In the US, if you’re ambivalent about something, you’re said to be of two minds. In the UK, however, they use a different preposition — they’re said to be in two minds. Also, Americans talk about brainstorms, which in the UK are called brain waves. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “In Two Minds vs. Of Two Minds”
Here’s another subtle difference between British English and American English that I never noticed.
In the United States, if you’re indecisive about something, you haven’t quite zeroed in on a decision. You might say, I’m of two minds about that. In Britain, you say, I’m in two minds.
Oh, interesting. Just the preposition, but it seems so different.
Yeah, so subtle, right? And it reminds me of another difference. We say brainstorm to mean an idea that just suddenly occurred to me. I had a brainstorm. Let’s do this. They might say I had a brainwave instead of brainstorm.
Pretty cool.
Yes, and they also came up with thought shower, which a lot of people think is in Americanism, but it’s a pushback against a brainstorm.
Another thing that Lynn Murphy addresses in her book, Prodigal Tongue, is that the English speakers in the UK often say that anything they don’t like must be in Americanism. They just assume if it’s annoying and it’s in English, their cousins across the pond came up with it.
But so often when you get down to the history of all of these things on the I really hate this list, it’s actually a Britishism first.
Right, right. So you get a lot of sociolinguistics in there as well.
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