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Opportunity knocks for USMNT's Ricardo Pepi: 'I'm feeling ready to be the man'

By www.foxsports.com
Published On :: Tue, 12 Nov 2024 18:29:11 -0500

With several U.S. men's national team strikers out with injuries, 21-year-old Ricardo Pepi has a golden opportunity to prove why he deserves to be Mauricio Pochettino top choice up top.


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Kyler Murray, Brock Purdy move up, Caleb Williams on bottom of Mahomes Mountain | First Things First

By www.foxsports.com
Published On :: Tue, 12 Nov 2024 23:59:55 +0000

Nick Wright reveals who climbs up and down his Week 11 QB Tiers, including Kyler Murray and Brock Purdy, who will face each other in the final game of the regular season with playoffs on the line. Watch as Nick explains why Caleb Williams is not off Mahomes Mountain yet despite a change in the Chicago Bears coaching staff.


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Alabama's Ryan Williams on Travis Hunter winning Biletnikoff: 'I can't let him do that'

By www.foxsports.com
Published On :: Tue, 12 Nov 2024 19:11:36 -0500

In an interview on FOX Sports' "All Facts, No Brakes," Alabama stars Ryan Williams and Jaylen Mbakwe shared why they stayed after Nick Saban's retirement and their thoughts on Travis Hunter.


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Providence's Oswin Erhunmwunse throws down a POWERFUL two-hand dunk vs. Hampton

By www.foxsports.com
Published On :: Wed, 13 Nov 2024 00:41:26 +0000

Providence Friars' Oswin Erhunmwunse threw down a powerful two-handed dunk against the Hampton Pirates.


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Deion Sanders talks Shedeur Sanders’ growth from last year to this season | Speak

By www.foxsports.com
Published On :: Wed, 13 Nov 2024 01:00:28 +0000

Deion Sanders discusses the impressive growth of Shedeur Sanders from last season to this year, highlighting his development as Colorado’s QB and the strides he’s made on the field.


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Deion Sanders compares Shedeur and Travis’ chemistry to Michael Irvin and Troy Aikman | Speak

By www.foxsports.com
Published On :: Wed, 13 Nov 2024 01:06:37 +0000

Deion Sanders talks about the strong chemistry between Shedeur Sanders and Travis Hunter, comparing it to the connection Michael Irvin had with Troy Aikman during their playing days.


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Deion Sanders argues why Travis Hunter is a Heisman front-runner this year | Speak

By www.foxsports.com
Published On :: Wed, 13 Nov 2024 01:11:08 +0000

Deion Sanders argues why Travis Hunter is a top contender for the Heisman this year, highlighting his unique talent and impact on Colorado’s success.


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Mavs' Klay Thompson cheered by 400 Warriors employees in return to Golden State

By www.foxsports.com
Published On :: Tue, 12 Nov 2024 20:18:09 -0500

Klay Thompson was greeted by some 400 cheering Warriors employees showing their love and appreciation for the former Golden State star and lined up along his path to the Dallas locker room


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Bensley Joseph finds Corey Floyd Jr. for a TOUGH ALLEY-OOP dunk as Providence leads 47-43 vs. Hampton

By www.foxsports.com
Published On :: Wed, 13 Nov 2024 01:21:41 +0000

Providence Friars' Bensley Joseph found Corey Floyd Jr. for a tough alley-oop dunk against the Hampton Pirates.


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Michael Irvin asked Deion Sanders about coaching the Cowboys | Speak

By www.foxsports.com
Published On :: Wed, 13 Nov 2024 01:34:13 +0000

Michael Irvin asks Deion Sanders about the possibility of coaching the Dallas Cowboys, sparking a funny moment and laughter.


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College Football Playoff Rankings: Oregon, Ohio State on top; Alabama enters top 10

By www.foxsports.com
Published On :: Tue, 12 Nov 2024 20:59:04 -0500

The second set of College Football Playoff Predictions were released Tuesday night, with Oregon, Ohio State and Texas listed in the top three spots. See the complete rankings!


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Tom Brady’s 3 Stars of Week 10: Lamar Jackson, Ja'Marr Chase, Leo Chenal | DIGITAL EXCLUSIVE

By www.foxsports.com
Published On :: Wed, 13 Nov 2024 02:09:54 +0000

Tom Brady gave his 3 stars of Week 10 which included Baltimore Ravens QB Lamar Jackson, Cincinnati Bengals WR Ja'Marr Chase and Kansas City Chiefs LB Leo Chenal.


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Tom Brady's 3 Stars of Week 10, including Ravens' Lamar Jackson

By www.foxsports.com
Published On :: Tue, 12 Nov 2024 21:20:50 -0500

Week 10 of the 2024 NFL season had a few memorable and exciting finishes as several stars showed out! Check out FOX Sports lead NFL analyst Tom Brady to name his latest 3 Stars of The Week.


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John Hugley IV records a NASTY block to help Xavier hold on to 40-25 lead at halftime vs. Jackson State

By www.foxsports.com
Published On :: Wed, 13 Nov 2024 02:32:10 +0000

John Hugley IV recodrded a NASTY block to help Xavier hold on to 40-25 lead at halftime vs. Jackson State


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2024 Fantasy football: Top performers in Week 10

By www.foxsports.com
Published On :: Tue, 12 Nov 2024 22:06:45 -0500

Check out which players had the top performances in Week 10 of the fantasy football season.


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Dailyn Swain takes it coast-to-coast for an UNREAL jam to extend Xavier's lead over Jackson State

By www.foxsports.com
Published On :: Wed, 13 Nov 2024 03:22:30 +0000

Dailyn Swain took it coast-to-coast for an UNREAL jam to extend the Xavier Musketeers' lead over Jackson State. 


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College Football Playoff rankings takeaways: Colorado's path, Indiana undervalued

By www.foxsports.com
Published On :: Tue, 12 Nov 2024 22:49:34 -0500

FOX Sports' RJ Young offers up three takeaways from the second set of College Football Playoff rankings, including Colorado's path to the CFP ... and the national title game.


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Champions Classic: Hunter Dickinson leads Kansas past MSU; Kentucky rallies past Duke

By www.foxsports.com
Published On :: Wed, 13 Nov 2024 00:46:50 -0500

Hunter Dickson led No. 1 Kansas to an impressive win over Michigan State, while Mark Pope aced his first big test as Kentucky's head coach.


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Въезд в Таиланд из Камбоджи через КПП Ban Pakkad / Phsar Prum. 2024

By za7gorami.ru
Published On :: Fri, 19 Apr 2024 08:20:43 +0000

В Таиланд через КПП Бан Паккад (на фото) - как практически осуществить, чтобы без платы за такси тут и там? Этот вопрос меня интересовал в феврале 2024, когда я возвращался из Камбоджи в Таиланд.

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UK-to-US Word of the Year 2022: fit

By separatedbyacommonlanguage.blogspot.com
Published On :: Sun, 01 Jan 2023 02:41:00 +0000

Having let the year run its course, I'm now am ready to declare the Separated by a Common Language Words of the Year for 2022. As ever, there are two categories: US-to-UK and UK-to-US.  To be a SbaCL WoTY, the word just needs to have been noticeable in some way that year in the other country. 

For past WotYs, see here. And now...

The 2022 UK-to-US Word of the Year is: fit

Now, of course the word fit is general English when we use it in contexts like The shoes fit or I'm going to get fit this year. But those fits are not my UK-to-US Word of the Year. The fit I'm talking about is the informal British usage that means 'attractive, sexy'. A close (orig.) AmE synonym is hot. 

Ben Yagoda, on his Not One-Off Britishisms blog, first noticed this sense of fit in an American context back in 2013, but it seems to have taken hold in the US in the past couple of years. I assume this is due to the international popularity of the British television (BrE) programme/(AmE) show Love Island. 

Here's a clear example of this sense of fit from another UK reality series, Made in Chelsea.*


I like that video just because it's clearly fit meaning 'hot' rather than 'healthy and/or muscular', but if you'd like to hear it said on Love Island, then you can hear it here at 1:38 (though the YouTube automatic subtitling mishears it as fair).

 

This use of the word is new enough to the US that it's included in glossaries for American Love Island fans, like this one and this one. The Oxford English Dictionary added it in 2001:

  British slang. Sexually attractive, good-looking.

1985   Observer 28 Apr. 45/1   ‘Better 'en that bird you blagged last night.’ ‘F—— off! She was fit.’
1993   V. Headley Excess iv. 21   ‘So wait; dat fit brown girl who live by de church ah nuh your t'ing?!’ he asked eyebrows raised.
1999   FHM June (Best of Bar Room Jokes & True Stories Suppl.) 21/1   My first night there, I got arseholed, hit the jackpot and retired with my fit flatmate to her room.
2000   Gloucester Citizen (Nexis) 14 Feb. 11   I would choose Gillian Anderson from the X-Files, because she's dead fit.

Green's Dictionary of Slang has one 19th-century example, but notes that "(later 20C+ use is chiefly UK black)." 

I can't give statistics on how often this fit is use in the US because (a) the word has many other common meanings, making it very difficult to search for in corpora, and (b) this particular meaning is not likely to make it into print all that often. (Slang is like that.) Ben Yagoda considers fit "still an outlier" in AmE. But Ben's probably not in the right demographic for hearing it. 

An anonymous blog reader nominated it, and it struck me as apt for 2022—the popularity of "Love Island UK" (as it's called in the US) was hard to miss on my visit to the US this summer. I got to hear my brother (whose [AmE] college-student daughter loves the show) imitating the contestants, throwing in words like fit. I can easily find young US people using and discussing 'sexy' fit on social media (though I won't share their examples here because those young people didn't ask for the attention). And it made it onto Saturday Night Live, in a sketch about Love Island. You can hear proper fit at 1:11:




So Happy New Year to you! I wrote this post after watching the fireworks (on tv) at midnight. Now I'm (BrE humorous) off to Bedfordshire, so I'll leave the other WotY for tomorrow. Stay tuned for the US-to-UK WotY! 


*Update: I'm told that the Made in Chelsea video does not play in the US. Here's a quick transcript of the relevant bit:

Scene: Two male cast members on a sofa, commenting on this video shot of a female cast member:

M1: God, she's fit. 

M2: She is so hot.

M1:  So fit.

 


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2022 US-to-UK Word of the Year: homer

By separatedbyacommonlanguage.blogspot.com
Published On :: Mon, 02 Jan 2023 01:28:00 +0000

Yesterday, I declared the UK-to-US SbaCL Word of the Year. You can read about it here. 

The US-to-UK one may be as controversial as it was the first time (a)round (in May). But here goes: 

2022's US-to-UK Word of the Year is: homer


Why? 
  • Because it is possibly the most talked-about Americanism in British social media this year.
  • Because if I chose the other finalist,* I'd get too many "that's not a word!" complaints.
  • Because it alludes a huge, wordy phenomenon of 2022.
That phenomenon is Wordle, the word game invented by a Welsh engineer in the US, an added transatlantic bonus. 

Homer was the Wordle solution on the 5th of May, setting off a lot of grumpiness on social media. The cartoonist Stephen Collins provides a good illustration of the depth of feeling on the matter on the part of many committed UK Wordlers:




So, this isn't a Word of the Year because British people have taken on the word to refer to baseball home runs. There is very little need to talk about baseball in Britain. It's US-to-UK Word of the Year because it was an Americanism talking point in Britain, demonstrating how separate our vocabularies can be.

But is it an Americanism? The thing is, British people do say homer for lots of other reasons. In various BrE dialects or jargons, it can be a homing pigeon, a (BrE) match played on the home (BrE) pitch in some sports, or "a job that a skilled worker, such as a house painter or a hairdresser[..], does for a private customer in the customer's home, especially when they do this in addition to their main job and without telling their employer or the tax authorities" (Cambridge Dictionary). It's also the name of an ancient Hebrew measurement. But none of these uses are as common in BrE as homer meaning 'home run' is in AmE, and so the word was definitely perceived as an Americanism by British Wordle players. 

Now, this choice isn't exactly original on my part. Cambridge Dictionary made homer their Word of the Year back in November. It's also been noted as one of the most Googled words of the year. But that's another reason why it feels right as the US-to-UK Word of the Year. It not only spiked high in their look-up statistics on the day, it continued to be looked up in their online dictionary for months after—perhaps because BrE speakers just can't stop talking/tweeting about it. Homer was again showing up in tweets about losing one's Wordle streak on 27 December, when the answer was the tricky HAVOC. (And I imagine it was showing up in the less searchable social media as well.)  It'll be interesting to see if it's still being put to these purposes next year, or if it'll have been forgotten. The chances that it'll be forgiven seem thin.

I do encourage you to have a look at Cambridge's Word of the Year site for more on this word, British–American linguistic relations and how Wordle's been affecting dictionary usage. 




*My other "finalist" was them's the breaks, as spoken by Boris Johnson in his resignation speech outside 10 Downing Street. I was sure in July that that would be my "Word" of the Year, but, two Prime Ministers later, this well and truly feels like ancient news now.


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what 'polite' means: Culpeper, O'Driscoll & Hardaker (2019)

By separatedbyacommonlanguage.blogspot.com
Published On :: Mon, 13 Mar 2023 15:20:00 +0000

I've studied the word please off and on for a few years now.* Currently, I'm trying to finish up a study that I started an embarrassing number of years ago. Now that I've returned to it, I have the pleasure of reading all the works that have been published on related topics in the meantime. They couldn't inform my study design, but they must now inform the paper I hope to publish. One of these is a chapter by Jonathan Culpeper, Jim O'Driscoll and Claire Hardaker: "Notions of Politeness in Britain and North America," published in the book in From Speech Acts to Lay Understandings of Politeness, edited by Eva Ogiermann and Pilar Garcés-Conejos Blitvich (Cambridge UP, 2019). 

Their question, what does polite mean in the UK and US, was a research project on my to-do list. When I was a younger scholar, I'd have been (a) royally annoyed with those authors for getting to it first, (b) sad, sad, sad that I didn't get to do a fun piece of research, and (c) consumed with self-loathing for not being quick enough to do the project myself. It is both the blessing and curse of middle age that I now look at anything anyone else has done with gratitude. Good! Now I don't have to do it! 

Let's start with why it's interesting to ask about "notions of politeness" in the two countries. Here's a clue from an earlier post about use of please when ordering at restaurants. I asked:
So, how can it be that Americans think of themselves as polite when they fail to extend this common courtesy word?
I argued that Americans (subconsciously) find the lack of please in these contexts "more polite." In the comments section for that post, some people—mostly British people—could just not accept that a food order without a please could be described as polite. To them, to be polite includes saying please. If you're not using the word please, it's just not polite. 

Now, part of the reason for that disagreement is that I was using the word polite in linguistic-theory-laden ways. The distinction between how the word politeness is used in linguistic discussions and how it's used in everyday life has become such a problem for us linguists that we now talk about polite1 and polite2 to distinguish commonplace understandings of polite (1) from our theoretical uses (2). The failures of communication in my previous blogpost probably stemmed from having three understandings of politeness at play: the linguist's polite2, American polite1, and British polite1. 


Postcard from the How to be British series


 

Culpeper et al. set out to contrast British and American polite1. They point out that academic research on the topic of British/American politeness is "full of stereotypes that have largely gone unexamined." These stereotypes hold that British culture favo(u)rs maintaining social distance by using indirectness and avoidance in interaction, while Americans are more interested in creating interactional intimacy by being informal and open. The authors asked: how do AmE and BrE speakers use the word polite? If differences exist, then do they conform to the stereotypes, or do they tell us something new? To investigate this, the authors used two sets of data.


Part 1: clustering 'polite' words in the OEC

First, they searched the Oxford English Corpus, where they found thousands of instances of polite. In AmE, it occurs 6.8 times and in BrE 8.8 times per million words. They then used corpus-linguistic tools to determine which words polite was most likely to co-occur with in the two countries' data. They then used statistical tools to group these collocates into clusters that reflect how they behave linguistically. (I'll skip over the detail of the statistical methods they use, but it suffices to say: they know what they're doing.) For example in the British data, words like courteous, considerate, and respectful form a courteous cluster, while words like cheery, optimistic, and upbeat are in the cheerful cluster. 

The British and American datasets were similar in that polite co-occurred at similar rates with words that formed cheerful and friendly clusters. This seems to go with the common stereotype of American politeness as outgoing and inclusive, but contradicts the British stereotype of reserved behavio(u)r. 

The most notable difference was that British polite collocated with words in a sensible cluster, including: sensible, straightforward, reasonable, and fair. This cluster didn't figure in the American data. The British data also had a calm cluster (calm, quiet, generous, modest, etc.), which had little overlap with American collocates. British polite, then, seems to be associated with "calm rationality, rather than, say, spontaneous emotion." 

Other clusters seemed more complex. Courteous and charming came up as British clusters, while American had respectful, gracious, and thoughtful clusters. However, many of the words in those clusters were the same. For example, almost all the words in the British courteous cluster were in the American gracious cluster. That is, in American courteous and attentive were more closely associated with 'gracious' words like open-minded and appreciative, while British courteous and attentive didn't intersect with more 'gracious' words. Respectful is a particularly interesting case: it shows up in the courteous cluster for the British data, but has its own respectful cluster in American (with words like compassionate and humane). 
 
Looking at these clusters of patterns gives us a sense of the connotations of the words—that is to say, the associations those words bring up for us. Words live in webs of cultural assumptions. Pluck one word in one web, and others will reverberate. But it won't be the same words that would have reverberated if you'd plucked the same word in the other web. It's not that compassionate wasn't in the British data, for example—it's that its patterns did not land it in a cluster with respectful.  In American, respectful seems to have "a warmer flavour" with collocates relating to kindness and positive attitudes toward(s) others, while in the British data respectful has "older historic echoes of courtly, refined, well-mannered behaviour." 

Part 2: 'politeness' and sincerity on Twitter

Their second investigation involved analy{s/z}ing use of polite and its synonyms in a particular 36-hour period on Twitter. The data overall seemed to go against the stereotypes that American politeness is "friendly" and British is "formal", but once they looked at the data in more detail, they discovered why: US and UK words differed in (in)sincerity. In the British data, respectful seemed to "be used as a vehicle for irony, sarcasm and humour", while in the American data friendly "appears to have acquired a negative connotation" about 17% of the time, in which "friendly" people were accused of being untrustworthy or otherwise undesirable. This also underscores the idea that American respectful has a "warmer flavour" than British respectful. It's intriguing that each culture seems to be using words stereotypically associated with them (American–friendly; British–respectful) in ironic ways, while taking the less "typical of them" words more seriously.  

Yay for this study! 

I'm grateful to Culpeper, O'Driscoll and Hardaker for this very interesting paper, which demonstrates why it's difficult to have cross-cultural discussions of what's "polite" or "respectful" behavio(u)r. The more we're aware of these trends in how words are interpreted differently in different places, the better we can take care in our discussions of what's polite, acceptable, or rude. 


*If you're interested in the fruits of my please labo(u)rs so far, have a look at:


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UK-to-US Word of the Year 2023: if I'm honest

By separatedbyacommonlanguage.blogspot.com
Published On :: Mon, 01 Jan 2024 00:24:00 +0000

Each year since 2006, this blog has designated Transatlantic Words of the Year (WotY). The twist is that I choose the most 'of the year' borrowings from US-to-UK and from UK-to-US.  The question this year raises is: does 2023 deserve SbaCL Words of the Year?

The eligibility criteria remain:

  • Good candidates for SbaCL WotY are expressions that have lived a good life on one side of the Atlantic but for some reason have made a splash on the other side of the Atlantic this year. 
  • Words coined this year are not really in the running. If they moved from one place to another that quickly, then it's hard to say that they're really "Americanisms" or "Britishisms". They're probably just "internetisms". The one situation in which I could see a newly minted word working as a transatlantic WotY would be if the word/expression referenced something very American/British but was nevertheless taken on in the other country.
  • When I say word of the year, I more technically mean lexical item of the year, which is to say, there can be spaces in nominations. Past space-ful WotYs have included gap year, Black Friday, and go missing. I've also been known to declare a pronunciation the Word of the Year.

The UK > US WotY was nominated by Nancy Friedman and endorsed by Ben Yagoda. It is most definitely a phrase:

if I'm honest

In Ben's post the phrase is associated with Great British Bake-Off (AmE: Great British Baking Show) judge Paul Hollywood. When I looked for it on YouGlish, there were a whole slew of examples from the British (BrE) motoring show Top Gear, on which they review cars. In both program(me)s, the phrase is useful in softening criticisms (which both shows have a lot of) by framing them as a truths expressed with some reservation. If I'm honest marks something as an admission of some sort. It's similar to to be honest, which has long been said in the US (and the UK) for much the same reason. (And then there's honestly, which I'll come back to.)

Here are some recent American uses of the phrase:
  • Ryan Gosling, on being cast as Ken in Barbie:  "I just decided I was going to Ken as hard as I can. I Kenned in the morning; I Kenned at night. If I’m honest, I’m Kenning a little right now.”
  • A Real Housewife of Potomac, on getting divorced: "I've just been a little bit complacent about it, if I'm honest, because there are benefits to being married."
  • A Manhattanite writing about an experiment in sustainable living: "If I’m honest, part of me hoped to find the challenge untenable so I could say the cure was worse than the disease and give up."
  • A Chicago police officer commenting on the city's mayoral race: “If I’m honest, I think Catanzara may have some blame here”

These kinds of phrases are discourse markers. They do not add factual meaning to the sentence they're in, but rather make a comment on the speaker's attitude, or stance, toward(s) what they're saying. 

Is it a British phrase? Yes. Here is if I *m honest (i.e., if I'm honest or if I am honest) in the 2012 data of the Corpus of Global Web-Based English, where it occurs 7.6 times more often in BrE than in AmE. (Click on the images to embiggen them.)


And here it is in British sources in the News on the Web Corpus: 


In the 2012 data, the phrase occurs at a much higher rate in GloWbE than in NOW—the NOW number only reaches GloWbE's rate (1.8 per million words) in 2023—because the types of texts in the two corpora are different—there's more variety and informal language on GloWbE. That's something worth keeping in mind when we look at the US numbers. Speaking of which, here they are:


A few things to notice here:
  • Yes, the phrase is going up in AmE news, from 0.08 per million words to 0.19 over the past 13 years. 
  • But it's still below the 2012 GloWbe number (0.24 pmw). One would imagine that if we had current data that was collected in the same way as GloWbE, we'd see a lot more there. 
  • And it's wayyyyyy below the British numbers.
  • A country music album had the title If I'm Honest in 2016, which helps (to) account for the higher number then.

Here's a view of the Google Books numbers, comparing If I'm honest with To be honest (though keep in mind that to be honest here is not necessarily the discourse marker. It could be in any number of sentences about honesty.)

And a comparison of it with the equivalent if I'm being honest, which is less common, but making a move in AmE.



The pictures (and numbers) tell the story of a British expression that's become more and more common in BrE, and that has raised American exposure to (and use of) it. But note that it's rising far faster in BrE than in AmE. So, does it meet the first of my eligibility criteria? Maybe not. But it's what I've got for this year!


P.S.  Honestly

Honestly, used as a discourse marker in a sentence seems to be more common in AmE. But as a stand-alone expression of exasperation, it seems more common in BrE (Honestly!). It's definitely more common from the BrE speakers in my house than from me, but maybe I'm just more exasperating to live with than they are. Here are searches with punctuation from GloWbE:







Will there be a US-to-UK WotY?  To be honest, it's unclear at this point! 


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US-to-UK Word of the Year: OK

By separatedbyacommonlanguage.blogspot.com
Published On :: Wed, 03 Jan 2024 21:32:00 +0000

See here for the UK-to-US WotY post.

Time for the 2023 US-to-UK Word of the Year. Before people complain that this word has been in British English too long for it to count as a word of 2023, let me remind you of the criteria for SbaCL WotYs: 

  • Good candidates for SbaCL WotY are expressions that have lived a good life on one side of the Atlantic but for some reason have made a splash on the other side of the Atlantic this year. 
  • Words coined this year are not really in the running. If they moved from one place to another that quickly, then it's hard to say that they're really "Americanisms" or "Britishisms". They're probably just "internetisms". The one situation in which I could see a newly minted word working as a transatlantic WotY would be if the word/expression referenced something very American/British but was nevertheless taken on in the other country.
  • When I say word of the year, I more technically mean lexical item of the year, which is to say, there can be spaces in nominations. 
This word did make something of a splash in the British news this year. Here's a tweet from the Daily Mail:



And what was that American word?  *fanfare* The 2023 US-to-UK Word of the Year is 


OK!

(Also spelled okay, but we'll get to that!)

Though it has appeared in BrE since at least the late 19th century (originating in AmE earlier in that century), OK took a while to make its way into everyday speech in the UK. (Click on images to enlarge them.) Here's its trajectory in books (via Google Books Ngram Viewer). 


OK is underrepresented in earlier years in this graph because it was spelled/spelt O.K. with (BrE) full stops/(AmE) periods until and into the 20th century. As far as I know, there's no way to search for a word with that punctuation in it in Google Ngram Viewer, so I'm a bit stuck in showing more of the historical picture. 

One of American English's great observers/collectors/analysts, Allan Walker Read put significant effort into the study of OK, tracing its origins to a humorous spelling of all correct. Then people forgot about the joke and it went on to become "the English language's most successful export" according to this Merriam-Webster post, about a book by another late, great American English linguist, Allan Metcalf, relating Read's research. 

Getting back to the UK news in 2023, here's the headline of the Daily Mail's story:

Dailymail.co.uk headline.
Not linking to them because they don't need the traffic

That headline came from a particular interpretation of work by Galina B. Bolden, Alexa Hepburn, and Jenny Mandelbaum published in the Journal of Pragmatics on differences in US and UK usage of right, about which they conclude:

[I]n American English, right conveys the speaker's knowing stance and, in certain environments, the speaker's claim of primary knowledge. In contrast, in British English, right registers provided information as previously unknown, informative, and relevant to the current speaker's ongoing project. 

        [...] 

[S]ome UK usages of right—such as registering of potentially consequential information and projecting a transition—are quite similar to US okay in comparable positions [...]. This suggests a possibility that, in US English, okay took over some of the right usages and/or, in UK English, right took over some of the okay usages."

Their research was inspired by this interaction between BrE-speaking "AB" and AmE speaker "GA":


So, essentially, the British use of right in that context leads GA to think that AB is confirming (rather than acknowledging receipt of) the information. If AB had said OK, then GA would have understood it as acknowledgement rather than confirmation.

Even though the researchers note differences in usage between BrE and AmE okay (though keep in mind that their research is about right), it seems like a fitting US-to-UK WotY because (in whichever usages), it's used more than ever in the UK. Here it is in the British section of the News on the Web corpus, where it shows OK and okay climbing in the last couple of years.




Something to notice about the spelling is that in the news corpus, the OK spelling outnumbers the okay spelling, but in the books okay outnumbers OK. I think this tells us something about spelling style in different kinds of publications. I checked whether it also told us something about adjective (an okay/OK word) versus interjection use (OK! Okay!), but did not find a great difference between the spellings in the different uses.

Since this was a year of warning Britons against it, OK is the 2023 Separated by a Common Language US-to-UK Word of the Year! 












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Bedfordshire, the hay, and the sack

By separatedbyacommonlanguage.blogspot.com
Published On :: Sun, 21 Apr 2024 15:46:00 +0000

Inspired by Anatoly Liberman's Take My Word for It: A Dictionary of English Idioms (which I've reviewed for the International Journal of Lexicography), here's a quick dip into some ways of saying one's going to bed, where they've come from and who uses them now.

to Bedfordshire

Bedfordshire, a county north of London, has been a humorous synonym for bed since the 17th century.



Here's what the OED has (in an entry last edited in 1887):


Humorously put for bed.
    1665
    Each one departs to Bedford-shire And pillows all securely snort on.
    C. Cotton, Scarronnides 19
  1. 1738
    Faith, I'm for Bedfordshire.
    J. Swift, Complete Collection of Genteel Conversation 214

This seems not to have made any inroads to AmE.  Here are go to Bedfordshire and off to Bedfordshire in Google Books. Of course some of them might literally be about going to the county where Luton Airport is, but it's pretty likely that most are the idiom.






Hit the hay

From Mel Brooks' Young Frankenstein (via Bad Robot)
Liberman says "the phrase seems to be an Americanism". The OED defines hit the hay and roll in the hay but its earliest citation for hay in this sense is crawl into the Hay (1903); the first hit the hay they have is from 1912 (though, of course, it probably existed in speech much earlier).  They also have leaving the hay (P. G.Wodehouse, 1931—English, but a great user of Americanisms) and being great in the hay (Norman Mailer, 1959). This all gives the sense that the hay might have been a more agile synonym for bed than it is today, when most of us are not so used to thinking of hay as mattress material.

Though still more used in AmE, hit the hay is no longer foreign to BrE. 



Hit the sack

Sack was a synonym for bed much earlier than hay (1829 first citation). The OED says of sack: 

(a) A hammock; a bunk; (b) a bed; frequently as the sack; to hit the sack: see hit v. II.11c. slang (chiefly U.S.; originally Navy).

Hitting the sack doesn't show up in citations till 1943, though, so it was probably influenced the use of hit in other expressions like hitting the hay. Its US/UK usage pattern looks much like hit the hay's: 


And others?

I was interested to learn that turn in is from the 17th century and, it seems, originally nautical slang. It comes from a time when sailors slept in hammocks rather than bunks—not sure if that's related. Going that far back, it's common to both Englishes. (Go to) beddy-bye(s) is also found in both Englishes in similar numbers. The first OED citation is from Australia in 1901.  




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one-off and one-of-a-kind

By separatedbyacommonlanguage.blogspot.com
Published On :: Sun, 20 Oct 2024 21:32:00 +0000

Congratulations to Ben Yagoda on his new book Gobsmacked: The British Invasion of American English! If you like this blog, you are going to like that book. I was both gobsmacked and chuffed to see that I was among the dedicatees of the book (and in wonderful company). It even has an appendix of my UK-to-US Words of the Year! (And on that note—feel free to start nominating 2024's Transatlantic Words of the Year.)



Ben has been observing the transit of British English words, pronunciations and grammar for 13 years now at his blog Not One-Off Britishisms. So, to celebrate his book, let's look at one-off, the Britishism in his blog title.  One-off can be used as a noun or an adjective to refer to something happens once and won't happen again.

Ben's blog evaluates previously British-only expressions that seem to be catching on in American English, and one-off was one he first covered in 2011. In the book, he gives more historical context for both the British and American usage. Google Books charts (nicely redrawn by Eric Hansen in the book) provide a handy view of the trajectory of British words in American publications over time.

In the case of one-off, the first known occurrence of it is in 1930s Britain. It seems to take off in Britain in the 1960s, then shows up in the US in the 1990s, picking up speed as it goes along.  Here's the the relevant bit of the book:


 
He also categori{s/z}es each expression as to how entrenched it has become in AmE. In the case of one-off, it's "taking hold."  

While Yagoda keeps track of the migration of Britishisms, my (self-appointed) job on this blog is to give American English translations. One-of-a-kind seems a good candidate But is one-of-a-kind American English or General English? And is one-off displacing it at all?

My first stop is the Corpus of Global Web-Based English, whose data comes from 2012:
 

Now, we don't always hyphenate one of a kind (it depends on how it's being used in a sentence), but this chart at least gives a sense that one-of-a-kind is used proportionally less in BrE, since it has one-off to use instead. In the same corpus, unhyphenated one of a kind is still "more North American," but more gently so: 490 US hits to 320 GB ones. 

All of the Oxford English Dictionary quotations for one-of-a-kind are North American too—the first one from 1954 by American art critic Arthur C. Danto. (The first unhyphenated one is from 1977.) The OED does not, however, mark it as an American expression. 

Now, one-off and one-of-a-kind aren't exactly the same thing. One-off has a more temporal connotation: it's happened once (and won't again). That said, you could say, for example, that a person is a one-off or one of a kind meaning that they're a unique kind of person.

So is the existence of one-off hurting one-of-a-kind? It happens to be easier to look at the unhyphenated version in Google Ngrams and the hyphenated one in the Corpus of Historical American English, so let's look at both.

First, we can see that one of a kind has been increasing fairly steadily in both AmE and BrE, but it's definitely more American. One-off's appearance on the American scene has not caused one of a kind to become less frequent. 

And here's the hyphenated one-of-a-kind in comparison with one-off in American English since the 1940s. American use of one-off has taken off in the 21st century. One-of-a-kind is still used more, but the gap is closing:



How are both of these expressions doing so well?  Well, it seems to be because everything in the world has got(ten) more unique. Here's the Google Ngram for unique, going up-up-up in English generally since World War II. 




And just for the pedants, here's the chart for more unique:



(I wonder what proportion of the hits for more unique are just people complaining or warning against more unique.)

Anyhow, congratulations to Ben Yagoda on the success of his blog and the publication of his book! 
And so many thanks for this kind dedication:



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Times People Were Awkwardly Misjudged

By cheezburger.com
Published On :: Fri, 30 Oct 2020 06:00:00 -0700

Sometimes people are all-too ready to make assumptions about other people, and those assumptions get in the way of empirical facts. You hope someone doesn't misjudge you so publicly that they make a total fool of themselves. Or maybe you do. Everyone knows wrongful times people were misjudged tend to stick in their memory for years.


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THANK GOD IT'S FRIDAY

By cheezburger.com
Published On :: Wed, 25 Jul 2012 18:00:00 -0700

THANK GOD IT'S FRIDAY bye mom. Gonna psend the weekend over with some college friends


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OH, I DON'T KNOW....

By cheezburger.com
Published On :: Wed, 13 Jun 2012 13:00:00 -0700

OH, I DON'T KNOW.... if they take the three actors and pour cement over them it might not be so bad.


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Trump Posts a Photo of Himself Working on His Inaugural Address and it Gives Spark to a New Meme

By cheezburger.com
Published On :: Mon, 26 Aug 2019 19:00:00 -0700

Yesterday Trump tweeted a photo of himself hard at work on his inauguration speech and the internet has been having a field day with it. 

It started on twitter with people guessing at what The Donald might be drawing. Shortly thereafter it got a small photoshop battle. 

'What's Donald Drawing' definitely has the potential to catch on.

Get More Trump Memes that are simply tremendous, people tell me how amazing these memes are all the time.


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The Internet Took the Opportunity to Photoshop Donald Trump With a Blank Sign and Ran With It

By cheezburger.com
Published On :: Wed, 28 Aug 2019 19:00:00 -0700

Has Trump seen people holding signs on the internet before? It never turns out well.


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The Funniest Protest Signs By People Who Think Trump's Presidency Is a Terrible Mistake

By cheezburger.com
Published On :: Thu, 29 Aug 2019 07:00:00 -0700

These people are not afraid to carry on hilarious protest signs and tell the world what they really think of Donald Trump's Presidency. Via: Sad and useless  


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Internet Had a Dangerous Amount of Fun Trolling Pic of Trump, Melania And Ivanka With The Pope

By cheezburger.com
Published On :: Thu, 29 Aug 2019 19:00:00 -0700

Just when we thought we'd never get anything better than Donald Trump grasping that orb, we get this dark-humored, delightfully awkward pic that just oozes cringe. Naturally, people were ready to flood Twitter with some entertaining captions. 


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The Untouched Picture of Kim Jong-Un Started a Supreme Photoshop Battle

By cheezburger.com
Published On :: Sat, 31 Aug 2019 07:00:00 -0700

North Korea released a smiling picture of Kim Jong-Un and were VERY specific about pointing out the fact that the image was untouched. Obviously the first thing the internet did when they got a hold of the image was to touch it up a bit. The results were glorious.


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The Queen of England Wore a Bright Green Outfit So, Naturally, the Internet Treated It Like a Green Screen

By cheezburger.com
Published On :: Sat, 31 Aug 2019 19:00:00 -0700

Queen Elizabeth wore a neon green outfit to her 90th birthday party. What could go wrong? Oh right, the internet...


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Bill Clinton Cracked a Terrible Dad Joke on Twitter and Nobody Can Handle It

By cheezburger.com
Published On :: Mon, 02 Sep 2019 07:00:00 -0700

Slick Willy just had to go and crack a dad joke that simultaneously dug on President Trump and kept the pun game strong, didn't he? Naturally, people were highly entertained and vaguely irritated. 


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11 Animals That Are Donald Trump's Look Alikes

By cheezburger.com
Published On :: Fri, 13 Sep 2019 07:00:00 -0700

Well...Can't ignore the resemblance


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Twitter Is Roasting Ivanka Trump For Claiming She Had A Punk Phase

By cheezburger.com
Published On :: Sat, 28 Sep 2019 07:00:00 -0700

New York Magazine published an excerpt from Ivana Trump's memoir Raising Trump - and it has since become a wildly entertaining meme. Thhe excerpt is actually a quote from Ivanka, reminiscing about her "punk" days. 

"During my punk phase in the nineties, I was really into Nirvana. My wardrobe consisted of ripped corduroy jeans and flannel shirts. One day after school, I dyed my hair blue. Mom wasn't a fan of this decision. She took one look at me and immediately went out to the nearest drugstore to buy a $10 box of Nice'n Easy. That night, she forced me to dye my hair back to blond. The color she picked out was actually three shades lighter than my natural color… and I have never looked back!"

The quote has left Twitter users in stitches, making Photoshop memes and mocking the wealthy businesswoman's statement. The results have been delightful. 


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Nancy Pelosi Pointing At Trump Is An Assertive Dank Meme

By cheezburger.com
Published On :: Sun, 20 Oct 2019 19:00:00 -0700

During a meeting to discuss Syria, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi was photographed assertively pointing a finger at Donald Trump. Trump later tweeted the photo with the caption, "Nervous Nancy's unhinged meltdown!" the photo has inspired a whole host of memes from every political angle. 

Whether you're a Trump supporter or a Pelosi fan, we think you'll find these trending memes amusing. Or maybe you hate both of them equally! That's certainly an option too!


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Twitter Roasts Pete Buttigieg For His Staged 'Walk Back To Iowa'

By cheezburger.com
Published On :: Tue, 28 Jan 2020 07:00:00 -0800

Poor Mayor Pete just can't seem to catch a break on the internet. The presidential candidate from South Bend, Indiana tweeted a photo of himself walking down a hallway on Saturday with the caption, "On my way back to Iowa. It's phase 4. Let's do this." The tweet has been catching a fair amount of flack for appearing to be staged. 

Here are some of Twitter's most amusing reaction memes and tweets!


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Bernie Still Needs Your Financial Support In These Fresh Dank Memes

By cheezburger.com
Published On :: Fri, 31 Jan 2020 19:00:00 -0800

We've been seeing these Bernie Sanders memes practically everywhere on the internet lately, and they don't appear to be stopping any time soon! Here's our last gallery in case you missed 'em. 

We sincerely hope you're not sick of political memes yet, because we've still got far to go before the 2020 presidential elections, so buckle up!


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Bernie Sanders Writing On A Whiteboard Gets Meme'd With Hot Takes

By cheezburger.com
Published On :: Wed, 05 Feb 2020 07:00:00 -0800

What started as Bernie Sanders writing an innocent thank you note to his field staff on a white board turned into memers filling it in with hotter takes and less savory messages. Seriously, people should know better at this point than to post images on the internet of people with white boards. It's just asking for bad news.


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Roundup Of Democratic Debate Memes That Roast Last Night's Total Freak Show

By cheezburger.com
Published On :: Sat, 22 Feb 2020 19:00:00 -0800

Last night's democratic debate in Nevada got pretty damn spicy to say the least. So much so that many are calling it the most entertaining debate of the election cycle so far. Pete spoke Spanish, Warren (and every other candidate, for that matter) came out swinging against Bloomberg, and many, many other things that warranted a monumental cringe fest. 

So please enjoy the following roast-y memes from the night and you can watch a more in-depth recap of it here!


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Kentuckians Are Meme-ing Their Beloved Governor In These Trying Times

By cheezburger.com
Published On :: Wed, 25 Mar 2020 19:00:00 -0700

In these trying and crazy times, Kentuckians are looking to Governor Andy Beshear for answers. His daily 5pm livestream updates have become popular for their wholesome messages and his amusing call-outs to stubborn bingo halls that just won't close for coronavirus quarantining. He's even earned himself a Facebook meme page, entitled "Andy Beshear Memes for Social Distancing Teens." 

Check some of them out below!  


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Trump's 'Exploding Trees' Comment Has Memers Trolling Like Crazy

By cheezburger.com
Published On :: Fri, 18 Sep 2020 07:00:00 -0700

As wildfires continue to ravage the West Coast, President Trump has been quick to dismiss climate change as one of the root causes, stating that countries in Europe like Austria don't suffer from wildfires because Europeans live in "forest cities" that are "managed better" yet are "more explosive" than the trees in California.

We're not entirely sure what any of that means, and apparently neither do memers, so please enjoy the following memes about "forest cities" in Austria.


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