The Umpteenth British Invasion: A Bonkers Kerfuffle

You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it.

I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

Earlier in the show, I mentioned the book Gobsmacked, The British Invasion of American English.

It’s by Ben Yagoda.

He’s a retired professor of English and journalism, and he writes frequently about language.

This book is based on his blog, where he examines scores of British words and phrases that have been imported into American English, especially since the turn of the 21st century.

Now, his blog is called Not One-Off Britishisms, and these are words like cushy and cheeky, dodgy, kerfuffle, and non-starter. And another one of these is bonkers. I did not realize until I read this book that bonkers apparently originated in British military slang and possibly had to do with getting bonked or struck in the head.

And early uses of bonkers meant to be drunk.

Wow, I had no idea either.

Yeah, I could see that making its leap given the close alliances in the various wars with the UK.

And in fact, this book includes a whole chapter on British military slang that’s found its way into American English.

And it also has chapters on the language of sports and food and what he calls insults and naughty bits.

And then there are the slight differences in grammar, you know, such as using plural verbs with nouns that you might expect to take a singular verb, as in, say, you know, the home team are undefeated.

What I didn’t know, Grant, is that this usage is showing up more and more in American sports writing.

That was news to me.

I’m not surprised, given the way that the United States consumes a great deal of English language content from around the world.

I mean, the Internet is this great Englishizer or Anglicizer, right, where all of the Englishes experience each other and borrow and kind of cross-pollinate.

And it’s kind of a really wonderful thing to see.

Yeah, yeah.

Cross-pollination is a really good word for it.

And I’m thinking about television, too.

I’m thinking about all of us who learned words from watching The Crown or The Baking Show.

Well, I’m thinking also about ginger for red-haired people, which traditionally wasn’t a North Americanism.

But after Harry Potter and South Park used it in that way, it’s kind of become a thing.

So this book by Ben Yagoda is called Gobsmacked.

We’ll have a link to it and more about it on our website.

We’d love to hear what you’re reading, 877-929-9673.

Or send your book recommendations to us an email, words@waywordradio.org.