Posting Scottish tennis star Andy Murray’s Twitter photo.
Note: Here’s my post on chuffed. I’ve written a lot about various NOOBy uses of “bits” (for example here and here) but not Murray’s use, for which Americans would substitute “to pieces,” if anything. Nor has “jumper” (aka “sweater) made any inroads here, although, come to think of it, I bet Nancy Friedman has made some twee retail sightings.
… is not a NOOB but rather the title of my new book, due out 22 January 22 and pictured above. To order, all you have to do is click.
Not long ago, Nancy Friedman alerted me to the use of “Panto” in her native San Francisco. For the uninitiated, in the words of the Theatre-Britain website, “A panto is a traditional fairy tale complete with songs, dances, jokes, exaggerated characters and lots of audience participation. The British love a good panto. In fact the nation has been mad on it ever since the actor manager John Rich introduced it in 1717.” (Note to self: check “mad on it.”)
Now, the term used back in 1717 was “pantomime”; according to the Oxford English Dictionary, the shortened form “panto” didn’t appear till 1852. “Panto” now predominates and emerges (as Theatre-Britain neglected to note) in the Christmas season. And speak of the devil, here’s a current offering of a troupe near me:
The doing of pantos by American companies is a kind of cultural Britishism, but I am inclined not to view either “panto” or “pantomime” as a NOOB, for the simple reason that there isn’t any alternative word for that thing.
In my admittedly non-scientific experience, the gossip column of my local newspaper, the Philadelphia Inquirer, is my single best source for NOOBs. One reason, I speculate, is that the writers’ embarrassment at covering such silly stuff prompts them to frantic elegant variation, as if to say, “I don’t really mean this.”
In any case, in today’s paper I read, “One person browned off by the hacks at Sony Pictures is the company’s chief, Amy Pascal.”
“Browned off,” meaning angry or annoyed, originated as British service slang, with the OED’s first citation coming from 1938. “Browned-offedness” is a later, baroque variation.
… is clearly called for. Around 11:30 last night, Eastern Standard Time, this blog passed the 1,000,000 page view mark.
Many thanks to all who have read and commented and made suggestions. There seems to be a never-ending supply of NOOBs, so no leaving do for some time to come.
Rose Jacobs, a colleague of mine at the Chronicle of Higher Education’s “Lingua Franca” blog, recently reported a use of “in hospital” on the public radio show “This American Life.” I’ve never come upon one myself, only “to hospital.” So I still count the expression as “On the radar.”
Rose also linked to an amusing New York Times column by Roger Cohen, an Englishman who, returning there after more than thirty years in the U.S., was reminded of the significant differences in language. He also found that British English had changed in his absence:
Somewhere in the interim the letter aitch had become “haitch,” with the result that spelling out my family name (surname) was painful. You had somehow morphed into the ghastly reflexive “yourself,” as in, “And for yourself?”
I had thought non-reflexive “yourself,” like “myself” (“Myself and Bill went to the movie”) was as American as it gets. Live and learn.
… in the U.S. media, my friend Andrew Feinberg points out, as witness this use of the word in today’s Wall Street Journal:
notoneoffbritishisms.com 