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AMERICAN ENGLISH

 

In the course of a conversation to a friend in the USA I had to put the phone down for a while. During the silence the operator broke in and asked: 'Are you through?' To which I replied: 'Yes, thank you.' She cut the connection.

 

No more comment is needed. If you do not watch Sky TV or much of Channels 4 and 5 for that matter, you may consider yourself lucky not to have been brainwashed by a whole new language. There is now an increasing and alarming intrusion on BBC and ITV channels as well.

 

So for those people who may have not travelled far or hope to visit the USA soon, the following is for them. Most come from the Barnhart Dictionary of New English, others from newspaper articles in the 1980's - after a while you just can't carry on collecting such an amazing amount of bewildering examples that fly in the face of the purity of the English language.

 

Just a fraction and in no particular order:

 

Bete Blanche - a white American liberal non-racist use of the term bete-noir

Blissout - a state of intense happiness.

Blephanoplasty is surgery for bags under the eyes

Grade-creeping is the process by which civil servants receive automatic yearly promotion through re-grading

Kwok’s disease, sometimes called the Chinese restaurant syndrome, is monosodium glutamate poisoning

Ratchet-jaw - talks too much on CB radio

Womanager - a feminist in a management job

Yerkish is the geometric language devised by Robert Yerkes to assist communications between humans and chimpanzees

Afghanistanism - undue emphasis on things happening in remote foreign places

Alimony drone - a divorcee who chooses not to remarry in order to continue milking he ex-husband

Begathon - TV charity marathons

Delawyerise - to eliminate the need for lawyers

Incommutation - commuting from the city to work in the suburbs

Uncle Tomahawk - an American Indian who cooperates with the white establishment

Aunt Tom - a woman who backslides from Women’s Lib

Biophilia - love of life as a natural human instinct.

Brown-baggers - people who take their lunch to work

Empty-nesters - people whose offspring have left home

Latch integrity - the door's shut

Waste management facility - toilet

Benign environment - safe

Dynamic environment - dangerous

Grody - disgusting

Tubular - very, very good

Gag me with a spoon - Yuk!