College students, but complicated. Institutions of higher education are traditionally “universities” in the U.K. but in the U.S. (and Scotland!), the term “college,” the OED notes, “has come to be interchangeable with ‘university.'” The traditional English meaning of “college,” meanwhile, is given by the OED as a “society of scholars incorporated within or in connection with a University”; more recently, it has been used to refer to some specialized, often technical or vocational institution.

In any case, undergraduates have traditionally been collectively referred to as “university students” in the U.K,. “college students” in the U.S. The usages are difficult to chart precisely because of the various meanings of the terms, because of instances where both graduate students and undergraduates are being referred to (and where “university students” would be traditionally used even in the U.S.), and because many search engine hits for “university students” will be on the order of “Penn State University students.” But my gut tells me “university students” is on the rise in the U.S. Incidentally, Google Ngram suggests that “college students” is on the rise in the U.K.!

“I still hope to lure him abroad for an occasional video piece, but mostly he will be in Los Angeles recovering from the last five years’ journeys. He will continue to work with university students, promoting web video and showing them how to develop their own multimedia, and he also would like to do more with not-for-profits.” (Nicholas Kristof, New York Times, April 8, 2008)

“’I think that we as university students should get some sort of deal,’ Jennifer Friedmann ’13 said of the paywall. ‘I hope the library grants full access to the [New York Times] website.’” (Yale Daily News, March 23, 2011. Note that Ms. Friedmann is a college sophomore.)

From trunk to hood (or is it hood to trunk?) of a car; metonimically, the whole car; by extension, the entirety of anything. Weirdly, the expression is almost exactly as often rendered as “from bonnet to boot”: 283,000 to 282,000, according to Googlefight. Still rare in U.S., and used mainly in automotive contexts. “One of the many options: wide racing stripes from bonnet to boot.” (New York Times, October 11, 2006)/”Boot to bonnet low cost maintenance.” (www.miniusa.com, accessed March 22, 2011)

This isn’t a Britishism but a question. I distinctly remember posting items on “kerfuffle” and “run-up,” but they seem to have, you got it, gone missing. Does anybody remember reading these? And does anyone have an idea what WordPress might have done with them?

Verb, transitive. Talk to someone in a friendly, informal way; schmooze. Most often used to suggest or imply flattery, as in “butter up,” and especially an attempt to flirt with or seduce the chattee. “At a Union 76 in Ontario, near Riverside, he saw a guy changing a headlamp, chatted him up, and learned that he was independent.” (John McPhee, The New Yorker, February 17, 2003)/”There’s a great scene toward the end of the film [“Diner”] when Boogie (Mickey Rourke) and Fenwick (Kevin Bacon) — two kids from downtown Baltimore — are driving through Maryland’s horse country and happen upon a comely young woman on horseback. The guys pull over and chat her up, and she says her name is “Chisolm, as in the Chisolm Trail,” and then gallops away.” (New York Times, January 26, 2011). Google Ngram.

Talk show. (Thanks to Gigi Simeone.)  “It came under immediate and sustained attack on the weekend political chat shows” (Hendrik Hertzberg, The New Yorker, June 14, 2004)/”If [New Jersey Governor Chris Christie] is not at a town-hall-style forum, it seems, he is on a television chat show.” (New York Times, March 10, 2011) Google Ngram.

Fish store; person who owns or works at a fish store. Thanks to Gigi Simeone. “The fishmongers had suddenly become personable and were saying things like ‘Enjoy!’ as they handed over the fish.” (Nora Ephron, The New Yorker, April 21, 1997)/”Now comes Eataly, an enormous and enormously crowded new Italian-food market and restaurant collection that opened recently off Madison Square Park: 50,000 square feet of restaurants and peninsular provisions, with a fishmonger and butcher (and vegetable butcher) and an espresso bar, a wine store, a cheese store, a cooking school, a kitchenware department and a great deal more.” (Sam Sifton, New York Times, October 20, 2010) Google Ngram.

A portion of coffee that is consumed on a single occasion. A cup of coffee; some coffee; coffee. In American English, “a coffee” can also refer to an informal afternoon social occasion at which coffee and other light refreshments are served. “Jeff Israely’s journey was a little shorter—just round the corner from his apartment in Rome to have a coffee and a chat with his local barista, Vincenzo.” (Time, June 14, 2007)/”You grabbed the car keys and set off to your destination not worrying about whether your friends knew that you were headed to the mall, then to the grocery store, then you might stop for a coffee and, oh yeah – you needed gas, too.” ([Newport News, Va.] Daily Press, blog post, March 8, 2011). Google Ngram.

This is a one-off post, if you will pardon the expression, because as far as I know, this usage appears in only one American publication. Backing up a bit, I am referring the the past participle form of the verb to get, which in British English is got and in American English is gotten. So, for example, we would say, “By that time I had gotten angry”; they, “got angry.” (This shouldn’t be confused with the very American “got” used to mean “have,” e.g.,”I got plenty of nuthin’.”) The distinction had appeared as early as 1908, when (as quoted in Garner’s Modern American English), a writer in Blackwood’s Magazine observed:

“America need not boast the use of ‘gotten.’ The termination, which suggests either wilful archaism or useless slang, adds nothing of sense or sound to the word. It is like a piece of dead wood in a tree, and is better lopped off.”

The American magazine I referred to earlier is The New Yorker. Among its several stylistic peculiarities (spelling the word “marvellous,” putting an umlaut over the second o in “cooperate”) is an insistence on this “got.” The normally very sharp Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage claims that “English speakers in North America seem to use both got and gotten in a way that is almost freely variable.” However, of the four sources the book cites for got, four (Calvin Trillin, Alexander Woollcott, Peter Taylor, and John Cheever) are New Yorker writers, with Russell Lynes the only outlier.

The New Yorker seems to have developed its affection for got early. Its online archives gives examples from the early 1930s, including a James Thurber Talk of the Town piece from 1931:

“An African novelist was supposed to speak at the Women’s Club of Maplewood, New Jersey, and the girls were all excited. He didn’t show up, and two days later they discovered he had got into a fist fight with a plasterer in a speakeasy and had landed in jail instead.”

That was one thing in the speakeasy era, but the usage seems seriously weird today. However, one comes upon it nearly every week in the magazine, including, very recently, a Lawrence Wright article from February 14, 2011: “When she was a young child, her stepfather had got the family involved with Scientology.”

This affectation bugs me so much that I started a Facebook group called “Get the New Yorker to Use ‘Gotten’ Instead of ‘Got.'” Call me crazy, but 135 people have joined, including some actual New Yorker writers, one being none other than Lawrence Wright. I guess he is trying to effect change from within. Good luck, Lawrence!

Preposition. Among. Note: at this point, “amongst”–like “whilst,” “amidst,” and “oftentimes”–is quite prevalent in “unofficial” writing, such as blog posts, Facebook, Twitter, and student writing, but has not yet penetrated the American mainstream. Give it time. “A wicked straight-faced satire of despair and false hope amongst the hip.” (Michael Sragow, The New Yorker, October 10, 1994, capsule review of the film “The New Age”)/”Narcissism an epidemic amongst Millenial students.” (Blog post, March 3, 2011).

Early, as in the early stages of  something. Usually preceded by “it’s” or “it’s still.” Paul Gigot: “It’s early days. It’s still early days.” Arthur Laffer: “It is early days.” (Fox News Broadcast, April 13, 2009.)/”Still, it’s early days. I want [New Jersey Governor Chris] Christie to rise to full truth-telling from half.” (Matt Miller, Washington Post, February 23, 2011) Google Ngram.