A history of the English Language

253.
Present Differentiation of Vocabulary.
Except in pronunciation the distance that the English language in America has traveled in 
its separation from that of England is chiefly measured in its vocabulary. It is easy to 
exaggerate the
59 
“But What’s a Dictionary For?” 
Atlantic
(May 1962), p. 62; reprinted in an instructive collection 
of reviews and essays on the subject, 
Dictionaries and
That 
Dictionary,
ed. James Sledd and Wilma 
R.Ebbitt (Chicago, 1962), p. 248. 
60 
As, for example, in Dwight Macdonald, “The String Untuned,” 
The New Yorker
(March 10, 
1962), pp. 130–34, 137–40, 143–50, 153–60; reprinted in Sledd and Ebbitt, pp. 166–88. 
The english language in america 373

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importance of the differences that can be readily pointed out. The American on going to 
England or the British traveler on arriving in America is likely to be impressed by them, 
because each finds the other’s expressions amusing when they do not actually cause 
puzzlement. As examples of such differences the words connected with the railroad and 
the automobile are often cited. The British word for 
railroad
is 
railway,
the 
engineer
is a 
driver,
the 
conductor
a 
guard
. The 
baggage car
is a 
van,
and the 
baggage
carried is 
always 
luggage
. American 
freight train
and 
freight yard
become in Britain 
goods train
and 
goods yard
. Some of the more technical terms are likewise different. A 
sleeper
in the 
United States is a sleeping car; in Britain it is what Americans call a 
tie
. American 
switch
is a
 point,
a 
grade crossing
a 
level crossing,
and so on. In connection with the 
automobile, the British speak of a 
lorry
(truck), 
windscreen
(windshield), 
bonnet
(hood), 
sparking plugs, gear lever
(gearshift), 
gearbox
(transmission), 
silencer
(muffler), 
boot 
(trunk),
 petrol
(gasoline or gas). British 
motorway
is American 
expressway
and 
dual 
carriageway
is 
divided highway
. Such differences can be found in almost any part of the 
vocabulary: 
lift
(elevator), 
post
(mail), 
hoarding
(billboard), 
nappy
(diaper), 
spanner
(wrench), 
underground
(subway), 
cotton wool
(absorbent cotton), 
barrister
(lawyer), 
dustman
(garbage collector). Americans readily recognize the American character of 
ice 
cream soda, apple pie, popcorn,free lunch, saloon
from their associations, and can 
understand why some of them would not be understood elsewhere. A writer in the 
London 
Daily Mail
complained that an English person would find “positively 
incomprehensible” the American words 
commuter, rare
(as applied to underdone meat), 
intern, tuxedo, truck farming, realtor, mean
(nasty), 
dumb
(stupid), 
enlisted man, 
seafood, living room, dirt road,
and 
mortician,
although some of these have since become 
normal in British English. It is always unsafe to say what American words a British 
person will not understand, and there are some pairs in this list that would be pretty 
generally “comprehended” on both sides of the Atlantic. Some words have a deceptive 
familiarity. 
Lumber
with Americans is timber but in Britain is discarded furniture and the 
like. 
Laundry
in America is not only the place where clothing and linen are washed but 
the articles themselves. A 
lobbyist
in England is a parliamentary reporter, not one who 
attempts to influence the legislative process, and a
 pressman
for Americans is not a 
reporter but one who works in the pressroom where a newspaper is printed.
61
It is of course on the level of more colloquial or popular speech that the greatest 
differences are noticed. The American seems to have a genius for
61 
For words, phrases, and syntactic structures from British English that have recently been adopted 
into American English, see John Algeo, “The Briticisms Are Coming! How British English is 
Creeping into the American Language,” 
Journal of English Linguistics,
23 (1990–95), 123
−
40. 
A history of the english language 374

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ephemeral coinages that are naturally quite meaningless to one who is not constantly 
hearing them. 
Bawl out, bonehead, boob, bootlegger, dumbbell, flivver, go-getter, 
grafter, hootch, peach of a, pep, punk,
and to 
razz
are part of a long list of terms in an 
American novel that had to be explained by a glossary in the British edition. There is 
nothing surprising about the geographical limitations of slang. Colloquial language has 
always shown more local variation than the more formal levels of speech. There were 
doubtless many colloquialisms current in Shakespeare’s London that would not have 
been understood in contemporary Stratford. These do not constitute the English language 
either in Britain or America. It is well to remember that in the written language the 
difference between the British and the American use of words is often so slight that it is 
difficult to tell, in the case of a serious book, on which side of the Atlantic it was written.