Gobsmacked!: Ben Yagoda charts the 'British invasion of American English'
New book shows how British words such as 'kerfuffle' have filtered into American usage

"It has been common over the last century to see the United States as the dominant cultural exporter, shaping the global palette with blue jeans, rock'n'roll and the American idiom," said Dennis Duncan in The Washington Post.
Reminding us that the process can also work in the opposite direction, Ben Yagoda's new book sets out to analyse the "British invasion of American English". Yagoda, a professor emeritus of English, maintains that for most of the 20th century, the American "appetite for Britishisms" was small. But in the 1990s, this began to change, and British phrases such as "book a table", "spot-on" and "own goal" increasingly filtered into American usage.
Yagoda attributes this phenomenon to several factors, said Anne Curzan in The Wall Street Journal: they include the popularity of shows such as "The Crown" and "Downton Abbey", influential celebrities and journalists such as James Corden and Tina Brown, and the "online availability of British periodicals more generally". Well researched and non-judgemental, Gobsmacked! is the perfect read for "anyone fascinated by language".
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
It is also a book that will "make the average Briton proud", said Emma Brockes in The Guardian. As Yagoda charts the often ludicrous British terms that have made inroads into the US – among them "kerfuffle", "pear-shaped" and "boffin" – it's hard not to feel a bit patriotic. I particularly enjoyed the chapter on rude words, "the creation and usage of which is one of the few areas in which we remain world class".
"Gobsmacked!" relies heavily on the Google Books Ngram Viewer, a tool for measuring the "frequency of words across millions of texts online", and I eventually became "a bit sick of hearing about it". But such nerdiness is "worth putting up with for the sheer joy of the rest of the book".
Princeton 288pp £20; The Week Bookshop £17.99
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
-
September 6 editorial cartoons
Cartoons Saturday’s political cartoons include profiting from authoritarianism, and the National Guard entering the CDC
-
Should Britain withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights?
Talking Point With calls now coming from Labour grandees as well as Nigel Farage and the Tories, departure from the ECHR 'is starting to feel inevitable'
-
5 outspoken cartoons about Epstein survivors taking center stage
Cartoons Artists take on cover-ups, Trump surrounded, and more
-
Rigatoni with 'no-vodka sauce' recipe
The Week Recommends Comfort food meets a clever alcohol-free twist on a classic
-
6 blooming homes for gardeners
Feature Featuring a greenhouse in Illinois and 13 raised garden beds in New Mexico
-
The Roses: Olivia Colman and Benedict Cumberbatch star in black comedy reboot
The Week Recommends 'Acidly enjoyable' remake of the 1980s classic features a warring couple and toxic love
-
Film reviews: The Roses, Splitsville, and Twinless
Feature A happy union devolves into domestic warfare, a couple's open marriage reaps chaos, and an unlikely friendship takes surprising turns
-
Music reviews: Laufey, Deftones, and Earl Sweatshirt
Feature "A Matter of Time," "Private Music," and "Live Laugh Love"
-
Woof! Britain's love affair with dogs
The Explainer The UK's canine population is booming. What does that mean for man's best friend?
-
Millet: Life on the Land – an 'absorbing' exhibition
The Week Recommends Free exhibition at the National Gallery showcases the French artist's moving paintings of rural life
-
Thomasina Miers picks her favourite books
The Week Recommends The food writer shares works by Arundhati Roy, Claire Keegan and Charles Dickens