D3X73R

Did you know that lengthy is not only an Americanism, but a much-protested one? Early on in its life, lots of American patriots used the word; John Adams seems to have coined it, and Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin and (though English) Thomas Paine all used it. But here's what they thought of it in the Philadelphia magazine The Port folio (1801):  [ Lengthy ] is a vicious, fugitive, scoundrel and True American word. It should be hooted by every elegant English scholar, and proscribed from every page. Port folio , though published in the US, was "remarkable chiefly for close adhesion to established English ideas" [ Henry Adams ]. The authors complained that if lengthy makes sense, then so must breadthy , but since no one's saying breadthy , that shows how ridiculous lengthy is. They didn't like it in England either (from the OED): 1793   Brit. Critic Nov. 286    We shall, at all times, with pleasure, receive from our transatlantic brethren real i...

In the last post , I looked at of instead of have after modal verbs--as in should of gone and might of known --in contrast to the more standard spelling of the contraction 've : should've gone , might've known .  As we saw there, the of spelling was more prevalent in British online writing than American. I promised then to look at what happens after negation. Here are the options (sticking with contracted have ): could not 've could not of couldn't 've couldn't of Again, I'm looking for these in the GloWBE corpus of English from the web. When I search for the of variants, I have to specifically search for a verb after the of in order to block out things like of course or of necessity , where the of isn't standing for have . The full not versions in the first row of the table offer no surprises. Just as with the modals, there are more of spellings in the British than in the American (126 v 86). The double-contracted versions in the...

A few years ago, The Telegraph ran an article about Americanisms on the BBC--or rather, an article about complaints about Americanisms on the BBC: Nick Seaton, Campaign for Real Education, said: “It is not a surprise that a few expressions have crept in but the BBC should be setting an example for people and not indulging any slopping Americanised slang.” (Tangent: I had to look up sloppin g , which doesn't seem to be used much as an adjective. Is he using the British slang 'dressing in an informal manner' or the American slang for 'gushing; speaking or writing effusively'? Or is slopping here being used as a euphemistic substitution for another word that ends in -ing ?) But ( of course! ) half of the 'Americanisms' in their closing list of 'Americanisms that have annoyed BBC listeners' weren't Americanisms. One (face up ) was first (to the OED's knowledge) used by Daniel Defoe , the Englishman. Another ( a big ask ) is an Australianis...