Category Archives: Outliers

Not long after I started spending time in London, I noticed the use of a phrase for which there is no precise U.S. equivalent: “on the day.” I know quite well that Americans use those words in that order, but not quite in the same context as in the U.K. I searched the phrase on Google News, and the first page of hits all came from British or Commonwealth sources. Here they are:

• “These games are often fifty-fifty at best and even the well credentialled teams are vulnerable to a bit of bad luck on the day.” (Australian sports site The Roar)
• “Amongst the star performers on the day were young centre duo Jack Roberts and George Catchpole.” (Bourne [England] Local)
• “Umpiring is a real team environment, just as playing is. We prepare to perform well, and all that matters is making sure you get it right on the day.” (The Roar, again)
• “There’s been widespread condemnation from fans and teams alike of Force India, who blocked Manor (previously Marussia, previously Virgin, previously Manor) F1’s return to the grid, based on a half-baked excuse they came up with on the day.” (English Formula 1 site Badger GP)
• “’Potentially, it’s a very useful tool but its complementary to the main pollsters. It would be feasible to do it on the day [of an election],’ he said.” (The Guardian)

That last one is interesting, because the bracketed insertion represents (to my mind) precisely the American version. That is, we are more explicit, saying  “on the day of [fill in the event],” or “when the day finally arrived,” or “on the day itself.” I have no idea why The Guardian should have felt the need to add “of an election,” other than as a gesture to its increasing number of American online readers.

I bring all this up because the other day I heard Vickie Barker’s very American voice, in an NPR report on London’s “Visit My Mosque” campaign, say these words: “But on the day, the center was packed with visitors sipping tea, nibbling pizza and cake, and eagerly listening to community members like Zahra Khimji describe a typical week there.”

NPR doesn’t provide any information about Ms. Barker, but I found a 2012 interview with her saying she had lived in London “over twenty years.” That makes at least twenty-five now, which is clearly enough time to lead even a Yank journo to say “on the day.”

There’s something about the Boston Globe. Hard on the heels of columnist Alex Beam’s “not by a long chalk” comes this from his fellow columnist Yvonne Abraham: “Occasionally, the eye-popping cost of a blood test gives us pause, but generally, we bin without a second thought.”

“Bin”–meaning to throw something in the rubbish bin (meaning the garbage can)–is not only rare in the United States, it’s non-existent. I can say that because Lynne Murphy of Separated by a Common Language took the trouble to trawl the massive Corpus of Contemporary American English and find that it contains not a single instance of “bin” as a verb.

Googling “Yvonne Abraham” provides an explanation: as she says in this interview (and as her accent makes obvious), she hails from Australia. But as Jan Freeman (who alerted me to the quote) points out, “I doubt that her editor is also from a bin-speaking nation.”

I thought it would never happen, but it did. Lynne Murphy has alerted me that the American site Slate has published the following sentence. (It’s from the Dear Prudence advice column; a woman has written in complaining that all her friends want to talk about is their darling baby grandchildren.)

Let’s hope these two can get free from the nappies long enough to come to brunch at your house or join you somewhere for coffee.

There is no reason for no reason for an American writing for an American publication to use “nappies” instead of “diapers”–other than being cute, that is. There’s nothing wrong with being cute, of course, but I would be gobsmacked if “nappies” caught on here.

My friend Henry Fuhrmann, a copyeditor (subeditor to you lot) on the Los Angeles Times, today posted this image to Facebook:

He noted: “We usually leave the Britishisms to, well, the British. But I like how Mary McNamara used ‘fug’ — meaning the unpleasant air in a crowded room — in her weekend commentary on Bill Cosby.”

The only “fug” I was aware of was the euphemism invented by Norman Mailer in The Naked and the Dead, later picked up by Ed Sanders in naming his ’60s rock band. But sure enough, the OED notes the word is “originally School slang” and provides this definition: “A thick, close, stuffy atmosphere, esp. that of a room overcrowded and with little or no ventilation.” The first citation was an 1888 quote from novelist E.F. Benson: “Seating himself in the most comfortable chair, as a consolation for the prevailing fug.” And there was also the interesting variation “fug-footer,” meaning indoor football and apparently spotted at Harrow in 1884.

Well played, Ms. McNamara!

John Grossmann alerts me that in today’s New York Times, columnist Nicholas Kristof (born in Yamhill, Oregon) refers to someone “rushing a gravely injured student to hospital.”

Truth to tell, I had always thought of as the Britishism as “in hospital,” compared to the American “in the hospital.” But a check of Google News reveals that Kristof’s usage is indeed a common British form. The American version is either “to a hospital” or (less commonly than in the “in” form) “to the hospital.”

This is the first “to hospital” or “in hospital” I’ve seen in lo these many years of paying attention to such things. So, until I find evidence to the contrary, I’m going to categorize this as an “outlier.”

I meant to note a Britishism uttered on my favorite television show, The Simpsons, a few of weeks ago. I figure that two days after the Super Bowl is about the right time! In the words of the recap on Celebrity Cafe:

Lisa emerges in the kitchen with a book titled “Pretending to Like Football” by Mrs. John Madden. Lisa dishes out a fact about “American football” before Bart interrupts her saying that it’s not “American” football; it’s just football. Lisa rubs it in that Milhouse invited her to the “American” football game instead of Bart. And Bart tattles on Lisa to Marge.

Congrats to the Seattle Seahawks side and their supporters for a brilliant match.

I’ve been reading about the return tour of an American cult rock band from the 1990s, Neutral Milk Hotel. The reviews all mention the album that’s considered their best, “In the Aeroplane Over the Sea.”

Aeroplane was first used for a “heavier-than-air aircraft,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary, in 1868, that is, before the aeroplane before it was invented. The OED describes airplane as “chiefly North American”; its first citation is from a 1906 Scientific American article that notes: “Air-plane is a much better word than aeroplane. It is as good etymologically, and much better when it is spoken.” The OED comments: “Airplane became the standard U.S. term (replacing aeroplane) after it was adopted by the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics in 1916. Although A. Lloyd Jones recommended its adoption by the BBC in 1928, it has until recently been no more than an occasional form in British English.”

Google Ngram Viewer confirms this analysis:

If the chart is too small to make out, it shows that aeroplane is still (barely) the preferred spelling in the U.K., and is virtually never used in the U.S.–other than in Neutral Milk Hotel albums.

Of course, I’d bet that in both lingos, the far preferred term is plane.