Separated by a Common Language

I got this by email from a reader named Robbie:A while ago I watched several episodes of the US children's show "Bubble Guppies" and found myself getting more and more annoyed with them. As in many preschool shows, the characters speak directly to the audience and encourage them to get involved with...

As we've already established, this was an indecisive year for me, and I've already announced two Words of the Year, both adjectives:  US-to-UK awesome and UK-to-US dodgy. Of course, many words go back and forth between the two countries each year, and these have been building up usage in their...

This was the fourth year that I declared October Untranslatables Month on my Twitter feed. (Here's 2011 , 2012, and 2013.) Instead of offering a 'Difference of the Day', I offered an 'Untranslatable of the Day' every weekday.  Last year, I swore that I wasn't going to do it again. In part...

Two matters for this belated blog post:  Words of the Year nominations and the Untranslatables Month summary. WotY Nominations Long-term readers will know that we have (at least) two Words of the Year here at SbaCL, and nominations are open for both categories as of now: 1. Best AmE-to-BrE...

Mwncïod ‏ on Twitter asked:AmE/BrE diff? Watching US sit-com "Big Bang Theory" character says "catch/caught a break" vs BrE "get/got a break"?Get a break is not so much BrE as general English. Break meaning 'a bit of good luck; a chance' is originally AmE and continues to be used there with get....

I've had various requests to cover various telephone-related vocabulary. Most of it is simple enough that I can do that thing that I think of as not-really-writing-a-legitimate-blog-post--that is, writing a big list of equivalent words. Some aspects might prove harder, though. Take, for instance,...

I have now lived in the UK (Brighton, England, precisely) for one quarter of my life. This came home to me today in a lexical way. You might want to shield your eyes now, people in the northeastern/midwestern/western US. We've been having days like this here (photos from my employer, Sussex University): The...