Overview

The British love to complain that words and phrases imported from America from French fries to Awesome, man! are destroying the English language. But what about the influence going the other way? Britishisms have been making their way into the American lexicon for more than 150 years, but the process has accelerated since the turn of the twenty-first century. From acclaimed writer and language commentator Ben Yagoda, Gobsmacked! is a witty, entertaining, and enlightening account of how and why scores of British words and phrases such as one-off, go missing, curate, early days, kerfuffle, easy peasy, and cheeky have been enthusiastically taken up by Yanks. After tracing Britishisms that entered the American vocabulary in the nineteenth century and during the world wars, Gobsmacked! discusses the most-used British terms in America today. It features chapters on the American embrace of British insults and curses, sports terms, and words about food and drinks. The book also explores the American adoption of British spellings, pronunciations, and grammar, and cases where Americans have misconstrued British expressions (for example, changing can't be arsed to can't be asked) or adopted faux-British usages, like pronouncing divisive as 'divissive'. Finally, the book offers some guidance on just how many Britishisms an American can safely adopt without coming off like an arse. Rigorously researched and documented but written in a light, conversational style, this is a book that general readers and language obsessives will love. Its revealing account of a surprising and underrecognised language revolution might even leave them, well, gobsmacked.

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9780691262291

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""The wash of cultural globalization, where everything is available all the time, has made it easier for words to flow into as well as out of the American word hoard. . . . Gobsmacked! is a collection of the hundred or so wittiest and most interesting entries from [Yagoda’s blog] — kerfuffle, pillock, twee, nonstarter and, of course, gobsmacked.""---Dennis Duncan, Washington Post ""It is possible that the British need 'Gobsmacked!' more than their American cousins. The Americanisation of British English is well known; the Britishisation of American English, not so much...A country not sure what influence it still does—or should—have in the world might like to know that the superpower across the ocean still fancies the mother country and its culture."" * The Economist *

""The wash of cultural globalization, where everything is available all the time, has made it easier for words to flow into as well as out of the American word hoard. . . . Gobsmacked! is a collection of the hundred or so wittiest and most interesting entries from [Yagoda’s blog] — kerfuffle, pillock, twee, nonstarter and, of course, gobsmacked.""---Dennis Duncan, Washington Post

Author Information

Ben Yagoda has published more than a dozen books, including Will Rogers: A Biography; About Town: ""The New Yorker"" and the World It Made; When You Catch an Adjective, Kill It: The Parts of Speech, for Better and/or Worse; and The Sound on the Page: Style and Voice in Writing. He is professor emeritus of English at the University of Delaware. His blog, Not One-Off Britishisms, has been visited more than 3 million times.

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