Whenever I read the word randy (quoth the OED: “orig. Sc. and Eng. regional. Lustful; eager for sexual gratification; sexually aroused. [Now the usual sense.]”), my mind’s eye and ear  instantly visualize Austin Powers in full leer: “Feeling randy? Fancy a shag?” Then I start visualizing Brits “‘avin’ a laff” about all the Americans with names like Randy Newman, Randy Travis, and Randy Moss.

This has been happening more and more lately, most recently last night as I was reading a Jonah Lehrer article in the New Yorker in which he mused about the odd behavior of male Australian gray-crowned babblers: “Instead of acting like randy juveniles, seeking out mates and getting into territorial fights, they are content to remain at home.”

But it’s not just The New Yorker, as witness:

“In the Mood,” a new song and a strong indication of where New Edition is likely to go next, was a randy, simmering seduction anthem. (Newark Star Ledger, February 21, 2012)

Seth [the Justin Theroux character in the film “Wanderlust”] suggests a cross between Charles Manson and a randy hobbit. (Boston Herald, February 23, 2011)

The only conceivable response is:

“Yeah, baby.”

I first presented this “U”-phemism–first cited by the OED, appropriately, in a 1940 Nancy Mitford quote–as a Portland, Oregon, outlier, but I now believe it’s made the grade as a NOOB. The Google Ngram chart, below, shows a more than 50 percent increase in U.S. use between 200o and 2008:

Then there are these recent quotes:

I saw Another Happy Day, and thought you really brought it home playing the bitch ex stripper, coke-whore mom — nearly spitting nails with every word catapulted at your co-star, Ellen Barkin. That cat fight in the loo alone was worth the price of admission (“An Oscar-Themed Open Letter to Demi Moore,” Huffington Post, February 28, 2102)

SUSPECTED PEEPING TOM HITS CAMPUS LOO (Coast Report Online, Costa Mesa, Cal., February 21, 2012)

…it’s no longer the morning news that dad is reading on the loo, but rather a tablet computer. (Consumer Reports.org, February 17, 2012)

I can’t top that, so, like George Costanza and Mitt Romney, I will just say:

Gotta go!

No pun intended.

Daft, previously designated On the Radar, is edging perilously close to a proper NOOB. From a Richard Sandomir article about Magic Johnson and AIDS in today’s New York Times:

“Science caught up to the public optimism that made Johnson sound daft or in deep denial on the day of his announcement.”

Your thoughts?

I know Michael Sokolove. Michael Sokolove is a friend of mine. I have not served in the Senate with Michael Sokolove, but I have broken bread with him and played basketball with him and happen to know he hails from Lower Bucks County, Pennsylvania. And so I was surprised to read him say–in a Q and A  at the New York Times website regarding his excellent recent article about Oscar Pistorius:

One of the great things about sport is that it is in some ways primitive, or we want to imagine it is.

The surprising thing was that he said sport, a Britishism, rather than the American sports. (We do, however, refer to baseball as a sport and to a person asa good sport.)I asked him about it and he blamed it on his English son-in-law.

But Sokolove is not alone. Times columnist David Brooks, theorizing on the Jeremy Lin phenomenon, recently wrote:

The moral ethos of sport is in tension with the moral ethos of faith, whether Jewish, Christian or Muslim. The moral universe of modern sport is oriented around victory and supremacy.

A headline in the Philadelphia Inquirer late last year read: “Money, not sport, the name of the game.” And a while back, Slate had this one: “Politics and sport: a dangerous mix.”

The next thing you know, we’ll be talking about maths.

@KenJennings of Jeopardy fame tweets:

What is going on where we are suddenly calling redheads “gingers”? People, we won the Revolutionary War, we don’t have to put up with this.

Hey, Ken, you may be the king of all trivia but you have to brush up your NOOBs: Ginger is the second most all-time most popular entry on this blog. (FYI, bits is first and wanker is third.) You and any other interested party can sort out what’s going on with ginger here.

Not One-Off Britishisms is one year and one day old, so happy belated birthday to me!

The very first post (on advert) has been followed by 142 more; there have been 686 comments and 79,492 page views. Massive attention has been paid, to which I say, “Cheers!” (a word that so far on these shores is seen only as a drinks salutation and e-mail closing, not as a substitute for thank you. Give it time).

Unaccountably, new NOOBs keep turning up, so I will carry on for a while. Talking of that, my next post will be on turn up (as a substitute for show up) and the one after that on talking of (speaking of).

Immediately. The OED cites a use as early as 1662; the subsequent examples given suggest that in roughly 1900, the predominant form changed from two words (straight away) to one (straightaway), though both versions are still found.

Since straightaway has a 100 percent precise and unobjectionable American equivalent, to wit, right away, its quite frequent use nowadays by U.S. writers is an excellent gauge of their unwavering fondness for NOOBs.

“I knew straightaway what had gone wrong—caps lock was depressed by accident—but instead of simply taking my lumps and re-entering my password, I vented: ‘Is there anything on the computer keyboard more annoying than the caps lock key?'” (Mathew X.J. Malady [“a writer and editor living in Manhattan”], Slate.com. February 1, 2012)

“A comedy about business consultants? Get them to a strip club straight away (‘House of Lies’ pilot, last month).(Neil Genzlinger, New York Times, February 4, 2012)

(Update, 11:59 AM Eastern time: We have not three but five correct answers. Check them in the comments.)

A reader who calls him or herself Avengah made this comment to my post about carry on:

Maybe “spoilt for choice” would be better as it’s the form more often used in England – e.g. spoilt brat / child, since I think you’re trying to give these posts an English flavour…?

I’m not sure that I’m actually trying to give the posts an English flavour, erm, flavor, but Avengah was very perceptive in noting that I find myself increasingly drawn to Britishisms like spoiled for choice, even when they are not NOOBs. Occupational hazard, I suppose.

So here’s a fun little task (you will be grateful that I am not repeating my woeful attempt, in this post’s title, to transliterate glottal stop). Can you find, in yesterday’s post on streets ahead,  three Britishisms about which I haven’t already written? (I have indeed done a post on a proper and it was Gareth who said “realising,” so these don’t count.) Hint: one of them is a proper NOOB that I plan to post on, one is nowhere in evidence on these shores, and the third is in between.

Put answers in comments, and please read the comments before commenting yourself: I will indicate correct and incorrect answers.

First of all, in answer to Gareth’s question, no. “Streets ahead” (which the OED defines as “far ahead of something or someone, far superior”) has never appeared in the New York Times–as uttered or written by an American–and that means from 1851 to the present. Yet it somehow has the reputation of being a catchphrase. A New Yorker blog post from January 201o revived the venerable character created by Frank Sullivan for the magazine in days of yore, Mr. Arbuthnot, the Cliche Expert, and had him say this about the then-brand-new Apple iPad:

It reflects the company’s commitment to cutting-edge design and elegant technology solutions. They’re the eight-hundred-pound gorilla in the room. They’re streets ahead of their competition and they have both the ground game and air attack to take on anyone.

@tim_stoltz : @danharmon Your hatred of “Glee” has made its way into “Community;” how long till your new favorite phrase makes it?

@danharmon : @tim_stotz I’m putting it in the current script, so it’ll be a few weeks. But I have to get the world understanding it by then!

How is ‘streets ahead’ a British or Irish phrase in any way shape or form? I’ve lived in the UK, to the best of my knowledge, for my whole life and have never heard it used until Community.