that annoy at least

1. When people ask for something, I often hear: "Can I get a..." It infuriates me. It's not New York. It's not the 90s. You're not in Central Perk with the rest of the Friends. Really." Steve, Rossendale, Lancashire

2. The next time someone tells you something is the "least worst option", tell them that their most best option is learning grammar. Mike Ayres, Bodmin, Cornwall

oliverburkeman Almost always, Americanisms add nuance. "Least worst option" doesn't = "best option", Mike Ayres of Bodmin Cornwall.

3. The phrase I've watched seep into the language (especially with broadcasters) is "two-time" and "three-time". Have the words double, triple etc, been totally lost? Grammatically it makes no sense, and is even worse when spoken. My pulse rises every time I hear or see it. Which is not healthy as it's almost every day now. Argh! D Rochelle, Bath

4. Using 24/7 rather than "24 hours, 7 days a week" or even just plain "all day, every day". Simon Ball, Worcester

5. The one I can't stand is "deplane", meaning to disembark an aircraft, used in the phrase "you will be able to deplane momentarily". TykeIntheHague, Den Haag, Holland

6. To "wait on" instead of "wait for" when you're not a waiter - once read a friend's comment about being in a station waiting on a train. For him, the train had yet to arrive - I would have thought rather that it had got stuck at the station with the friend on board. T Balinski, Raglan, New Zealand

Yes, to "wait on" also means to be a waiter, but writers from Chaucer to Milton to George Eliot used "to wait on" in various senses including "to observe", "to lie in wait for", "to await" and more.

7. "It is what it is". Pity us. Michael Knapp, Chicago, US

8. Dare I even mention the fanny pack? Lisa, Red Deer, Canada

Um, fanny doesn't mean the same in the US as it does in the UK. After all this is a country that uses the term faggot to describe a pork dish. A Brit could never get away with saying that in the States!

9. "Touch base" - it makes me cringe no end. Chris, UK

10. Is "physicality" a real word? Curtis, US

11. Transportation. What's wrong with transport? Greg Porter, Hercules, CA, US

Much used in 17th c. down to c1660; afterwards gradually given up for transport, prob. to avoid association with penal transportation".

12. The word I hate to hear is "leverage". Pronounced lev-er-ig rather than lee-ver -ig. It seems to pop up in all aspects of work. And its meaning seems to have changed to "value added". Gareth Wilkins, Leicester

13. Does nobody celebrate a birthday anymore, must we all "turn" 12 or 21 or 40? Even the Duke of Edinburgh was universally described as "turning" 90 last month. When did this begin? I quite like the phrase in itself, but it seems to have obliterated all other ways of speaking about birthdays. Michael McAndrew, Swindon

14. I caught myself saying "shopping cart" instead of shopping trolley today and was thoroughly disgusted with myself. I've never lived nor been to the US either. Graham Nicholson, Glasgow

15. What kind of word is "gotten"? It makes me shudder. Julie Marrs, Warrington

16. "I'm good" for "I'm well". That'll do for a start. Mike, Bridgend, Wales

17. "Bangs" for a fringe of the hair. Philip Hall, Nottingham

18. Take-out rather than takeaway! Simon Ball, Worcester

19. I enjoy Americanisms. I suspect even some Americans use them in a tongue-in-cheek manner? "That statement was the height of ridiculosity". Bob, Edinburgh

20. "A half hour" instead of "half an hour". EJB, Devon

21. A "heads up". For example, as in a business meeting. Lets do a "heads up" on this issue. I have never been sure of the meaning. R Haworth, Marlborough

22. Train station. My teeth are on edge every time I hear it. Who started it? Have they been punished? Chris Capewell, Queens Park, London

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23. To put a list into alphabetical order is to "alphabetize it" - horrid! Chris Fackrell, York

24. People that say "my bad" after a mistake. I don't know how anything could be as annoying or lazy as that. Simon Williamson, Lymington, Hampshire

25. "Normalcy" instead of "normality" really irritates me. Tom Gabbutt, Huddersfield

In my last post , I refrained from saying much about the BBC Magazine piece by Matthew Engel on 'Why do some Americanisms annoy people?' , pointing readers instead to Mark Liberman/Language Log 's analysis of the so-called Americanismsidentified by Matthew Engel. Today the BBC website followed up with ' 50 of your noted Americanisms ', and already Geoff Pullum/Language Log Americans Living in London --and others I've yet to hear about, I'm sure--have posted reasoned replies to this offensive piece.Why am I offended by this piece? I'll tell you why. Because I'vefor it.The piece is driving a huge number of people to the BBC News website (as Stan Carey has noted on Twitter). As I type this, it is the 'most shared' piece on the site and the seventh most read (on a very big news day). But it is the journalistic equivalent of (orig. & mostly BrE)reality television: let's get people to say things that might be controversial, and then we'll edit it into something that will get people arguing about which words to throw off the island. Two American views are printed as sidebars to the article; both, like the material in the article itself, are from readers who sent in comments. If we can call this journalism, it is completely passive journalism. Perhaps next we can have viewers' thoughts about whether it's going to rain tomorrow, rather than paying all those expensive weather forecasters. (Not to say that viewers' thoughts---or their photos of tornadoes---are never welcome on news program(me)s. That's why we have (mostly BrE)/(AmE)and letters to the editor. But putting up a lightly-moderated forum of people's gripes about language does not constitute news or journalism. We get those for free on the web already. We don't need our public broadcaster for that.)One could understand commercial television or newspapers doing such things--the more viewers they recruit, the more their advertisers pay them. But this is the BBC. This is what I pay a television licen{s/c}e fee for.* I want its online publications to live up to the organi{s/z}ation's charter to 'inform, educate and entertain'. And when they say 'entertain', I'd like it not to be throwing Christians to the lions or dwarf bowling or just letting people air their prejudices and ignorance with no (orig. AmE). As Mark Liberman has demonstrated , many of Engel's pet American peeves were not, in fact, Americanisms. Guess what? Some of the contributors to this piece are not much better at distinguishing things that they don't like and things that are American. Geoff Pullum's piece on Language Log makes the case that this outpouring of anti-Americanismism is also anti-Americanism, and I think that you should read his take on that, since he makes some interesting points from an interesting perspective. But I do want to say something about the title.It's odd, isn't it?. Does this sound odd to anyone else? It means, according to the introduction to the piece that they are the fifty that were most mentioned in emails to the BBC in reply to Engel's article. Now first, I'd have liked something more than one person's mention of each. Are they presented in order?. Sounds odd, odd, odd. But it does bear a certain phonic resemblance to a phrase that doesn't sound odd. Lo and behold, if one searches "50 most hated Americanisms", one finds that that's how some people, at least, have remembered the title.So, a quick tour of the fifty, starting with the first twenty-five and a (orig. & cheifly AmE)the rest. Where I've blogged about them, there's a link. (If you want to comment on the previously blogged topics, please could you do it at the original post? They continue to be read and linked to. I'd like for your comment to be where it can do the most good for people who want to know more about that particular expression.)This definitely sounds American to those old enough to remember when it wasn't said in the UK. But this battle is lost--it's pervasive. Back here I did some wondering about why it sounds odd to BrE ears and not to AmE ones.I liked Guardian columnist (and British expat in Brooklyn) This is originally AmE, but noted by the OED in theas early as 1960. But areandreally equivalent toand? Couldn'tmean that they won two prizes (say, in singles and doubles) in the same year?means 'twice as much';means 'at two times'. Grammatically it makes perfect sense, as it is identical to, which seems to be originally BrE.I'm sure this one annoys some Americans too. Slang does that. I'm more annoyed that the so-called 24-hour stores here (Asda, the UK arm of Walmart) close late- ish on Saturday, re-open for a few hours on Sunday, close again, then open ( on ) Monday morning ( see example opening times here ). Does the phrase 24/7 actually crop up in BrE? (she asked, mischievously).This is an airlineism. No one says this but flight attendants and pilots, and then only to annoy you. Yes, you.Johnson's covered this one, and says:Apparently we're supposed/meant to pity people in Chicago who have to hear American English. Six of the fifty people whose 'noted' Americanisms the BBC has noted are in the US. Another four are in countries other than the UK (two of those are in non-Anglophone countries). One can only imagine that the US ones are expatriates from the UK or elsewhere. Engel and others claim that Americanisms are fine in their place (America), but the problem is when they invade British English. But apparently they're not OK in the US either.Tisha at Americans Living in London notes (my link added):Not to mentionYeah, that annoyed a lot of us too. Google "pet peeve" "touch base", if you'd like a show-and-tell. Is it a baseball metaphor? That'll be especially peevable in the UK.Johnson again (emphasis added for that obnoxious American effect):Yes, first noted in a book published in London in 1827. What's wrong within California is that it would be a foreign word. And a newfangled Briticism at that. To quote the OED,was "The pronunciation difference, with BrE preferring 'ee' where AmE prefers the "short vowel" is found in a range of words, including. I haven't noticed the meaning change Mr Wilkins claims (thoughmight need translation for AmE readers: 'something extra included in the price'). It is used a lot in business jargon, and 90% of any country's population hates business jargon. [Need a made-up statistic? I got'em right here!]Really,It means something different from, certainly. Glad you like it.Hey, give our word back!! ( Here's my cart/trolley post. It's the kind of word that's been in English probably as long as it's been English. (First OED citation, ca. 1380.) Here's an old post . As I've been heard to say before, if you object to, then it's your duty to object toandtoo.I used to take this as an ironic misuse--i.e. being 'incorrect' to give your response a down-home flavo(u)r. If you ever hear me say it, it's ironic. But it's general informal AmE now. (Emphasis on the.) An old [and not-quite-relevant! ed.] post on adjectives-as-adverbs Here's an old post . In AmEandwould be somewhat different styles. (Nuance!)Are the Scots still allowed to say Old post --the comments are very informative about the regional variations.Oh, Bob! Thank you, Bob! This takes us back to a post called "Language play -- not getting it" The OED has citations back to 1420. Needless to say, they're not American.Neither am I, in the way Haworth has related it.is to give them a warning. It's informal, figurative. Looking aton the web, there's a lot of. No idea what that means either. Jargon, or is my AmE too out-of-date?A number of BrE speakers commented at an earlier post that they findvery natural in their dialects. This battle is lost, and one can see why--since BrE hasAmE (long-distance only)--e.g. a Greyhound station) and(but not) works on analogy with it.Do you care to explain this, C Fackrell? This seems similar to Engel's complaint about 'hospitalize', in that there is some general opposition to using one of English's lovely productive derivational suffixes. Why is this one so bad? And if it's so bad, why do BrE speakers pressuri{z/s}e people to do things where AmE speakers would pressure them Annoys me too. See point about slang, at number 4. But I don't see how it's any lazier than sayingAn oldie but a goodie. Here's what the Maven's Word of the Day said about it . For a long time, it was considered non-standard in AmE too, but we've overcome that and it's now nearly twice as common as* You probably smell a rat too. The BBC has had its budgets slashed. The people in charge of such things are all co{s/z}y with the people who run a very sleazy news organi{s/z}ation. I wouldn't be surprised if the BBC website puts things up to meet readership targets or some such thing, in hopes that their budgets and services won't be further attacked.** Thanks to reader 'jb' for noticing/suggesting this difference. In AmEis about three times more common than, which is the BrE form.