It started when I sent an article from the sports news site New York Times sports site The Athletic to my tennis buddy Don Lessem, who occasionally uncorks an underarm serve. The article was about the top professional Sara Errani, who uses the same dare I say underhanded tactic. Don wrote back: “What’s ‘nous’?”
I was pretty sure he wasn’t misspelling “new,” but otherwise I didn’t know what he was talking about. But when I read the article all the way through, I found this sentence:
“Instead of letting her serve become a complete albatross, Errani has used her ground skills, tactical nous and the shock factor of a serve that regularly registers around 60mph (96.5kph) on the speed gun to reach the very top of tennis in singles and doubles.”
Looking up “nous” in Green’s Dictionary of Slang, I find that it means “instinct or common sense, as opposed to actual learning”; that it rhymes with “mouse”; and that there are more than two dozen citations for it in British and Australian sources, going back to 1704, but only one American one, from an 1878 book.
The explanation for its appearance in the Athletic article is simple. Here’s the bio of the author of the article:
“Charlie Eccleshare is a tennis writer for The Athletic, having previously covered soccer as the Tottenham Hotspur correspondent for five years. He joined in 2019 after five years writing about football and tennis at The Telegraph.” The Telegraph being a British newspaper.
And in fact there are more Britishisms in this one particular piece:
- Eccleshare calls the underarm serve “cheeky.”
- He gives the speed of Errani’s serve as quoted above, and lists Errani’s her as “5ft 5in (164cm).” An American publication would never give the centimeter or kilometers per hour figures. (Eccleshare also leaves out the spaces that normal Times style requires, but that’s too nerdy a topic to get into, even for me.)
- He talks about her being “broken to love,” meaning a game in which she was serving but didn’t win a point. I’m not sure, but I think the American version is “broken at love.”
- He uses logical punctuation when he quotes someone as saying Errani is “the brain of the team”.
- He uses single quotation marks, or inverted commas, when he refers to Errani of being one of the ‘Fab Four’ of Italian women’s tennis.
- He uses British spelling when he writes about a player who “practised,” rather than “practiced,” a particular shot.
Now, I don’t really have a problem with any of this. Arguably, it makes the writing more colorful. But it does point to a new and robust conduit for NOOBs. Other than that the Times owns the Athletic and their staffs are separate, I’m not exactly sure of the precise relationship between the two entities, but I got to the Errani piece and all other Athletic articles via the Times home page, and Athletic content is in the searchable Times database.. However, it’s clear that that Athletic pieces aren’t subject to Times style rules or editing. As a result, in the coverage not only of international sports but also of Premier League and European football, the Athletic is poised to be a massive source of NOOBs.
notoneoffbritishisms.com 
Actually, Chambers Dictionary says nous can be pronounces either to rhyme with cows or with noose.
As to giving both metric and imperial measurements, it could be worse. I was given a link recently to a BBC article that said “It has since emerged that a drone came within 273.40 yards (250m) of HMS Queen Elizabeth” which is more proof of my feeling that when people apply for a job as a journalist, they are given a maths test, and if they pass, they don’t get the job.
Why are drones flying near US airbases in Suffolk and Norfolk? – BBC News
I have absolutely no evidence for it, but I have long suspected that nous is borrowed (public* school slang filtering into HM Forces?) that from the Greek, “νους” which has various shades of meaning, including intelligence, understanding or intellect.
*That’s “public” as in private, Greek not generally being taught in state schools.
As for the units. Metric (SI) units have been taught in UK schools since at least the early 1970s, but there is still a sizeable cohort of the population that thinks in “old money” and likewise a cohort that finds the use of feet and inches impenetrable. Writers will often give both as a courtesy to readers who are not fluent in both systems. Those born in in the 1960s are generally comfortable in both systems, those born before and later perhaps less so.
Indeed, but I’m not against giving both, it’s just giving a conversion apparently accurate to a third of an inch. How accurate do you think the 250m was?
It’s not uncommon to hear “nous” in spoken English in Britain, but I have rarerly read it in modern writings. (Regarding the British spelling of the verb “to practise”, do Americans seeking help with a task, hope that someone can advice them?)
I would pronounce “nous” the same as “noose”. And yeah, it’s a classical Greek-ism. I never really batted an eye at it. I studied philosophy and Husserl’s terminology of noesis and noema, the noetic and the noematic, etc. – all derived from Greek νοῦς – is all pretty normal to me.
Interesting. I have noticed nous sneaking into a certain kind of snobby American writing for a few years now, though I never hear it spoken. I had no idea it was a NOOB. And that explains its sudden relative ubiquity; it has sneaked into a certain kind of snobby American writing precisely because it’s a NOOB.
It was common usage in Liverpool when I left 50 years ago ( to rhyme with ‘scouse’ ) but, it being slang or ‘common’, I never saw it in print and had no idea how it was spelled till later. Away from that city I have rarely heard or seen its use in the UK although I believe its meaning is generally understood.
Coincidentally, I’ve been listening to Mick Herron’s “Bad Actors” (2022), and the British narrator, Gerard Doyle, has just read the part about so-and-so’s “nous,” which he rhymed with “mouse.”
As a Brit I wouldn’t use this myself naturally, but it’s not unheard. I’d expect it to rhyme with mouse, probably, but it would be quite dialect dependent.
I’ve heard it to rhyme with ‘mouse’ and on occasion I’ve said it like that (I’m from the West Midlands) but I could certainly imagine a Scotsman (or woman) who says ‘mouse’ like ‘moose’ saying it exactly like the word ‘noose’
Lynne Murphy at Separated by a Common Language blogged on nous, gumption, horse sense, pointing out that the OED’s definition of nous as “Common sense, practical intelligence, ‘gumption’” itself uses a chiefly British sense of “gumption”.