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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 here: arse (=AmE ass ), Mummy (=AmE Mommy ), footy (=AmE soccer -- or whatever informal equivalent of soccer there is. Socky ?). But the sore thumb sticking out here is bollocks (click link to see its Word of the Year discussion). Yes, bollocks sometimes-- sometimes --is an equivalent to AmE bullshit in the sense of 'nonsense, (BrE) rubbish '  But calling bullshit on (something/someone) is an American idiom, and you just can't stick new words (especially new words with not-quite-the-same-feel) into idioms. Kicking the pail is not the same as kicking the bucket ; a bird in the hand is not worth two in the shrub , etc. Who knows, maybe...

Thursday's British referendum on EU membership (let's not talk about the result) has given American readers cause to wonder about the hokey-cokey (thanks for pointing this out, Emma ). Americans know the song-dance as the hokey-pokey . On referendum day, it was a hashtag on Twitter, with gems like these: We had one referendum on "in" or "out". If there's another it should be focused on the question whether to "shake it all about" #hokeycokey — Peter Coles (@telescoper) 27 June 2016 Disappointed there wasn't an option to "shake it all about" :( #iVoted #hokeycokey — Chris Dutton (@ThatDuttGuy) 23 June 2016  ( Click here for a barbershop referendum hokey-cokey .) Various sources tell origin stories for the song/dance. It may be based on an old British or Irish children's song/game, but it definitely became popular (as hokey-cokey ) in British music hall entertainment in the 1940s. The Hokey Pokey Dance was copyrighted i...

American readers/tweeters have been getting in touch to wonder about the use of surgery in reports like this from the BBC and other UK sources. Jo Cox 1974–2016 From the Labour party website Mrs Cox, 41, is the first sitting MP to be killed since 1990, when Ian Gow was the last in a string of politicians to die at the hands of Northern Irish terror groups. The man taken into custody was arrested in Market Street, not far from Birstall Library where Mrs Cox was holding a constituency surgery. I touched on surgery back in the post about physician's titles , but I didn't cover all its uses.  Oxford Dictionaries Online gives the relevant British senses. (This is sense 2, after the general-English 'invasive medical procedure' sense.) 2. British A place where a doctor, dentist, or other medical practitioner treats or advises patients . 2.1 [in singular] A period of time during which patients may visit a doctor, dentist, or other medical practitioner for treatmen...

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 word, but I have. I'd say it in a linguistics lecture, but putting it on a page is a bit too in-your-face for a blog that wants to be used in schools. I think I've screwed my chances with the nanny software already, though. Of course, I'm talking about the word that's an anagram of the name of a certain Danish king .) The article never happened (I'm sorry!) and the site closed (I hope unrelatedly, but I will admit my contribution by non-contribution, if necessary). But today I am moved to write a bit about the word because of this (slightly censored for this blog) message I got on Facebook this morning: I will come back to why I got this messag...

And so we come to the end of Book Week. There may well be other books that I'd been sent at some point or another, and if I find them, I may stick in a book post here or there. But I'm ending with a book that I cannot wait to read, but that I have to wait to read because of other work-related reading commitments. So, the main thing I'm going to do here is call attention to it and talk about why I want to read it, because it's probably more useful to the author and publisher if you know about it now rather than knowing about it later... Free book 9: You could look it up by Jack Lynch The subtitle of the book (or maybe its tagline) is The reference shelf from ancient Babylon to Wikipedia . A history of reference books-- swoon! Order UK Order US When I went to the States in April to do research for my 'Dictionary Cultures' project, I had just received this book, and though I was excited to read it, I had just started Rosemary Ostler's Founding Grammars (whic...

I missed a couple of my promised 'post a day for Book Week' posts because I was running a fantabulous event (if I do say so myself) called Doing Public Linguistics . The event was about linguists doing things like I do here with the blog—engaging non-academics in the work we do as academic linguists. One of the best bits of the day was when Geoff Pullum (speaking about his involvement in Language Log ) gave us their motto for how to deal with media stories about language: " We can fact-check your ass ". It's what I do, but I'm glad now to have a motto to go along with the doing. Now back to books! Free book 7: Collins English Dictionary , 12th edition The beautiful cover Order UK One of my hobbies: looking up words that start with nid- I'm grateful to the Collins people for sending me a copy of the latest edition of their beautiful dictionary. Collins is one of the dictionaries I regularly use for checking BrE facts. It's also now the basis for th...

Book Week continues... Free book 6: One language, two grammars? differences between British and American English Order UK     Order US A lot of the interesting work about British and American English these days is not coming from Britain or America, but from the home countries of other Germanic languages. This collection, edited by Günter Rohdenburg and Julia Schlüter is a case in point; German, Swiss, and Swedish universities are better represented in the table of contents than the US or UK. The 19 chapters cover a range of topics--many of which I've not got(ten) (a)round to posting about here, with a few exceptions (like this one ).  I won't try to go through all of the chapters here--you can read the table of contents at the publisher's (Cambridge University Press) site . The book tests the sociolinguistic aphorism that "accent divides, syntax unites" by taking a much closer look at the patterns of language use and grammatical change in these two major var...

(For more about Book Week, see the first post of the week .) Free book 5:  English: meaning and culture I do believe that this was the first book I ever received as a blogger. Yes, it is 10 years old. Yes, I am only just writing about it. Yes, I am contrite. What's kept me from writing about it is that I haven't read it cover to cover. This is very common with me and academic books. I get a sense of the argument, a sense of the contents and then I know where to go when I need more specifics on that kind of content. When I read books for review in academic journals, I do read cover-to-cover (except for reference books, for which I set up a sampling scheme). What's got(ten) Book Week going is that I've relieved myself of the duties of print book reviews. I am freeing myself to say things about books that I'm reasonably familiar with. English: meaning and culture is by the mind-bogglingly productive Anna Wierzbicka , and like most of her books it uses elements of he...

Instal(l)men t 2 of me showing off the books people have sent me for (BrE informal) nuffink .  (For the introduction to Book Week, click here .) Free book 3:  Women talk more than men...and other myths about language explained First today it's Cambridge University Press's Women talk more than men...and other myths about language explained (2016) by Abby Kaplan, whom they list as "assistant professor (lecturer) in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Utah". I checked her website to see which was her real title, and it's the same there too, and other people have it at Utah as well (but not all assistant profs do). Is this Utah's way of marking a teaching-only positions? Or are individuals there trying to translate their titles into British ? (Why?) {E/i}nquiring minds want to know . Order UK Order US Ok, that was a tangent about titles, but before I go on to say nice things about this book, I'm going to (BrE) have a go at its title, particula...

A nice thing about having a popular blog is that people send you free stuff. In my case, stuff means 'books'. Some have been sent with no warning (and gratefully received), some come with a query "would you like to receive this and maybe write about it?" and I say "yes, I'd be happy to receive it". (Notice the careful lack of promises on my part.)  I now have a stack of such books that I've been intending to say something about here--some of which I've not had time to read yet, some of which I may never read cover-to-cover. I had been thinking: I'll just do a really big book post about all of them and get that off my plate. But that's a big job, and so it got put off. My new solution is: I'm going to write about one or two books each day for a week. And I'm not going to say too much about them, because I have a book to write myself. If you know these books, please do add your thoughts on them in the comments! Where possible, I...