Two great lexicographers, Samuel Johnson and Noah Webster
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What are the most American and most British words?
Is American English really that different than its British ancestor? And if so, what words truly separate the American from the Brit? The Department of Data is on the case.
Washington Post (August 22, 2025), Column by Andrew Van Dam
Depending on the date and time when it appeared online, this article has a different title and format (e.g., fewer or more graphs / charts, but the textual content remains basically the same. The published version is much longer than the extract I have given here, and provides much more data.
As recently as the roaring 1820s, the loose confederations of dialects that would become American and British English were almost equally colourful. But in 1828, Noah Webster’s “American Dictionary of the English Language” hit shelves.
It came as a counterweight to Samuel Johnson’s 1755 dictionary, which had helped anoint correct spellings in a language that traditionally took a devil-may-care approach to such things. Literally.
In her stellar “The Prodigal Tongue,” linguist Lynne Murphy writes that the first folio of “Romeo and Juliet” “included three spellings of devil” and that none of them were d-e-v-i-l. Murphy, an American who has taught at the University of Sussex for the entirety of this millennium, might be the planet’s most devoted chronicler of the dialects’ differences. And she’s spent endless hours digging into how they came about.
Much of it goes back to Webster. He wasn’t impressed by British English, writing in 1789 that “Great Britain, whose children we are, and whose language we speak, should no longer be our standard; for the taste of her writers is already corrupted, and her language on the decline.”
But Murphy told us his changes weren’t mere rebelliousness.
“Americanization was certainly one of his goals, though he’s not going to change things just for the sake of them being different — he also wants to argue that they’re logically, pedagogically or etymologically better,” Murphy said.
Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary, has been my lexical vade mecum since 1961. I still keep it on my desk.
Selected readings
- "You Smell, I Stink" (7/15/11)
- "Samuel Johnson's birthday" (9/19/17)
- "Webster as an orthographic conservative?" (5/10/11)
- "Centuries of disgust and horror?" (3/16/09)
[Thanks to François Lang}
Gregory Kusnick said,
August 31, 2025 @ 10:01 am
Not yet.
JPL said,
August 31, 2025 @ 4:37 pm
@Gregory Kusnick:
The writer had a momentary attack of hyperbole. That could be fixed by:
"Murphy, who has taught at the University of Sussex for the entirety of this millennium so far,": but then why hold back? "… might be at least this planet's most devoted chronicler of the dialects's differences. And she's spent an endless series of hours", no, let's make that "an infinite series of endless hours", "…digging into how they came about." Why not write something like that, if you're under the hyperbolic impulse?
That's a good question for fun, but too imprecise for serious purposes. An interesting listing would be for commonly used words that a monodialectal speaker of the other dialect would not recognize. (I don't know about quantification.) For example, the BE word 'kip', which for some of its senses would be equivalent to AE 'crash', but I don't know the AE equivalent for "get some kip". Another one, from the article, might be 'skint' (and also 'hard-up' and 'out of pocket'), where AE might say "broke" (but "broke" to me indicates complete absence of funds). An expression like "ta", for a brief "thanks" is unknown in the US. I'm sure LLog readers with experience in both varieties could provide more examples.
Jonathan Smith said,
August 31, 2025 @ 5:03 pm
further to JPL. there are cases where a familiar word used in some semantic extension might not even be recognizable cross-pond but for orthography… the many better examples aren't coming to mind right now.
Seonachan said,
August 31, 2025 @ 8:27 pm
A well-known Simpsons meme:
Bart: "This is the worst day of my life."
Homer: "The worst day of your life so far"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bfpPArfDTGw
Gregory Kusnick said,
August 31, 2025 @ 11:14 pm
In fact I was thinking, when I wrote that first comment, of the old joke that begins "Lived here all your life, farmer?" and which I first heard, oh, must be a couple of millennia ago.
JPL said,
September 1, 2025 @ 1:44 am
In my above comment it bothers me that for clarity I perhaps should have added, wrt the nominal usage of 'kip', that although there is the obvious AE expression "get some sleep", the word 'sleep' has a more general usage, while the usage of 'kip' seems more specialized, e.g., referring to recuperative, or temporary or not-the-ususal-place sleep, as with 'crash', but you would never say "You need to get some crash". That's why I didn't say that 'crash' and 'sleep' line up exactly with 'kip'. Another one that has always intrigued me is that Americans don't use the word 'punter' to refer to a customer or patron of a commercial establishment, but do seem to use it to refer to people who buy a lot of college football tickets and sell them outside the stadium on game day. I could be wrong about that one. I'm sure I'll be remembering others in the coming days.
AntC said,
September 1, 2025 @ 2:07 am
['punter'] to refer to people who buy a lot of college football tickets and sell them outside the stadium on game day.
In BrE those would be 'touts'. BrE 'punter' has a narrower sense of one who gambles or bets. 'Take a punt' could mean place a bet; or make a wild guess.
Keith said,
September 1, 2025 @ 2:48 am
Do the people of the USA not "catch some Zs" (pronounced "zees")?
Peter Cyrus said,
September 1, 2025 @ 5:10 am
For me (New York boomer), those people who buy tickets for resale are called "scalpers".
The British comic magazine Viz used to publish a dictionary of English swearing called Roger's Profanisaurus. The intent was light-hearted, but the work was IMHO pretty serious, and taught an American (who back then was spending a lot of time in London) quite a few useful expressions, at least to comprehend.
Maybe I was an innocent, but the extent and subtlety of the differences between London English (not Cockney) and New York English (not BBQ) amazed me. Much more profound than differences of lexicon and pronunciation are differences of prosody, humor, and habit, or let's call it "culture". The two versions of The Office television show or Friends vs. Coupling bear testimony thereto.
I lived briefly in Australia, and it took me a week to realize that the emphatic "hmmph" sound was "yes", not "what?" as it is for me.
But there are also deep dialectal isoglosses criss-crossing both countries that don't line up with oceans.
Barbara Phillips Long said,
September 1, 2025 @ 1:34 pm
The article mentions Johnson and Webster, but omits another, more colorful, lexicographer:
“Thirty years after Dr Johnson published his great Dictionary of the English Language (1755), Francis Grose put out A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue (1785), a compendium of slang Johnson had deemed unfit for his learned tome. Grose was not one for library work. He preferred to do his lexicography in the sordid heart of after-hours London. Supported by his trusty assistant Tom Cocking, he cruised the watering holes of Covent Garden and the East End, eating, boozing, and listening. He took pleasure in hearing his name punningly connected to his rotund frame. And he produced a book brimming with Falstaffian life. …
“While a good deal of the slang has survived into the present day — to screw is to copulate; to kick the bucket is to die — much would likely have been lost had Grose not recorded it. …
“Captain queernabs — shabby ill-dressed fellow
Chimping merry — exhilarated with liquor
Comfortable importance — a wife
Dicked in the nob — silly, crazed
Dog booby — an awkward lout
Duke of limbs — a tall, awkward, ill-made fellow
Eternity box — a coffin“
https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/a-classical-dictionary-of-the-vulgar-tongue-1788/
More slang terms are included in the post.
SlideSF said,
September 1, 2025 @ 2:58 pm
"Catch some zees"
"Get (or catch) some shut-eye"
"Take 40 winks"
To me "crash" has two distinct meanings not exactly the same as "kip"
It can mean to sleep temporarily someplace other than home ("Can I crash at your place tonight?"), or to suddenly run out of energy after a burst of activity ("I crashed right out after my last shift at work")
Michael Vnuk said,
September 1, 2025 @ 6:37 pm
Victor wrote: 'Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary, has been my lexical vade mecum since 1961. I still keep it on my desk.'
I had a vague idea what 'vade mecum' meant as a concept, but I now find that 'vade mecum' is Latin for 'go with me' and thus the first and literal meaning is to denote a manual or guidebook that is compact enough to be carried in a pocket. This is not Victor's meaning, as he says the book sits on his desk. A second, more common meaning refers to any comprehensive reference book for a particular subject. If this is the meaning that applies in Victor's case, then I am surprised, because English has changed so much in 60 years that an old dictionary would have many gaps that would reduce its usefulness significantly. But perhaps I have misinterpreted what Victor wrote and he actually keeps the latest edition of that particular dictionary on his desk and has done so since 1961.
Chris Button said,
September 1, 2025 @ 6:59 pm
Ernest Klein's "A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language" was my vade mecum. And it still holds its pride of place on my bookshelf.
I still vividly remember going to the book store to buy my own physical copy for what was an exorbitant amount of money for me at the time.
Chas Belov said,
September 2, 2025 @ 12:40 am
@keith: We Americans do catch zees. ¿Do British catch zeds?
Philip Taylor said,
September 2, 2025 @ 5:39 am
"English has changed so much in 60 years that an old dictionary would have many gaps that would reduce its usefulness significantly" — My OED (13 volumes, case-bound, 1933 edition, purchased with enormous pleasure and pride for the princely sum of £175) is as useful to me today as it was on the day on which I bought it. I deliberately chose the 1933 edition because it is the last edition with which Sir James Murray was personally associated. And while I do not dispute for one second that "English has changed so much" since 1933, it is rare (probably unknown) for me to want (or need) consult a dictionary that reflects those changes. And if I were to want or need to consult such a dictionary, I can always fall back on the CD-ROM edition of OED 2, which is probably the best option for all but the most recent changes to the language, given that the online edition appears to get worse (and be of less use) every time a new edition is released.
ajay said,
September 11, 2025 @ 6:29 am
It can mean to sleep temporarily someplace other than home ("Can I crash at your place tonight?"), or to suddenly run out of energy after a burst of activity ("I crashed right out after my last shift at work")
The latter meaning is also shared, in AmE, by the word "bonk" – especially among endurance athletes. To "bonk" is what marathon runners might also call "hitting the wall" – you suddenly lose energy and motivation. (The connection is obvious – onomatopoeia for running into something that stops you proceeding.)
This is hilarious for BrE speakers, especially those who are a bit childish generally, for whom "bonk" means something quite different. I encountered this issue in the worst possible way when an American triathlete remarked that she and her husband had bonked really hard after a particularly arduous training run the previous day.