[David9694]

A new catch-all Tea Shop thread for those miscellaneous new stories that don’t quite fit with parking, crashing into buildings or trapped/prisoners in their homes. 

Topic

[chrisonabike]

David9694 wrote:

Hot diggety dawg!

Yeehaw!

[David9694]

Hot diggety dawg!

Hot diggety dawg!

[Rendel Harris]

David9694 wrote:

Are you implying an Americanism has to have originated there? Was thinking what might there be under that head? Best I could do was tee-pee, tomohawk and names of animals peculiar to North America like raccoons.

There are quite a few English words that originated in America that don’t have their roots in the Native American languages, such as teenager, rookies, airport, runway etc. I was amused to discover a little while ago that the quintessentially English phrase “keep a stiff upper lip” actually originated in America in the early 1800s before being adopted into British English in the Victorian era.

[David9694]

Are you implying an

Are you implying an Americanism has to have originated there? Was thinking what might there be under that head? Best I could do was tee-pee, tomohawk and names of animals peculiar to North America like raccoons.

[David9694]

“If I hadn’t gotten out the

“If I hadn’t gotten out the way pretty sharpish, that car would have hit me”

I guess “trash” is another example of a word that was used in Britain (e.g. Cobbett’s Two-Penny Trash) and got exported to America and was pretty much lost as a noun. Attorney, though not completely disused in the UK, might be another.  

[Rendel Harris]

mdavidford wrote:

[* Formal British English, anyway – how much it remained in colloquial/dialectical English and how much that contributed to readoption is another question again.]

It still hung around in the phrase “ill-gotten gains”, of course.

[Rendel Harris]

David9694 wrote:

wtjs wrote:

I meant the ‘gotten‘

ah, another Americanism creeping in to UK English

“Jake Cade hath gotten London Bridge” – Shakespeare HVI pt ii (sure there are other examples too). More an Englishism coming back after an extended holiday in America.

[mdavidford]

It probably does count as a

It probably does count as a loanword from American English, having been mostly lost in British English*, but that’s not the same thing as an Americanism, which implies coinage in America.

[* Formal British English, anyway – how much it remained in colloquial/dialectical English and how much that contributed to readoption is another question again.]

[chrisonabike]

This sounds like “how long is

This sounds like “how long is now” or a “loan” version of the Ship of Theseus?  When it lost currency / died out in the UK but was still in common use in America was it then immediately “American”?  Equally when it came back to the UK (presumably little changed, but perhaps also having evolved slightly) from the US, was simply the return of a native or an imported Americanism?

So… you’re both right! 

Languages – like other human mind-artifacts – have more paths for evolution than e.g. lifeforms.  Although we’ve been aware for a while those are more complex than simple “descent with modification”.

[mdavidford]

That doesn’t make it an

That doesn’t make it an americanism. It came from here originally.

And even if they have got(ten) it from how people talk in America, so what? This is how language works. If you got rid of everything imported into (British) English from other languages, well there wouldn’t be much left.

[wtjs]

Except it is. The police are
Except it is. The police are not transcribing from illuminated Middle English parchments, they’re parroting what they’ve seen on American films and TV

[mdavidford]

David9694 wrote:

wtjs wrote:

I meant the ‘gotten‘

ah, another Americanism creeping in to UK English

Except, like a lot of these things, it isn’t an americanism. It’s been around since Middle English. It would be more accurate to describe the use of ‘got’ in dynamic situations as a ‘britishism’.

[David9694]

Yes, our legal system does

Yes, our legal system does seem to have a thing about signs. I guess you feel like you’ve responded to an issue, e.g. by putting up a/ another standard red circle prohibition sign and then saying in words underneath what it means.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thornton_v_Shoe_Lane_Parking_Ltd

In ye olde cases, the argument was that on receiving say a train ticket from the desk if you didn’t like it you could reverse the transaction and walk away.  Not so easy with a machine.  Anyway, the upshot in Thornton was, as every public liability lawyer knows, that the “don’t blame us if you get hurt while youre parked here” clause wasn’t going to hold up. 

“In order to give sufficient notice, it [acontract] would need to be printed in red ink with a red hand pointing to it – or something equally startling.”

[David9694]

wtjs wrote:

I meant the ‘gotten‘

ah, another Americanism creeping in to UK English

[chrisonabike]

David9694 wrote:

David9694 wrote:

[…], there isnt a problem out there that can’t be solved with MORE SIGNS, bigger signs, light-up signs, flashing signs, and even bigger signs.

Well, first did they have warning sign warning signs? Perhaps pre-warning-sign-warning-sign alerters would be safest?

Curiously the Dutch and indeed Danish hold that “moar sign” is something to be avoided for several reasons – but while those may include “evidence-based human factors engineering” and “road training aa part of the school curriculum for different age-groups” they don’t have our world-beating lawyers…

[Author]

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