“American” words in English: where would we be without them? They own the bulk of the shares
“There is no such thing as the Queen’s English. The property has gone into the hands of a joint stock company and we own the bulk of the shares!”
Mark Twain said that as far back as 1897 (Following the Equator, Chapter XXIV). While many Brits continue to entertain the attitude typified (or satirized) by Max Beerbohm:
“He held, too, in his enlightened way, that Americans have a perfect right to exist. But he did often find himself wishing Mr Rhodes had not enabled them to exercise that right in Oxford.”
Zuleika Dobson, 1911
all of us (i.e. English-speakers) use U.S.-coined words some – if not all – of the time.
Oscar Wilde’s quip “We have really everything in common with America nowadays, except, of course, language” really does not apply to so very many words – though the differences between British and U.S. English as indefatigably explored by Lynne Murphy, are still legion.
Twentieth-century “new” words
As mentioned in an earlier blog, I’m having great fun looking at words that “came into the language” year by year from 1900 onwards, and tweeting one or two a day. To find them, I use “advanced search” in the OED specifying “headword” and a given year. Each year there are usually round 500 such words, and in some years rather more (e.g. 1900: 686), but very occasionally rather fewer (e.g. 1913: 451). [Note that very careful use of fewer, ;-)]
That search excludes words which [yes, oh Word grammar checker, it’s fine to use “which” in a defining clause] acquired new meanings in any year. So, what I end up with is a list of completely new “visitors” (in bird terms) to our language. For each year, I generally look at the first 100, ordered by frequency, and then select 20 or so according to criteria explained in the earlier blog.
Now, while doing this (at the time of writing, I had got up to 1915), I found myself wondering more and more insistently just how many emerged in British English and how many in U.S.English. I was expecting U.S. English to produce the greater number, but my little sample surprised even me.
A 50-word personal sample
I chose 20 words from 1909 and 30 from 1913, thus giving me a nice round figure of 50 to do easy percentages with. The OED lists a few of them as “Orig. U.S.” and variants on that theme. But I had a suspicion that more of them were U.S. than that labelling suggested. I decided to look at the written source which the OED had tracked down as the first record of the word: was it an American journal/newspaper/book, or a British one?
The totals are as follows: U.S. = 33; Brit = 16; other = 1
i.e. 66% of words are first cited in U.S. sources.
Some caveats are in order, of course.
First, several of the OED entries have not been revised for the third edition; different dates and sources may therefore be found.
Second, the fact that a word first appears in a U.S. source does not prove conclusively that it is an American coinage, though it does point strongly in that direction.
And, third, my sample is neither random, nor large enough to prove anything. But it is, to my mind, very suggestive, given that most of these words must surely be considered part of everyday language, rather than technical.
I also labelled the words with a subject field. “Modern life” is a bit of a cop-out, to avoid too many labels; “General language”, as you will see, includes several informal or (once) slangy terms.
“Bull” does not mean what you might think
Hopefully, the abbreviations in the list of sources are self-explanatory. “Bull.”, by the way, means “Bulletin”. Newspapers figure as the first citation for ten words; three appear first in dictionaries.
Finally, some of the first citations are piquant: Winston Churchill for seaplane, Compton Mackenzie’s Sinister Street for lav, P.G. Wodehouse for fifty-fifty, and Arnold Bennett for turn-round. The relevant citations follow the table.
Words are in order of frequency as listed in the OED. Finally, quite why piggy bank first appears in the Dietetic and Hygienic Gazette for March 1913 is anyone’s guess.
Headword
Year
Country
Source
Field
gene
1909
US
Amer. Naturalist
science
movies
1909
US
Springfield (Mass.) Sunday Republican
entertainment
cinema
1909
Brit
Tragedy of the Pyramids
entertainment
trade-off
1909
US
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
business, economics
coke
1909
US
Coca-Cola Bottler (Philadelphia)
modern life
air conditioning
1909
US
Useful Information Cotton Manufacturers
modern life
exponentially
1909
US
Cent. Dict. Suppl.
science
libido
1909
US
Freud Sel. Papers on Hysteria
psychology
fuselage
1909
Brit
Flight
transport
empathic
1909
US
Lect. Exper. Psychol. Thought-processes
psychology
multi-party
1909
Brit
Englishwoman
politics
mindset
1909
US
Philos., Psychol. & Sci. Methods
psychology
rite of passage
1909
Brit
Folk-Lore
anthropology
neo-cortex
1909
Brit
Arch. Neurol. & Psychiatry
psychology
counter-offensive
1909
Brit
Daily Chronicle
warfare
xenophobia
1909
Brit
Athenæum
politics
socialite
1909
US
Oakland (Calif.) Tribune
general language
scrounge
1909
US
Webster’s New Internat. Dict. Eng. Lang.
general language
gaffe
Brit
Pall Mall Gaz.
general language
bakelite
1909
US
Jrnl. Industr. & Engin. Chem.
modern life
isotope
1913
Brit
Nature
science
close-up
1913
US
Technique Photoplay
entertainment
Salmonella
1913
Brit
Pract. Bacteriol
medicine
project management
1913
US
Nevada State Jrnl
business, economics
behaviourism
1913
US
Psychol. Rev.
psychology
superconductor
1913
Proc. Sect. Sci. K. Akad
science
big picture
1913
US
Titusville (Pa.) Herald
entertainment
comic strip
1913
US
Altoona (Pa.) Mirror
entertainment
streamlined
1913
Brit
Aeroplane
transport
not-for-profit
1913
US
Ann. Amer. Acad. Polit. & Social Sci.
business, economics
talkie
1913
US
Writer’s Bull.
entertainment
petrochemical
1913
US
Chem. Abstr.
science
record player
1913
US
Waterloo (Iowa) Times-Tribune
entertainment
seaplane
1913
Brit
Hansard Commons
transport
turn-round
1913
Brit
The Regent
general language
stooge
1913
US
Sat. Evening Post
general language
person-to-person
1913
US
Lincoln (Nebraska) Daily Star
general language
anti-freeze
1913
US
Dict. Automobile Terms
transport
pre-eclampsia
1913
Brit
Lancet
medicine
fifty-fifty
1913
US
Little Nugget
general language
once-over
1913
US
N.Y. Evening Jrnl
general language
lav
1913
Brit
Sinister St
general language
pep talk
1913
US
Colorado Springs Gaz.
general language
intelligence quotient
1913
US
Psychol. Bull.
psychology
parsec
1913
Brit
Monthly Notices Royal Astron. Soc.
science
reflexology
1913
US
Med. World
medicine
sexologist
1913
US
Pract. Treat. Causes, Symptoms & Treatm. Sexual Impotence
medicine
admin
1913
US
Trans. 15th Internat. Congr. Hygiene & Demography
general language
headcount
1913
US
Motion-pict. Work
general language
piggy bank
1913
US
Dietetic & Hygienic Gaz
general language
seaplane: Hansard Commons, 17 July – We have decided to call the naval hydroplane a seaplane, and the ordinary aeroplane or school machine, which we use in the Navy, simply a plane. (Churchill)
lav: Sinister St. I. vii. 99 – Tell the army to line up behind the lav. at four o’clock. (Mackenzie)
(lav is marked as “Chiefly Brit” and “colloq.” in the OED)
fifty-fifty: Little Nugget vi. 121 – Say, Sam, don’t be a hawg. Let’s go fifty-fifty in dis deal. (Wodehouse)
turn-round: The Regent x. 291 – She’s going to do the quickest turn-round that any ship ever did… She’ll leave at noon to-morrow.
Filed under: Word origins Tagged: 20th-century words year by year, Mark Twain, Oxford, US & British usage
