Definition:
An English word or phrase--or a feature of grammar, spelling, or pronunciation--that originated in the United States and/or is used primarily by Americans.
See also:
Etymology:
Term introduced by the Reverend John Witherspoon in the late-18th centuryExamples and Observations:
- As pioneers, the first Americans had to make up many new words, some of which now seem absurdly commonplace. Lengthy, which dates back to 1689, is an early Americanism. So are calculate, seaboard, bookstore and presidential. . . . Antagonize and placate were both hated by British Victorians. As members of a multiracial society, the first Americans also adopted words like wigwam, pretzel, spook, depot and canyon, borrowing from the Indians, Germans, Dutch, French and Spanish."
(Robert McCrum et al., The Story of English. Viking, 1986) - "When the American people get through with the English language, it will look as if it had been run over by a musical comedy."
(Finley Peter Dunne, quoted by H.L. Mencken in The American Language, 1921) - "Most 'Americanisms' coined [during the 19th century] haven't stood the test of time. When a woman disposes of an unwanted admirer we no longer say that she has 'given him the mitten.' We still call experienced travellers 'globetrotters,' but tend to say they've 'bought the T-shirt' rather than 'seen the elephant.' We prefer more elegant metaphors for a cemetery than a 'bone-pit.' Our dentists might object if we called them 'tooth carpenters.' And if a teenager today told you they'd been 'shot in the neck' you might ring for an ambulance rather than ask what they'd had to drink the previous night.
"Lots, however, have become part of our everyday speech. 'I guess,' 'I reckon,' 'keep your eyes peeled,' 'it was a real eye-opener,' 'easy as falling off a log,' 'to go the whole hog,' 'to get the hang of,' 'struck oil,' 'lame duck,' 'face the music,' 'high falutin,' 'cocktail,' and 'to pull the wool over one's eyes'--all made the leap into British usage during the Victorian period. And they've stayed there ever since."
(Bob Nicholson, "Racy Yankee Slang Has Long Invaded Our Language." The Guardian, Oct. 18, 2010) - "In American English the first noun [in a compound] is generally in the singular, as in drug problem, trade union, road policy, chemical plant. In British English, the first element is sometimes a plural noun, as in drugs problem, trades union, roads policy, chemicals plant. Some noun-noun compounds that entered American English at a very early stage are words for indigenous animals, like bullfrog 'a large American frog,' groundhog 'a small rodent' (also called woodchuck); for trees and plants, e.g. cottonwood (an American poplar tree); and for phenomena like log cabin, the kind of simple structure many early immigrants lived in. Sunup is also an early American coinage, parallel to the Americanism sundown, which is a synonym for the universal sunset."
(Gunnel Tottie, An Introduction to American English. Wiley-Blackwell, 2002) - Americanisms in The Telegraph [U.K.]
"Some Americanisms keep slipping in, usually when we are given agency copy to re-write and do an inadequate job on it. There is no such verb as 'impacted,' and other American-style usages of nouns as verbs should be avoided (authored, gifted etc). Maneuver is not spelt that way in Britain. We do not have lawmakers: we might just about have legislators, but better still we have parliament. People do not live in their hometown; they live in their home town, or even better the place where they were born."
(Simon Heffer, "Style Notes." The Telegraph, Aug. 2, 2010) - "[F]ew of the grammatical differences between British and American are great enough to produce confusion, and most are not stable because the two varieties are constantly influencing each other, with borrowing both ways across the Atlantic and nowadays via the Internet."
(John Algeo, British or American English? Cambridge Univ. Press, 2006)
