Every day, the online Merriam-Webster dictionary chooses a “Word of the Day.” Yesterday it was “nobby,” which M-W defined as “cleverly stylish; chic, smart.” It derives from the noun “nob,” meaning a person of wealth or social distinction. (Interestingly it doesn’t appear to be etymologically related to “snob.”) There was no mention of the word being a Britishism, but it is. It doesn’t appear in the archives of the New York Times, and the only quote M-W gives is from the British magazine The New Statesman: “Sponsorship of nobby events seems to be the favourite PR trick for City firms in the soup.”

Similarly, almost all the citations in the Oxford English Dictionary are from British sources. The exceptions are the American Anglophiles Cole Porter (“Nowadays it’s rather nobby/To regard one’s private hobby/As the object of one’s tenderest affections”) and S.J. Perelman (“A serried row of floodlit edifices..trumpeted to the newcomer that he was in the nobbiest winter playground ever devised”).

Incidentally, the OED notes in its definition that the word is “In later use depreciative,” that is, mocking. Merriam-Webster appeared to be unaware of this and took some heat on Twitter:

As found by Nancy Friedman:

More on British/Australian “fully” here.

Shades of “baby bump.” Once again, a singsongy term (that one alliterative and prenatal, this one rhyming and post-) much loved by the Daily Mail and other British tabloids has made its way to the U.S. Unlike the very popular “baby bump,” this new one doesn’t have much of a presence over here–where the preferred affectionate term is “mommy,” not “mummy”–but being featured in an NPR story a couple of days ago may change that.

Don’t get me wrong. It isn’t my place to comment on any exercise new mothers (or anyone else) choose to undertake. But let’s not take away their dignity. The NPR story says of this condition, “It turns out the jelly belly actually has a medical term: diastasis recti, which refers to a separation of the abdominal muscles.” So, rather than cutesy terms like “jelly belly” or “mummy tummy,” can’t we just call it what it is?

Picking up the “i” newspaper in London today, I read an interview with Alyssa Mastromonaco (lovely name), a former top adviser to Barack Obama who’s written a memoir of her time in the White House. She is an American. However, in the interview, she is quoted as saying: “OK, sure, there were arguments, because we were passionate people, but we always sorted our issues in house.”

My eye fixed on that word “sorted.” Although I have written a NOOBs post on the verb (it means, roughly, “take care of” and is unavoidable here), it really hasn’t penetrated to the U.S. And therefore, just as a few years back when I read an interview by a Welsh journalist in which American ex-CEO Al Dunlop was purported to say “rubbish” instead of “garbage,” I was dubious that Mastromonaco had actually used “sorted.”

Of course, it’s possible that she’s quite up on British lingo and purposely adopted it when talking to the reporter. But the only way to find out for sure is if Alyssa Mastromonaco reads this post. I await her comment.

Update: The internet sure is something. After posting this, I asked Ms. Mastromonaco on Twitter if she had said “sorted.” Within minutes, she replied that indeed she had. So this issue is sorted.