Ill-gotten gains – why Americanisms are a boon for the British

Many phrases the British love to hate are actually old English expressions - while many genuine Americanisms are accepted without a fuss. Are they a bad thing? You do the math

Do you hate Americanisms? Lots of people wince and reach for the green ink if they hear a British person speak of death as "passing". Yet that euphemism is present in Chaucer and Shakespeare. What about "oftentimes"? It's in the King James Bible. And even "the fall" for autumn is good old 17th-century English, a shortening of the traditional term "fall of the leaf".

By contrast, some phrases that appear echt-British are, in fact, American. A "stiff upper lip" first appeared in a Massachusetts newspaper in 1815. Americans also coined the terms "commuter" and "teenager", which don't seem to prompt so much of a post-imperial cringe from those who want to take back control of our linguistic borders.