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Yesterday I announced the US-to-UK Word of the Year (click for details!) , and so today is the turn of the UK-to-US WotY. The 2018 US-to-UK WotY has been moving to the US for quite a while—but Nancy Friedman ( @Fritinancy ) makes the case for us recogni{s/z}ing it in 2018. And the word is: whilst ...that is, a longer version of the conjunction while . Whilst was probably one of the things that led Ben Yagoda to start his Not One-Off Britishisms blog . In a 2011 Lingua Franca post ( Lingua Franca, RIP! ), he mentions American students using whilst in their writing, then a few months later he started NOOB, with whilst as one of the early entries . I wrote about whilst earlier —though not about it as an import to the US, but as something that was annoying me in my British students' writing (I've been coming to terms with it ever since). What this year's two WotYs have in common is that the people who nominated them had researched and made good cases for them, rather than jus...

It was a tough year for deciding on Separated by a Common Language Words of the Year, and so I am very grateful to those who nominated US-to-UK and UK-to-US borrowings that seemed 'very 2018'. So grateful that I offered a prize for the best nominations. And our first winner is: Simon K! Simon—please contact me off-blog with your postal details and your choice of prize: Lane Greene's Talk on the Wild Side or my The Prodigal Tongue . And Simon's winning word? Well, some of you are going to complain that it's not a word. Enjoy your complaining. I've written several times about why 'that's not a word, that's a phrase' complaints don't bother me.  If you want to read several paragraphs on the topic, see this old Word of the Year post . To give you a taste of it, I'll quote myself: It all comes down to your definition of word . We can fight about it, but I'll just phone in my part of the fight because 'word' is not a terribly us...

I've had a few emails inquiring about the health of this blog. It's the same story as in some past years: the Autumn terms at the University are the worst for me—my heaviest teaching with constant essays to read and most of the admin work that needs to be done in my Director of Teaching and Learning role. (This should change next year, when one of my modules/courses is moving to spring and I shouldn't have the administrative role anymore.) So, my apologies for ignoring you. I promise to do better in Spring. Because I have to get through a lot of essays this weekend, I'm going to heavily plagiari{s/z}e my past call for Word of the Year nominations: It's that time of year again. Dictionary publishers are already starting to announce their words of 2018. I try to wait till we've actually seen the whole year before announcing mine, so it will be coming around New Year('s) . If it comes at all. The twist on Words of the Year on this blog is that I choose the mos...