“The set subject of our novelists is information; the set obsession of our dons is what it does to our intelligence.”–Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker, February 14, 2011

Verb. To investigate so as to discover the truth about a person or thing. Until Wes Davis suggested this to me, I had no idea it was a Britishism. It is. (Wes says he first heard it on BBC programs that aired here in the 1970s.) It seems to have originated in the sort of British noir slang sus, short for “suspect” (both the noun and verb). The OED cites D. Webb’s 1953 novel Crime Is My Business: “He turned to Hodge and said, ‘Who’s sussed for this job?'” This form first shows up in a 1966 article in Queen: “Youth susses things out on its own.” Google Ngram indicates that the expression turned up in the U.S. circa 1990 and has been steadily increasing in popularity ever since.

Fifty-nine to 36, 125 to 119, 5 to 2, 4 to 0; scores are all so obvious and pure — too damned obvious and pure for those of us inclined to suss out subtle meanings and unseen truths. (Kurt Andersen, Time, January 17, 1994)/We’ve taken a close look at all the pilots in production, talked to insiders, and read the scripts to suss out the twenty most exciting and intriguing ones, and then handicapped their chances of success. (New York Magazine, April 7, 2011)

Each edition of the New York Times has a “Quotation of the Day.” Here is today’s:

“We want to see real structural, cultural-type changes tied to this debt ceiling. We’re not interested in a one-off kind of savings, or anything small.” –Representative Mick Mulvaney, a first-term Republican from South Carolina.

Noun; commonly used in the expression fruit and veg. Vegetable, but also a vegetable or produce stand or market, or vegetarian food, a vegetarian dish, or a vegetarian, as in this Urban Dictionary exchange:

“Do you want to go to Steak Hut?”

“No, I’m veg.”

A couple of points worth noting. The OED’s first citation of this veg is from an Arnold Bennett novel in 1898, and there is this from P.G. Wodehouse in 1940: “The fruit and veg. dept has just given of its plenty.” (That is the last cite with a period to indicate abbreviation.) The verb veg or veg out, to (often facetiously) indicate hanging out in a more or less vegetative state, seems to have originated in the U.S., the OED first citing it in a 1980 Washington Post article, but quickly spread to the U.K.

The traditional U.S. nickname for vegetable is, of course, veggie, which inspires some general comments about U.S. and British differences regarding diminutives and/or abbreviations. In short, the Brits seem to want to shorten the original word, while we elongate it. Thus, over there, your vacation becomes hols and instead of brilliant you can just say brill. To them, Reginald becomes Reg; to us (in the rare cases when we know a Reginald), he is Reggie. American Williams become Billys or Willies; British ones are Will or (if you really want to express fondness) Wills. On the other hand, the morning meal is brekkie (beautifully illustrated in the alliterative headline from The Sun BIKINI BATTLE OF THE BREKKIE BABES) and Russell Brand called his autobiography My Booky Wooky. I guess the bottom line is that the Brits really like their nicknames.

[Fritz] Haeg, who lives in a geodesic dome in the easterly neighborhood of Mt. Washington, was talking about his ongoing project Edible Estates, which encourages people to tear out their lawns and plant fruit and veg instead. (Dana Goodyear, Letter from Los Angeles, blog, the New Yorker, July 25, 2008)/Miller Park, Milwaukee, Racing Sausage Kabobs: These are the creation of a fan in a concession contest. Courtney Ring decided to poke a couple of skewers through the famed Klement’s Racing Sausages (dog, brat, chorizo, Polish, and Italian) and grill them with some veg. (Philadelphia Inquirer, April 10, 2011)

(Thanks to Nanette Tobin and Deb Dempsey.) Cheap wine; more generally, wine or alcohol of any kind. The Oxford English Dictionary cites Australian use beginning the 1930s, with the first U.K appearance (in inverted commas) in 1967. The OED speculates that the etymology may be “a colloquial or humorous pronunciation of blanc.”

Department of Plonk (Heading to a New Yorker Talk of the Town piece about a Manhattan winery, September 26, 2005)/[The Australian wine industry] did, after all, in the 1970s and ’80s, transform a moribund, 100-year-old industry making widely mocked plonk—Monty Python fans will recall “the prize-winning Nuit San Wogga Wogga, which has a bouquet like an armpit”—into the epitome of a modern, high-production industry. Businessweek.com, March 24, 2011.

Sort; figure out. But also address in a more general sense; solve (as in a headline from the Daily Mirror: “Sort Out Those Sleep Demons–For Good!”). I just went to nytimes.com and was greeted with a banner advertisement (from Ameritrade) announcing, A LOT OF FACTORS IMPACT YOUR RETIREMENT. WE’LL HELP YOU SORT THEM OUT, which reminded me that I have been meaning to look into this phrasal verb.

Brits seem to have a fondness for many sorts of sort. There is Harry Potter’s sorting hat, of course; the noun roughly equivalent to type, as in a decent sort; and, notably, the qualifier sort of, which not only is preferred to the U.S. kind of but seem to be taken to in a more existential way, as a contingent and unenthusiastic attitude toward life. U2 has a song called “A Sort of Homecoming,” and one of Graham Greene’s memoirs is (brilliantly) titled A Sort of Life. In Tom Stoppard’s play The Real Thing, a pop-music-besotted character refers to once being taken to Covent Garden to hear “a sort of foreign musical with no dancing”–about as good a definition of opera as I have come across. (In fairness, I should also note that the very American William Carlos Williams has a poem called “A Sort of a Song.”)

I have the impression that sort of is getting some legs in the U.S., especially in academic circles. However, I am here today to talk about sort out. Neither Google Ngram nor Google Trends shows any great increase in American use, though Ngram suggests that in Britain, figure out is a not one-off Americanism, having overtaken sort out in about 1995 and maintaining a substantial lead. Even so, I am going to invoke blogger’s privilege and claim sort out as a not one-off Britishism.

Laura Hoptman, the curator of the exhibition, which runs until January 6th, has sorted out a quiet but potent development of the last decade by focussing on an international array of twenty-six young but established artists of many tendencies. (Peter Schejeldahl, The New Yorker, November 4, 2002)/Mobile phone carriers, banks, credit card issuers, payment networks and technology companies are all vying to control these wallets. But first, they need to sort out what role each will play and how each will get paid. (New York Times, March 23, 2011)

While. Apparently has an appeal similar to that of amongst and amidst. But yo, I have found a new tool, or should I say toy. Since starting Not One-Off Britishisms, I have relied on Google Ngram, which shows the relative popularity, over time, of a word or phrase in a variety of databases (British English, American English, English, etc.). It’s great, but has the drawback of being limited to published books, which, having gone through a formidable editorial process, are not the earliest adopters of new words and phrases and linguistic trends. I’ve just discovered Google Trends, which shows two trends: the popularity of a word in web searches and, more useful for my purposes, its use in Google News sites. Google News, which can be localized to the U.S. or any other country, includes not only newspapers and magazines, but many web sites. Hence its ear is closer to the ground than Ngram–more “demotic,” as my English Department colleagues would say.

The results for whilst are instructive. Ngram shows a steady decline in American English from about 1810 till 1990 (my provisional date for the beginning of the not one-off-Britishisms trend!) and from then till now a flat line. But Google Trends shows a steady increase starting at the beginning of 2008.

[S]ince many of us do our talking whilst driving, might they consider coming up with a mobile phone that only works in the house, while we’re not spewing emissions along with our hot air? [Matt Richtel, New York Times “Bits” blog, August 22, 2007)/Whilst scouring my mental vault of classroom distractions this past week, I recalled a favorite past time of my youth. Before Facebook and Minecraft, when Netscape Navigator was the browser of choice among proto-hipsters, Cartoon-Network.com ruled my leisure. (Daily Princeonian, blog. April 4, 2011)

On vacation. Often it seems that the whole world is on holiday as you drive in heavy traffic. (Cherokee County Herald, December 15, 1998)/Apparently Art Conn has been on holiday while the rest of the cast, Jeff Wellington and Susan DeJesus, were rehearsing.(Clarksville [Miss.] Leaf Chronicle, January 28, 2011. Google Ngram.

Make a decision. If not exactly a one-off, this is a novelty item. A 1989 William Safire New York Times column notes its appearance and interestingly comments on the British preference for this verb in such phrases as take your point and take lunch. (Less persuasively, he connects this to the Hollywood-ism take a meeting. I am more convinced by the traditional explanation that this stems from the Yiddish-derived take a haircut or take a steambath.) But Google Ngram suggests that even in Britain, make a decision started to surpass take a decision in about 1925, and today is about nine times more frequently used.

So it was striking to see David Brooks, in his Times column dated March 31, 2011, write, “Obama took this decision [to intervene in Libya], I’m told, fully aware that there was no political upside while there were enormous political risks.”

A 2007 Brooks column shed some light on his choice of this locution, and frequent use of other Britishisms. It began:

Although as a child I had turtles named Disraeli and Gladstone, I was never invited to sip Champagne with the queen until yesterday. Although I’ve been an Anglophile all my life, I was never able to participate in a fawning orgy of Albion worship until the British ambassador’s party for the monarch yesterday afternoon.

It was wonderful.

I got to enjoy many of the features I love about Britain: repressed emotions, overarticulate conversationalists and crustless sandwiches. It reminded me why over the decades so many of my Jewish brethren have gone in for the ”Think Yiddish, Act British” lifestyle — shopping at Ralph Lauren and giving their sons names that seemed quintessentially English: Irving, Sidney, Norman and Milton.

Noun and verb. Check, as in the mark one puts in a box. The only differences spotted so far are the new Applications icon in the left-hand source column (you’ll need to tick the box in the preferences before it appears). (Wired.com, July 10, 2008)/Our decisions in the voting booth should be among the most meaningful that we make in our lives. Too often, it seems to be just the opposite — we waltz into the booth and carelessly tick the box we’ve come to expect as our choice. ([Rutgers University] Daily Targum, March 23, 2011) Google Ngram. I normally don’t comment on my votes, but in this case I’ll say I “ticked” “Borderline” rather than “Over the Top” despite the fact that tick the box means the exact same thing as check the box and hence would seem to be pure pretentiousness. My reason is that the word check has so dizzyingly many meanings that I can see the utility of choosing tick instead.