Color(ed) pencils, color((ing) in) books

[Lynne Murphy]

"coloring" versus "colouring in" was one of my first BrE/AmE 'Differences
of the Day' on Twitter--but I think that the latter is rather informal,
possibly childish. The only instance of "colouring-in" in the BNC is about
a pie chart, and there are 13 instances of "colouring book". There are no
'in's on the colouring books that our daughter's been given.

10x as many 'colouring books' as 'colouring-in books' on Google, but I'm
not sure that Google can be trusted to honoUr the u.

Lynne


--On Wednesday, March 23, 2011 16:20 -0400 Neal Whitman
<nwhitman at AMERITECH.NET> wrote:

> For me, it's "colored pencils" and "coloring book". But from a Wiggles
> video, I learned (or maybe hastily generalized) that AusE has
> "coloring-in book".
>
> Neal Whitman
>
> On Mar 23, 2011, at 12:32 PM, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>
> wrote:
>
>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>> ----------------------- Sender:       American Dialect Society
>> <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU> Poster:       Jonathan Lighter
>> <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>
>> Subject:      Re: Diversified shopping
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> -------
>>
>> When I was at the appropriate age,
>> the teacher called them "colored pencils."
>>
>> "Color pencils" and "coloring pencils" sound and look weird. "Coloring
>> book" - that's different.
>>
>> JL
>>
>> On Wed, Mar 23, 2011 at 12:25 PM, Victor Steinbok
>> <aardvark66 at gmail.com>wrote:
>>
>>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>>> -----------------------
>>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>>> Poster:       Victor Steinbok <aardvark66 at GMAIL.COM>
>>> Subject:      Diversified shopping
>>>
>>> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
>>> --------
>>>
>>> I meant to mention this weeks ago, but forgot. A listing on Buy.com:
>>>
>>>> Prismacolor Premier Lightfast Colored Pencils, Set of 24
>>>
>>> I am used to "color pencils" or, at worst, "coloring pencils", but, I
>>> suppose, one could say that the lead is the same, differing only by
>>> addition of coloring.
>>>
>>>    VS-)
>>>
>>> ------------------------------------------------------------
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>>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the
>> truth."
>>
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Dr M Lynne Murphy
Senior Lecturer in Linguistics
Director of English Language and Linguistics
School of English
Arts B348
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QN

phone: +44-(0)1273-678844
http://separatedbyacommonlanguage.blogspot.com

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org