[Ads-l] US slang with British origins?

Stephen Goranson goranson at DUKE.EDU
Sat May 12 09:20:34 UTC 2018


Well, there's "kibosh," from London, England, circa 1830, in current American slang.


Origin of kibosh /

Gerald Leonard Cohen;  Stephen Goranson;  Matthew Little

2018, ©2018
English [Book]  Book viii, 161 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm.
ISBN: 9781138628953 1138628956



Stephen G.


On Sat, May 12, 2018 at 12:13 AM, GEOFFREY NUNBERG <nunbergg at gmail.com> wrote:
> Mencken wrote, "It is most unusual for an English neologism to be taken up in this country, and when it is, it is only by a small class, mainly made up of conscious Anglomaniacs. To the common people everything English, whether an article of dress, a social custom or a word or phrase has what James M. Cain has called 'a somewhat pansy cast.' That is to say, it is regarded as affected, effeminate and ridiculous.”
>
> That was then, of course, but I have to say I’m hard put to come up with examples of current American slang that began their lives as Britishisms, in the way that Americanisms like “awesome” and “you guys” have naturalized as slang in the UK.
>
> Geoff
>
> Geoffrey Nunberg
> School of Information,
> University of California, Berkeley
> Berkeley, CA 94720-4600
>
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