You’re not just what you eat but also what you call the meals you eat

Is this breakfast, lunch, tea, supper or dinner? Could be any of them …

Staying on the food theme, let’s address the subject of what you call each of your meals and what this says about you (at least in England until fairly recently). Here, when someone invites you to “tea”, this can mean a couple of different things, depending largely on your host’s geographical location or social class: they could be inviting you for a cup of tea and a biscuit in the mid-afternoon, or they could be asking you to join them for their evening meal. It seems to be a peculiarly British phenomenon that you can tell a lot about someone’s social class — or where they come from — simply by what they call their meals (and also by what they call some of the rooms in their houses — but that’s for a separate discussion). Beware: this is something of a linguistic minefield …

Here’s a journey through a day’s repasts in England (at least as I understand them).

Morning: Breakfast: a morning meal, from break + fast, as in “breaking the nightly fast”. This is fairly standard throughout the UK and English-speaking countries.

Mid-morning: Elevenses: a snack eaten in the morning, usually biscuits or cake (a bit like tea in the afternoon). It’s an old-fashioned term – and is a curious “double plural” of the number eleven, at which time it’s usually taken. According to Merriam-Webster, it dates back to about 1819. Its use now is confined mainly to the elderly or when speaking in jest. Wikipedia reminds us that for elevenses, Winnie-the Pooh preferred honey on bread with condensed milk; Paddington Bear often took elevenses at the antique shop on the Portobello Road; and it’s a meal eaten by Tolkien’s Hobbits between second breakfast and luncheon.

Middle of the day: Lunch/luncheon or dinner. This is where social class distinctions begin to creep in. Dinner was historically the main and most formal meal of the day, and from the Middle Ages up until the 18th century it was usually taken at midday. As working men began to travel further away from home, and it became logistically more sensible for them to take a portable, lighter meal in the middle of the day, the main meal of the day shifted to the evening, still called dinner, and the midday meal, now lighter, came to be known as luncheon, or lunch for short. However, in northern England and among the working class, the word dinner is traditionally used for the midday meal even if it’s lighter and taken to or at school or work. Hence the enduring term “school dinner”, and the English “dinner ladies” who supervise schoolchildren while they scoff or throw around their midday meal. Lunch is otherwise now fairly standard for the midday meal — throughout the English-speaking world in fact. But luncheon is reserved for more formal occasions, and is used very rarely (and somewhat pretentiously) by the upper-middle and upper classes to describe their midday repast.

Mid-afternoon: Tea or low tea: a snack — usually consisting of biscuits, a small sandwich, and/or baked goods — and a cup of tea (or coffee), to tide oneself over and provide an energy boost between the midday and evening meals. For a brief social history of the meal known as tea, and to understand the distinction between “low tea” and “high tea”, see an earlier Glossophilia post on the subject. Although “low tea” is still used in some schools and establishments, the term is now virtually obsolete and wouldn’t be understood by most Brits.

Evening: Tea/high tea, supper or dinner. As explained above, dinner historically and traditionally refers to the most substantial and formal meal of the day, which in modern times is typically taken in the evening. However, as also mentioned above, English northerners and midlanders, as well as working-class Brits, still often refer to the midday meal as dinner and then to their evening meal as tea. This word evolves from the original “high tea”: a more substantial evening meal, usually consisting of “meat and two veg” (or a similar combination) put on the table at around 6 pm for the working man of the family to return home to. However, high tea wasn’t a meal of just the working class. The middle classes would sometimes take a form of high tea in the early evening – at five or six o’clock – replacing the later evening dinner, especially if there were evening entertainments planned (much like our modern pre-theater meal) or not enough staff on duty to cook or serve dinner.

Nowadays, supper, which has always described the last meal of the day, has come to replace dinner as the standard middle- or upper-class word for the evening meal, especially when referring to the informal meal eaten at home with family members. Dinner tends to be reserved for more formal occasions, such as when inviting guests for an evening meal (you invite people to dinner), eating out in restaurants (you meet or go out for dinner), or for official or celebratory events and occasions.

Late evening (before bed): Supper refers sometimes — in some parts of the UK and in working- or middle-class usage — to a late-evening snack (similar to afternoon tea in its constitution) that follows the main evening meal and is taken before retiring. I believe it has become a rather old-fashioned name, verging on obsolete, for this particular meal.

Confused? Because this verbal meal-maze has been so studied and picked over by social historians and linguists in recent years, it’s probably been affected by an increased self-consciousness — as well as by social (both upwards and downwards) and geographical mobility — so it’s less indicative of one’s social standing or location than it used to be, and meanwhile England continues to move in the direction of a classless society. But you still might want to be mindful of all this when you receive that tea invitation — especially if it’s from a kindly northern stranger for a 5.30pm start time …

Cat’s pajamas, bee’s knees and dog’s bollocks

“You’re the cat’s whiskers!” one of my colleagues said to me recently. And I realized I didn’t know exactly what he meant — and it wasn’t an expression I had ever heard said aloud, except in old movies or shows set in the 1920s.

It was during that time that a whole collection of American expressions were coined to mean “an outstanding or excellent person or thing”, with overtones of style, class or newness (thank you Max! — although I’m pretty sure there was a touch of irony in your compliment …). The fad was to use the names of animals, body-parts and clothes in peculiar combinations, such as the flea’s eyebrows, the canary’s tusks, the eel’s ankle, the elephant’s instep, the clam’s garter, the snake’s hips, the kipper’s knickers, the sardine’s whiskers and the pig’s wings. Whereas most of these nonsensical expressions disappeared relatively quickly, three feline-themed terms — “cat’s pajamas”, “cat’s whiskers” and “cat’s miaow” — managed to stick around and they remain in use today, as does the rather charming “bee’s knees”.

As old-fashioned and archaic as they might sound today, these phrases were considered modern, clever and rather daring by the free-spirited flappers of the roaring 20s and the emerging ‘cool cats’ of the jazz age who bandied these words about. (Pajamas, by the way, were a new and fashionable article of clothing in the 1920s and therefore suitably hip for inclusion in this mod lingo.) So popular were these expressions that by the late 1920s, the ‘cat’ ones were sometimes abbreviated to just “it’s the cat’s.” All American by origin, they soon caught on in England as well. The lexicographers William and Mary Morris suggest that the “cat” phrases might have originated earlier than the ’20s, since they were reportedly first heard in girls’ schools and women’s colleges earlier in the century — at which time the terms were considerably risqué.

It’s widely believed that Tad Dorgan, the American sportswriter and cartoonist, first coined all these expressions (especially the cat ones), or at least brought them into popular usage. Dorgan created or popularized a whole “slang vernacular”, introducing into standard English a slew of now common words and phrases such as dumbbell (a stupid person), for crying out loud (an expression of astonishment), hard-boiled (referring to a tough person), and “yes, we have no bananas”, which became the title of a popular song.

I’m guessing that “the bee’s knees”, another such term still in use, endured simply because of its tidy size and tidy rhyme. According to Oxford Dictionaries, it was first recorded in the late 18th century, when it meant “something very small and insignificant”. However, its meaning changed in the 1920s — presumably to match its fellow “animal-body-part” expressions so fashionable at the time — to denote excellence. Some speculate that it derives from a comical mispronunciation of the word business, but there’s no evidence to support this idea. According to the Phrase Finder, another theory is that “bee’s knees” might have been connected to Bee Jackson, a 1920s dancer from New York who was said to have helped to popularize the Charleston by introducing the dance form to Broadway in 1924 (she went on to become a celebrated Charleston champion); “Bee’s knees” must have been fairly impressive. However, the phrase was in use before 1924, so this is also an unlikely scenario.

The British expression “dog’s bollocks”, which is thought to have originated as a printer’s term for the typographical colon dash “:-” (as Eric Partridge noted in his Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English in 1949), is now widely used in the UK to mean the same as the “cat’s whiskers”. (Here’s another example of animal body-parts, with bollocks being the British slang for testicles.) The OED cites an early example of the canine term being used in the sleeve notes for the cassette tape recording of Peter Brewis’s play The Gambler: “They are of the opinion that, when it comes to Italian opera, Pavarotti is the dog’s bollocks.”

The American entree: a menu misnomer?

While we’re on the subject of food — and British-American differences in naming — let’s not forget meal parts and their monikers. In the UK, you can expect your restaurant menu to go something like this: first a starter, then a main (course), and finally a dessert, pudding, or sweet — or even afters. But an Englishman in an American restaurant might be forgiven for being confused by the entrée coming between the appetizer and the dessert: could this be a misnomer or mistranslation? (Entrée is a French word meaning “entry”, so it stands to reason that it should name the first, introductory, part of a multi-course meal.) No, there’s a perfectly good explanation for this menu curiosity …

Dan Jurafsky, on his Language of Food blog, gives a potted history of the entrée, explaining how when the word entered the English language (with the meaning of a meal part) in the mid-17th century, it actually represented the second or third dish served, not the first.

“The word entrée first appears in France in 1555. In the 16th century, a banquet began with a course called entrée de table (“entering to/of the table”) and ends with one called issue de table (“exiting the table”). … The entrée is the first course of the meal, there can be multiple entrées, and after the entrée comes the soup, one or more roasts, and then a final course.

“Over the next hundred years, this sequence began to shift slightly, with the most significant change being that by 1650 the soup was the first course, followed by the entrée.

“Let’s look at Le cuisinier françois, the famous 1651 cookbook that helped introduce modern French cuisine, to see what the word entrée meant at this time. An entrée was a hot meat dish, distinguished from the roast course. The roast course was a spit roast, usually of fowl or rabbit, while the entree was a more complicated ‘made dish’ of meat, often with a sauce, and something requiring some effort in the kitchen. The cookbook, recently translated as The French Cook, gives such lovely entrees as Ducks in Ragout, Sausages of Partridge White-Meat, a Daube of a Leg of Mutton, and Fricaseed Chicken. An entrée was not cold, nor was it composed of vegetables or eggs. (Dishes that were cold, or composed of vegetable, or eggs were called entremets, but that’s a story for another day). So the entrée in 1651 is a hot meat course eaten after the soup and before the roast.”

~~~~~~~~

We’re still hungry: what’s for pudding (or ‘pud’ for short)? And, more to the point, what is pudding?

Nowadays the word pudding describes mainly desserts, or the final (sweet) course of a meal, but it didn’t start out that way. Originally the name of a sausage made mostly of blood, it then denoted a range of savory dishes created the way the sausage was — with meat and other ingredients in a semi-liquid form encased and then steamed or boiled to solidify the contents. Only a few of those original savory puddings are still made and eaten today: black pudding (also known as blood sausage in the US) is eaten in Asia, Europe and the Americas; haggis, regarded as Scotland’s national dish, is banned in the U.S. but is still enjoyed in Scotland and by Scots around the world.

Eventually the word pudding (thought to be derived from the French word boudin, in turn from the Latin botellus, meaning “small sausage”) came to describe dessert items similar to their savory forebears in terms of their texture, presentation and cooking process; still scoffed down today are a range of stodgy items from treacle pudding to Christmas pudding. And let’s not forget that most infamous of British dessert puddings: the Spotted Dick …

In North America, pudding describes a milk-based “sweet” (that’s another British synonym for dessert, as well as being the Brits’ name for the confectionery that the Americans call candy), which resembles custards or mousses set with eggs or gelatin. Vanilla and chocolate puddings are U.S. dessert staples.

British pudding American pudding

Finally, here are a few menu miscellanies to note for kicks:

“with au jus (sauce)” (an Americanism): au jus is a French term meaning “with juice”, so “with au jus” means “with with juice”

“rice pilaf” (or “pilaf rice”): pilaf (pronounced pee-lahv, not pee-laff) means rice, so “rice pilaf” means “rice rice”

“shrimp scampi”: scampi means shrimp or prawns, so “shrimp scampi” means “shrimp shrimp”

“paninis”: the plural of panino (the Italian word for small bread roll) is panini. So there can’t be a plural of panini, which is already a plural in itself.

Finally, slightly off-topic, there’s a restaurant in Winnipeg called “Unburger” (sic). “UnBurger … sources only LOCAL meat and never freezes it.” I guess that makes it an “unburger”, right?

You say biscuit, I say cookie

Brits say jelly, Americans say jello … Here’s a list of foodstuffs and beverages that have different names depending on which side of the Atlantic you’re on.

Please add any further examples in the comments section below. (Note that some words are used by both the English and the Americans, but in each case at least one of the names is exclusive to just one country.)

Brits Yanks

Jelly Jello

Jam Jelly

Biscuit Cookie

Griddle cake/Scotch pancake Pancake

Fairy cake Cupcake

Bun (Chelsea, sticky, currant) Pastry, or (cinnamon) roll

Bap Hamburger bun

Crisps Chips

Chips (French) fries

Jacket potato Baked potato

Sausage Breakfast sausage

Salami Sausage

Mince Ground beef / hamburger

Prawn Shrimp

Fish fingers Fish sticks

Gherkin Pickle

(Branston) pickle Relish

Courgette Zucchini

Aubergine Eggplant

Broad bean Fava bean

Cos Romaine

French/green beans String beans

Beetroot Beet

Rocket Arugula

Coriander Cilantro

Chicory Endive

Custard Egg custard

Mousse/Angel Delight Pudding

Porridge Oatmeal

Sweets Candy

Candy floss Cotton candy

Cornflour Cornstarch

Icing Frosting

Sultanas (White) raisins

White coffee Coffee with cream/milk

Apple juice (Apple) cider

Cider Hard cider

Spirits (Hard) liquor

Posterior to using prior to, do you feel just a tad pompous?

Why use “prior to” when before works just as well? Linguists and writers have explained — in tones ranging from polite to contemptuous — why “prior to” never needs to see the light of day, variously dismissing its use as affected, pompous, overworked, corporate, or inflated. Glossophilia has nothing to add (except to suggest that “prior to” might be quite useful as a crossword clue). Bryson, Shore, Bernstein, Gowers and Kimble: let it rip!

Bill Bryson summed it up nicely in his Dictionary of Troublesome Words: “Before, prior to. There is no difference between these two except length and a certain affectedness on the part of ‘prior to’. To paraphrase [Theodore] Bernstein, if you would use ‘posterior to’ instead of ‘after’, then by all means use ‘prior to’ instead of ‘before’.”

Michael Shore on his Language Lore blog brands the use of “prior to” instead of before as a hyperurbanism.

Publisher’s Weekly describes its usage: “Sometimes termed pompous or affected, prior to is a synonym of before that most often appears in rather formal contexts, such as the annual reports of corporations.”

Theodore M. Bernstein in The Careful Writer: “Prior to is a ‘‘faddish affectation for before. Would you say posterior to in place of after?’’

Roy H. Copperud in American Usage and Style: “Prior to is ‘pompous in the sense before.’’

Bryan A. Garner in A Dictionary of Modern Legal Usage: ‘‘Prior to is a terribly overworked lawyerism. Only in rare contexts is it not much inferior to before.’’

Sir Ernest Gowers, The Complete Plain Words: ‘‘There is no good reason to use prior to as a preposition instead of before. Before is simpler, better known and more natural, and therefore preferable.’’

And Kimble puts it most eloquently:

Joseph Kimble in A Modest Wish List for Legal Writing: ‘‘Prior to takes the booby prize for the most common inflated phrase in legal and official writing. Why would anyone prefer it to before? Try to think of a single literary title or line that uses prior to. . . . By itself, prior to may seem insignificant. But it often leads to clumsy, indirect constructions . . . . More important, a fondness for prior to may indicate a fondness for jargon—and a blind resistance to using plain words. That resistance, that cast of mind, is in large part responsible for the state of legal writing.’’

From Amharic to Zulu, bogus to zombie: the languages and words of Africa

I’ve just returned from Morocco, where I was struck by the country’s enthralling cultural diversity, which is reflected in and epitomized by its linguistic variety (there are three standard languages spoken there: French, English and Moroccan Arabic — and that’s just the locals talking, we’re not including the tourists…). The continent of Africa is home to more than 2,100 languages — some estimate more than 3,000, many of which are spoken around the world. About a hundred African languages are used for mass inter-ethnic communication; Arabic, Amharic, Berber, Hausa, Igbo, Oromo, Somali, Swahili and Yoruba are spoken by tens of millions of people. Nigeria alone has 500 languages. Most languages spoken in Africa belong to one of three large language families: Afroasiatic, Nilo-Saharan, and Niger-Congo.

The Niger–Congo languages constitute Africa’s largest language family in terms of geographical area, number of speakers, and number of distinct languages. The most widely spoken Niger–Congo languages by number of native speakers are Yoruba, Igbo, Fula, Shona and Zulu. The most widely spoken by total number of speakers is Swahili. Although Swahili is the mother tongue to only about five million people, it is used as a lingua franca (a working, bridging or unifying language) in much of the southern half of East Africa; it serves as the official language of four nations — Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo — and is one of the official languages of the African Union. The total number of Swahili speakers exceeds 140 million.

More than 300 million people speak an Afroasiatic (also known as Hamito-Semitic) language; these are spoken predominantly in the Middle East, North Africa, the Horn of Africa, and parts of the Sahel. The most widely spoken Afroasiatic language is Arabic.

Nilo-Saharan languages are spoken by about 50 million people, mainly in the upper parts of the Chari and Nile rivers, and extending through 17 nations in the northern half of Africa.

~~~~~~

Many words that we use on a daily basis are imports from the French language. Premiere, ballet, genre, unique, liaison, resume, and fiance are just a few examples. Although not nearly as numerous, there are several words in standard English that originated in Africa — including a few that are quite surprising. Did you know, for example, that bogus originally comes from the Hausa (West African) word boko-boko, meaning fake or fraudulent? Jumbo, meaning unusually large, comes originally (and via P.T. Barnum) from the Swahili jumbe or jambo, meaning elephant. And I had always assumed that tango was Spanish or Latin in origin, but it’s from an African word in the Niger-Congo family of languages meaning “to dance”.

Here are some other words that came from this most exotic and beautiful of continents:

banana: West African (possibly a Wolof word)

bozo: West African for “stupid”

dig (in the sense of to appreciate or understand): from the Wolof dega, used at the beginning of a sentence to mean either “look here” or “understand”

guys (informal word for people): David Dalby, founding director of the Linguasphere Observatory (a transnational linguistic research network), contends that there’s a direct connection between guys and the Wolof word gay, meaning person or fellow and always used in the plural form

jukebox: from juke, joog meaning “wicked, disorderly” in Gullah, probably from Wolof and Bambara dzug meaning “unsavory”

Okay: there are numerous theories about where this word — now used and understood all over the world — originated, but it’s widely believed that it might be from the Wolof expression “waw kay”, meaning “all correct”

tango: originally the name of an African-American drum dance, probably from a Niger-Congo language, eg. the Ibibio tamgu meaning “to dance”

tote: a popular theory is that this originated in West African languages: the Kikongo tota meaning “to pick up,” or the Kimbundu tuta meaning “carry, load,” related to Swahili tuta “pile up, carry”. (However, the OED disputes this etymology.)

safari: from the Swahili word meaning “to travel”

zombie: originally a Creole word “zobi”, of Bantu origin, from the Kikongo word zumbi, meaning “fetish”, and the Kimbundu word nzambi, meaning “god”, zombie was originally the name of a snake god. Zombie was first used in the 19th century to mean voodoo dead spirits. More recently it has taken on a new meaning of “automaton” or someone who looks like a robot or lifeless being.

Thank you. You might be welcome …

Do we say thanks too much? “Thank you” (or the appropriate equivalent — eg. thanks, tah, cheers, merci, etc.) tends to be said more frequently in some cultures — especially in English-speaking countries — than in others; many would argue that utterances of thanks and gratitude are dished out so habitually and gratuitously in England and the U.S. that the sincerity of the sentiment is often diminished.

The Chinese rarely say thank you to their family and close friends. And because they value humility, saying “thank you” after being paid a compliment can be perceived as arrogant. In Thailand, gratitude is generally conveyed using the “wai”, a gesture of hands clasped together as in prayer, which varies according to the social status of the person being thanked, and sometimes simply a smile will suffice; a verbal “thank you” is reserved for important actions that warrant sincere and special gratitude. The Nepalese have no words that translate directly to thank you or please; they adjust or conjugate their pronouns and verbs (much like the way the French use vous or tu) to reflect the level of respect they wish to convey, but don’t have dedicated “polite” words. (Similarly, most Scandinavian countries — certainly Danish, Finnish and Icelandic — don’t have an actual word for please.)

As for acknowledging thanks, the nature of the verbal response also varies from culture to culture and language to language, and seems to fall into three general categories. The first amounts to dismissing the act that inspired the thanks as unimportant or non-existent. The French say de rien, the Portuguese de nada, in Catalan, it’s de res — all translating roughly to “it’s nothing”. Then there’s almost the opposite: an expression of pleasure on the part of the person being thanked. The Dutch phrase graag gedaan translates literally as “gladly done”; when the Icelandic say gerdu svo vel, they mean “my pleasure”. And finally there’s a fairly common tradition of echoing back the word for please when you’re acknowledging an expression of gratitude. In Hebrew, Russian and a number of Eastern European languages, the way you say “you’re welcome” is by using the word for please. In Russia, it’s пожалуйста” (“pah-zhal-stah”); the Polish dual-purpose word is prosze; in Hebrew, it’s bevakasha.

In British and American English, we tend to use variations on the first two types of expression. An Englishman, if he does verbalize a response, is more likely to offer “of course”, “don’t mention it”, “it was nothing”, “by all means”, “no problem”, “no worries” (very common in Australian English), “that’s OK”, “that’s all right”, “my pleasure”, or “not at all”. The traditional “you’re welcome” is more of an American phenomenon. In fact, since the British have a habit of thanking everyone for the smallest and most trivial actions (they give thanks almost as much as they apologize), they’re less inclined to acknowledge all the gratitude being doled out — and therefore a nod or a smile, with deliberate eye-contact (which in itself is enough to make most English folk blush), will usually do the trick. The Americans are more conscientious (they will usually offer a verbal reply), less self-conscious and more effusive with their “you’re welcomes”, and common alternatives are “sure”, “sure thing”, or, even more informally, “you bet” — or “you betcha!”. That’s something you won’t hear an Englishman say.

Last year, Lynneguist on her blog Separated by a Common Language wrote a detailed and nuanced post comparing American and English usage of please, thank you and other general terms and expressions of politeness (a video of her TEDx talk on the subject at Sussex University accompanies the piece). It’s well worth a read to understand some of the more subtle differences in manners — both linguistic and social — between the Yanks and the Brits.

Here are a few international versions of “you’re welcome”, with their literal translations where I’ve managed to track them down:

Brazilian/Portuguese: de nada, “of nothing”

Catalan: de res, “it’s nothing”

Cantonese: M̀h’sái haak-hei, “not necessary”

Danish: selv tak, “thanks yourself”

Dutch: graag gedaan, “gladly done”

Finnish: ole hyvä

French: de rien, “it’s nothing”

German: Bitte schoen, “please pretty”

Hebrew: bevakasha, “please”

Hungarian: nincs mit, “nothing”

Icelandic: gerdu svo vel, “my pleasure” or “there you go”

Italian: prego, “I beg”

Japanese: dou itashimashite

Norwegian: bare hyggelig, “my pleasure”

Polish: prosze, “please”

Russian: pohzhalstah, “please”

Slovenian: prosim, “please”

Spanish: de nada, “it’s nothing”, or mi gusto, “my pleasure”

Swedish: varsagod, “be so good”

Tagalog: walang anuman, “no problems”

Italian: Prego

If you will

Commenting in a recent Washington Post article — about whether earthworms whose heads are severed from their tails really can and do grow back their missing halves — Mark Zoran, who studies nervous system regeneration at Texas A&M, made the following statement: “[Severed red wiggler tails especially] have trouble mounting productive head regeneration and thus die of starvation and brainlessness, if you will.” As I see it, his use of the expression “if you will” is slightly ironic or mildly facetious: he’s clearly playing on the word brainlessness, which is usually meant figuratively but in this case can be taken more literally; he’s drawing our attention to his hesitant choice of word, and asking the reader to accept it in this context, perhaps with a touch of humor.

“If you will” is an expression that you won’t hear in England, but it is common on the other side of the Atlantic (and is thought by many to be pretentious or fuddy-duddy, especially if it’s used habitually). The British phrase “if you want” is probably the nearest equivalent (but used less often), and is more or less a translation of “if you will”, since will is used here in the archaic sense of “want” or “wish”, rather than the future form of a verb (as in “if you will do something”). Probably more common in British-English are the phrases “as it were” or “so to speak”, which convey a similar sense of word-choice hesitancy, and can also be perceived as pompous, pretentious or old-fashioned.

Geoffrey Pullum on Language Log claims that the expression serves the same purpose as the now ubiquitous discourse particle like: as “a way to signal hedging about vocabulary choice — a momentary uncertainty about whether the adjacent expression is exactly the right form of words or not.” (Although I would argue that this is giving like too much credit; I think of it more as a sentence filler such as er or um, with no discernible intention of meaning.)

The OED explains “if you will” as being “sometimes used parenthetically to qualify a word or phrase: = ‘if you wish it to be so called’, ‘if you choose or prefer to call it so.’” It claims that there are citations of the exact phrase going back to the 16th century, and similar elliptical uses date back to Old English.

According to UsingEnglish.com, “if you will” is used to make a concession in a sentence, allowing the writer or speaker not to commit to a particular argument or assertion, but letting the reader or listener draw that conclusion if he so wishes. It gives the following example: “He wasn’t a very honest person, a liar if you will,” whereby the writer, while not accusing the subject of the sentence of being a liar, allows her reader to draw that conclusion nevertheless.

Laines and twittens

Me in a twitten

During my weekend in Brighton, I’ve discovered two words from the old Sussex dialect that are still alive and well and being used in Brighton, Lewes and Cuckfield: laine and twitten. One of these has a similar meaning to lane, and you’ve probably guessed that it’s not the one you might think.

A visit to Brighton wouldn’t seem complete without a visit to the North Laine — a trendy bohemian shopping and eating area that isn’t actually part of the city’s famous Lanes (apart from anything, they’re spelled differently). Laine is an old Sussex word describing an open tract of land; it derives from an Anglo-Saxon legal term for a landholding — nothing to do with lanes or streets. The area now known as North Laine once represented five open farming plots that had probably existed as such since the Middle Ages. In fact, the original farmhouse is where Brighton’s famous Royal Pavilion, the palace built for the Prince Regent who would become King George IV, now stands.

Twitten is also from old Sussex dialect, dating back to the early 19th century, and it means a narrow path, passage or alleyway between two walls or hedges, usually leading into a courtyard, street or open area. There are a few very picturesque twittens dotted around Brighton and throughout East and West Sussex, some with quaint little houses on at least one side of the narrow alleyway. It has been suggested that the word derives from the Low German twiete, meaning “alley” or “lane”; Wiktionary proposes that it’s a corruption of betwixt and between. The word is included in William Douglas Parish’s A dictionary of the Sussex dialect and collection of provincialisms in use in the county of Sussex, published in 1875.

Other regional/quirky names for alleyways around England and Great Britain are twitchells (probably related to twittens) in north-west Essex, east Hertfordshire and Nottingham; chares in north-east England; jennels, gennels or ginnels in northern England — the latter sometimes roofed or covered; opes in Plymouth; jiggers or snickets in Liverpool; gitties (or jitties) in Derbyshire and Leicestershire; shuts in Shropshire; and vennels in Scotland. As recently as 1983, a Yorkshire writer named Mark W. Jones invented a new word, snickelway, by making a portmanteau of three words already mentioned: snicket, ginnel and alleyway: this neologism is now in regular local use.

Here are a bunch of what I might refer to as twitten: participants in Brighton’s annual Naked Bike Ride, which we stumbled upon in fairly frigid temperatures earlier today:

American -ates and -ations

The Americans usually shorten their words and phrases, given any opportunity. Take “three hundred fifty dollars” (cf. “three hundred and fifty pounds”), “it starts June 2” (cf. “it starts on June 2nd”), or “let’s go find him” (cf. “let’s go and find him”). They even take letters and syllables out of words – eg. “color” cf. “colour”, “aluminum” vs. “aluminium”. So isn’t it interesting that there are a few words that have longer alternative versions — and it’s the longer rather than the shorter words that have been adopted into standard American English? An Englishman orients himself in a new city; his American spouse probably orientates herself with a map. The tourist from London would inquire (well, she would actually enquire) about what transport she can take to Boston; the American would ask about transportation. The sleazy limey is planning to burgle the house on the corner; the Yank was caught burglarizing his neighbor. Administrate is an uncommon version of the verb administer, and although it’s more widely heard in the U.S. (and it is acknowledged by dictionary consensus to be a real word), it’s generally considered disagreeable and best avoided.

There is one further pair of related words that some might argue have a subtle difference in meaning; however, I believe they are synonymous. Whereas the English feel obliged to say sorry at any given opportunity, even to inanimate objects, the Americans generally feel obligated to give up their seats to the elderly. According to the Oxford Dictionaries, oblige means “to make (someone) legally or morally bound to do something”, and obligate means “to require or compel (someone) to undertake a legal or moral duty”. As far as I’m concerned (and I’m British-born), they’re the same, and oblige suffices without the added ‘-ate’.

There are words for which the addition of an ‘-ate’ or ‘-ation’ does in fact change the sense of the root word. To comment is to make a single remark, whereas to commentate is to provide a steady flow of comments and observations, usually about a sports event. A protest is an expression of disapproval or objection to something said or done, but a protestation is an emphatic declaration that something either is or isn’t the case.

Can you think of other words with longer alternative incarnations that are favored by the Americans?