George Bernard Shaw once wrote, “England and America are two countries separated by a common language.” This isn’t true of my own household, though. I married an unapologetic Brit, and our common language doesn’t separate us. It just makes things interesting. For instance, around my house, I hear British terms such as “have a go” (“go for it” or “take a turn,” in American English), “your room is a tip!” (“clean up that pigsty!”), “stop pissing and moaning” (“quit your complaining”), “go on!” (“no way!”), “peckish” (“hungry”), “don’t get your knickers in a twist” (“chill”), and, perhaps my all-time favorite, “Bob’s your uncle!” (“And there you have it!”).

If Ben Yagoda is to be believed, it’s not just my family that has absorbed numerous Britishisms in recent years, but American society as a whole. In Gobsmacked!, Yagoda’s entertaining and carefully researched chronicle of the British invasion of American English, the reader is treated to the who, what, when, where, why, and even whilst of this phenomenon. A onetime English professor and the current steward of the immensely popular blog Not One-Off Britishisms (or NOOBs), Yagoda plumbs etymological origins and Google Ngram analysis alike to explain exactly how British English has penetrated the United States after decades of American cultural colonialism in the British Isles. 

Yagoda attributes the explosion of NOOBs over the last 30 years principally to how “media and technology have dramatically sped up linguistic cross-pollination among national or regional forms of English.” He also contends, reasonably, that Britishisms catch on when they “offer value,” either by “describing a thing for which there’s no precise American equivalent” or by offering a posher (case in point) and, therefore, more appealing version of an existing American phrase.

Take, for instance, “go missing,” a Britishism generally rendered in American English as “disappear.” Yagoda traces its emergence in the U.S. to the early 2000s, around the time that congressional intern Chandra Levy fell off the radar (tragically, she was murdered, her body found in Rock Creek Park). The term “go missing” conveys a certain passive subtlety not entirely present in “disappear,” a sense that a human being simply dissolved into mystery. Other examples include “dodgy,” a British version of the casual American “sketchy” that’s less critical and more playful; “taking the piss,” Leeds’s slightly edgier way of saying “teasing”; and “book,” a sturdier-sounding version of “reserve.”

Then there are the British phrases that simply sound better (more dramatic, elegant, or sophisticated) than their exact American counterparts, such as “full stop” for “period,” “spot on” for “exactly right,” “whinge” for “whine,” or, well, “gobsmacked” for “shocked.” Pronunciations trace a similar trajectory: “eye-ther” and “neye-ther” are horning in on “nee-ther” and “ee-ther,” “sce-nah-rio” may be replacing “sce-nare-io,” and “ahnt” is starting to outpace “ant” (for “aunt”). As Yagoda notes, “Most NOOBs become NOOBs in part because they have no precise American equivalent and therefore provide valuable nuance.” However, with these terms, “Americans presumably use the variant because they want to sound British — or they’ve heard others say it and they like the ring of it.”

Yet other British terms, such as “boot” for “trunk,” “bonnet” for “hood,” “shag” for “have sex,” or “lift” for “elevator,” never caught on because those terms already had other established meanings in American English. Similarly, “sport” is unlikely to replace “sports,” just like “maths” won’t soon supplant “math.”

However, sometimes it can be difficult to disentangle the two. For instance, “clever” in American English usually connotes artifice or unexpected ingenuity, while in British English, it simply means “smart.” “Proper,” similarly, denotes authenticity in the United Kingdom (“a proper cup of coffee”) and propriety in the U.S. (“proper behavior”). “Piss off” signifies “get out of here” (intransitive) in Manchester and “enrage” (transitive) in Miami, and “holiday” means vacation across the pond and festive (or solemn) occasion on American shores. Thus, tracking these NOOBs’ proliferation via Ngram only reveals so much.

Some adaptations are context-dependent, such as American soccer fans’ selective use of “draw,” “nil,” “supporters,” and “side” when discussing what the British call football but never when discussing properly (ahem) American sports. (“Soccer” is itself a Britishism, originating in the U.K. as “Association football” before fading out there in the 1970s.) Others are official, such as the adoption by the U.S. military and Customs and Border Protection of the day-month-year convention of recording dates prevalent pretty much everywhere in the world besides the U.S.

You may find yourself surprised and even delighted by some entries, such as “smog” (which originated in early 20th century London), “gadget” (19th-century British sailors), “over the top” (the Royal Army during World War I), “bonkers” (the World War II-era Royal Navy), and even “dicey” and “a piece of cake” (Royal Air Force slang). The “long game” owes its existence to whist-players in 1850s Britain. 

Equally intriguing is “easy peasy,” which does not derive from a lemon-scented Sqezy [sic] dishwashing liquid advert (ahem) but rather from a 1983 Guardian article. Who would have thought that Aussies, not California surf bros, coined “no worries” as an alternative to “no problem”? Thank you, Crocodile Dundee.

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Curiously, while Yagoda studiously consults evolving usage in the New York Times and NPR as indicative of respectable American philological and literary culture, he gives relatively short shrift to the New Yorker, that nearly hundred-year-old magazine whose idiosyncratic style guide offers fertile ground for examining the taking root of NOOBs. (Although Yagoda’s short section on the magazine’s stubborn use of “got” is rather amusing, especially his admission that he founded a Facebook group titled “Get The New Yorker to Start Using ‘Gotten.’”) Perhaps he feels (another Britishism) About Town, his (excellent) 2000 history of the magazine, suffices. 

Ultimately, though, Yagoda shines a torch (I couldn’t help myself) on a fascinating cross-cultural linguistic phenomenon that, while still measured, is — like my own marriage — gradually reuniting speakers of a once-divisive common language.

Michael M. Rosen is an attorney and writer in Israel and a nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.