Gobsmacked!
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Ben Yagoda's new book, Gobsmacked!: The British Invasion of American English, is "A spot-on guide to how and why Americans have become so bloody keen on Britishisms—for good or ill". The publisher's blurb:
The British love to complain that words and phrases imported from America—from French fries to Awesome, man!—are destroying the English language. But what about the influence going the other way? Britishisms have been making their way into the American lexicon for more than 150 years, but the process has accelerated since the turn of the twenty-first century. From acclaimed writer and language commentator Ben Yagoda, Gobsmacked! is a witty, entertaining, and enlightening account of how and why scores of British words and phrases—such as one-off, go missing, curate, early days, kerfuffle, easy peasy, and cheeky—have been enthusiastically taken up by Yanks.
FWIW, Amazon now ranks this book as the #1 New Release in Lexicography.
For a preview, see Ben's 9/26/2024 Guardian article "The other British invasion: how UK lingo conquered the US", which starts like this:
I am an American, New York-born, but I started to spend time in London in the 1990s, teaching classes to international students. Being interested in language, and reading a lot of newspapers there – one of the courses I taught was on the British press – I naturally started picking up on the many previously unfamiliar (to me) British words and expressions, and differences between British and American terminology.
Then a strange thing happened. Back home in the United States, I noticed writers, journalists and ordinary people starting to use British terms I had encountered. I’ll give one example that sticks in my mind because it is tied to a specific news event, and hence easily dated.
In 2003, it became clear that the US would invade Iraq. Months passed; we did not invade. Then we did. Journalists faced a question: what should we call that preliminary period? In September 2003, the New York Times’ Thomas Friedman chose a Britishism, referring to “how France behaved in the run-up to the Iraq war”.
Dick Margulis said,
September 28, 2024 @ 8:25 am
Britishism appears to be a Briticism that has invaded US usage. Both spellings have long coexisted, but I just compared Google ngram plots for AmE and BrE. Indeed, Britishism has been gaining ground in the US and now slightly edges out Briticism, the former standard US spelling. (My browser's spell checker hasn't quite caught up yet. There are red squiggles under Britishism as I write this.)
Philip Taylor said,
September 28, 2024 @ 8:50 am
I know nothing about British exports to the American language, but my inclination would be to write "Anglicism" rather than either of the above. Google Ngrams confirms that it predominates — Briticism,Britishism,Anglicism,anglicism
Philip Taylor said,
September 28, 2024 @ 8:51 am
Sorry, meant to append hyperlink, not search strings — https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=Briticism%2CBritishism%2CAnglicism%2Canglicism&year_start=1800&year_end=2022&corpus=en&smoothing=3
Joe said,
September 28, 2024 @ 9:55 am
Well I say good on him, full stop!
I hope he addresses the internet's recent role in this. In online text forums, no one can hear your accent. I think that's accelerated the exchange of vocabulary, in both directions, more than Hollywood ever did in the opposite direction.
Terry K. said,
September 28, 2024 @ 9:59 am
I would understand Anglicism to mean a word from English in another language. Though dictionaries recognize both that definition and it meaning a word particular to British English.
Ngrams does not confirm that Anglicism predominates for that meaning, because it does not distinguish between the two meanings of Anglicism. It only confirms it's a more common word.
Stephen Goranson said,
September 28, 2024 @ 10:45 am
The jump from 1928 codswallop to two 1958 uses needs clarification.
Robert Coren said,
September 28, 2024 @ 10:55 am
As a USAn who has had a long enthusiasm for British novels, I have often found that I incorporate a bit of British style into my speech, e.g., "Did you put gas in the car?" "Well, I would have done, but…"
Stephen Goranson said,
September 28, 2024 @ 11:03 am
I neglected to note: pages 139-141 (kindle version) on gobsmacked.
DJL said,
September 28, 2024 @ 1:44 pm
Dunni, do Americans use the word "omnishambles" (doesn't appear in the Guardian piece)? If not, then these reports are greatly exaggerated.
Fritz Newmeyer said,
September 28, 2024 @ 2:03 pm
I had never heard 'chat up' or 'top up' (a tank) until I spent a year in the 1970s in the UK. Over the next decade or two I started noticing them used quite a bit in the US. Another example is 'roundabout', which has started replacing 'traffic circle' and 'rotary'. 'Twit' might be another example of a word that crossed the Atlantic from east to west.
Canadian English is full of Briticisms: 'bum' (buttocks), 'zed' (the letter), 'physiotherapy', 'in hospital', 'by-election', 'tea towel', and many more.
Barbara Phillips Long said,
September 28, 2024 @ 2:26 pm
One possibly overlooked source of cross-cultural familiarity with British terms and turns of phrase are Harlequin romance novels, published by Mills & Boon. Romance novels have commanded a significant share of the book market in the U.S. for decades, and the book series that were not acquired by purchase, such as the Silhouette book series, are edited to British English standards. (So, for instance, a building on a property unconnected to the main building is not an (AmE) outbuilding, but a (BrE) outhouse, and an outhouse (AmE) is a (BrE) privy.)
The linguistic and cultural references in the Harlequin novels can be mixed. Novels set in Australia written by Australian authors, for example, will have been edited In England but will include Aussie slang along with references to American culture, such as movie or music references. Given the number of readers of Harlequin books in English-speaking markets, it isn’t surprising that British English usages are seeing wider acceptance due to increasing familiarity among readers.
Rick Rubenstein said,
September 28, 2024 @ 6:11 pm
I'm honestly chuffed.
ErikF said,
September 28, 2024 @ 7:28 pm
Canada is somewhat weird because of our history, so we borrowed British words for politics and banking (MP and cheque), but American words for practically everything else. A consequence of this is that nobody in Canada knows how to spell or pronounce anything "correctly." :-)
I think that the Internet has sped up adoption of words from around the world, as memes and viral words can catch on from practically any source incredibly quickly (and get dropped almost as fast.)
Fritz Newmeyer said,
September 28, 2024 @ 8:01 pm
@ErikF. I've lived in Canada for 18 years now and continue to be surprised how unaware most Canadians are about the cases where their usage differs from American usage. I was recently telling a little story to some Canadian friends, the point of which involved knowing that American kids call their mother 'Mom' and Canadian kids, as in the UK, say 'Mum' (even though it is usually spelled 'mom'). Nobody in the group knew that Canadians and Americans said it differently. And this despite the fact that Canadians are constantly bombarded with American media. I could give many other similar examples.
Julian said,
September 29, 2024 @ 2:04 am
67yo Australian here
Just curious – if I'm going to see a film on the big screen, I'm "going to the pictures".
What do you British/US/Canadian folk do?
Philip Taylor said,
September 29, 2024 @ 2:24 am
[British English] "go to the pictures" (informal) / "go to the cinema" (formal).
Robert T McQuaid said,
September 29, 2024 @ 5:20 am
To: Fritz Newmeyer
I think traffic circle refers to those death traps from before 1950 that allowed drivers to maintain highway speed while interacting with cross traffic. A roundabout is small enough to compel drivers to slow to a safe speed.
Coby said,
September 29, 2024 @ 8:09 am
When British (or Irish) books are published in the US, the spelling and punctuation are usually Americanized. This is sometimes taken too far, as when Tana French's Broken Harbour (a place name!) became "Broken Harbor".
This was once done with the vocabulary as well, so that "flat" became "apartment", "petrol" became "gas", "mobile phone" became "cell phone", and so on. In Ian Rankin's The Naming of the Dead (2006) the text was apparently subjected to some sort of search-and-replace macro, and not only was every instance of "mobile phone" replaced by "cell phone", but the word "mobile" itself, commonly used in Britain as an abbreviation for mobile phone, became simply "cell" — a risky move for a novel dealing with police work, and in fact there is an episode in which a character is imprisoned and then released, but without his mobile phone. When the text reads “he left his cell” it is not at all clear if the reference is to getting out of the lockup or not taking the mobile phone.
In the next Rankin novel, Exit Music (2007), the vocabulary was left intact. And the practice of Americanizing it seems to have been mostly abandoned in the last 15-20 years.This may have contributed to Americans getting familiar with British usage, or it may result from it. But now we find incongruous cases of Americans (in British novels) saying "called" in place of "named".
Noam said,
September 29, 2024 @ 8:48 am
@Joe “In online text forums” – I wonder if you’re showing your age. I strongly suspect for gen Z, and probably also somewhat older people, audio/video sources (YouTube, TikTok, instagram reels) are orders of magnitude more influential. I know my kid randomly picks up various accents (just for fun) from the things they watch.
Jason M said,
September 29, 2024 @ 10:46 am
I thunk I have been hearing more “mobile phone” by Americans where we used to say exclusively “cell phone”. At least I can say “mobile phone” doesn’t sound foreign to my ears the way “zed” does.
The usage that I hear Americans use more these days, at least when calling soccer games, is “just about” to mean American “just barely” which is the opposite sense of “just about” that I grew up with as an American; e.g.: “The keeper just about saved that shot.” In my usage, that would mean the goalie [American term for goalkeeper] almost saved the shot but didn’t in the end, and a goal was scored, whereas the common British usage would have the shot saved by the goalkeeper, even though the ball was close to going in. I also think American usage of “goalie” has been decreasing for British “keeper” now that I think about it.
Note that the “just barely” use for “just about” is apparently not universal in Britain either, according to whatever I Googled when looking into this, with some regions using it the way Americans do. Seems confusing because the sense are exactly opposite in terms of the outcome one is trying to convey.
Scott P. said,
September 29, 2024 @ 11:24 am
When British (or Irish) books are published in the US, the spelling and punctuation are usually Americanized. This is sometimes taken too far, as when Tana French's Broken Harbour (a place name!) became "Broken Harbor".
Wait until you see what the British do with Köln, Dunkerque, and Livorno.
Matt Juge said,
September 29, 2024 @ 11:41 am
We Americans "go to the movies", unless of course we stay at home and stream something instead.
VVOV said,
September 29, 2024 @ 12:10 pm
What’s the current situation with trans-Atlantic borrowings in Spanish and Portuguese? Do only Spaniards complain that their language is being overstuffed with Latin Americanisms, or also the reverse?
Keith said,
September 29, 2024 @ 1:03 pm
I read that piece in the Grauniad recently and was reminded of my first trip to the US in 2001. I was in a bookshop (younger readers might want to ask an older person to describe what these were).
A sales assistant asked if he could help me. I thanked him, but said that I had already found the local guides and that I'd take a look at a few.
"Well, gander away!", he said cheerily. I think that this was the only time I ever heard the word used in the US, despite living there from 2005 to 2012. I never heard it used in that sense, and in the sense of a male goose it was rare.
Even in the UK I didn't often hear people use the verb "to gander". It was much more usual to hear "having a gander" in the sense of "having a look round".
Stephen Goranson said,
September 29, 2024 @ 1:53 pm
Have a gander?
You take a gander.
You must not be from 'round here.
Stephen Goranson said,
September 29, 2024 @ 2:28 pm
Cod walloper is attested before 1928. More research needed.
Ben Yagoda said,
September 29, 2024 @ 2:59 pm
Cheers, everyone. Just a note that I’ve been writing about this since 2011 at my Not One-Off Britishisms blog https://notoneoffbritishisms.com/ I’ve written probably 1000 posts and covered most of the words and phrases mentioned here.
I don’t have my Fowler’s at hand, but when I do I’ll come back and quote what he said about Britishism vs.Briticism vs. … wait for it … Britannicism.
Tom Dawkes said,
September 29, 2024 @ 3:24 pm
Don't forget the blog by Lynneguist aka Lynne Murphy "Separated by a common language" at https://separatedbyacommonlanguage.blogspot.com
Stephen Goranson said,
September 29, 2024 @ 3:50 pm
Ben Yagoda's book by no means ignored Lynn Murphy.
What I seek is a better analysis of cod wallop.
Keith Ivey said,
September 29, 2024 @ 3:51 pm
Although "Briticism" does exist, it doesn't seem well-formed to me. Maybe "Britannicism" could work, but I'll stick with "Britishism".
Peter Taylor said,
September 29, 2024 @ 4:07 pm
@Scott P., could you enlighten this Brit as to what his compatriots are claimed to do to Livorno. I can find the Italian spelling in British newspaper articles, but I'm not sure what alternative spellings I might look for.
(Purely incidentally, but as a point of interest, I used to live in an English village called Dunkirk, so I can understand why we might butcher that particular French spelling.)
VVOV said,
September 29, 2024 @ 4:58 pm
A scroll through the (delightful!) NOOB blog is interesting to this American in that some of the expressions sound so "normal" to me that I was unaware of their British origin (ex. aggro, smarmy), while others sound completely foreign / "things I would never say" (ex. advert, scuppered), and some are in between (ex. dodgy).
I imagine the extent of U.S. penetration by these British vocabulary items varies a lot by speaker, region, age, register, … etc.
VVOV said,
September 29, 2024 @ 5:00 pm
Addendum re "dodgy" – A quick search for the word in the archives of my personal email account (about 15 years worth) yields 4 results, 1 by me and 1 each by 3 other Americans. Supports my vibe that we do use it, but uncommonly.
Coby said,
September 29, 2024 @ 6:10 pm
Scott P.: Cologne and Dunkirk are standard American. Leghorn refers to a breed of chicken.
Doug said,
September 29, 2024 @ 7:23 pm
@Peter Taylor
Scott P. is presumably referring to the custom of referring to Livorno as "Leghorn."
Perhaps that has gone out of style, but it's still noted in the Wikipedia entry for Livorno:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Livorno
"It is traditionally known in English as Leghorn"
Jonathan Smith said,
September 29, 2024 @ 8:43 pm
Wikipedia also says "Leghorn" comes from "the Genoese name Ligorna" and can be "pronounced /lɛˈɡɔːrn/ […] or /ˈlɛɡərn/", so the "reanalysis" is a decent phonetic match.
Re: Britishisms in the US (or Americanisms in the UK) there should be more or at least some such cases — that is, phonetic borrowings where the identity of the word(s)/morpheme(s) is (partly) lost. Like if one only heard UK "earlydoors" and interpreted it as "earlidaws" or sth. That there are so few of these (any examples?) suggest this stuff happens largely via writing… or that people are just that good at grocking each others' accents, which is doubtful…
Philip Taylor said,
September 30, 2024 @ 3:02 am
Re Livorno/Leghorn, etc., I would also adduce Vlissingen/Flushing and Nürnberg/Nuremberg — the latter almost caused me to miss a flight, since I was intending to travel to Nürnberg but had been issued a ticket to Nuremberg !
Levantine said,
September 30, 2024 @ 4:02 am
“The pictures” in the sense of “the cinema” sounds distinctly old-fashioned to this 40-something Londoner. My parents say it; I don’t.
Peter Taylor said,
September 30, 2024 @ 4:37 am
Thanks, Doug. Now that I know what to look for I can see fairly recent usage of that too.
Philip Taylor said,
September 30, 2024 @ 5:16 am
Ah, but do you watch movies or films, Levantine ? If the former, I suspect that you may have (perhaps unconsciously) incorporated some Americanisms into your idiolect …
Matthew Bladen said,
September 30, 2024 @ 7:21 am
@Stephen Goranson: to the best of my knowledge, the article I wrote in 2020 to accompany the publication of the revised OED entry for 'codswallop' is the fullest and most up to date discussion of the word.
https://www.oed.com/discover/a-load-of-old-codswallop/
I'm not aware of any securely dated examples of usage between 1928 and 1958, although we have Alan Simpson's 2005 testimony that it was in use in the 1930s, albeit not in the sense in which it's used today. The 7th edition of Eric Partridge's dictionary of slang (1970) also dates it to the 1930s, but shows no awareness of the earlier sense.
The emergence of the current sense (OED's sense 2) seems fully accounted for, but I would still like to know more about sense 1. OED's etymology ('apparently an alteration of "cod walloper", probably after "trollop" ') is as far as the evidence will take us; it's tempting to surmise that it originated as rhyming slang for 'trollop' (which fits with the apparent London origin) but without more evidence it's impossible to do more than guess.
Robert Coren said,
September 30, 2024 @ 9:26 am
@Jason M: Although you hear "mobile phone" from Americans nowadays, you probably don't hear stand-alone "mobile", and you almost certainly don't hear the second syllable sounding like "I'll", both of which are standard in the UK, as far as I can tell.
David Marjanović said,
September 30, 2024 @ 9:39 am
Hasn't the mobile phone / cell phone division been largely rendered obsolete by the shift to phone? After all, landline phones are much rarer now than they were 30 years ago.
Philip Taylor said,
September 30, 2024 @ 11:11 am
David — Of 212 members of my bowls club, 151 have provided a landline number and 150 have provided a mobile telephone number.
DJL said,
September 30, 2024 @ 2:01 pm
'Going to the pictures' is definitely rather old-fashioned in the UK, and so is belonging to a bowls club!
I go to the cinema to see a film (yes, a film, not a movie), I do not have a landline number, and I am not a member of a bowls club.
RfP said,
September 30, 2024 @ 3:11 pm
Yes, I (California) do go to a “theater” to see a “movie,” when I’m not watching at home. And if I had to specify, I would call it a “movie theater.”
But I have to study film quite a bit as part of my work, and I think of that medium primarily as “film,” but also as “movies” or “motion pictures.”
And then there’s my sister, who actually worked in Hollywood as a director and producer. She always talked about being “in pictures.“
S. Norman said,
October 1, 2024 @ 11:59 am
Thanks to Peppa Pig our daughter says 'mummy' and 'on holiday'.
I think 'fanny pack' will stay on this side of the Atlantic.