 Americanisms

An Americanism is a word or phrase (or, less commonly, a

feature of grammar, spelling, or pronunciation) that (supposedly)
originated in the United States or is used primarily by
Americans.
Americanism is often used as a term of disapproval, especially
by non-American language mavens with little knowledge of
historical linguistics. "Many so-called Americanisms come from
the English," Mark Twain accurately observed more than a
century ago. "[M]ost people suppose that everyone who 'guesses'
is a Yankee; the people who guess do so because their ancestors
guessed in Yorkshire."
The term Americanism was introduced by the Reverend John
Witherspoon in the late-18th century.
Examples and Observations
 "[F]ew of the grammatical differences between British and
American are great enough to produce confusion, and most
are not stable because the two varieties are constantly
influencing each other, with borrowing both ways across the
Atlantic and nowadays via the Internet."
(John Algeo, British or American English? Cambridge
University Press, 2006)
 As pioneers, the first Americans had to make up many new
words, some of which now seem absurdly commonplace.
Lengthy, which dates back to 1689, is an early
Americanism. So are calculate, seaboard, bookstore and
presidential. . . . Antagonize and placate were both hated by
 British Victorians. As members of a multiracial society, the
first Americans also adopted words like wigwam, pretzel,
spook, depot and canyon, borrowing from the Indians,
Germans, Dutch, French and Spanish."
(Robert McCrum et al., The Story of English. Viking, 1986)
 Americanisms in British English
 An Americanism is a word or phrase (or, less - "Most

'Americanisms' coined [during the 19th century] haven't

stood the test of time. When a woman disposes of an
unwanted admirer we no longer say that she has 'given him
the mitten.' We still call experienced travellers
'globetrotters,' but tend to say they've 'bought the T-shirt'
rather than 'seen the elephant.' We prefer more elegant
metaphors for a cemetery than a 'bone-pit.' Our dentists
might object if we called them 'tooth carpenters.' And if a
teenager today told you they'd been 'shot in the neck' you
might ring for an ambulance rather than ask what they'd had
to drink the previous night.
"Lots, however, have become part of our everyday speech. 'I
guess,' 'I reckon,' 'keep your eyes peeled,' 'it was a real eye-
opener,' 'easy as falling off a log,' 'to go the whole hog,' 'to get
the hang of,' 'struck oil,' 'lame duck,' 'face the music,' 'high
falutin,' 'cocktail,' and 'to pull the wool over one's eyes'―all
made the leap into British usage during the Victorian period.
And they've stayed there ever since."
(Bob Nicholson, "Racy Yankee Slang Has Long Invaded Our
Language." The Guardian [UK], Oct. 18, 2010)
- "A list of fully assimilated English words and expressions that
started life as American coinages or revivals would include
antagonise, anyway, back-number (adjectival phrase), back yard
(as in nimby), bath-robe, bumper (car), editorial (noun), fix up,
just (=quite, very, exactly), nervous (=timid), peanut, placate,
realise (=see, understand), reckon, soft drink, transpire,
washstand.
"In some cases, Americanisms have driven out a native
equivalent or are in the process of doing so. For instance, in no
particular order, ad has pretty well replaced advert as an
abbreviation for advertisement, a press clipping is driving out
cutting as a piece taken from a newspaper, a whole new
ballgame, that is a metaphorical game of baseball, is what meets
the harried circumspect eye where once a different kettle of fish
or a horse of another color furnished the challenge, and
someone quit his job where not so long ago he quitted it.
"Such matters probably indicate nothing more than minor,
harmless linguistic interchange, with a bias towards American
modes of expression as likely to seem the livelier and (to adopt
an Americanism) smarter alternative."
(Kingsley Amis, The King's English: A Guide to Modern Usage.
HarperCollins, 1997)
 American and British Compounds
"In American English, the first noun [in a compound] is
generally in the singular, as in drug problem, trade union, road
policy, chemical plant. In British English, the first element is
sometimes a plural noun, as in drugs problem, trades union,
roads policy, chemicals plant. Some noun-noun compounds that
entered American English at a very early stage are words for
indigenous animals, like bullfrog 'a large American frog,'
groundhog 'a small rodent' (also called woodchuck); for trees and
plants, e.g. cottonwood (an American poplar tree); and for
phenomena like log cabin, the kind of simple structure many
early immigrants lived in. Sunup is also an early American
coinage, parallel to the Americanism sundown, which is a
synonym for the universal sunset."
(Gunnel Tottie, An Introduction to American English. Wiley-
Blackwell, 2002)
 Prejudice Against Americanisms
"Documenting the sustained prejudice against American English
over the past century and a half is not difficult since the only
alteration in the complaint involves the particular expressions
that have come to the attention of the reviewers. So we will leap
ahead to 21st century examples parallel to most of the
complaints of the past.
"In 2010, the expressions targeted for criticism included ahead
of for 'before,' face up 'confront,' and fess up for confess (Kahn
2010). A counterargument has often been that these expressions
are historically English, but the truths of historical linguistics are
seldom persuasive or even seen as germane to the dispute.
'Americanisms' are simply bad English in one way or another:
slovenly, careless, or sloppy. . . . Reports like these seethe with
disapproval.
"The same metaphors are used elsewhere in the English-
speaking world. In Australia, new forms of language believed to
derive from America are seen as a contagion: 'suffering the
creeping American disease' is a way to describe a situation the
critic deplores (Money 2010). . . .
"The expressions that give rise to such complaints are not such
ordinary Americanisms as blood type, laser, or minibus. And
some are not Americanisms at all. They share the quality of
being racy, informal, and perhaps a little subversive. They are
usages that poke fun at pretense and gibe at gentility."
(Richard W. Bailey, "American English." English Historical
Linguistics, ed. by Alexander Bergs. Walter de Gruyter, 2012)
 Passing Prejudices
"The playwright Mark Ravenhill recently tweeted irritably: 'Dear
Guardian sub please don't allow passing. Here in Europe we die.
Keep the horrible euphemism over the Atlantic.' . . .
"Ravenhill's . . . complaint about passing is that it is an
Americanism, one that should be kept 'over the Atlantic' by the
verbal equivalent of a ballistic-missile shield, so as to preserve
the saintly purity of our island tongue. The trouble with this is
that it's not actually an Americanism. In Chaucer's Squire's Tale,
the falcon says to the princess: 'Myn harm I wol confessen er I
pace,' meaning before it dies. In Shakespeare's Henry VI Part 2,
Salisbury says of the dying Cardinal: 'Disturbe him not, let him
passe peaceably.' In other words, the origin of this use of passing
is firmly on this side of the Atlantic. It's as English as the word
soccer―at first spelled 'socca' or 'socker,' as an abbreviation of
association football.
"A lot of other supposed Americanisms aren't Americanisms
either. It's sometimes thought that transportation instead of the
good old transport is an example of that annoying US habit of
bolting on needless extra syllables to perfectly good words, but
transportation is used in British English from 1540. Gotten as
the past tense of got? English from 1380. Oftentimes? It's in the
King James Bible."
(Steven Poole, "Americanisms Are Often Closer to Home Than
We Imagine." The Guardian [UK], May 13, 2013)
 Americanisms in The Telegraph [U.K.]
"Some Americanisms keep slipping in, usually when we are
given agency copy to re-write and do an inadequate job on it.
There is no such verb as 'impacted,' and other American-style
usages of nouns as verbs should be avoided (authored, gifted
etc). Maneuver is not spelt that way in Britain. We do not have
lawmakers: we might just about have legislators, but better still
we have parliament. People do not live in their hometown; they
live in their home town, or even better the place where they were
born." (Simon Heffer, "Style Notes." The Telegraph, Aug. 2,
2010)