British equivalent of the American take a look. There seems to be a British fondness for verbal idioms that start with have a–for example, have a go at it (U.S.: give it a try); Are you having a laugh? (the Ricky Gervais’ character’s catch phrase on the TV show “Extras”); and this headline from NOW Magazine: “Charlotte Church: I was having a wee, not sex in embarrassing snaps.” (To make sense of this quote, insert comma after “sex” and know that “snaps” means “photographs” in British tabloid English.)

A Google Ngram of American use of have a look (blue line) and take a look (red line) from 1850-2008 shows they were more or less equally popular until about 1960, when have dropped and take took off. Like many Britishisms, the American use of  have a look has steadily and significantly increased in since roughly 1980.

Devotees of Candace Bushnell–a journalist who looks like Suzanne Somers with a polo-club membership–approach her writing the way they might a car wreck or a Peter Greenaway movie: they know it might repel, but they are forced to have a look. (Ginia Bellafante, Time, August 12, 1996)/Complex date calculations aside, we will have a look at a handful of the companies who have withstood the test of time, both at home and abroad. (San Francisco Chronicle, July 18, 2011)

Sometimes verb; more often adjective. Acronym for “do-it-yourself.”

Google Ngram shows roughly a doubling of American use since 1990 (with a bump presumably associated with the launch of the DIY Channel on cable television in 1999):

DIY also increased in Britain in this period, from about double U.S. use to triple–demonstrating, I suppose, the transatlantic power of cliched catchphrases.

Owen Wilson, not yet a bankable movie star, and Jackie Chan, not ready for retirement, return for a second round of D.I.Y. stunts and business-casual wisecracks in this sequel to “Shanghai Noon.” (The New Yorker, March 3, 2003)/Indie-minded artists, storytellers and comics creators have banded together to form a pop-up space called “Tr!ckster” that will celebrate the spirit of DIY and creator-owned work. (Los Angeles Times, June 21, 2011)

Excrement; shit.  I have always thought of this word as having a strong Irish association, though the OED is silent on the subject. In the U.S., it is used exclusively metaphorically, that is, to mean that something is worthless, offensive or contemptible. One definition on Urban Dictionary recognizes shite‘s slightly euphemistic quality, calling it “the best way to say ‘shit’ without getting told off, as you can simply say that you were trying out being Irish for the day. ”

And [former New York Times Editor Howell] Raines all but comes out and writes that his predecessor, Joseph Lelyveld, produced shite. (Jack Shafer, Slate, March 24, 2004)/“We’re getting hammered by everything right now,” says Bert the Bug Man (a.k.a. Bert Bertrand, a licensed exterminator). “Smoky brown tree roaches are coming out of the sewer lines to hang in people’s foliage because people are trying to keep their plants alive.” So we’re not producing enough shite in this drought?? (Houston Post, blog post, June 21, 2011)

In addition to went missing  (and I sincerely hope that Thurston has “turned up”!), I like how the owners fudged on the question of British vs American date style by doing both: “March 14th March.” Or almost both–the th is American.

The punctuation mark that comes at the end of a sentence; apparently coined by Shakespeare in “The Merchant of Venice.” The word Americans are familiar with, period, dates from the 16th century, but OED labels it “Now chiefly N. Amer.”; judging from the citations, that has been the case for about two hundred years. The mark has also sometimes been referred to as a point. (All of these probably eventually be supplanted by a new term: the dot indicating a period in computer addresses.)

Americans have taken to using full stop not to literally mean a period, but to emphasize that they are referring to a complete sentence, or by extension, a complete idea or phenomenon.

Verb, transitive, from the brand of vacuum cleaner, which was apparently hugely popular in the U.K in the mid-20th-century period. The OED reports that the literal verb–that is, to clean by means of a vacum cleaner–appeared no later than 1939 (impressive, since Hoover was patented only in 1927). The first cite for the metaphorical verb (“To consume voraciously; to devour completely. Freq. with up or (occas.) in”) is from the 1970 Times:  “The populace‥sit hoovering up the drivel poured out on television at peak viewing times.” A Google Ngram suggests that, as with so many Britishisms, U.S. use started to rise in the early 90s and is still going up.

Urban Dictionary offers two additional meanings for the verb. One of them you can guess. The other:

Being manipulated back into a relationship against your will with threats of suicide or self-harm, threats of harm to others or property, or threats of false criminal accusations. A “hoover” is relationship blackmail. This slang term is often associated with individuals suffering from personality disorders like Borderline Personality Disorder or Narcissistic Personality Disorder.

“Where are we rolling?” “Into the heart of the night. Wherever there are dances to be danced, drugs to be hoovered.” (Jay McInerney, Bright Lights, Big City, 1984)/For years, Mr. Madoff’s elusive genius act beguiled his Jewish neighbors, as well as friends of those neighbors, and so on, and so on, until vast chunks of local money were hoovered into his Ponzi scheme. (New York Times, April 11, 2009)

Varies in meaning according to context, and preposition. Thus keen to+verb, and keen by itself as an adjective both mean, roughly, eager. Keen on+gerund or +noun means enjoying that activity or thing, while to be keen on a person means to fancy him or her (in the British sense). An example of the last is an oft-quoted–in my family–exchange from the wonderful film (and fount of Britishisms) “About a Boy.” The Hugh Grant character, Will, is developing feelings for a woman, as Will’s young mate, Marcus, explains to the woman’s son, Ali:

Marcus: Oh, don’t worry, I think your mum is keen on him.
Ali: [shouting] She’s not keen on him! She’s only keen on me!

Google Ngram shows a roughly 100 percent increase in the use of both keen on and keen to in American English between 1990 and 2008.

Scientists are keen to explore cloning as a potential source of embryonic stem cells, which could be used to treat diseases such as Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s. (Time, Dec. 11, 2001)/ If You’re Keen on Quinoa (New York Times headline, May 27, 2011).

Noun or adjective corresponding, respectively, to the U.S. redhead  and redheaded or red-haired. Also a nickname for a ginger person (equivalent to U.S. Red) as in drummer Ginger Baker or singer Geri “Ginger Spice” Halliwell (impressively, the second consecutive Spice Girls reference in NOOBs).

The term first appeared on my radar when, in London in 2004, I read this sentence in the Daily Telegraph: “The ginger asthmatic was always going to struggle in Coimbra’s oppressive heat.” I eventually figured out that this was a reference to footballer Paul Scholes–and “the ginger asthmatic” still ranks as my favorite all-time example of the class of misguided synonym that H.W. Fowler referred to as “elegant variation.”

Undoubtedly, the term gained traction in the U.S. with the popularity of the Harry Potter books. According to the Harry Potter Wiki, “Scabior, Fenrir Greyback, and a drunk man on Tottenham Court Road” all referred to Harry Potter’s famously ginger-haired mate Ron Weasely by this term.

The term has a long and sometimes unsettling history in Britain. According to Wikipedia (don’t judge me! there are footnotes!)

A UK woman recently won an award from a tribunal after being sexually harassed and receiving abuse because of her red hair;^[55] a family in Newcastle upon Tyne, England, was forced to move twice after being targeted for abuse and hate crime on account of their red hair;^[56] and in 2003, a 20 year old was stabbed in the back for “being ginger”.^[57] In May 2009, a British schoolboy committed suicide after being bullied for having red hair.^[58] The British singer Mick Hucknall, who believes that he has repeatedly faced prejudice or been described as ugly on account of his hair color, argues that Gingerism should be described as a form of racism.

Ginger prejudice arrived in the U.S. in 2005 with an episode of the animated comedy series “South Park” entitled “Ginger Kids.”  In the episode, a satire on racial and other sorts of prejudice, “Cartman rallies all other ginger kids to rise up and assume their role as the master race” (in the words of the series website). As is often the case with satire, there were unintended consequences. A 14-year-old Vancouver boy started a Facebook group devoted to “National Kick a Ginger Day”; it attracted almost 5,000 members, and the founder was eventually investigated by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police for possible hate crimes

Marc Torsilieri, who looked like a ginger-bearded lumberjack and played the part in splendid fashion by annually felling the Christmas tree for Rockefeller Center, died on March 12 in Somerville, N.J. (Douglas Martin, New York Times, March 17, 2007)/Scarlett Johansson, who is now a ginger, and Donald Trump. Really, I would love to know what’s being said here. “Scarlett, I’d like to bring you back to the Trump Tower so I could tell you you’re fired while we make love on a bearskin rug.” “OH DONALD YOU’RE TOO MUCH! HAHAHAH, don’t you know I’m with Sean Penn now?!” (photo caption, BostonHerald.com, May 1, 2011)