Separated by a Common Language

This is the second of my 2017 Word of the Year posts. For the US>UK winner, see yesterday's post. A Pinterest page credits this photo to Josef Gelernter As I said then, there's always a choice--do I go for the (BrE) slow burner that's been wheedling its way into the other country, or...

As I mentioned in the last post, I was at the BBC (on) Monday recording a Word of Mouth episode with Man Who Cries "American English is ruining Britain" Matthew Engel. One of his examples of Americanisms taking over was people in the UK saying poop instead of poo. I wish I'd known then what I just...

From Cllr James Baker's website Want to bring out the pedant in me? Invite me to help fight the stigma attached to mental health. Then watch me shout: "There is no stigma attached to mental health! There is a stigma attached to mental illness!" I have these little shoutings fairly regularly these...

We've seen other cases before of Americans trying to use "cool" British words--especially slightly "colo(u)rful" words, and getting it wrong ([more used in BrE] viz. wanker, snog). Here's a lovely example from the New York Daily News (which I saw via Oliver Burkeman): There's a pile-up of Britishisms...

In 2011, Douglas Bigham asked me if I'd write a piece about "the c-word" for the Popular Linguistics website, which he was trying to get started at the time. He observed: It *seems* to me that "c---" is less gendered in the UK, but can only be directed at a woman in the US. (He didn't censor the...

I'm often told (by Brits) that Americans are prudes when it comes to language. And I can often demonstrate the error or hypocrisy in their claim. Tidbit/titbit is one I've covered here so far. Another one is levee, which an Englishman informed me is used because Americans don’t want to say (AmE)...

Since I presented four Words of the Year in four posts, I thought it might be useful to have one post that lists all four. Then I thought: why not have a look at all of the US-to-UK and UK-to-US Words of the Year since I started doing them in the first year of the blog?  Yeah, why not? ...

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I've been in blog-paralysis because everything I want to blog about would take a Very Long Time to write about and I'm supposed to be writing about other things. But along came Mrs Redboots on the Lynneguist Facebook page, making me blog by saying an oft-repeated falsehood about American English. ...

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...

Eek!  The Wordnik List of the Day yesterday was titled "Hugonyms" and was explained as "Anything hugging related".  The Facebook announcement of this included several people excited about learning the new-to-them BrE (though not marked as such) word snog.  One went so far as to comment: I'm...

Thanks to Twitter-followers who re-tweeted to me their nominations for 'most impenetrable to cross-ponder' tweet.  We have a winner, Transblawg (Margaret Marks) who sent two--one that I declare the winner, and one that I declare a runner-up.  First, the winner (I'm deleting the identities...

This post is inspired by the following quotation from darling, two-year-old daughter Grover: "Bastard.  (BrE) Mummy said it!"  Before she (orig. AmE) outs me as a (orig. AmE) potty mouth at her (AmE) daycare/(BrE) crèche (or nursery), I'll have to take the matter into hand and save my sparkling...