute. Liberman finds the sentence-initial quite who very strange, preferring exactly who or just who. He suspects...

We buy the Guardian every Saturday because Better Half just cannot live without the Guide. It's a lot of paper to buy just to get the television listings, but this doesn't deter BH. It's a nightmare for me, though. Once a newspaper crosses my threshold, the only section that I can bear not to read...

Someone some time ago asked about moot. This is a real source of miscommunication in BrE and AmE, as it has opposite meanings when used as an adjective, as in the phrase a moot point. My first experiences of this word were in relation to moot court scenes in The Paper Chase (that [AmE] show/[BrE]...

At a party yesterday I was told a story about an American psychometric test that was deemed unethical when it was imported to the UK. I've not been able to confirm the story, but the alleged problem was that people were asked whether they considered themselves "a nervy person", and that answer affected...