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Liz Truss delivers her keynote speech during the Conservative Party’s annual autumn conference in Birmingham, U.K., Oct. 5.
Photo:
Hollie Adams/Bloomberg News
The Daily Star, a British tabloid, wondered what would wilt first, Prime Minister
Liz Truss
or a “ball of lettuce.” It wasn’t the first time that Americans were flummoxed by British idioms.
Americans would say “head of lettuce,” and that’s how most U.S. publications described the vegetable in the Star’s cheeky gag.
The New York Times
had an internal debate and ended up using both “head” and “ball.”
The controversy over Ms. Truss’s proposed supply-side tax cuts, abrupt retreat and rapid resignation featured a lot of classic Britishisms that left Americans wondering. Some words were intelligible but unfamiliar. When
Charles Walker,
a Conservative member of Parliament, was asked by the BBC about Ms. Truss’s future, his remarks were retweeted widely: “This whole affair is inexcusable; it is a pitiful reflection on the Conservative Party at every level. I have had enough of talentless people putting their tick in the right box, not because it’s in the national interest but because it’s in their own personal interest to achieve ministerial position.” An American would “check” the box, not put a “tick” in it.
Or consider this tweet from another Conservative member of Parliament,
Nadine Dorries,
referring to Ms. Truss’s predecessor, Boris Johnson: “Conservative MPs removed the PM people wanted and voted for with a stonking big majority less than three years ago.” Stonking means great or overwhelming, like an artillery barrage.
As Americans increasingly read British papers online, they are bumping into puzzling Britishisms and even adopting some. The Telegraph noted in 2018 that Americans had picked up “dodgy,” “bespoke” and “twee.” These days younger Americans may say that an outfit is “smart,” meaning attractive, or a person “clever,” meaning simply intelligent as opposed to the American sense of ingenious.
It may feel like cultural ventriloquism to traditionalists, but that’s how languages evolve. When the English colonized America in the 1600s, they brought many regional words with them. New England was largely colonized by people from East Anglia, Virginia and Maryland by those from Britain’s Southwest.
Regional words like “frying pan” in Massachusetts and “skillet” in colonial Virginia were preserved and became distinguishing features of the Yankee and Southern dialects. Other words took on different meanings: “Holler” refers to shouting in the Northeast and a valley between two mountains in the South. Some words, like “gotten,” died out in the land of their birth. Englishmen today use “got” as the past participle of “get.”
New technology also led the English and the Americans to invent different words for the same thing; what amateur linguists refer to as the “windscreen vs. windshield” problem. But after centuries of the English language growing apart, the internet and streaming shows such as “Ted Lasso” may be knitting it back together again.
The title character of that Apple TV comedy-drama is an American football coach who goes to work for a British “football” team. Some differences may prove impossible to bridge.
Mr. Miniter is CEO of Zenger.news.
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