KVHAA Konferenser 36:145-158. Stockholm
1996
American and British words John Algeo
American and British English are clearly one language. But also just as clearly, they are distinct varieties of that language. The distinction befween the varieties is least obvious in grammar. It is most salient in pronunciation, and particularly intonation. But it is greatest in vocabulary: the forms and uses of words. This paper examines some ways British is distinct from American for three semantic fields in words beginning with the letter e. A few comments about these qualifications limiting the scope of the paper are in order. First, the corpus for this paper is limited to words with the initial letter e, including all such words in the combined files of Allen Walker Read and John and Adele Algeo. Allen Walker Read collected about 100,000 citations of British uses from the eighteenth century to the 1960s. Read's citations include notably comments by English visitors to America and American visitors to England, concerning the odd uses of the foreign land in which they found themselves.
My wife and I have been collecting contemporary citations of Briticisms since the 1960s and now have more than 50,000. In these combined corpuses, there are more than a thousand Briticisms beginning with e, which is a large enough number to serve as the basis for some conclusions, but not so large as
to be daunting for the present purpose. It is also a corpus currently being investigated by my student, Susan Wright Sigalas, for her doctoral dissertation at the University of Georgia.
Second, the corpus consists of Briticisms and so the focus of this paper is on how British differs fromAmerican, not the reverse. British andAmerican English define each other: what is British is what is notAmerican, and vice versa. The usual approach in British-American studies is to assume British English as a norn and to look at the ways American departs from it. This approach, generally unacknowledged, has been practically universal in scholarly studies. Only a few popular works have taken the opposite or a more balanced stand. For example, the Oxford English Dictionary, undeniably the greatest of scholarly works on the history of the English vocabulary labels Americanisms, Australianisms, Canadianisms, Indianisms, New Zealandisms, Scotticisms, South Africanisms, West Indianisms, and so on. However, it has no
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labels for Briticisms, the usage of England. The unspoken assumption in the OED is that anything used in England is English pure and simple, and that anything used only outside England is something else, a variation of core English. Such an assumption is pardonable in a dictionary intended only for domestic use within England, but is unacceptable in a work that pretends to general international relevance.
language is not located in a landscape or in a political entity such as a nation. It is located in the brains and on the tongues of its speakers. English is thus to be found wherever English-speakers are. And English-speakers are found all over the world. Since a majority of native speakers of English are' however, now in the United States, it is not completely unreasonable to regard the American variety as the norm of the language and to study minority varie-
A
ties with reference to it. Such a view may not appeal to His Royal Highness, the Prince of Wales, for whom architectural and linguistic rectitude appear to be matters of greater
concern than some other norms of behavior. Nor will it appeal to those for whom the export of British English is a significant industry or those who have invested heavily in it. However, the approach taken here is to see how British differs from the norm of American. Third, the terms "British" and "Briticism" hele refer to the standard use of English in England. They are not ideal terms for that purpose but are used for
lack of better ones. The polysemy of the wotd Englisft refening on the one hand to the English language in all of its pied beauty and on the other hand to the geographical area of England encourages confusion. What counts here as a Briticism is any usage associated specifically with England by label or definition in dictionaries or any usage identified as a British varietal distinction by Britons or Americans. Some of the words so counted may not be Briticisms by some other criteria, but the definition used here is a purely operational one.
Fourth, the semantic fields into which the Briticisms were classified are a-posteriori ones, derived from an inspection of the corpus. Initially 73 such fields were used to classify the corpus of Briticisms; they were of considerable variation in size, ranging from a single word to about 60 in a field. Those semantic fields included law, crime, politics, social classes, royalty, derogation, entertainment, sports, communication, animals, plants, occupations, and so on. Other fields and other assignments of words to fields would be easily possible, any such classification being to some extent arbitrary' Because of time and space limitations, I have here restricted attention to three of the more populous semantic fields: education, food, and transportation. The appendix lists nearly 150 Briticisms beginning with the letter e in these three semantic fields. Following are brief comments on the fields and selected items in them.
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One of the largest areas of semantic differentiation is education. That is not surprising. The older British systems of elementary preparatory, and university education were not carried over intact to America, where new systems were instead developed to meet the social and geographical needs of the new land. Postgraduate education, when it developed in America, followed a German rather than a British model. And so there was from the beginning a sharp hiatus between educational practice in the New World and that in Britain, a hiatus intensified by the recent independent development in Britain andAmerica of universal education on all levels. There is today, to be sure, a great deal of mutual influence, but the historical divergence has produced many differences in practice and thus in the vocabulary for talking about that practice. Much of the terminological difference befween British andAmerican educational matters therefore reflects differences in the things named. Names for the divisions of the academic year in Britain reflect the ecclesiastical origins of British education: terms such as Christmas, Easter Michaelmas, HiIary (commemorating an otherwise obscure French saint), Lent, and Trinity. American academic terms are distinctly duller, more prosaic, and more secularfall, winte4 spring, summer. The use of seasonal names (which are not unknown in Britain but compete with the more churchy alternatives) is a reminder that the American academic calendar was created to allow children to be out of school when they were most needed for farm chores, an anomaly today. The system of English external examinations, by which faculty at one university write and grade tests for students at another university, is foreign to American education. The American analog is the national examination provided by a private testing company, but it is a distant analog. Even the term for the basic artifact of the examination is different: British examination paper is not used in America, where the term is simply examination, exam) or test, ot for its reciprocal aspects: questions and answers. Food is another area of extensive lexical differentiation between American and British use. Although earthnut has been an English word since AngloSaxon times, the plant is not native to America, so the first colonists did not need the name for it, and the term dropped out of use on the western side of the Atlantic. When the peanut spread to Britain, the term earthnut was sometimes extended to it there, but America had enough native terms for that food, inchtding peanut itself and the geographically more limited Africanisms goober (pea) and pinder. Thus an ancient English term, earthnut, has become a two-
fold Briticism, fust by being lost from American English through lack of its original referent and second by being innovatively applied in British English to a new referent for whichAmerican already had other terms. Endive is a particularly complex example. Also known as escarole, it comes in several varieties with leaves of variable width and curliness, used as a salad ingredient. The related plant chicory, also called succory or, to add to the
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confusion, Belgian endive, is cultivated by blanching its crown leaves for use also as a salad ingredient, when it is sometimes called witloof ot French en' dive.To sort out the use of the names for these plants, both Britons andAmericans have often been advised that the terms endive and chicory are used in opposite ways in their two countries, so they should simply reverse what they ttt" things when they are traveling in partibus infidelibus. That advice is "utt too simple. Americans, however, do tend to reserve chicory for the ground root ofthe piant as a coffee substitute and use endive generally for the salad ingredient, whatever its botanical identity. Other differences in food terms are due to British innovation. Egg mayonnaise,happily unknown inAmerica as either a term or a food, suggests a French culinary dtju:te,neri:/ or anglicb /'krlinerif model. Neither it nor itsAmerican r alad, are listed in general dictionaries; yet neither is semantically anutog, "gg and thus both neglected terms need lexicographical treatment. transparent, E[g cup is another Briticism. This article of crockery was generally unknown in nineteenth-century America. lnstead, when Americans ate softboiled eggs, they broke them into an ordinary cup or a wine glass, added seasoning, and stirred up the mixture'
In L833, u gritirh traveler in America made an observation about this (to him) peculiar American custom that many of his fellow countrymen echoed: ,,Wine-glasses are placed on the breakfast table in lieu of egg-cups. On enquiry, we learned from the waiter, that this is the universal custom, and that the Americans never eat an egg direct from the shell, but pour the contents into a wine-glass, in which they mix it up with salt before tasting it'" A generation later, an American traveling in England and staying at a London hotel in 1867 made a complementary observation: "The eggs were brought in [for breakfast] ... in egg-cups, with the shells unbroken, not broken into a glass as was the invariable practice in America' I was astonished to see in the egg thus eaten out of the eggshell." The term e88 cup, which is still rare
America,
as is its referent, is a
Briticism.
Some terms change their status, and do so quite rapidly. Espresso,both term and thing, was new to English in the 1940s. It seems to have entered British English first andAmerican afterwards, whether directly from Italian or by way of British is not clear. It is general English today. But in the 1940s it appears to have been a Briticism.
It is not surprising that transportation terms should vary, since the normal modes of transportation have changed radically since the political and cul-
tural separation of America and Britain. The two areas of greatest contrast are automoiive and railroading terms. Automotive terms, for cars, trucks, busses, and the road, are doubtless the most salient of contrasting transportation words.
Some automotive differences are obvious and so well known as to be
American and British
words
1,49
shibboleths of British-American difference: British estate car for American station wagon is a case in point. Others are subtler. The use of engage in collocation with gear is a Briticism; Americans do not usually "engage a gear"; instead they "put it in gear" or "put it in fust, second, third, high, reverse, etc." or they "shift gears." Engage (of a gear) is understandable to an American, but belongs to the wrong register for most car-talk. A passage like the following, from an Anthony Price thriller, would be impossible in American detective fiction: "'I'll be off then.'He engaged the gear and released the defective hand-brake to suit his words." An American analog might go something like this: "'I'm outta here.' He put the car in gear and took off the bum parking brake, to show he wasn't just flapping his gums." (Engage is generally more popular and less formal in British than inAmerican. [n addition to gears, British telephones and public toilets are often engaged, uses that are faintly comic to an American sensibility, which prefers busy and occupied, respectively.) Railroading language is obsolescent for mostAmericans, with the demise of the national rail system, replaced by passenger cars and trucks on interstate highways and by air travel especially for longer distances. American railroading terms are consequently nearly as foreign to most Americans as are their British equivalents, so the contrast is rapidly becoming one between British terminology and no terms at all. Even before the dismantling of the American train system, some of the traditional differences had ceased to be valid. In the heyday of the railroads, an often cited contrast was between British engine and American locomotive,but by the first third of this century the British alternative had been naturalized in American English. There are fewer differences in aviation, doubtless because it is highly international by nature. There is also a good deal of fluctuation in both British and American aviation terminology, for example, the terms for various classes of service (first class versus economy, tourist, excursion, or simply an unnamed "all others"). The airlines strive to find a set of terms that will distinguish firstclass seats from "all others" without making those who are the "all others" feel like what they are-second-class travelers. For all semantic categories, an interesting factor is the extent to which Briticisms, as operationally defined here, are recorded in the OED. As already observed, the OED does not label Briticisms, but in addition, it does not even enter a goodly number. About 39 percent of the Briticisms examined here have entries, main or subordinate, inthe OED. Another 9 percent are exemplified somewhere in the text of the OED, in quotations or definitions for other entries, but have no entries of their own. Thus 52 percent of these Briticisms are not in the OED at all and 61 percent have no entry in that work. The reasons for the omission from the OED of over half the Briticisms
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examined here are fairly clear. Many such terms would have been considered by the OED editors to be free combinations or contextualized semantic variants rather than independent lexicalized forms. Although Munay and his colleagues were generous in including what they regarded as free combinations and finely distinguished semantic categories, the number of candidates for such inclusion is very large. It is impossible in practice to include all in any dictionary, so the lexicographer has to rely on the competence of the native speaker to identify more or less predictable uses. However, what seems to a native speaker of British English to be a predictable use may not seem so to the speaker of another variety, such as American. Early tea (which does not have an OED entry) may seem to a British speaker to be obvious and therefore not needing a definition, but no American uninitiated into the mysteries of British mealtimes would have any notion of what it is. Similarly, egg soldier is transparent to someone who knows about the soldiers that are strips of bread and what they are used for, but not to ignorant Americans. A single word that falls into the same category is excess for what Americans would call "overtime" or "violation" on a parking meter, as in excess charge and excess flag. Such extended use of excess may seem to be obvious to British speakers, but it is a pruzlement to others. That use is probably recent, however, and so suggests another reason for its lack
of entry. Some items are probably missing from the OED because they are too new, even for Robert Burchfield's Supplement, or the lightly expanded content of the merged "second edition." An instance is Eurotunnel. Others are perhaps too rare to have been picked up by the OED edilors or, if collected, too infrequent in use to have passed editorial scrutiny of what to include. Examples may be esquire bedell and Eve's pudding. The OED also avoids proper names, although in fact a good many get included. Indeed, the grounds on which the OED has admitted or excluded proper names are not clear. Examination Schools as the name of a building at Oxford where examinations are held is, in fact, defined inthe OED, but has no citation or date, and seems to have been entered as an after-thought. Exonian is defined as a native or resident of the town of Exeter, but not as a student or alumnus of Exeter College. Some items may have been excluded because they were judged too dialectal. Easter-ledge pudding is, according to the unappetizing definition in the Collins Dictionary, a pudding made from the leaves of the bistort plant. The term is not attested in the OED, but then it is a Northern delicacy and so is its name. Northern things have been given short shrift in Southern England ever since Chaucer's "Miller's Tale." On the other hand, the OED does have an entry for emmet in the sense of a tourist in Cornwall . Emmet's primary meaning is 'ant'. Tourists in Cornwall
American and British
words
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are so called because at certain seasons of the year they swarm like ants. The term would seem to be just as regionally limited as Easter-ledge pudding, and to be a joke word in addition. Perhaps it is mere happenstance that emmet 'tourist'is included inthe OED whereas Easter-ledge pudding is not. Some items are probably missing because they were judged not to be lexical matters on principle. An instance is the phrase eggs and bacon for what in American use would be bacon and eggs. In this case one of the OED citations
contains some misinformation. The dictionary's entry for the tetm co-text includes the following citation commenting on the collocation of the words eggs and bacon: 1965 B. M. H. Strang Metaphors & Models 4 Bacon and eggs is reversible, asfish , nd chips is not, ... by reason of linguistic information about position and about the items in the co-text (the words bacon, eggs, fish, chips).
Barbara Strang's observation about the reversible order of bacon and eggs appears to be supported by Ihe OED evidence, for the body of the dictionary includes 14 instances of bacon and egg(s) (12 with the plural eggs and 2 with the singular egg) and L3 instances of egg(s) and bacon (10 with the plural eggs and 3 with the singular egg). According to the dictionary's evidence, the two orders are practically equal in frequency, and thus the words are reversible in the expression. However, the text of the OED is overwhelmingly British. I have asked a fair
sampling of Americans which order they think is more natural, and their response is overwhelmingly, indeed so far universally, in favor of bacon and eggs.The word order eggs and bacon is not impossible, but it is not normal for Americans. The phrase as a term for a typical breakfast menu is not fully reversible inAmerican use. Such a difference between British andAmerican in the preferred ordering of the parts of a set expression needs to be recorded in dictionaries as lexical information. Only a few terms have been discussed here; others are listed in the appendix. They are limited to Briticisms beginning with the letter e in the semantic areas of education, food, and transportation. But they are fairly representative of the much larger range of British-American word differences. From even this brief discussion, two conclusions should be apparent. One is that British and American words differ extensively. The other is that dictionaries, including or even especially that Queen of dictionaries, the OED, do a poor job of recording such differences. In particular, the distinctive lexical features of British English have been unconscionably neglected. An attempt to redress that neglect will be made by the dictionary of Briticisms for which my wife and I have been gathering additional evidence for the past few years whileAllen Walker Read's extensive file of citations has been computerized. Like all works of human hands, it will
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be incomplete and flawed, but it will make an effort to do on a large scale what so far has been done mainly by enthusiasts on relatively small scales: to identify the range of distinctive words in British English.
Appendix Briticisms in Education, Food, andTransportation Beginning with the Letter E KEY ; lno OED entry, earliest date for the term occurring in a citation under another entry, followed by that entry form]; {no OED record, earliest date in the Read orAlgeo files)
Education early school Schooling between 7:30 and 8:30 {1949} Easter term The term between Easter and mid-summer <1603> Edinburgh UniversityA university founded in 1583 education(al)ist 1: Educational theorist <1,857;1827> 2z Educator Educational Welfare Offrcer formerly: school attendance ffice4 truancy officer One who investigates the out-of-school life of pupils for interference with their attendance or achievement education authority grant Financial support provided for college students {1e87} Education Committee School board [1911 counci| education inspectorAn educational supervisor of home schooling {1993} ekker Exercise (Oxford slang) <1891> Electoral RollA body at Cambridge University {1898} elementary (child/education/schooVteacher) Pertaining to a state school for pupils between 5 and 13 or 14; primary school <- education 1870, - school 1841> {- child 1942, - teacher 1939} (The category was abolished by the Education Act ot 1944) eleven plus l,: The age, between 11 and 12, when pupils leave primary school <1937> 2: An examination formerly taken by children at age 10-12 to determine the type of secondary education they would receive: academic (grammar school), nonacademic (secondary modern school), or technical (technical school) <1957> emigrant One who changes colleges within a university {1356} Emma, Emmanuel CollegeA Cambridge college founded in 1584 Encaenia, Encenia with sg. or pl. verb An annual university ceremony at Oxford; Commencement or Honors Day <169L> endowed school A private preparatory school with an endowment <1846>
American and British
words
153
entrance paper Entrance examination {1979)
entry Group or class who begin together {1991} equipollence The grouping of colleges so that each group is equally attractive to potential students
- equipollent {1957}
ESN Educationally sub-normal < 1955> esquire bedell One of three mace-bearers who accompany the vice-chancellor at Cambridge on ceremonial occasions [1873 beadleship)
ET Employment Training {1990} Eton boyA student at Eton Eton (College) A public school founded in 1440 and now socially influential and associated with upper-class prejudice Etonian (A student or alumnus) of Eton College <1770> Euclid Geometry, as a school subject {1869} evangelical college Denominational college { 1884} evening classes/school Night school <- school 1822, - classes (L579) [1929 junior]> Examination Board The authority that organized the GCSE and A-level examinations {1988} examination funk Motivation to work because of fear {1840-5} (ct OED examination fev
e
r L884)
exam(ination) paper 1: The printed questions for an examination 2: A candidate's written answers to the questions of an examination
- 1837>
Examination Schools 1: Curricula at Oxford with formal examinations <1868> 2: A building in Oxford where examinations are held {1916} exeat [Latin 'let him depart'] A leave of absence for a student <1725-51.> - Exeat Day {1965} - Exeat Sunday {1965} exercise Any of four preliminary examinations for a Cambridge degree (two o'acIs" and two "opponencies") {1888} exercise book Composition book; blue book <1813> ex-ex-seventh Formerly, a council school class beyond the ex-seventh {1921.} exhibition An award for study, usually for high performance on an entrance examination, distinguished from a scholarship exhibitionerA student granted an EXHTBTTToN <1679> Exonian 1: A native or resident of Exeter <1871> 2: A member of Exeter College, Oxford {1926} ex-seventh Formerly, an advanced class in council schools beyond the seventh standard (age 12) {I92I} extern A nonresident student <1848> external (conference / course / degrce / exam(ination) / examiner / examining) 1: Extension; home-study; administered by another university <- examination 1912, - examiner 1888> 2: External examination {1989}
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John Algeo
externally By nxreRxar EXAMINERS {1958} extramural (Of courses, classes) Extension {1945},
FOOD E- prefix See E NurrlnBn e and b, e&b Eggs and bacon {1988} Earl Grey [Charles, 2dEarl Grey, d. 1845]A black tea, China or China-Indian blend, scented with bergamot oil <1958 Indian> early (morning) tea Tea with bread and butter delivered to a bedroom before
breakfast learly tea L862 pikelet; early morning tea I9ll Russianl earthnut also called pignut 1: A European plant, Conopodium maius, with edible tubers <875> 2: A peanut EasterJedge pudding northern dial. Apudding made from the bistort (Easter ledge) plant eaterAn eating apple eating-house A modest restaurant <1440> eating ironmilitary Eating utensils {1982} eating-parlour Dining room <1823> eating room Dining room, domestic or commercial eating-shop Snack shop {1933} Eccles cake [Eccles, Greater Manchester] A small round cake of flaky pastry filled with raisins and candied fruit eddo(es) Taro <1-685> Eden Vale milk Packaged milk for coffee or tea {1986} Edinburgh rock [after Castle Rock in Edinburgh]A rock-candy bar flavored with peppermint and cinnamon 11949 tartanl eel and pie shop A food store selling eels and meat pies {1987} eel pieA potpie made with eelsll828 bushl egg and bacon pieA Northern dish {1938} egg and chips n. sing. Eggs and french fries {1985} egg and meat boat Toast, scrambled egg, and sausage arranged to resemble a boat {1986} egg cosy A cloth cover to keep a boiled egg warm <1894> egg cup A small handleless cup for holding a boiled egg to be eaten from its shell <1773> eggcupful A cooking measurement egg mayonnaise Sliced hard-boiled egg with mayonnaise; cf. Am. egg salad
fL9I4lobster) egg powder Powdered eggs <1862> eggs and bacon Bacon and eggs (phrasal order) 11749 whatl
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words
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egg slice A spatula for removing eggs from a frying pan 4796> egg soldier A strip of toast for dipping in egg yolk [1966 soldierf egg spoon A small spoon for eating soft-boiled eggs <1886> eggspoonful A cooking measurement {1944} egg wedgerA device for cutting a hard-boiled egg into wedges
egg *rriir< 1: An egg beater <1868> 2z slang An autogiro, helicopter-like airplane {1943}
Egon Ronay A restaurant guide 11975 privatel elbow Elbow pasta {L987} elevenses, elevens, eleven's with sg. or pl. verb 1: A morning snack time about LL a.m.; cf. Am. morning coffee bteak 2z Specif., the food and drink at that snack 4927> elevenses-counter (Morning) snack bar {1946} Elvira new potatoes {1987} endive A lettuce-like plant (Cichorium endivia) of the daisy family with bitter leaves used in salads; in Am., the young crown of the chicory or Belgian endive (Cichorium intibus)blanched by growth in darkness for use in salads <1.440>
Engtish breakfast A breakfast including cooked foods such as eggs' bacon, and porridge, contrasted with Continental brealcfasr <1807> entrecdte Boned rib steak entrde A course between fish and meat; in Am. and non-U Brit., a main dish <1759; no entry for theAm. sense> E number [European] In lists of ingredients on food packages, a number prefixed with the letter E, denoting a particular additive in an EEC identification system <1977>
Epping butter A kind of butter { 1960} escarole Endive (British sense) <1897> espresso Coffee made by forcing steam through finely ground beans <1945> Extract, as in vanilla essence [used in the definition of vanille ice], "ri.rr"" coffee essence 11897 coffee'1, almond essence {1986} Essex duck Sheep's head (as a food) {1954} Essex (hog/pig)Abreed developed in Essex for bacon rather than lard <1838> Everton toffee 1: A kind of candy named for the Liverpool suburb 4861> 2z riming slang Coffee <1857> Eve's PuddingA kind of nursery food {1987} TRANSPOKTAIION Ecopave A type of ecologically sound road paving {1993} Ecosivephoron obsoleteA large van {1.961, said to have been current "in early
Victorian times")
'J,56 John Algeo Elder Brother p/. Elder Brethren One of thirteen senior members of Trinity House, an institution responsible for navigation around the British coast, cf. Am. Coast Guard 11696 brother) electric Electric train {L991} electric adjustment Of a car seat, movability by electricity {1989} electricarA bus used in a mine {1954} electric road Electric trolley {1904} electrobus An electrically propelled bus <1906> electrolyte Battery fluid <1834 general sense; L968 reference to batteries>
{re43} electronic tagAn electronic monitoring device attached, for example, to a car to keep track of its whereabouts {1989} electronic toll A highway toll collected electronically {1993} elevator plane An airplane elevator to make it ascend or descend {1956} embus To board a bus <19L5>
emergency hammer
A
hammer to break train windows
in an emergency
{1e8e} emmetA tourist (in Cornwall) <1975> engage (a gear) Shift into; put in {1980} engine Train locomotive <1838> engine bay Part of an automobile {1986} engine driver Train engineer f1.846 junctionf engine seizure An automotive breakdown {1991} engine shed Roundhouse [1971 runningf erect 1: Make up/down (a Pullman sleeper bed) {I9a2} 2zPfi up (a convertible top) {1986} E registeredA type ofcar registration {1990} escape lane/road An exit from a highway for a vehicle in difficulty estate (car/wagon) Station wagon <- car 1950, - wagon 1959> {estate 1985} Eurocity Eurocity Express, a British airline {1987} Eurohub A center of European transportation { 1989} Euro-lorry A large European truck {1986} Eurotunnel 1: The Anglo-French company building a rail tunnel under the English channel {1986} 2: The Channel tunnel Euston Station A train station in north-central London serving the western Midlands and Scotland; the nearby underground station except for access A road sign forbidding vehicles (of a certain size or weight) entrance to a road unless their destination is on that road excess charge Overtime parking fee on a meter excessed A label put on luggage on a train to indicate that overweight charges have been paid <1888 (of railway tickets)> {1895}
American and British
words
'1,57
excess flagA yellow overtime indicator on a parking meter {1990} excursion class Economy class (on airlines) {L987} excursion ticketA reduced-fare round-trip train ticket {1354} excursion trainA special train run for vacationers executive class Business class (on airlines) {1957} exhaust box Muffler <1903> express-carrier Special delivery ofpurchased goods by a store {1901}
express coachA long-distance bus {1952} express omnibus A fast l,ondon bus operating at rush hours {1869} express train A train run for a special occasion, stopping only at particular stations <1841>
Selected bibliography Algeo, John. 1986a. "National Standards Bulletin, 3.2 (Dec.):
-
in an International
Dictionary.,, Euralex
1.
1986b. "The Two Streams: British and American English." Journal of English Lin guis tic s 19 :269-84.
1987.'A Dictionary of Briticisms." Dictionaries 9:L64-18.
1988a. 'A Computer Corpus for a Dictionary of Briticisms." In: Corpus Linguistics, Hard and Sort: Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference on English Innguage Research on Computerized Corpora, ed. Merja Kytci, Ossi Ihalainen & Matti Rissanen, 45-59. Amsterdam: Rodopi. 1988b. "The Year British English Began." SECOL Review 12:176-85. 1989a. "Americanisms, Briticisms, and the Standard: An Essay at Definition.,, In: Standardizing English: Essays in the History of Language Change in Honor of John Hurt Fisher, ed. Joseph B. Trahern, Jr., 139-57. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press.
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1989b. "British-American kxical Differences: A Tlpology of Interdialectal Variation." In: English across Cultures; Cultures across English: A Reader in Crosscultural Communication, ed. Ofelia Garcia & Ricardo Otheguy, 21941.. Berlin:
Mouton de Gruyter. 1989c. "Queuing and Other Idiosyncraciesl'World Englishes 8.2:15743. 1989d. "Research in Progress: A Dictionary of Briticisms." English World-Wide
10:12314. 1990. "American and British English: Odi et Amo." In: papers from the 5th International Conference on English Historical Linguistics, Cambridge, 6-9 April 1987, ed. Sylvia Adamson, Vivien Law, Nigel Vincent & Susan Wright, 13--29. Amsterdam: Benjamins. 1994. "Pan-Atlantic Usage Guidance." In: Centennial Usage Studies, ed. Greta D. Little & Michael Montgomery 101-7. PADS 78. Tuscaloosa: Univ. of Alabama Press.
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l995a. "British andAmerican Biases in English Dictionaries." lnl. Cultures, Ideologies, and the Dictionary: Studies in Honor of Ladislav Zgusta, ed. Braj B. Kachru & Henry Kahane, 205-12. lrxicographica Series Maior 64. Tiibingen: Niemeyer. 1995b. "Having a l-ook at the Expanded Predicate." In: The Verb in Contemporary English: Theory and Description, ed. Bas Aarts & Charles F. Meyer, 203-17. Cambridge: University Press.
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l995c. "TheAmerican Language and Its British Dialect." SECOL Review 19:
ll4-
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