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.

 

Adj. Immature in the ways young men are immature. A lad (or laddie) magazine is a publication, such as Maxim, nicely described on urbandictionary.com as “catering to oversexed braindead morons and featuring double-extra-soft porn (no actual nudity), gadgets, sports, cars and beer.” Google Ngram. Girls may find this band icky, and parents may wish it had some manners, but Blink 182 showers its fans with laddish love. (Ann Powers, New York Times, June 18, 1999)/And shame on us, really, for not being more on top of our buzz and getting the inside track on James Blake, but The Vaccines were really great – in a laddish, London’s Strokes kind of way – even if they did only play four songs. Hartford Advocate, March 17, 2011) 

Noun. A relatively brief period of time leading up to a particular event. Synonym of lead-up. A Google Ngram shows a spike between 2003 and 2005, supporting my impression that wide use began in reference to the months before U.S. invasion of Iraq, a period in which the imminent military action was obvious to everyone in the country. (Usage also sharply increased in 2007 and 2008, which I attribute to the popularity of not one-off Britishisms.) Also, particularly in journalism, an increase, as in a run-up in gas prices; used as an alternative to hike, spike, and other elegant variations. “To nervous allies, those words echo the run-up to the Iraq invasion, which began three years ago today. But Iran is not Iraq. (New York Times, March 19, 2006)/“The Packers’ report is more than a novelty in the run-up to their playing the Pittsburgh Steelers in the Super Bowl on Feb. 6.” (Richard Sandomir, New York Times, January 27, 2011.)

Or mobile phone. Pronounced to rhyme with so vile. The traditional U.S. equivalents have been, in order of adoption, cellular phone, cell phone and cell. For a true telephonic Britishism, use on (instead of at) before giving your number, as in “Ring me on 555-1212.” “In other words, the kind of people who would call in — on a mobile phone, perhaps — for Tom Petty tickets.” (New York Times, February 6, 1995)/”Once readers click on their 21st article [from nytimes.com in a month], they will have the option of buying one of three digital news packages — $15 every four weeks for access to the Web site and a mobile phone app…” (New York Times, March 17, 2011) Google Ngram.

Noun. Line, as in the thing you stand in, or, if you are from New York, on. Also verb, intransitive, usually followed by “up.” I was inspired to include this because just this morning I was at my local grocery store, and noticed that a sign indicating where the “line” for checkout should start had been replaced by one indicating where the “queue” should start. Queue may possibly have initiated the current crop of not one-off Britishisms; a Google Ngram indicates a steady rise in popularity since the early 1950s. Presumably its appeal has something to do with the ambiguity-inducing multiple meanings of line, line up and (these days) online. Also worth noting is a recent vogue for using queue up instead of the traditional cue up, as in cue up a recording. Clearly, further investigation is called for.“Whatever the other attractions of the Lillian Hellman play [“The Little Foxes”], which opens on May 7, the most talked about one is unquestionably Elizabeth Taylor, its star, who has never been on Broadway. On Monday, while a queue formed in the rain, the Martin Beck sold $120,000 worth of tickets.” (New York Times, March 18, 1981) “Hundreds queue up to be extras for upcoming Bonnie and Clyde film” (Headline, Joplin Globe, March 5, 2011)

The Oxford English Dictionary’s (OED) definition 8b for the word cheer is: pl. A friendly exclamation or exhortation to be cheerful; esp. a salutation before drinking. The first citation comes from the copy in an advert (sorry) in a 1919 issue of the magazine Sphere: “Cheers—I’m longing to see you and a Kenilworth together—the two nicest things on earth.” The first drinking example given isn’t until 1946–surprisingly late, it seems to me. Another meaning had cropped up by 1976, the date of a citation from The Times: “By a remarkable transition from the pub to the sober world at large outside cheers has become the colloquial synonym in British English for ‘thanks’.”

With all these meanings, plus the plural of cheer, as in fans’ literal or figurative shouts of encouragement, it is impossible to objectively chart the American use of the word, at least with my limited resources and skill. My impressions are: the drinking salutation took off here right away, and persists; the “thank you” meaning (which I remember being startled by in London circa 1996 when a newsagent [ NOOB alert!] took my coin and handed me a Guardian) has not yet arrived; and the “friendly exclamation or exhortation to be cheerful” has been a resounding success in one and only one realm: e-mail signoffs. This is widely practiced and seemingly inoffensive, yet it raises the hackles of some.  E.g., cheers bothered a respondent to a Lifehacker survey on annoying signoffs because “the sender is almost never (a) British or (b) sharing a drink with me.”

I will not get into cheerio, except to note that it has not penetrated and surely never will penetrate the U.S., except as something the stage Englishman says, and to guess that at this point, it’s used almost solely ironically in the U.K. That is suggested by the final citation in the OED, from P.G. Wodehouse, in which the word has shifted parts of speech, often a sign of its decadence: “You could not have found a more cheerio butler.”

Cheers.

Noun. Controversy, commotion. From the Scots “curfuffle.” “The kerfuffle began when the American bloke in the striped tie tried to prove he was not a poppy by stopping at a pub and shouting for some cold ones.” (Maureen Dowd, New York Times, April 30, 1989)/”Ricky Gervais Globes-hosting kerfuffle does not move ratings needle.” (Washington Post headline, January 11, 2011) Google Ngram.