080155373

Is British English being swamped by Americanisms?

A lexical investigation

Nicholas Walker

May 2011

Abstract

There is a long held fascination in the lay-linguistic community that English speakers in the

UK are increasingly favouring American English vocabulary. Some prescriptivists see

American English as an unwelcome invader destined to drive out British vocabulary items. .

This research study focuses on the cross-Atlantic transmission of concrete nouns in the field

of economics. This is made possible by using the OED to find lexical items of US origin, then

using a historical thesaurus to find competing synonyms. Where synonyms exist, a corpora

analysis can show whether the American English expression is favoured. From the data it is

possible to make some conclusions over why certain ‘Americanisms’ are able to enter British

English usage and others not. The use of American lexical items in British English is

necessary in some cases to fill conceptual or lexical gaps. Cases where an existing British

English synonym is replaced by an American English word are seemingly rare.

Consideration is due as to whether adoption of American English words can be considered

any different from borrowings from other dialects and languages. Thus a position towards

thinking of ‘Americanisms’ with a similar framework to other borrowings is endorsed.

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Acknowledgements

Dedicated to everyone who has ever wanted to know more about Americanisms.

Thanks are due to Dr Lynne Murphy whose blog on British/American differences spurred me

on to find out more, and for her help in finding related readings.

With special thanks to the all the academic staff at the University of Sheffield School of

English Language and Linguistics whose enthusiasm and passion for their subjects helped

make 3 years of study fly by.

Likewise special thanks to my project supervisor, Dr Justyna Robinson, for pointing me in

the right direction throughout the study and her constant encouragement and support

throughout.

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Glossary of Key terms

American English (or AmE) – the variety of English used in the United States of America. It

includes all English dialects used within the United States.

British English (or BrE) – the variety of English used in the United Kingdom. It includes all

English dialects used within the United Kingdom.

Lexis – The total stock of words in a language.

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Contents

Introduction..............................................................................................................................1

Outline..................................................................................................................................1

Background..........................................................................................................................1

Literature review.......................................................................................................................4

Method...................................................................................................................................11

Hypothesis..........................................................................................................................16

Results...................................................................................................................................17

Analysis..................................................................................................................................27

Evaluation..............................................................................................................................37

Conclusion.............................................................................................................................45

Recommendations for further study...................................................................................47

Summing up.......................................................................................................................48

Bibliography...........................................................................................................................51

Appendix...............................................................................................................................56

10,389 words(N.B. Background and Method sections previously assessed)

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Introduction

Outline

In this investigation I will start by introducing the concept in question – ‘Americanisms’ – and

discuss some of the viewpoints that contextualise the debate. I will then go on to look at

some of the linguistic studies and schools of thought that may be useful to the investigation

with a view to finding a methodology. From there I will lay out the method chosen to study

the phenomena involved and provide a hypothesis to test. The experimental stage will be

conducted with the results presented in the study. Following this, the results will be

discussed with the intention of finding trends and interesting results to challenge the

hypothesis. Any problems and limitations that arise from the experimental method will be

discussed before a final conclusion on the validity of the hypothesis is set out.

Background

English is the common language of both the United Kingdom and the United States. The

social, economic and political influences of these two nations in particular have been a

driving factor in English becoming one of the foremost international languages. English’s

global status can be quantified by the estimated 328 million individuals who use the

language worldwide (Lewis, M.P. 2009). English arrived in America as the language used by

early settlers from Britain in the 16th century and onwards. The colonisation of North America

by the British ensured that the language would go on to become the dominant tongue of that

part of the world, even long after the British had formally left. Over time however, the

dialectal features of the English used in the UK and the English used in the US began to

show marked differences. The marked differences in phonology, morphology, syntax and

vocabulary in the varieties and dialects of the English language highlight one of the great

challenges for linguists and lay speakers alike – the lack of a universally accepted standard

of English

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The dialectal differences between British and American varieties of English are of interest to

linguists and non-linguists on both sides of the Atlantic. Some British English users have

been critical of the US version of the language, and there is evidence to suggest that this

discussion has existed for as long as the two nations have been separate entities. The

famous Scottish-born clergyman and academic John Witherspoon coined the expression

‘Americanism’ in 1781 as a term to describe features of US English that differ from British

English (in Tottie, G. 2002b: 94). The linguistic differences in America arose under the

backdrop of the American nationalism movement, which sought economic, governmental

and ecclesiastical freedom from the United Kingdom (Algeo, J. 2001: 4). The period of

political tensions between the thirteen British colonies in North America and the ruling

government of the United States eventually led to the Revolutionary War and consequently

the Declaration of Independence in 1777.

The new nation would have been a place where settlers would encounter unfamiliar flora

and fauna as well as unusual landforms. Thus the English used in the US would need to

change and innovate to keep up with every new discovery. New language would also have

been coined to refer to new innovations and it is thus unsurprising that American English has

been so productive in creating new words in the nearly quarter of a millennium since

Independence.

Witherspoon’s term ‘Americanism’ has come to be used in an often pejorative sense by

language commentators describing US dialect features. In his noted style guide, The King’s

English, Henry Fowler, a famed lexicographer for the Concise Oxford English Dictionary,

claimed that ‘Americanisms are foreign words and should be so treated’ (1922: 23). Many of

Fowler and his brother’s views laid out in The King’s English would be seen by modern

linguists as being prescriptivist. Prescriptivism in linguistics refers to the type of assertions

that identify supposedly correct and incorrect instances of language usage aim to tell people

how a language should be used (Meyer 2009: 13). Modern-day linguists are primarily

concerned with being descriptive, or describing human linguistic ability, rather than

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prescriptive (O’Grady, Dobrovolsky and Katamba 1997: 6) and therefore avoid making

normative judgements about which language variants are ‘better’.

The controversy of ‘Americanisms’ is of interest to the general public, as evidenced by the

BBC receiving complaints from listeners to a Radio 4 programme where the presenter,

Martha Kearney, used the phrase ‘fess up’ in an interview (Kearney 2010). One criticism

stated “When has it become acceptable for radio journalists...to use this American slang?”

(BBC Radio 4 Messageboard 2010: Message 1).

It appears to be a popular topic of conversation for broadcasters and journalists too.

Matthew Engel for the Daily Mail goes as far as using the metaphor of US vocabulary being

‘like the grey squirrel, destined to drive out native species and ravage the linguistic

ecosystem’ (2010: para. 3 of 14).

Hardeep Singh Kohli says that American English seems to ‘permeate, pervade and pollute

British English (2008: para. 2 of 10) and blames the spread of American English on US

television and films (2008: para. 7 of 10). Entertainment is indeed one of the most lucrative

exports for the US with British people richly consuming American pop music, films and TV

shows. In the UK, the television channels Sky Atlantic and Five USA are dedicated solely to

broadcasting programming originating from the US and 19 out of the top 20 highest grossing

films of 2009 in UK cinemas were fully or partly US-made (UK Film Council 2010). However,

Trudgill stipulates that while speakers may learn new words from film and television,

electronic media do not play a big role in the diffusion of phonological and grammatical

change (1998). Whether or not this is true, the belief that British English is being ‘swamped’

by Americanism as Engel claims is one that very little previous linguistic research has tested.

The aim of this study is to apply descriptive linguistic thought to these types of views.

In the following chapter I will critically analyse existing literature connected to the argument.

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Literature review

In this chapter I will critically look back upon previous research conducted in the various

fields related to language change, particularly change involving the differences between

British and American English. From this I aim to find groundwork for a suitable methodology

that can test the impact of AmE vocabulary on BrE.

Benson, Benson and Ilson (1986) present a detailed taxonomy including a list of British

English words and their American English synonyms (and vice versa). It is not entirely clear

how the editors came to declare each lexical item as being either BrE or AmE, as some may

be based on origin while others on common usage. As the list is now 25 years old, it is

probably out of date in many cases and missing recent developments in the language.

Therefore, part of the methodology will require sourcing a new list of vocabulary items to

test.

A key area of understanding that applies to new language is the notion of gaps. Gaps in the

language occur where a semantic field is missing an item to refer to a given concept.

Chomsky talks of a distinction between items in semantics that are ‘occurring, possible but

non-occurring and impossible’ (1965: 175). Lehrer expands on this by noting that the

‘possible but non-occurring’ parts of a semantic field are where lexical gaps arise (1970:

258). Lehrer illustrates this using a matrix model showing the lexical gap for an expression

that means ‘to make an animal grow’:

animal plant

make grow grow

raise

The figure shows that while one can say ‘he grows corn’ to mean ‘he makes corn grow’,

there would be no equivalent way of saying ‘he makes dog grow’ other than by using the

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shared term ‘raise’ (1970: 258). This investigation may have to consider whether matrix gaps

are responsible for incoming AmE vocabulary.

Research that has focussed on the language differences between British English and

American English have offered analyses based on a broad range of linguistic subfields. This

should come as no surprise given the observable notion that the two varieties (with ‘varieties’

being a key term here) diverge in syntax, phonology, morphology and, most crucially to this

study, lexis.

In the field of stylistics, Douglas Biber (1987) found that British texts used less formal

language on average than American texts of the same genre. He did this by using language

extracts from corpora of British English and American English, grouping them by genre, and

giving each genre a score for three stylistic dimensions – interactive versus edited text (e.g.

use of personal pronouns, wh-questions), abstract versus situated content (e.g. use of

nominalisations, place adverbs) and reported versus immediate style (e.g. use of past tense

or present tense). The results showed a general trend towards American English extracts

using a greater amount of the more formal language features than equivalent extracts from

the same genres in British English. The aim of my study is to find broad trends, so a stylistic

analysis may be interesting for further investigations beyond this one but not applicable for

the mean time.

Marko Modiano and Marie Söderlund investigated the perceptions and preferences of

Swedish upper secondary school pupils in relation to BrE and AmE. Part of the experiment

involved a listening comprehension exercise where informants were asked to listen to 26

Swedish words and translate them into English, with all the words being ones with both a

BrE and AmE equivalent, either in spelling or lexis. The results of this test were that 49% of

the responses overall favoured the AmE variety and 31.3% the BrE variety (Modiano, M.

2002:163). This was despite the fact that a questionnaire by the researchers to find teachers

attitudes concluded that the majority of teachers felt that the variety they taught in was

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British English (2002: 162). This certainly shows evidence for American English having an

influence on the speech of English users in Sweden, but as Swedish speakers are likely to

have contact with both varieties of the language, it should come as no surprise that elements

of both occur in the English used in Sweden. A translation exercise would obviously not be

possible for a study examining two varieties of the same language.

Donald Macqueen (2002) uses a corpus analysis of a British newspaper (the Guardian) and

an American newspaper (the New York Times) to find the difference in frequencies of certain

numerical expressions in the years 1993 and 1999. The findings from this study show a shift

towards AmE expressions by the British newspaper over the 6 year period. For the phrase

‘have not [pp] in/for years’, the American newspaper favours the use of ‘in’ and the UK

newspaper favours ‘for’, but the results show a 37% rise in the use of ‘in’ in the British

newspaper over the six year period. Using comparable texts as corpora could be useful for

this study, but holds the problem of both corpora having the same style or register and thus

inherent linguistic similarities. It is also not the best way to reflect general trends in the

language.

Tottie (2002a) noted that previous studies on the differences between the varieties often

assumed that the language forms were categorical, in this case meaning that British English

takes one variant, American English uses another variant and neither variant occurs in the

other variety. Tottie suggests that a better reflection of the differences would be to note that

the features in question may occur in both dialects but to varying degrees. In order to go

beyond a categorical view, he used large corpora to not only find the relative frequency of

features and their alternatives in both varieties, but also to compare the results between the

two varieties. A purely categorical description of the difference between ‘autumn’ and ‘fall’

would state that ‘fall’ is AmE and ‘autumn’ is BrE. Tottie’s non-categorical description shows

that ‘autumn’ is in fact ‘fairly frequent but register specific in American English’ (2002a:39) as

it occurs recurrently in written American language. A good aspect of Tottie’s methodology is

the comparison of results between the varieties as it allows the potential for establishing

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‘how American’ a feature has become by comparing its foothold in British English with its

position in American English. Comparing the usage of the synonyms within each dialect is

also made simple by working out relative percentages for each word/language feature.

Hjavard (2004) studied language change involving English spreading into Danish. In a study

of all the new words entering the Danish vocabulary between 1955 and 1998, it was found

that 38% of words were either direct loans from English or English influenced (2004:78). A

study like this could be useful for looking at AmE words entering British English but probably

would not be possible as English dictionaries include AmE and BrE words. The proportion of

imported films that used English titles was also assessed by Hjavard. This found that while in

1980, about 10% of films used English titles, by 2000 that proportion had risen to about 45%

(2004: 88). Again, this kind of study works well for different languages but probably would

not be a successful study when looking at the difference between AmE and BrE as English

film titles could include a mixture of words from different origins (The 1986 film Three Amigos

for example is made from one word originating in BrE and one from AmE).

A number of studies have investigated the potential hegemony of American English over

varieties of New World English. Bayard (1989) conducted a study in New Zealand in which

respondents were asked to choose which lexical item they preferred from a choice of two

words – a traditional New Zealand English or British English word, or a ‘new’ American

English alternative. Bayard used 10 lexical pairs in the investigation and found that in nearly

all cases, respondents maintained usage of the conservative lexical items over the

innovative AmE words but that New Zealand English (NZE) expressions were under

pressure from these new expressions. In the case of ‘lorry’ versus ‘truck, the AmE variant

‘truck’, was used by 70% of informants compared with 7% who used ‘lorry’. The research,

which was framed in the field of sociolinguistics, also concluded that preference towards

AmE lexis was higher among the working class and the young.

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Meyerhoff (1993) conducted a follow up study based upon Bayard’s experiment but with a

focus entirely on working class informants in an area of Wellington, New Zealand. The

results of this project found extensive use of the conservative synonyms in more of the pairs

than in Bayard’s study.

A limit to the methodology used in the Bayard and Meyerhoff studies is that informants were

asked to make a choice from the lexical pairs of which word they used and therefore does

not take into account other potential synonyms. By asking respondents which word they

would use given a choice of ‘jersey’ and ‘sweater’ the researchers ignore other potential

responses like ‘pullover’. Therefore, the results might not offer a true reflection of the

participants’ ordinary vocabulary. Meyerhoff and Niedzielski (2003) later evaluate that some

of the language features that are observed to be increasing in NZE like /t/-flapping and the

quotative ‘be like’ appear to be occurring cross-linguistically (2003: 546). It is therefore

difficult to know if speakers are moving their language towards AmE or to a more general

global English ideal.

Pam Peters (1998: 39) refers to a database known as the International English Reference

Tool (IERT) that aimed to compile a reference for all the English terms that express the

same semantic concept (said to be known as a ‘sense unit’ in the database). Unfortunately,

it seems that the project may have been abandoned at some point as no trace of it can be

found as of 2011. Peters states that the IERT would be able to show all the expressions

used in a given dialect that refer to a specific sense unit (thus synonyms of each other) and

which dialect of English they first appeared in. This resource could have been used to test

the prescriptivist view that AmE vocabulary is entering the BrE lexicon by assessing what

proportion of words in British English are from the US. It would have also been able to show

if AmE was used more or less than BrE vocabulary to refer to a sense unit. Nonetheless, the

ideas behind this resource can still be tested instead by using a dictionary to find word

origins and a corpus analysis to show how frequently elements of the language are used.

8

Barbieri (2008) used a corpus of spoken American English and divided it into samples

representing 15 to 25 year olds and 35 to 60 year olds. The aim was to see to what extent

the frequency of certain language features differed between the younger and older

speakers. The results found that the younger speakers used more taboo language than the

older speakers (2008: 64) and that they also used more polite speech-act terms like ‘sorry’

and ‘please’ than the older speakers (20008: 67). The useful aspect of using corpora for a

study like this is that you can compare the contexts in which language features were used as

well as just their frequency which could lead to the discovery of trends within trends.

An alternative to a traditional corpus analysis was used by Eames and Robboy (1967) in

their study to find synonyms for ‘submarine sandwich’. They surveyed advertisements in

telephone directories from across the United States to see which terms were being used and

where, thus inventively finding a way to show the distribution of lexical items across a

geographical space. A similar technique could be used to study the spread of AmE in the UK

by finding the frequency of certain target words in Yellow Pages advertisements. However, a

limitation of this technique is that the Yellow Pages is a single text which might have its own

intrinsic register and therefore is not the best way to reflect the language use of an area as a

whole. The sorts of lexical items that can be studied will also be restricted to ones related to

businesses and trade, which is perhaps too small to extrapolate a conclusion on the state of

British English from.

Görlach’s (1990) proposed methodology for investigating ‘heteronyms’ (words from different

regions with the same meaning) is to send a questionnaire to informants asking them to

‘translate’ a selection of sentences into the form of English that they use (1990: 261). An

example of such a question is ‘The bonnet and boot of my motorcar are made of aluminium’

(1990: 269). An alternative he proposes is to use drawings of various objects and asking

informants to name them (1990: 262). This would be a good way of showing variation

between the language used by speakers of different dialect areas and could be looked at as

an apparent time analysis. However, I would be hesitant to use a questionnaire method like

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the one proposed as things like the age, gender, class and communities of practice of the

informants all present their own independent variables to the data.

The technique favoured for this study is one based on an analysis of corpora. Using different

corpora like Barbieri (2008), Biber (1987) and Macqueen (2002) will help to compare the

differences. Corpora that would be useful for this study would be the British National Corpus

(BNC) and the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) as they include multi-

genre extracts from the separate varieties of English. Unlike Meyerhoff (1993) and Benson,

Benson and Ilson (1986), I would be looking to find all the possible words that can be used

to refer to a sense unit, particularly with the aim of avoiding categorical descriptions. In lieu

of the IERT resource, a thesaurus search would need to be used in order to find the

available synonyms to refer to a concept.

In the following chapter I will build upon these ideas to put together a solid methodology for

testing the viewpoint.

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Method

In this chapter, I will outline the method that will be used to assess the impact of AmE

vocabulary on the BrE lexicon and hypothesise what result might be discovered.

To find out if AmE expressions are displacing BrE expressions requires a three-step

methodology.

1. Using a dictionary to identify the words that first appear in American English.

2. Using a historical thesaurus to identify the synonyms of the target expressions (and a

dictionary to find the origins of the synonyms)

3. Using a corpus analysis to see if BrE words are less-favoured than, or even being

made obsolete by their AmE synonyms.

This method should make it possible to see if AmE words are displacing BrE words and offer

some clues for why that is (or is not) the case.

The categories function on the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) website allows users to

browse the words in the dictionary limited to their subject, usage or region of first citation.

For this study, it allows for the 600,000 entries in the OED to be limited down to only those of

US origin - more precisely, those that have their first citation in the United States. When the

word selection is restricted down to words that were first cited after the 1770s (the decade in

which the United States gained independence), the OED shows over 21,000 entries of US

origin in the dictionary.

One evaluative point to note about the data provided from this method is the occasional

erroneous counting of expressions as the dictionary flags uniquely American usages of

certain words within that word’s dictionary entry. For example, the word ‘nineteen’ appears in

the United States region category merely because the definition flags the American variant

of compound numerals (OED: “Forming compound numerals...as one hundred and nineteen

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(also one hundred nineteen: now U.S.”). The word itself is not American in origin, nor is that

particular sense of the word so its appearance in the United States region category is invalid.

This should not present a problem for the next part of the study, as the words chosen for

analysis will be manually selected rather than leaving it up to a computer selection, which

could yield some of the erroneous expressions.

For the purposes of this study, the selection of AmE expressions has been limited by part of

speech with only nouns being included. Nouns are the least complex expressions to work

with using this methodology as, unlike adjectives or verbs, they usually denote perceptible

and referential objects. This means that a noun is used to talk about something that can be

distinguished by human senses like vision or hearing, and that can be picked out or

demonstrated to another person. Exceptions to this are abstract nouns (e.g. ‘thirst’) and

gerunds (nouns derived from verbs e.g. verb ‘drink’ becomes gerund ‘drinking’), which refer

to concepts that cannot be picked out and are thus also excluded from the study.

Therefore, the types of word to be selected must be concrete nouns. It is possible using this

methodology to research other types of noun or other parts of speech (see the Evaluation

chapter for recommendations), but I have chosen to use concrete nouns as they are the

most likely to have direct synonyms.

The final limitation of the word selection will be the subject area of the items chosen.

Choosing a field that is shared in both countries and broadly similar in significance should

reduce the number of words that are inherently barred from crossing to BrE due to the extra-

linguistic factor of physical geography. For example, it may be difficult to assess at the field

of animals as it is likely that many US-coined expressions to do with animals would not be

used in the UK or have any BrE synonyms simply because they refer to animals that do not

exist in the UK. Therefore, I have opted to use a selection of words related to work and

industry, or economics. Economics is a universal concept which applies not only to the two

countries in question but to all nations around the world. The geographic differences

between the US and the UK should not, in theory, present a barrier to a referent and its

12

denoting expression being used in the British lexicon. This means that it should be possible

to understand under solely linguistic reasons why an expression might not enter British

vocabulary and eliminating as many extra-linguistic factors as possible.

Using the selection criteria set out above, a list of 30 US-coined expressions were chosen

for the study. They were:

advertorial

ATM

bakery

bartender

blue-chip

cafeteria

cash register

chain store

classified

delicatessen

employee

food court

freebie

garage sale

gas station

infomercial

laundromat

lifeguard

motel

mixologist

realtor

retail park

repo man

sawbuck

speakeasy

store-front

swamper

terminal

think-tank

theme park

The next stage of the methodology requires finding synonyms for the US coined

expressions. The Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary (HTOED) is included

within the online OED database. Like an ordinary thesaurus, it shows synonyms for words

and phrases but, unlike most thesauruses, it also shows all words with the same meaning

from across the history of English. The HTOED will thus be used to see if synonyms of AmE

expressions exist or have existed, particularly BrE synonyms. If the expression has no

synonyms, then it may be present in the British lexicon as a lexical or conceptual gap filler

(refer to the Discussion chapter for more on these terms). If the expression has a synonym,

then the subsequent aim is to see which synonym is predominant in British usage – the AmE

expression, or another, possibly BrE, alternative. By using this stage of the method

alongside the information on first citation dates from the OED it also becomes possible to

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assess whether the age of the expression is also a contributing factor to its lexical

dominance.

The final stage of the methodology involves a corpus analysis using the British National

Corpus (BNC). The BNC is a resource of written and spoken language from modern British

English and includes 100 million words. The texts and transcriptions used by the BNC

include different styles, genres and registers and should therefore reflect a broad range of

British English. The aim of the corpus analysis is to see whether the AmE synonym is the

dominant expression used to refer to the concept in question. This is made possible by

searching the BNC for each synonym of the sense unit and thus finding and comparing how

many instances of each expression are present in the corpus. The data can then be

presented as percentages to assess how prevalent the AmE expression (or expressions) are

compared to their BrE (or other) comparables. In the event that one of the AmE expressions

has no synonyms, the corpus search can be used to see if the word has any significant

usage in BrE.

The three stages of the methodology can be demonstrated as follows:

1. OED search and word selection

<EXPRESSION α> is selected as an AmE concrete noun in the lexical field of

economics.

2. HTOED synonym search

Synonym search finds that <EXPRESSION α> has the synonym <EXPRESSION β>

which is from also from AmE and <EXPRESSION γ> which is from BrE.

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3. Corpus analysis

Item Origin Frequency Percentage

<EXPRESSION α> US 42 31.1% 36.3%

<EXPRESSION β> US 7 5.2%

<EXPRESSION γ> UK 86 63.7% 63.7%

Total 0 100%

The corpus shows that the BrE synonym is the most dominant. 63.7% of all

references to the concept in BrE use an expression that originated in the UK.

It is also possible to compare the results from the analysis of the BNC with results from

another corpus – the Corpus of Contemporary American (COCA). The COCA is a similar

corpus to the BNC as it uses written and spoken language from the late 20th century but

indexes American English instead. The COCA is made up of 425 million words compared to

the BNC’s 100 million so any comparison of results between the two will need to be based

on ratios or percentages rather than raw frequencies.

A potential limit of corpus analysis is the presence of erroneous results in the frequency

total. This is why it is important to examine the keywords in context in a corpus search, as

they will show in what environment the word was used and ensure that the result is the type

being looked for.

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Hypothesis

The argument of prescriptivists is that American English is creeping into British English

vocabulary. The prescriptivist hypothesis would be that the American English expressions

are the predominant variant and will be used more frequently than British English synonyms.

However, I am sceptical of the prescriptivist standpoint and believe that it is based on

exaggeration. Therefore my hypothesis for this experiment is as follows:

The American English expressions chosen for the experiment will be used less

frequently than British English synonyms to refer to a sense unit.

If the hypothesis is true, the results will show that a synonym originating in BrE will be used

more frequently than the AmE expression for most (but probably not all) of the 30 assessed

sense units. If the hypothesis is false, the results will show that the AmE expressions are

used more frequently than any BrE synonym for that expression.

It is possible that an expression originating from another global variety of English (e.g. New

Zealand English) may be used more than a synonym from one (or both) of American English

or British English. This would obviously need to be accounted for in the analysis of the

results but as the key concern of the study is relating to the spread of Americanisms, a focus

would be placed on which out of BrE and AmE is the most dominant in each case.

In the following chapter I will outline the numerical results that arose from the experiment.

16

Results

In this chapter I will show the numerical results that arose from the method with any other

relevant commentary on the expressions.

The definitions given by the OED for the expressions being studied can be found in the

appendix section.

Expressions without synonyms

11 of the sample words were found to have no English synonyms in the HTOED. They are

listed in alphabetical order here in addition to the frequency with which they occur in the

BNC and COCA and the number of times they occur per million words in each corpus (words

per million or wpm).

advertorial

First citation from 1961 in Webster’s 3rd New International Dictionary of the English

Language.

BNC – 23 (0.23 wpm)

COCA – 16 (0.04 wpm)

blue-chip

Sense relating to the stock exchange derived from an earlier expression relating to poker.

First citation from 1932 in The Sun (Baltimore).

BNC – 113 (1.13 wpm)

COCA – 649 (1.53 wpm)

classified

First citation from 1909 in Modesto (California) Morning Herald.

BNC – 43 (0.43 wpm)

COCA – 270 (0.64 wpm)

17

food court

First citation from 1979 in Los Angeles Times.

BNC – 5 (0.05 wpm)

COCA – 276 (0.65 wpm)

infomercial

First citation from 1981 in United Press International Newswire.

BNC – 0

COCA – 593 (1.4 wpm)

motel

First citation from 1925 in Hotel Monthly.

BNC frequency – 170 (1.7 wpm)

COCA frequency – 4897 (11.52 wpm)

retail park

First citation from 1973 in The Chicago Tribune

BNC frequency – 14 (0.14 wpm)

COCA frequency – 1 (<0.01 wpm)

sawbuck

First citation from 1850 in Knickerbocker.

BNC – 1 (0.01 wpm)

COCA – 14 (0.03 wpm)

speakeasy

First citation from 1889 in The Voice (New York).

BNC – 9 (0.09 wpm)

COCA – 149 (0.35 wpm)

18

swamper

First attested in 1862 from The Maine Woods by H.D. Thoreau. First citation from 1880 in

Lumberman’s Gazette.

BNC - 0

COCA – 13 (0.03 wpm)

think-tank

First attested in 1958 from The Economic Journal (in reference to a specific organisation in

the US).

BNC – 160 (1.6 wpm)

COCA – 2186 (5.14 wpm)

Expressions with synonyms

The remaining 19 expressions were found to have English synonyms in the HTOED. The

information that will be presented for these expressions and their synonyms are:

1. The year of the OED’s first citation of the item.

2. The text in which the item is first cited.

3. The country of origin of the first citation.

4. The raw frequency of the item’s appearances in the British National Corpus.

5. The raw frequency of the item’s appearances in the Corpus of Contemporary

American.

6. The percentage share of usage for the expression and (where necessary) the

percentage share of usage for the variety of origin.

7. Any other relevant information.

The definitions of each of the expressions mentioned can be found in the appendix. The results of the experiment are as follows:

ATM

ATM – first citation from 1976 in Business Week.

19

automatic teller (machine) – first citation from 1971 in The American Banker. Sometimes

known as ‘automated teller (machine)’.

cash dispenser – first citation from Banker in 1967.

cash machine – first citation from The Times (London) in 1967.

cashpoint – first citation from The Times (London) in 1973.

hole-in-the-wall – first citation from The Guardian in 1985.

Item Origin Year BNC Freq. % COCA Freq. %automatic/automated teller [machine]

US 1971 0 [16]

11.11% 28.47%

26 [181]

12.05% 94.01%

ATM US 1976 25 17.36% 1408 81.96%cash dispenser UK 1967 29 20.14% 71.53

%4 0.23% 5.99%

cash machine UK 1967 47 32.64% 98 5.70%cashpoint UK 1973 16 11.11% 1 0.06%hole-in-the-wall UK 1985 11 7.63% 0 0.00%

144 100% 1718 99.99

bakery

bakery – first citation from circa 1820 in Reports of the Royal Commission on Historical

Manuscripts.

cake house – first citation from 1666 in the diary of Samuel Pepys

confectionery shop – first citation from 1801 in Moral tales for young people by M.

Edgeworth.

pastry shop – first citation from 1656 in I ragguagli di Parnasso; or, Advertisements from

Parnassus (transl. 2nd Earl of Monmouth).

patisserie – first citation from 1871 in A. Lister’s Diary.

pie house – first citation from 1589 in Bibliotheca scholastica: a double dictionarie Part I.

English and Latin by John Rider.

Item Origin Year BNC Freq. %

COCA Freq. %

bakery US 1820 150 87.21%

87.21%

2524 93.65%

93.65%

pie house UK 1589 0 12.79%

0 6.35%pastry shop UK 1656 3 1.74% 82 3.04%

20

cake house UK 1666 0 0confectionery shop

UK 1801 5 2.91% 5 0.19%

patisserie UK 1824 14 8.14% 84 3.12%0 100% 167 100%

NB. A number of results for the search string ‘[bakery].[n]’ were for the meaning ‘A place for

making bread; the whole establishment of a baker’ (OED). As this meaning is not a

synonym of the other words, results which appeared to designate this meaning were

removed from the total.

bartender

bar-keep – first citation from 1846 in The Spirit of the Times: a chronicle of the turf,

agriculture, field sports, literature and the stage

bar-keeper – first citation from 1712 in The Spectator

barmaid – first attestation from 1658 in Lucasta: posthume poems of Richard Lovelace, Esq

by R. Lovelace

barman – first citation from 1837 in British Emigrant's Adv.

bartender – first citation from 1836 in Franklin Repository.

drawer – first citation from 1567 in Triall of Treasure

mixologist – first citation from 1856 in Knickerbocker

potman – first citation from 1652 in Catch that catch can, or, A choice collection of catches,

rounds, and canons for 3 or 4 voyces by J. Hilton

tapster – first citation from c.1000 in Grammar by Ælfric of Eynsham

Item Origin Year BNC Freq. % COCA Freq. %bartender US 1836 46 10.80

%10.80%

3033 86.36%

86.90%

bar-keep US 1846 0 4 0.11%mixologist US 1856 0 15 0.43%tapster UK c1000 3 0.70% 89.20

%5 0.14% 13.10

%drawer UK 1567 * *potman UK 1652 4 0.94% 7 0.20%barmaid UK 1658 155 36.39

%202 5.75%

barman UK 1837 218 51.17%

242 6.89%

bar-keeper UK 1712 0 0% 4 0.11%

21

426 100% 3512 100%*Too many results but a sample of 300 results revealed none relating to this sense. Perhaps

obsolete.

cafeteria

cafeteria - first citation from 1912 in Journal of Home Economics

canteen – first citation from 1870 in Palace and Hovel by D.J. Kirwan

Item Origin Year BNC Freq. % COCA Freq. %cafeteria US 1912 147 17.29% 2886 95.25%canteen UK 1870 703 82.71% 144 4.75%

0 100% 850 100%

cash register

cash register – first citation from 1879 in The Official Gazette (U.S. Patent Office)

till –first citation from 1698 in The London Gazette

Item Origin Year BNC Freq. % COCA Freq. %cash register US 1879 32 8.21% 915 92.89%till UK 1698 358 91.79% 70 7.11%

0 100% 390 100%

chain store

chain store – first citation from 1910 in The Saturday Evening Post

multiple – first citation from 1956 in A dictionary of slang and unconventional English by E.H.

Partridge

Item Origin Year BNC Freq. % COCA Freq. %chain store US 1910 58 61.05% 231 100%multiple UK 1951 37 39.95% 0

95 100% 231 100%

22

delicatessen

delicatessen – first citation from 1889 in Kansas Times & Star.

deli – first citation from 1954 in An American dictionary of slang and colloquial speech by

J.A. Weingarten.

Item Origin Year BNC Freq. % COCA Freq. %delicatessen US 1889 135 72.19% 295 16.25%deli US 1954 52 27.81% 1520 83.75%

0 100% 187 100%

employee

employé – first citation from 1834 in The Spectator

employee – first citation from 1850 in Wah-to-yah, and the Taos Trail by L.H. Gerrard

worker – first citation from 1848 in Cassell's Book Quot. by Kingsley

Item Origin Year BNC COCAemployee US 1850 8917 46779worker UK 1848 18199 76019employé UK 1834 No results. Perhaps obsolete.

27116 122798The term ‘worker’ is polysemous and there were too many results overall to easily narrow

down to results for the correct sense.

freebie

freebie – first citation from 1925 in Inter-State Tattler

free gift – first citation from 1909 in The Daily Chronicle (London)

Item Origin Year BNC Freq. % COCA Freq. %freebie US 1925 101 49.75% 353 80.96%free gift UK 1909 102 50.25% 83 19.04%

0 100% 203 100%

23

garage sale

garage sale – first citation from 1966 in Daily Union (Sacramento) Family Weekly Magazine

yard sale – first citation from 1976 in Flint (Michigan) Journal

Item Origin Year BNC Freq. % COCA Freq. %garage sale US 1966 5 100% 386 52.88%yard sale US 1976 0 344 47.12%

0 100% 5 100%

gas station

filling station – first citation from 1921 in Outing: an illustrated monthly magazine of

recreation

gas station – first citation from 1932 in Devil take the hindmost: a year of the slump by E.

Wilson

petrol station – first citation from 1912 in The Sheboygan Press (Sheboygan, Wisconsin)

Item Origin Year BNC Freq. % COCA Freq. %petrol station US 1912 166 70.34% 24 0.89%filling station US 1921 40 16.95% 205 7.56%gas station US 1932 30 12.71% 2482 91.55%

0 100% 236 100%

laundromat

coin-op – first citation from 1960 in The Times (London)

launderette (also laundrette) – first citation from 1949 in Vogue (London)

Laundromat – first citation from 1951 in American Speech

Item Origin Year BNC Freq. %

COCA Freq. %

laundromat US 1951 6 4.32% 4.32% 411 90.53%

90.53%

launderette/laundrette

UK 1949 114/18

94.96%

94.96 21/21

9.25% 9.47%

coin-op UK 1960 1 0.72% 1 0.22%139 100% 454 100%

24

lifeguard

lifeguard – first citation from 1893 in The New York Times

lifesaver – first citation from 1887 in The Courier-Journal (Louisville, Kentucky)

Item Origin Year BNC Freq. %

COCA Freq. %

lifeguard US 1893 90 96.77%

731 99.59%

lifesaver US 1887 3 3.23% 3 0.41%93 100% 734 100%

Item Origin Year BNC Freq. % COCA Freq. %estate agent US 1880 774* 99.36% 12* 1.02%realtor US 1916 5 0.64% 1170 98.98%

779 100% 1182 100%*results for ‘estate agent[s]’ initially yielded 783 items in BNC and 1131 items in COCA. ‘Real

estate agent[s]’ made up 7 of these results in BNC and 1119 results in COCA. The results

for ‘real estate agent[s]’ were removed from the data thusly.

repo man

repo man – first citation from 1964 in The Tucson Daily Citizen (Tucson, Arizona)

repossessor – first citation from 1926 in Los Angeles Daily Times

Item Origin Year BNC Freq. % COCA Freq. %repo man US 1964 36 100% 51 89.47%repossessor US 1926 0 6 10.53

36 100% 57 100%

store-front

shop-front – first citation from 1835 in Evening Chron. by Dickens

store-front – first citation from 1880 in The Grandissimes by G.W. Cables

Item Origin Year BNC Freq. % COCA Freq. %

store-front US 1880 8 12.90% 1603 98.95%shop-front UK 1835 54 87.10% 17 1.05%

62 100% 1620 100%

25

terminal

terminal – first citation from 1888 in The Boston Journal

terminus – first citation from 1836 in The Mechanics' Magazine

Item Origin Year BNC Freq. % COCA Freq. %terminal US 1888 239 45.52% 1901 85.98%terminus UK 1836 286 54.48% 310 14.02%

0 100% 525 100%

Item Origin Year BNC Freq. % COCA Freq. %amusement park

US 1909 17 9.04% 955 42.81%

theme park US 1960 171 90.96% 1276 57.19%0 100% 188 100%

In the following chapter I will discuss what the implications of these numerical results are to

the theories involved and suggest how they may be significant for the hypothesis.

26

Analysis

In this chapter I will make observations about trends and anomalies found in the data and

discuss their significance to the hypothesis and the research rationale.

Some general observations and comments on the findings of the results are:

65 expressions were included in the analysis. 24 were from the UK, 41 from the US.

11 of the expressions had no synonyms.

Of the 19 expressions with synonyms, 12 had synonyms from British English

(however, one of these expressions was removed from the study before the corpora

analysis).

Of the 11 expressions analysed with British English synonyms, American English

expressions were more popular in only two of the sense units studied.

From the selection of 30 words, something that I immediately found to be a surprising

outcome was that that ‘bakery’, ‘cash register’, ‘chain store’ and ‘employee’ were all words

that appear to have originated in the US. I was particularly surprised not only by ‘bakery’s

status as an ‘Americanism’, but also by how late it arrived into the English language. From

my own uninformed judgement, I would have assumed that the word had been around since

at least the Elizabethan period if not earlier. There were more surprising results to be found

in the analysis which I will mention further in the chapter.

The first consideration to take into account is for the results that did not make it past the first

stage of the methodology, namely those expressions which did not have any synonyms in

the HTOED. These expressions were:

advertorial

blue-chip

classified

food court

infomercial

motel

retail park

sawbuck

speakeasy

27

swamper think-tank

A few questions arise when thinking of expressions like these. One of these is why might

there have been no pre-existing synonyms to denote the relevant sense unit? Another is why

no synonyms have arisen since the word entered the language. But the most important

question for this study in particular is why might there have been no British English

synonyms created to use instead of the American English terms that the referents have been

assigned.

One reason why no pre-existing synonyms existed for some of these expressions could be

due to the existence lexical gaps. With a lexical gap, the concept itself is something familiar

but no referring expression for it exists yet. If these terms were the first to fill the lexical gap

then it explains why no pre-existing direct synonyms existed. Examples from these words

could include:

advertorial, classified, infomercial

These three terms all refer to a special type of advertisement. In the case of ‘advertorial’

for instance, the concept of an advertisement written in the style of editorial may have

been around for some time but without any expression of its own to refer to it. The

HTOED actually offers a few expressions such as ‘ad’ and ‘infomercial’ as synonyms for

‘advertorial’ due to the way that the expressions were simply classified under the

heading ‘an advertisement’. However, given the very specific definition of ‘advertorial’ it

is evident that these other expressions do not express the concept in the same way. The

word ‘advertorial’ is thus the filler for the lexical gap.

blue chip

Again, the HTOED actually does offers some synonyms to this expression but all of

these are simply expressions referring to types of stock rather than reliable stocks

specifically. Consequently ‘blue-chip’ appears to be the only expression in the OED that

refers to a reliable investment on the stock exchange.

28

It is worth noting that this expression has less concreteness than most of the nouns used

in the study, although some sources may use the term with a rigid designation in mind of

the qualities necessary to make a stock a ‘blue-chip’. The finance company UBS has a

set of characteristics that must be fulfilled for a stock to qualify for its Blue Chip Series

(UBS 2011). The relatively high usage of the expression in the BNC (1.13 words per

million) indicate that this is an expression that has a stable foothold in British English.

Referents that are entirely new or innovative also give explanation for why an expression

might not have had a pre-existing synonym. New phenomena usually require new

expressions to denote them. New expressions like these can be said to be filling a

conceptual gap – they are created with the purpose of turning a ‘possible but non-occurring’

part of the semantic field to an ‘occurring’ expression (Chomsky 1965: 175). Conceptual gap

filling expressions can be seen for things such as new inventions and products so ‘corn

flakes’ would be a conceptual gap filler as it became the denoting expression when the

concept came first into existence (the invention/discovery). Examples from these words

could include:

food court, retail park

Reflecting the growing trend of consumerism in the mid to late 20th century the new

concepts of a place to dine in a shopping centre (itself, a new concept), and an out-of-

town shopping development of large stores are probably known by the terms they were

assigned at their conception.

motel

The first citation for this term from a publication about the hotel industry describes the

upcoming opening of the first chain of motor hotels to be name ‘Motel’. This is a very

evident case of a term being used as a conceptual gap filler.

think-tank

Similarly to ‘motel’, the first OED citation refers to a specific research institution that was

29

nicknamed ‘the Think Tank’ and thus as the concept spread to other places, the

expression appears to have stuck.

speakeasy

Again, the first OED citation defines the term showing that the concept of an unlicensed

bar selling alcohol and the expression may have been unfamiliar to many at the time.

The expression would probably have been widely used in the US during the Prohibition

years of the 1920s.

swamper

It seems likely that the concept for ‘a workman who clears the road for lumberers in a

swamp’ (OED) is so finite that the expression probably would have arisen to refer to a

new section of the workforce in the 1860s. The first attestation in the OED also includes

a definition of the word.

The reason why synonyms might not have come about since these expressions entered the

language may be due to the possibility that once a lexical or conceptual gap is filled, English

simply does not demand a further word to denote the same thing. The implication for British

English is that if these expressions are accepted into the BrE lexicon, there is no reason to

come up with another word for them when the existing word will suffice. Prescriptivists may

believe that BrE should have its own words for the concepts and therefore fill the gaps with

British words but the linguistic reality is that making new words for things that already have

them is an inefficient use of the language.

The word ‘employee’ had to be removed from the investigation at the third stage of the

methodology as one of its synonyms, ‘worker’, had too many results in both corpora which

could not be easily separated from irrelevant sense of the word which are not synonymous.

Problems with the corpora will be explored further in the Evaluation chapter.

30

The seven expressions that had synonyms but no BrE synonyms are effectively in a similar

situation to the expressions that did not have synonyms. In both cases the terms have no

competition from British English vocabulary. The seven words were:

31

delicatessen

garage sale

gas station

lifeguard

estate agent

repo man

theme park

Potential reasons for the dominance of AmE and lack of BrE competition are explained as

follows:

garage sale

In Benson, Benson & Ilson’s list of lexical differences, no British equivalent is offered for

‘garage sale’ but instead a description of the sense (‘a sale of one’s household articles

held on one’s own private property’, 1986:121). The concept in question (a sale of

unwanted possessions held in (the garage of) a private house, OED) is possibly one that

has no parallel in the UK. This may be because UK homeowners do not have the same

amount of space to hold such events on their property compared with US homeowners.

People in the UK might also be more used to selling their unwanted possessions through

car boot sales or, increasingly in recent years, over the internet. It seems that the lack of

any older or newer British expression can be put down to the concept being unfamiliar in

the UK.

The low frequency of results for ‘garage sale’ (just five entries in the BNC) also seems to

indicate that the expression has little relevance to British people. This may also explain

why ‘yard sale’ had zero usage in the UK, although it may also be down to BrE

preference for the word ‘garden’ rather than ‘yard’ (Benson, Benson and Ilson 1986:

152).

repo man

The HTOED only provides two AmE words for the concept (a person hired by a credit

company to repossess [items] when the purchaser defaults on payments, OED), which

would suggest that it could be another concept unique to the United States. However, I

would posit that the referent is the same as, or at least very similar to what might be

referred to in the UK as a ‘bailiff’. The HM Courts & Tribunal Service define a bailiff as

32

someone who can ‘remove and sell a person's possessions in order to pay money owed

to a person or organisation’ (2011: para. 1 of 10) which seems to entail the same sort of

activity as ‘repo man’ and ‘repossessor’ do. Therefore, it seems apparent that the

HTOED might not have delivered all the possible synonyms for this term.

theme park

Similarly to ‘repo man’, the fact that there are no British English synonyms for ‘theme

park’/’amusement park’ would appear to suggest that the concept was introduced to the

UK from the US. Again, however, there is a possibility that the HTOED and is missing

synonyms. Much like a modern day ‘theme park’, large public spaces with rides and

activities spread across Europe between the 17th and 19th century but these were known

in their time as ‘pleasure gardens’ (Weinstein 1992: 133). ‘Adventure park’ might have

also been a valid synonym if it were found in the OED.

realtor

This term ‘estate agent’ probably acts as a lexical or conceptual gap filler. ‘Realtor’ is

noted in the OED as being a proprietary name for a member of the National Association

of Realtors. As there is no equivalent organisation in the UK using that name, the low

usage of the term ‘realtor’ is perhaps understandable

delicatessen

‘Delicatessen’ is a word originating from German and Dutch but seems to have come

into English usage via the United States (although the first citation of the word is a

spurious entry from a British text in 1877). Like many of the expressions without

synonyms, it seems probable that the term began being used to fill a conceptual gap. Its

synonym ‘deli’ is a clipped form rather than an entirely new word and it is the least

popular of the two terms in British English perhaps due to it being newer (an idea that will

be explored further later in the chapter).

lifeguard

An interesting result that is explained further ahead in the chapter.

gas station

33

One of the surprises found in the OED search was that the synonym for this term ‘petrol

station’, which was the significantly dominant expression in the UK, appears first in AmE.

One of the archetypal distinctions between BrE and AmE is the split between the terms

‘petrol’ and ‘gas/gasoline’ (commented on by Benson, Benson and Ilson 1986: 79,

Gramley 2001: 104, Barber 2000: 255 among many others). Many of the other ‘petrol’

compounds in the dictionary are from BrE and examples from within the same decade

like ‘petrol bus’, ‘petrol fumes’ and ‘petrol pump’ are all first cited in British texts.

However, terms ‘gas pump’, ‘gas tank’ and, crucially, ‘gas’ station’ do not appear until the

mid 1920s onwards.

It seems likely therefore that ‘petrol station’ is a term that was created in the US to fill a

conceptual gap and spread with the concept to the UK. This would make sense if ‘petrol’

had a foothold in the US at the time and perhaps ‘gas’ gained popularity later.

What is clear from the results is that there is a very marked preference towards ‘petrol

station’ in British English compared with very little use of the term in American English.

Evidently, the expression has fallen out of use in the US whilst the UK has stuck to the

original term.

One aspect of the results that appears to show a trend is that for those expressions where

synonyms from BrE did exist, British English words were favoured over American English

counterparts for all but two of the referents studied. The exceptions, ‘bakery’ and ‘chain-

store’, can be tentatively explained thusly:

bakery

The five synonyms offered by the HTOED for ‘bakery’ were all BrE expressions but none

of these expressions are directly synonymous with the word – that is to say that one

could not exchange the word ‘bakery’ to, for example, ‘pastry shop’ in an utterance and

always mean the same thing by that utterance. The key difference is entailed by the

meanings of these expressions. While ‘bakery’ means ‘a shop where baked products are

sold’ (OED), the expressions ‘cake house’, ‘pastry shop’ and ‘pie house’ suggest by their

34

names that a specific type of baked product is sold at these shops – cakes, pastries and

pies respectively. ‘Confectionary shop’ is also comparatively restrictive as it suggests

that the shop only sells sweet goods which may or may not be baked. The preference

towards the term ‘bakery’ is therefore logical as it is the least limited or specialised of all

these expressions and can reasonably denote a shop that sells all kinds of baked goods.

However, this does not explain why the similarly broad term ‘patisserie’, a French word

used in the UK before other Anglophone territories, is not more popular. It is possible

that ‘bakery’, analogous with terms like ‘perfumery’, ‘pottery’ and ‘brewery’, better

indicates whose work is involved at the location (the baker, much like the perfumer,

potter and brewer) than ‘patisserie’ does (‘patisser’ as a word for a pastry-cook or seller

appears to be obsolete by the 17th century, OED).

Notably, the HTOED does not offer ‘baker’s shop’ as a synonym and there is evidence to

suggest that this may have been the favoured expression in Britain before ‘bakery’ came

into usage. For example, The London Gazette report that followed The Great Fire Of

London in 1666 said that ‘fire broke out at a baker's shop in Pudding Lane’ (‘A farther

account of this lamentable fire’, London Gazette, 10 September 1666, p. 2).

chain-store

The concept of a series of shops that are part of one firm was probably not innovative at

the time ‘chain-store’ was first cited. It is likely that the term is thus a filler of a lexical

gap. The BrE synonym ‘multiple’ is first cited some 41 years after the first citation for

‘chain store’ in the OED, and 21 years after the first British citation of the term. It is likely

that ‘multiple’ arrives to the British English lexicon far too late to overtake ‘chain-store’ as

the dominant term and it has not achieved dominance since as the lexical gap has

already been filled.

The age of an expression may play a part in how successful it is in British usage. In 14 of the

19 expressions with synonyms, the oldest synonym was the most used by British English

35

users. The five exceptions that were all more used for their sense unit than an older

synonym, or older synonyms were:

bakery

barman

lifeguard

repo man

theme park

The previously mentioned exploration of the term ‘bakery’ may offer an explanation for that

expression but other factors seem to be at play for the other expressions here.

repo man

Not only are ‘repo man’ and ‘theme park’ both AmE expressions, but their older

synonyms are also. ‘Repo man’ and its synonym ‘repossessor’ have already been

evaluated as unused because BrE has a word/concept that is more used in ‘bailiff’.

theme park

It is difficult to find a reason why the newer expression is more successful than

‘amusement park’. The 51 year difference between their origins is greater than that of

‘chain store’ and ‘multiple’, yet ‘multiple’ takes second place. One potential reason could

be due to ‘theme park’ being associated with the new brands of tourist destinations like

Walt Disney World. The first BrE citation in the OED from 1967’s Encyclopedia

Britannica Book of the Year and makes reference to ‘American-type theme parks’ which

suggests that perhaps a ‘theme park’ is more exciting and exotic sounding than a plain

old ‘amusement park’

lifeguard

The first citation of the term in a British English text is in 1896 while a British citation for

its synonym ‘lifesaver’ is not found until 1931. If the concept (a person that assists

swimmers who get into difficulty) was unfamiliar to the UK then it is likely that the term

that would have been introduced to British English first would have been the one that

was most popular in the US at the time.

36

barman

The reason for ‘barman’ being more popular than several older synonyms including

‘tapster’, ‘bar keeper’ and ‘bartender’ is not so clear. It may be that ‘barman’ functions as

the logical masculine form of the word ‘barmaid’.

This age factor could be an alternative explanation for why BrE words appear to be so

successful compared with their AmE counterparts. Of the 10 concepts that have BrE

synonyms, 9 have a BrE expression that is older than an equivalent AmE expression

(‘multiple’ being the one exception). If the age of an expression is the dominant reason for its

success or failure rather than the dialect of its origin, it would seem logical that the largely

older BrE words would be more popular with English users in the UK.

Other interesting results that arose in the data:

freebie

The use of both synonyms was almost exactly the same with BrE ‘free gift’ being just 1

instance ahead of AmE ‘freebie’. A suggested theory of why this is the case is that the

term ‘free gift’ is essentially no more useful or descriptive than the sense of the concept.

‘Freebie’ by comparison gives a single word to what is otherwise a descriptive phrase.

The distinction is almost like a worked example of the lexical gap phenomena.

terminal

It seems peculiar that usage of ‘terminal’ and ‘terminus’ should be so similar in British

English, especially given that ‘terminal’ is a clear winner in the US. It is possible that in

practice, British English makes a distinction that American English does not – ‘terminal’

applies mainly to air travel while ‘terminus’ applies to overland travel. This distinction

might be being lead by an American dominance in designating the language of air travel.

While prescriptivists view that British English should prohibit most, if not all Americanisms

from its lexicon, these results actually find that British English accepts many AmE words but

limited to those that have no pre-existing equivalent.

37

In the next chapter I will look at the limitations and challenges presented by the data.

Evaluation

In this chapter I will highlight some of the unavoidable limitations of the study and ways in

which ideally they could be overcome.

The method used in the experiment has proven to be a relatively solid way to establish the

extent to which American English vocabulary is being used by users of British English.

Finding the AmE expressions using the OED’s regional search function proved to be a more

reliable way of choosing the target expressions for the study than by using existing

taxonomies of American and British language differences. Benson, Benson and Ilson’s list of

American and British expressions (1986: 43-152) for example does not make clear how the

words were categorised into each dialect list. A key difference is where Benson et al

categorise ‘estate agent’ as British English, perhaps due to it being more used in the UK

than the US, I categorised this expression as American English, as it appears to have

originated in the US based on the citation information in the OED. Selecting words based on

a list like this for the study could have led to a preliminary bias where commonly accepted

expressions from America would be incorrectly viewed as ‘British’.

A limitation of using the OED as a source for establishing where words first entered the

English language is that it relies on a belief that the initial citations found by lexicographers

cannot be antedated. The OED’s editors themselves acknowledge that 60% of the words

and senses that were in the dictionary in 2000 now have earlier attestations (Collecting the

Evidence: Oxford English Dictionary 2010: para. 24 of 27). Sebastian Hoffman criticises the

OED’s range of sources by noting that authors like Shakespeare are over-represented in its

quotations while working-class newspapers of the 19th century hardly feature (2004: 21).

The knowledge that one has on the origin of each of the expressions studied is only as

reliable as the information the OED has for the first citations of each expression. It could

38

reasonably transpire that some of the words that are classified in this study as AmE due to

their first citations being from the US, could have earlier uses in British English that simply

have not been found yet.

It is also increasingly possible with the rapid and interconnected nature of society today that

where a word originates will become less apparent over time. If a new word were to appear

on an internationally broadcast live television event and became absorbed into the lexicon of

languages around the world, which nation would the word be considered to originate from?

The location from where the event was broadcast? The place where the person who said it

lives or where they grew up or where they were born? The place where a newspaper put the

word on the front page the next day? Complications like this will make it harder in the future

to be able to always have a set-in-stone knowledge of where a word came from.

Nonetheless, without knowing for certain where this may be the case, the OED is still the

most reliable source for knowing the origins of words and meanings and vastly superior to

the apparent guesswork of Benson, Benson and Ilson.

The secondary stage of the methodology using the HTOED to find synonyms for the target

American English vocabulary items is a very good way of seeing if the words in question had

arrived into English after any pre-existing expressions, particular BrE ones. However, in

some instances the HTOED was not the best tool for finding synonyms as words were often

grouped by fairly broad categories rather than specific senses. For instance, the term

‘realtor’ was placed under the classification ‘society > occupation > trade and commerce >

agent or broker > [noun]’ which meant that the ‘synonyms’ it was placed with were words

referring to generic brokers (e.g. ‘chapman’) in addition to specific types of brokers that had

not been placed in a subcategory (e.g. ‘yacht broker’). This meant that the HTOED on its

own could not be relied upon as a source of synonyms as there was still a need to also use

the OED to find the meanings of each given term and assess whether or not the expressions

referred to the target sense unit.

39

A problem with trying to find synonyms for words is that the semantic meaning of words is

often quite difficult to know. Wherever necessary in this study I intended to use the

definitions given in the OED as a guide for understanding the sense of each expression and

assessed from there if the other expressions offered were broadly similar enough to count as

synonyms. Algeo states that the challenge here is down to language being often imprecise

with fuzzy meanings (1989: 223) which makes assigning words as synonyms difficult. The

way in which a language user employs a vocabulary item might not be in a way that best

designates the sense unit but it still gets swept into the count of words as the inferred

meaning appears to be correct.

Another limitation of the OED and the HTOED for this study was that some reasonable

synonyms may not be featured in the dictionary and thus not listed as synonyms in the

thesaurus.

‘Real estate broker’ was a synonym offered by Benson, Benson and Ilson for ‘realtor’ but the

expression does not appear in the OED and thus could not be included in the data. If the

expression had been an authorised synonym, it would have had no results in the BNC but

349 results in COCA – enough to have accounted for 22.79% of the overall share and

consequently reduced the share of the other two synonyms.

Similarly, I would suggest ‘adventure park’ as a synonym for ‘theme park’ but this expression

also does not appear in the OED. ‘Adventure park’ has a frequency of 5 in the BNC and 29

in COCA. Although this would not be enough to unseat the dominance of the other two

synonyms, information about the origin such as where the term comes from or when it first

appeared could have helped in gaining a greater understanding of why it is not as frequently

used. If it is an expression of British English origin than it would have been an example of a

BrE term that is less used than an AmE counterpart, which would not only differ from most of

the other results but also act as evidence to counteract the hypothesis.

At the heart of this problem is the inalienable truth that the OED does not include every

lexeme in the language and therefore provides a challenge for semantic investigations such

40

as these which aim to find out what language people use to denote certain concepts and

referents.

A limitation for the corpus stage of the analysis comes in the fact that the two corpora used,

the BNC and COCA, span different time periods. The BNC contains language from the

1980s to 1993 while COCA contains language from 1990 to 2011. If the study were looking

for a completely like-for-like comparison between British English and American English, it

would be favourable to have two corpora that use the exact same years to compare by. To

some extent, the degree to which this difference presents a challenge for the purpose of this

study is low as both corpora use data from the late 20th century and all of the expressions

investigated originate before and, in the individual case of ‘hole in the wall’, during the

1980s. Nevertheless, there is a possibility that some expressions may have gained more of

a foothold in British English since 1993, so a reliable corpus of British English that is more

up-to-date would have been useful had such a resource been available.

Another drawback of the corpus search is the difficulty in limiting search results to useful hits

relevant to the context in question. The study of the expression ‘employee’ had to be

abandoned because of the vast number of search hits for the synonym ‘worker’ in both

corpora. Even if there was more time or manpower available to remove patently erroneous

uses like ‘worker ant’ or ‘metal worker’ from the results, there would still have been a

challenge presented by ambiguous usages like ‘a good worker’. Consequently, the total

number of instances of the word ‘worker’ as a synonym of ‘employee’ would be difficult to

ever conclude.

Similarly, there are inevitably cases where an AmE expression is used in a reporting context

to refer to something as it would be referred to in America. These could be quotes from

users of American English, glosses of unfamiliar language, references to proper names (e.g.

‘repo man’ yields some descriptions of the 1984 film of the same name) or fictional texts

written in the American vernacular. For most of these cases a justification for keeping them

within the count is that their usage in British English language implies that the writer or

41

speaker expects that the audience will understand the terms used and is therefore no

different to any other use of American English. However, these results could have meant

that the usage of some expressions was over-reported and did not reflect overall trends in

British language.

The previous point leads to the final evaluating assertion, which is that the BNC might not be

the best reflection of the language of British English. While the primary sources for its 100

million words are taken from a number of texts of different genres, the genres are not given

equal weighting. For instance, there are 10 million words of spoken British English compared

with 17 million words of fictional text. Differences like these could affect the degree to which

the corpus accurately portrays British English as a whole. For the purpose of this study, the

BNC is a satisfactory corpus for reflecting British language use but any conclusions from the

investigation should come under the proviso that a corpus that weighted its extracts

differently could present a different reflection of the language.

The results found that far from being completely unwanted, American English vocabulary is

widely adopted into the British English lexicon in instances where British English has no

corresponding expression, which in many ways is analogous to linguistic borrowings from

other languages.

Borrowings are expressions taken in exactly the same form from one language to another

(Barber 2000: 60). English borrows words from other languages as an important source of

new words if they are required to fill a gap. Examples of borrowings into English that fill

lexical gaps include words like ‘Schadenfreude’ from German and ‘thug’ from Hindi. This

also occurs with other languages borrowing words from English, hence the infamous

example of ‘le weekend’ in French (Bragg 2003: 291).

Perhaps the most evident cases of borrowings are for conceptual gaps, where English will

refer to a concept unfamiliar to English users with the expression it is referred to in the

language of the concept’s origin. ‘Confetti’, meaning ‘little sweets’, is an example of a word

42

borrowed into English from Italian to fill a conceptual gap for the concept of ‘bon-bons or

paper imitations thrown during [a] carnival’ (OED). Some borrowings are so well known that

language planning policies are in place to protect and limit their usage. The European

Union’s Protected Geographic Status framework prevents specialised names like

‘champagne’ and ‘Roquefort’ from being misapplied to generic products (Rovamo 2006: 10).

Borrowings for conceptual gaps from English to foreign languages is also evident from words

like ‘télévision’ in French and the recent spread of ‘Wi-Fi’ (albeit a trademark) to all of the

major modern languages.

On the other hand, there are also cases where a conceptual gap is filled with an English

word rather than borrowing the concept’s native language term. For example, the sweet that

originates in Turkey consisting of cubed gelatine dusted with sugar is known in Turkish as

‘lokum’ but referred to in English as ‘Turkish delight’. There are also examples of foreign

languages not taking the original English word to fill a conceptual gap. Contrary to the

French language, German uses the word ‘fernsehen’ (literally ‘far sight’) to refer to television.

The McDonald’s hamburger known in American English as the ‘Quarter Pounder with

Cheese’ is named the ‘Royal Cheese’ in France which, as famously commented on in the

film Pulp Fiction (1994), is due to France being unfamiliar with imperial measurements.

It is also possible to find instances in English of a borrowed word and an English word co-

existing or competing as referring expressions. Words relating to food and dining are often

borrowed into English from French resulting in synonymous pairs such as ‘tarte au citron’

and ‘lemon tart’, ‘dauphinoise potatoes’ and ‘potato bake’, and ‘sommelier’ and ‘wine

steward’. Similarly, one can observe usage of both ‘ordinateur portable’ and ‘laptop’ in

French, and ‘descarregar’, ‘baixar’ and ‘download’ in Portuguese.

43

By using a matrix model inspired by Lehrer’s (1970), it is possible to represent how

conceptual and lexical gaps in British English arise:

British EnglishAmerican English/other

English dialect/other language

Concept {Concept}Familiarity Unfamiliar Familiar FamiliarExpression used

{EXPRESSION}

Type of gap conceptual lexical noneA worked example of this for the expression ‘food court’ would look like the matrix below:

British English American English

ConceptAn area in a shopping centre, etc. containing a variety of

fast-food outlets and shared seating for dinersFamiliarity Unfamiliar Familiar FamiliarExpression used

food court food court

Type of gap conceptual lexical noneThis shows how when presented with the unfamiliar concept outlined, British English

borrows the expression used from American English to fill its conceptual gap. If the example

was the expression ‘Schadenfreude’, the matrix would look fairly similar and work in the

same way:

British English GermanConcept Pleasure derived from another’s misfortuneFamiliarity Unfamiliar Familiar FamiliarExpression used

Schadenfreude Schadenfreude

Type of gap conceptual lexical noneThis shows how when presented with the familiar concept outlined, British English borrows

the expression used in German to fill its lexical gap.

44

Therefore, it would perhaps be a satisfactory analysis to think of many of the American English expressions accepted into British English as ‘inter-dialectal borrowings’ that function in a similar way to common inter-language borrowings.

Other languages →

English

English → Other

languages

American English

→ British English

Lexical gap ‘Schadenfreude’ ‘week-end’ ‘chain store’

Conceptual gap ‘confetti’ ‘Wi-Fi’ ‘lifeguard’

Competing

expressions

‘sommelier’ vs. ‘wine

steward’

‘laptop’ vs.

‘ordinateur portable’

‘freebie’ vs. ‘free gift’

Because the United States and the United Kingdom are separated by physical geography,

the opportunities and scenarios for dialect contact will not have been the same as those

within each country, or even those between the countries and their nearest English-speaking

neighbours (Canada and Ireland respectively). Traditional contact between speakers of

different dialects would entail face-to-face conversation in work, education or leisure

environments (Trudgill 1986). If the physical separation of the two dialect areas makes this

sort of day-to-day contact impossible, this leaves a question of how the lexical diffusion

evident from this research has been made possible at all? Stephen Gramley posits that

technology and the growing presence of the media ‘make once distant and strange

Englishes ever more accessible to all of us’ (2001: 242). It is likely that these communication

changes are the reason why the lexes of both American and British varieties of English are

considered considerably closer to each other than they were in the 19th century, or even

early 20th century (Svejcer 1978: 160).

In the following chapter, I will bring together the points of discussion that have arisen from

the study and look to find a conclusion that satisfactorily answers the hypothesis.

45

Conclusion

In this chapter I will use the evidence from the investigation to re-analyse the prescriptivist

view on American English vocabulary and assess the extent to which the results support or

contradict the hypothesis.

As explained in the introduction chapter, folk linguists have presented a belief that so-called

Americanisms are unpleasant, unwanted and threatening to British English. While

considering the phonoaesthetics of the vocabulary items would require a whole other

investigation of its own, the assertion that the English lexicon of the UK does not need and is

endangered by American vocabulary can be counteracted by the instances of Americanisms

that function as ‘inter-dialectal borrowings’.

The lending of terms to fill lexical gaps is perhaps a testament to the lexical innovation of the

United States and its English users’ ability to provide a single lexeme to denote a concept or

idea that would previously have had a lengthier or less precise term attached to it. Without

the Americanism ‘blue-chip’, British English would have to be satisfied with referring to the

existing concept with ambiguous and idiosyncratic phrases like ‘reliable stock investment’ or

‘trustworthy enterprise’. The absence of a convenient word or phrase, sometimes called a

‘functional gap’ (Lehrer, 1970: 261), is not necessarily a problem for the language but is

arguably unnecessary when American English has a perfectly unambiguous, fixed lexeme

available. If having a convenient word is favourable to leaving a functional gap, then

prescriptivists should not view British English sourcing lexical gap fillers from another dialect

area of English as a bad thing.

Correspondingly, the lending of terms to fill conceptual gaps is most certainly a testament to

the practical innovation of the United States and its inhabitants’ ability to create and discover

new things. The term ‘food court’ would not be part of the British English lexicon if it were not

for America’s creation of the concept in the outset. The fact that British English does not fill

46

the conceptual gap created by American English vocabulary with its own synonyms in any of

the cases studied is significant. It shows, at least for the English of the UK, that users of the

language generally seem to be content with referring to concepts with the name they were

initially given. It would be difficult for a prescriptivist to suggest that these types of

Americanisms are unwanted; without them, British English would need to create its own

referring expression or borrow from elsewhere, thus creating potential for unintelligibility

between speakers of the two dialects.

The view that Americanisms are a threat to British English, described most pertinently in

Matthew Engel’s grey squirrel analogy (2010), is also one that the evidence from this study

has opposed. If this were the case, the data would show that the AmE expressions were

favoured over BrE synonyms. In reality, the opposite was in fact true and BrE synonyms

were more popular in 9 out of the 11 cases where they were present.

If this information were extrapolated to all instances where vocabulary from both dialects are

in competition, it would categorically dismiss the view that Americanisms are a threat to

British English as BrE lexemes are still favoured in over 80% of cases. Engel’s belief that

Americanisms are ‘destined’ to drive out native vocabulary items from British English is also

counteracted by evidence from the data that shows that British English favours the eldest

word available in the majority of cases. The results for ‘terminal’ versus ‘terminus’, and

‘freebie’ versus ‘free gift’ certainly show that there are cases where the two dialects are

running a close race and perhaps one might take dominance at some point in the future.

Nonetheless, in the majority of cases there is no doubt that British English over American

English provides the vocabulary items of choice for English users in the UK.

The hypothesis stated that ‘the American English expressions chosen for the experiment will

be used less frequently than British English synonyms’. Some concessions have to be made

in order to know if the hypothesis can be supported.

47

Not all of the expressions had British English synonyms; for these expressions the

discussion chapter instead looked at why they were present in British English, which for all

cases appeared to be for the purpose of filling conceptual or lexical gaps. These results

neither support nor contradict the hypothesis. It could be argued that they support the

prescriptivists’ stance that Americanisms are unnecessarily invasive, as British English could

have created a neologism to fill the gaps instead of just borrowing from the US. On the other

hand, it could also be argued that they counteract the prescriptivists’ stance, as the mere

fact that a gap which needed to be filled existed at all highlights the necessity for American

and British English to maintain some degree of relativity (unlike, say, the relationship

between Japanese and English, which may have a number of lexical gaps that are never

filled e.g. ‘amae’ (Doi 1962: 132)).

For the sense units that did have American and British synonyms, the American English

expressions were used less frequently in nearly all cases, thus supporting the hypothesis.

Recommendations for further study

Any further study based upon the methodology used in this investigation would need to find

more data to see if the conclusions found here are true in other cases. One possibility for

research is to find out if the semantic field influences how much American English lexis is

used in British English. This study looked at words relating to the economic and working

world as this is something of importance to both countries. A further study could also be

based upon fields that are of equal importance to both nations such as the human body, the

cosmos or travel. Alternatively, it could be interesting to see how differently the results

emerge for concepts that may have inherent differences for the two territories such as

animals, plants or the weather. Results could show more opposition from British English to

Americanisms in these fields.

48

An investigation into different parts of speech would also be interesting. Results could show

that American English verbs are becoming increasingly prominent in British English.

Although in some cases it may be challenging to demark synonyms, an investigation into

adjective use could still be possible and might find that British English is less hostile towards

new words in this area. Compared with the concrete nouns used by this study, it would be

interesting to see if words that are always non-referring like ‘OK’, ‘zillion’ or ‘pesky’ are more

or less able to enter the British lexicon.

The methodology stage of the investigation could also be changed by the corpora used.

COCA continues to grow as corpus with 20 million new words being added each year. The

BNC by comparison is fixed at its 100 million word sample. There is only so long left that the

BNC will remain relevant to the contemporary language while COCA continues to remain up-

to-date with how American English is being used. A solution could be to use the recently

developed Google Books Ngram Viewer which uses a large sample of texts available on

Google Books as its corpus. The set of texts can be limited to British English or American

English. A drawback of this set-up, however, is that all the texts are books and therefore

does not include other types of language like spoken English, newspapers, television or film.

How reliably it can represent English usage as a whole might therefore be called into

question but it is still a potentially useful way of comparing similar language between the two

dialect areas.

Summing up

Compared with the historic split of Latin-based languages, English remains fundamentally

intelligible between its varieties - the different dialects would probably not be known as

‘English’ if it were not. The continued clarity between the global dialects of English allows

British English users to continue watching American blockbuster films, viewing Australian

soap operas, listening to Barbadian pop singers or e-conferencing with Hong Kong

49

businessmen. Given the differences between cultures and the vast distances separating

some English speaking communities, the fact that users of one dialect can understand those

of another should be consider something of a marvel.

Where once contact between a Londoner and an Angeleno would take several weeks to be

possible, the continued improvements in communications has meant that they can see each

other face-to-face within seven hours or even speak in real-time instantly. It is this continued

communication between the two varieties of English that helps to keep the language

developing, which should not be considered negatively if it means that English continues to

be a language that can reflect the state of so much of the world today. The instantaneous

nature of communication in the modern age means that one can assume that British English

will continue to borrow words from American English to fill matrix gaps, just as it will do from

other dialects and languages.

The suspicions and hostility towards American English vocabulary will probably continue to

be a prevalent attitude held by prescriptivists in the UK. The ideology of prescriptivists will

always be that one system of the language is preferable to another. What these individuals

will choose to ignore is just how useful it is that British English has a sister dialect that often

has its own pool of words and phrases that can be borrowed to improve the linguistic

diversity of our own dialect. Many languages in the world are not as lucky to have large

communities of users dotted around the planet who can help the language to grow in

virtually any area regardless of geographic constraints.

The phobia of Americanisms is not unique to Britain, the birthplace of English, but is also

observable in other national dialects of English (Australian English in Peters, P. 1998, Indian

English in Sedlatschek 2009 and Irish English in Behan 2005). The linguist Steve Jones is

perhaps most astute about the situation in stating that when folk linguists object to American

English, ‘their complaint is really about the insidious effect of Americanisation on our culture’

(in Law, P. 2007 para. 13 of 14). This theory seems to have pertinence when one considers

how frequently we hear complaints of broadcasters or teenagers or advertisers using

50

Americanisms compared to how rarely, if at all, we hear complaints of people using, for

example, ‘Canadianisms’, ‘Australianisms’, ‘Jamaicanisms’ or ‘Nigerianisms’, all of which can

certainly be heard in 21st century Britain.

If the question is ‘is British English being swamped by Americanisms?’ the answer I hope to

have demonstrated is clear ‘no’. On the other hand, if the question is ‘is British English

expanding by embracing vocabulary from elsewhere - be it the United States, the rest of the

Anglosphere or any of the world’s languages?’, then the answer should be an emphatic

‘yes’.

In many ways, Henry Fowler (1922:23) was correct in his historic and uncompromising

claim:

‘Americanisms are foreign words and should be so treated’.

51

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English: Papers from MAVEN 97. Ed by H. Lindquist, S. Klintborg, M. Levin, and M.

Estling (Vaxjö: Acta Wexionensia), pp. 29–34

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<http://financialservicesinc.ubs.com/wealth/Investing/TraditionalInvestments/UITs/

BlueChipSeries/Series2007A.html> [accessed 9 May 2011]

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<http://sy10.ukfilmcouncil.ry.com/2.1.asp> [accessed 12 May 2011]

Weinstein, R. M. 1992. ‘Disneyland and Coney Island: reflections on the evolution of the

modern amusement park’, The Journal of Popular Culture, 26: 131–164.

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Appendix

Definitions

ATMn. (Banking orig. U.S.) automated (orig. automatic) teller machine.

A, n.Second edition, 1989; online version March 2011. <http://www.oed.com.eresources.shef.ac.uk/Entry/1>; accessed 26 April 2011. Earlier version first published in New English Dictionary, 1884.

advertorial, nChiefly U.S.An advertisement written in the form of an editorial, which purportedly provides objective information about a commercial or industrial subject.

Second edition, 1989; online version March 2011. <http://www.oed.com.eresources.shef.ac.uk/Entry/2983>; accessed 25 April 2011. First published in A Supplement to the OED I, 1972.

amusement parkin amusment, n7. Frequent in Comb. in senses 5, 6, as amusement-lover ( amusement-loving), amusement-mad, amusement-seeker ( amusement-seeking); also amusement arcade, amusement centre , amusement hall, amusement park.

amusement, n.Second edition, 1989; online version March 2011. <http://www.oed.com.eresources.shef.ac.uk/Entry/6790>; accessed 20 May 2011. Earlier version first published in New English Dictionary, 1884.

automatic tellern. (automatic teller machine) (orig. U.S.), a machine (usu. linked to a computer) that automatically provides cash or performs other functions of a bank cashier when a special card is inserted; cf. ATM n. at A n. Initialisms 2.

automatic, adj.Second edition, 1989; online version March 2011. <http://www.oed.com.eresources.shef.ac.uk/Entry/13464>; accessed 26 April 2011. Earlier version first published in New English Dictionary, 1885.

bakery, n.2. A place for making bread; the whole establishment of a baker. Also, a shop where baked products are sold. U.S.

Second edition, 1989; online version March 2011. <http://www.oed.com.eresources.shef.ac.uk/Entry/14771>; accessed 27 April 2011. Earlier version first published in New English Dictionary, 1885.

bar-keep n. U.S. a bar-keeper (for refreshments).

bar-keeper

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n. one who keeps or manages a bar for refreshments, who keeps a toll-bar, or keeps guard at a barrier.

bar, n.1Second edition, 1989; online version March 2011. <http://www.oed.com.eresources.shef.ac.uk/Entry/15349>; accessed 20 May 2011. Earlier version first published in New English Dictionary, 1885.

barmaid, n.A female who sells food and drink at the bar of a tavern or hotel. Also attrib. and fig.

Second edition, 1989; online version March 2011. <http://www.oed.com.eresources.shef.ac.uk/Entry/15606>; accessed 20 May 2011. Earlier version first published in New English Dictionary, 1885.

barman, n.3. A man who serves at the bar of a public-house, etc. Cf. bar n.1 28.

Second edition, 1989; online version March 2011. <http://www.oed.com.eresources.shef.ac.uk/Entry/15607>; accessed 20 May 2011. Earlier version first published in New English Dictionary, 1885.

bartender, n.b. A bar-attendant or barman.

Second edition, 1989; online version March 2011. <http://www.oed.com.eresources.shef.ac.uk/Entry/15796>; accessed 20 May 2011. First published in A Supplement to the OED I, 1972.

blue chip, norig. U.S.A blue counter used in Poker, usu. of high value. Also transf., spec. Stock Exchange, a share considered to be a fairly reliable investment, though less secure than gilt-edged; hence any reliable enterprise, etc. Also attrib. or quasi-n. Cf. blue n. 4c.

Second edition, 1989; online version March 2011. <http://www.oed.com.eresources.shef.ac.uk/Entry/20591>; accessed 25 April 2011. First published in A Supplement to the OED I, 1972.

cafeteria, n.orig. U.S.A coffee-house; a restaurant, esp. now a self-service restaurant.

Second edition, 1989; online version March 2011. <http://www.oed.com.eresources.shef.ac.uk/Entry/26032>; accessed 20 May 2011. First published in A Supplement to the OED I, 1972.

cake-house, n.1. A house where cakes are sold. Obs. or dial.

Second edition, 1989; online version March 2011. <http://www.oed.com.eresources.shef.ac.uk/Entry/26120>; accessed 27 April 2011. Earlier version first published in New English Dictionary, 1888.

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canteen, nb. In extended use. Now usu. a refreshment-room at a factory, school, or the like.

Second edition, 1989; online version March 2011. <http://www.oed.com.eresources.shef.ac.uk/Entry/27231>; accessed 20 May 2011. Earlier version first published in New English Dictionary, 1888.

cash dispensern. an automatic machine from which bank (building society, etc.) customers may withdraw cash, esp. from a current account; = automated teller machine n. at automated adj. Special uses.

cash machinen. (in early use) any of various machines used for transactions involving cash; (now) spec. = cash dispenser n. at Compounds 2.

cashpointn. = cash dispenser n. above; freq. attrib.

cash registern. orig. U.S. a till for recording and adding the amounts put into it.

cash, n.1Second edition, 1989; online version March 2011. <http://www.oed.com.eresources.shef.ac.uk/Entry/28425>; accessed 26 April 2011. Earlier version first published in New English Dictionary, 1888.

chain storen. orig. U.S. one of a series of stores belonging to one firm and dealing in the same class of goods.

chain, n.Second edition, 1989; online version March 2011. <http://www.oed.com.eresources.shef.ac.uk/Entry/30197>; accessed 20 May 2011. Earlier version first published in New English Dictionary, 1889.

classified, norig. U.S. Also with capital initial. A small advertisement placed in a classified section of advertisements in a newspaper or magazine. Chiefly in pl. (usu. with the).

Third edition, November 2010; online version March 2011. <http://www.oed.com.eresources.shef.ac.uk/Entry/33900>; accessed 25 April 2011. An entry for this word was first included in A Supplement to the OED I, 1972.

coin-opadj. = coin-operated adj.; used as n., esp. of an automatic launderette or dry-cleaning establishment.

coin, n.Second edition, 1989; online version March 2011. <http://www.oed.com.eresources.shef.ac.uk/Entry/35998>; accessed 20 May 2011. Earlier version first published in New English Dictionary, 1891.

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confectionery shop4. a. attrib., as confectionery shop, etc.

confectionery, n.Second edition, 1989; online version March 2011. <http://www.oed.com.eresources.shef.ac.uk/Entry/38713>; accessed 27 April 2011. Earlier version first published in New English Dictionary, 1891.

deli, ncolloq. (orig. U.S.).Abbrev. of delicatessen n. b.

Second edition, 1989; online version March 2011. <http://www.oed.com.eresources.shef.ac.uk/Entry/49338>; accessed 20 May 2011. First published in A Supplement to the OED I, 1972.

delicatessen, nb. ellipt. A delicatessen shop.

Second edition, 1989; online version March 2011. <http://www.oed.com.eresources.shef.ac.uk/Entry/49364>; accessed 25 April 2011. First published in A Supplement to the OED I, 1972.

drawer2. spec. One who draws liquor for customers; a tapster at a tavern. Also in comb., as beer-drawer.

drawer, n.1Second edition, 1989; online version March 2011. <http://www.oed.com.eresources.shef.ac.uk/Entry/57546>; accessed 20 May 2011. Earlier version first published in New English Dictionary, 1897.

employé, nOne who is employed. (In French use chiefly applied to clerks; in English use gen. to the persons employed for wages or salary by a house of business, or by government.)

Second edition, 1989; online version March 2011. <http://www.oed.com.eresources.shef.ac.uk/Entry/61372>; accessed 20 May 2011. Earlier version first published in New English Dictionary, 1891.

employee, norig. U.S.1. a. A person employed for wages; = employé n., which it has now virtually superseded.

Second edition, 1989; online version March 2011. <http://www.oed.com.eresources.shef.ac.uk/Entry/61374>; accessed 20 May 2011. Earlier version first published in New English Dictionary, 1891.

60

estate agentn. one who acts as steward or manager of a landed estate; one who conducts business in the sale of houses and land.

estate, n.Second edition, 1989; online version March 2011. <http://www.oed.com.eresources.shef.ac.uk/Entry/64556>; accessed 27 April 2011. Earlier version first published in New English Dictionary, 1891.

food courtn. orig. U.S. an area in a shopping mall, airport terminal, etc., containing a variety of fast-food outlets and a shared seating area for their customers.

food, n.Third edition, September 2008; online version March 2011. <http://www.oed.com.eresources.shef.ac.uk/Entry/72632>; accessed 25 April 2011. An entry for this word was first included in New English Dictionary, 1897.

filling stationn. orig. U.S. a depot for the supply of petrol, oil, etc. to motorists; a petrol station.

filling, n.Second edition, 1989; online version March 2011. <http://www.oed.com.eresources.shef.ac.uk/Entry/70235>; accessed 20 May 2011. Earlier version first published in New English Dictionary, 1896.

freebiecolloq. (orig. U.S.).A. n. Something that is provided or given free or without charge, freq. as a means of publicizing or promoting something.

freebie, n. and adj.Third edition, March 2008; online version March 2011.<http://www.oed.com.eresources.shef.ac.uk/Entry/74380>; accessed 20 May 2011. An entry for this word was first included in A Supplement to the OED I, 1972.

free gift(b) an object given away free of charge, typically to promote sales (cf. sense A. 17b).

free, adj., n., and adv.Third edition, March 2008; online version March 2011. <http://www.oed.com.eresources.shef.ac.uk/Entry/74375>; accessed 20 May 2011. An entry for this word was first included in New English Dictionary, 1898.

garage salen. U.S. a sale of unwanted used goods and possessions, usu. held in (the garage of) a private house; cf. yard sale n. at yard n.1 Compounds (c).

garage, n. and adj.Second edition, 1989; online version March 2011. <http://www.oed.com.eresources.shef.ac.uk/Entry/76677>; accessed 20 May 2011. First published in A Supplement to the OED I, 1972.

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gas stationn. a filling-station.

gas, n.2Second edition, 1989; online version March 2011. <http://www.oed.com.eresources.shef.ac.uk/Entry/76919>; accessed 20 May 2011. First published in A Supplement to the OED I, 1972

hole-in-the-walln. colloq., chiefly Brit. an automatic teller machine installed in the (outside) wall of a bank or other building.

hole, n.Second edition, 1989; online version March 2011. <http://www.oed.com.eresources.shef.ac.uk/Entry/87707>; accessed 26 April 2011. Earlier version first published in New English Dictionary, 1899.

infomercialn. (also infommercial) [ < info- comb. form + -mercial (in commercial n.)] Broadcasting (orig. and chiefly U.S.) an advertisement (esp. one shown on television) which promotes a product, service, etc., in an informative and purportedly objective style; = informercial n.

info-, comb. formThird edition, December 2003; online version March 2011. <http://www.oed.com.eresources.shef.ac.uk/Entry/242309>; accessed 25 April 2011

launderette, n.Also laundrette.An establishment providing automatic washing machines for the use of customers.

Second edition, 1989; online version March 2011. <http://www.oed.com.eresources.shef.ac.uk/Entry/106281>; accessed 27 April 2011. First published in A Supplement to the OED II, 1976.

Laundromat, norig. U.S.The proprietary name of a brand of automatic washing machines; also, by extension, a launderette.

Second edition, 1989; online version March 2011. <http://www.oed.com.eresources.shef.ac.uk/Entry/106287>; accessed 20 May 2011. First published in A Supplement to the OED II, 1976.

lifeguardb. orig. U.S. An expert swimmer employed to assist bathers who get into difficulty (as at a beach or swimming pool); = lifesaver n. 2.

lifeguard, n.Third edition, September 2009; online version March 2011. <http://www.oed.com.eresources.shef.ac.uk/Entry/108105>; accessed 20 May 2011. An entry for this word was first included in New English Dictionary, 1903.

62

lifesaver2. orig. U.S. = lifeguard n. 2b. Cf. surf lifesaver n. at surf n. Compounds 2a. Now chiefly Austral. and N.Z.

lifesaver, n.Third edition, September 2009; online version March 2011. <http://www.oed.com.eresources.shef.ac.uk/Entry/108124>; accessed 20 May 2011. An entry for this word was first included in A Supplement to the OED II, 1976.

mixologist, n.slang (orig. and chiefly U.S.).A person who is skilled in mixing drinks; a bartender. Cf. mixer n. 1b.

Third edition, September 2002; online version March 2011. <http://www.oed.com.eresources.shef.ac.uk/Entry/120365>; accessed 20 May 2011. An entry for this word was first included in A Supplement to the OED II, 1976.

motel, norig. U.S.A roadside hotel catering primarily for motorists, typically having rooms arranged in low blocks with parking directly outside.

Third edition, December 2002; online version March 2011. <http://www.oed.com.eresources.shef.ac.uk/Entry/122623>; accessed 25 April 2011. An entry for this word was first included in A Supplement to the OED II, 1976.

multiple5. A retailer or other company with multiple outlets or branches; a chain store. Cf. sense B.6.

multiple, n. and adj.Third edition, March 2003; online version March 2011. <http://www.oed.com.eresources.shef.ac.uk/Entry/123584>; accessed 20 May 2011. An entry for this word was first included in New English Dictionary, 1908.

pastry shopn.

pastry, n.Third edition, June 2005; online version March 2011. <http://www.oed.com.eresources.shef.ac.uk/Entry/138649>; accessed 27 April 2011. An entry for this word was first included in New English Dictionary, 1904.

patisserie, n.2. A shop which sells pastries and cakes, usually made on the premises; esp. a French one.

Third edition, June 2005; online version March 2011. <http://www.oed.com.eresources.shef.ac.uk/Entry/138840>; accessed 27 April 2011. An entry for this word was first included in New English Dictionary, 1904.

petrol stationn. = filling-station n. at filling n. Compounds 2.

Third edition, December 2005; online version March 2011. <http://www.oed.com.eresources.shef.ac.uk/Entry/141925>; accessed 20 May 2011. An entry for this word was first included in New English Dictionary, 1905.

63

potman2. A man employed in a public house; a barman. Now usu. spec.: a person employed to collect and wash glasses, clean tables, etc., rather than serve behind the bar in a public house. Cf. pot-boy n.

potman, n.Third edition, December 2006; online version March 2011. <http://www.oed.com.eresources.shef.ac.uk/Entry/148884>; accessed 20 May 2011. An entry for this word was first included in New English Dictionary, 1907.

realtor, nU.S.A member of the National Association of Realtors (formerly the National Association of Real Estate Boards). Hence: a real estate agent or broker. Also in extended use. A proprietary name.

Third edition, December 2008; online version March 2011. <http://www.oed.com.eresources.shef.ac.uk/Entry/158954>; accessed 20 May 2011. An entry for this word was first included in A Supplement to the OED III, 1982.

repo mann. (also with capital initial) a man employed to repossess goods, etc.; = repossessor n.

repo, n.2Third edition, December 2009; online version March 2011. <http://www.oed.com.eresources.shef.ac.uk/Entry/241715>; accessed 20 May 2011. An entry for this word was first included in OED: Additions series 1, 1993.

repossessor, n2. orig. and chiefly U.S. spec. A person hired by a credit company to repossess a car, house, or other item when the purchaser defaults on payments.

Third edition, December 2009; online version March 2011. <http://www.oed.com.eresources.shef.ac.uk/Entry/241716>; accessed 20 May 2011. An entry for this word was first included in OED: Additions series 1, 1993.

retail parkn. orig. U.S. an out-of-town shopping development, usually containing a number of large chain stores.

retail, n.1, adj., and adv.Third edition, March 2010; online version March 2011. <http://www.oed.com.eresources.shef.ac.uk/Entry/164142>; accessed 20 May 2011. An entry for this word was first included in New English Dictionary, 1908.

sawbuck, nU.S.1. a. = buck n.7

sawbuck, n.Second edition, 1989; online version March 2011.

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<http://www.oed.com.eresources.shef.ac.uk/Entry/171511>; accessed 27 April 2011. First published in A Supplement to the OED III, 1982.

shop frontn. (also attrib. and fig.).

shop, n.Second edition, 1989; online version March 2011. <http://www.oed.com.eresources.shef.ac.uk/Entry/178518>; accessed 20 May 2011. Earlier version first published in New English Dictionary, 1914.

speakeasy, nslang (orig. and chiefly U.S.).A shop or bar where alcoholic liquor is sold illegally. Also attrib.

Second edition, 1989; online version March 2011. <http://www.oed.com.eresources.shef.ac.uk/Entry/185913>; accessed 25 April 2011. First published in , 1986.

storefront, na. The side of a shop facing the street; (a building with) a shop window.

storefront, n. (and adj.)Second edition, 1989; online version March 2011. <http://www.oed.com.eresources.shef.ac.uk/Entry/190931>; accessed 20 May 2011. First published in , 1986.

swamper, n1. U.S.a. A workman who clears a road for lumberers in a ‘swamp’ or forest.

Second edition, 1989; online version March 2011. <http://www.oed.com.eresources.shef.ac.uk/Entry/195408>; accessed 25 April 2011. Earlier version first published in New English Dictionary, 1918.

tapster1. orig. A woman who tapped or drew ale or other liquor for sale in an inn; a hostess. Obs.2. A man who draws the beer, etc. for the customers in a public house; the keeper of a tavern.

tapster, n.Second edition, 1989; online version March 2011. <http://www.oed.com.eresources.shef.ac.uk/Entry/197749>; accessed 20 May 2011. Earlier version first published in New English Dictionary, 1910.

terminal5. a. A terminal station or premises on a railway, a terminus; a terminal point of a railway, a place or town at which it has a terminus (orig. and chiefly U.S.). Hence, in extended use, applied to the terminal point of an airline (= air terminal n. at air n.1 Compounds 2), a bus service (= bus terminal n. at bus n.2 Compounds 1a), or occas. some other transportation service.

terminal, adj. and n.Second edition, 1989; online version March 2011.

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<http://www.oed.com.eresources.shef.ac.uk/Entry/199419>; accessed 20 May 2011. Earlier version first published in New English Dictionary, 1911.

terminus, n6. a. The end of a line of railway; also, the station at the end; the place at which a tramline, bus route, etc. ends. (The common current sense.)

Second edition, 1989; online version March 2011. <http://www.oed.com.eresources.shef.ac.uk/Entry/199440>; accessed 20 May 2011. Earlier version first published in New English Dictionary, 1911.

theme parkn. chiefly U.S. an amusement park organized round a unifying idea or group of ideas.

theme, n.Second edition, 1989; online version March 2011. <http://www.oed.com.eresources.shef.ac.uk/Entry/200321>; accessed 27 April 2011. Earlier version first published in New English Dictionary, 1912.

think-tank2. a. A research institute or other organization providing advice and ideas on national or commercial problems; an interdisciplinary group of specialist consultants.

Third edition, September 2009; online version March 2011. <http://www.oed.com.eresources.shef.ac.uk/Entry/200809>; accessed 26 April 2011. An entry for this word was first included in , 1986.

till, n2. Now spec. A drawer, money-box, or similar receptacle under and behind the counter of a shop or bank, in which cash for daily transactions is temporarily kept.

till, n.1Second edition, 1989; online version March 2011. <http://www.oed.com.eresources.shef.ac.uk/Entry/201991>; accessed 20 May 2011. Earlier version first published in New English Dictionary, 1912.

worker, nc. One who is employed for a wage, esp. in manual or industrial work; now often in the language of social economics, a ‘producer of wealth’, as opposed to capitalist.

Second edition, 1989; online version March 2011. <http://www.oed.com.eresources.shef.ac.uk/Entry/230228>; accessed 20 May 2011. Earlier version first published in New English Dictionary, 1928.

yard salen. U.S. a sale of miscellaneous second-hand items held in the garden of a private house.

yard, n.1Second edition, 1989; online version March 2011. <http://www.oed.com.eresources.shef.ac.uk/Entry/231200>; accessed 20 May 2011. Earlier version first published in New English Dictionary, 1921.

66