The plural of virus? Latinate plurals reconsidered

Jan 19, 2012 by

The plural of virus? Latinate plurals reconsidered

[Thanks to Cynthia Typaldos for bringing this topic to my attention! The cartoon to the left is from this site] A recent article on paidContent.org by Robert Andrews states:   “Google (NSDQ: GOOG) already operates its own legal...

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American English from sea to shining sea

Sep 30, 2011 by

In a number of recent postings, I’ve discussed American English words that have penetrated into British English and vice versa. But it must be remembered that neither American English nor British English are uniform, but are...

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Posh: from the sea or from the gypsies?

Sep 29, 2011 by

In the previous posting, I mentioned the word posh, an adjective describing stylish items or members of the upper class, which came into the American lexicon from “across the pond”. But what is the origin of this word in...

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Americanisms vs. Britishisms

Sep 29, 2011 by

In a recent posting, I’ve looked at the journalist Matthew Engel’s BBC piece on Americanisms in British English and discussed some of the fallacies found in that article. One of the points I made there is that...

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BBC enquires “Why do some Americanisms irritate people?”

Jul 21, 2011 by

Recently a student of mine forwarded to me this article from the BBC website. BBC has long been the stronghold of “proper English”, so I am not completely surprised to see such a strong rhetoric coming out of a BBC...

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