13: Oxford American Dictionary ft. Ben Yagoda

Brits fiercely gatekeep their language, which they haughtily named "English" after some of their people, and Americanization is hated almost as much as the invasive gray squirrel. Or grey squirrel?

Anyway, the process doesn't just go one way. The British are coming for your words and soon the internet will have us all talking like Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins. 

Today your hosts are joined by Ben Yagoda, author of the blog Not One Off Britishisms, which catalogues the ways in which British idioms are worming into American English. Fortunately this gives us a head start when leaning the lingo, even if it does occasionally leave us feeling gazumped (um, this doesn't makes sense - ed.) 

Plus we go up the Arsenal with a sport update and cover the latest political intrigue as Matt and Mike don't correct some completely accurate information they gave out in the last episode. 

Ben Yagoda is the author of Gobsmacked!: The British Invasion of American English and hosts the excellent podcast The Lives They're Living. His latest book is the novel Alias O. Henry.

His Not One off Britishisms blog is at: https://notoneoffbritishisms.com/

Google's Ngram viewer shows a surprising result in the red vs. grey squirrel match. You can see it here. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_05 0:05

Hello and welcome to Notes from a Small, Cold, Dark, Miserable Island. Your encyclopedia, your Oxford English Dictionary. If you're an American here in the British Isles, I'm Mike.

SPEAKER_03 0:17

I'm Matt. I dance every time you say small, cold, dark, miserable island.

SPEAKER_05 0:22

You're doing a little jig there.

SPEAKER_03 0:23

There's a little rhythm uh that I pick up on.

SPEAKER_05 0:27

We have a very uh interesting guest uh these days, which is why we have the uh dictionary themed uh introduction. Um But before we get there, I wanted to just sort of update from uh last time around and the time before that. Um little bit of a sports update as to the uh American sports. Some of them reach their sort of uh uh dramatic final stages.

SPEAKER_03 0:51

Yes, but also English sports. I wanna I want to touch on that if I may uh with a little with a little compare and contrast.

SPEAKER_05 0:57

I was actually in Highbury yesterday. Terrible luck. There was a great um uh uh one establishment, I can't remember what restaurant, they had um free meals if your name is, and then they had like listed all the first names of the Arsenal squad. Like it is like if Boyaka gets uh Boyaka was like you could get free tacos. Um the boyaka taco. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:23

Um sorry. Um well this is the thing, Mike, that I wanted to contrast. I am on record as a Premier League hater, as a uh as a football in general uh skeptic. Um on Tuesday night in in Hackney Dalston, not not like Finsbury Park, not Highbury, not like at the site of the stadium, but on Tuesday night when Arsenal won the league, uh the fans went dickhead. And and so, like, you know, line bikes on the sidewalk, people running around drunk, everybody honking horns, you know, clogging up the intersections. And this is far, far away from the stadium. Now, leading up to uh um Arsenal winning the league, I didn't see signs and windows. I didn't see like people rocking their gear like you would in America when when your hometown team is is on the verge of winning at all. It all just sort of came out of the woodwork at the moment of the win. And the moment of the win to shit further on the Premier League was a Tuesday night. Arsenal didn't even win. But the team in second place tied. And thus you crown a champion based on an out-of-town tie. And if and if Arsenal wants to get all the time, yeah. If Arsenal wants to get all pumped up about their first win in 22 years, they just lost to Man City a few weeks ago, too. So congratulations, Arsenal, you gooners and boomers.

SPEAKER_05 3:01

It didn't go to like it could have been the first year.

SPEAKER_03 3:03

All they have to do, first place, second place, do a championship match. Just do a championship match.

SPEAKER_02 3:10

Oh, they're too exhausted from other champions leagues and the all the other distraction leagues and all the other like water it down leagues.

SPEAKER_03 3:19

You at least were a little bit enthused by the my brother is like I'm happy for I'm happy for my you know my sister-in-law's uh partner because it took him a long time. Now let's contrast let's contrast this with a uh a s uh uh you know in in American sports uh in in hockey and basketball, f four-round playoff series to crown a champion. Each round seven games just to advance, and you get and you're in the second round and you haven't been there in a while, and you get to the seventh game, and the seventh game is tied at the end of regulation. And then you go and then you go to sudden death overtime next goal. Fast forward. You move on to the next round, you don't score that goal, you go home. What could be more higher stakes and on the edge of your seat than the Buffalo Sabres losing to the Montreal Canadian?

SPEAKER_05 4:17

Well, there we go. We lose in overtime. Commiseration to you, Mike. The Sabres. Your calves though did a good job.

SPEAKER_03 4:26

My calves rushed in game second, uh, game seven of their second research.

SPEAKER_05 4:30

The other nights not so well.

SPEAKER_03 4:31

What happened? They blew a big 20-some point lead in the second half in Madison Square Garden, which is a hard place to win. You wanna, when you don't have home court advantage, you want to get out and get get you steal a game uh uh and and sort of flip the script, uh especially against a team that had been sitting waiting for a week for you. They had uh the Knicks swept their previous round and it took the Cavs seven games. So you really want to get that first game, and they had it and they blew it. Uh so I'm now for game two tomorrow night, or wait, or is it tonight? Oh, it's tonight. I'm officially I've decided I'm not gonna because they it starts at one. They basically start at one.

SPEAKER_05 5:12

So You're not gonna stay up?

SPEAKER_03 5:14

I'm not gonna stay up for game two. I'm just gonna see what happens in the morning and just because I can't keep living I can't keep living, yeah. Oh, of course. But I can't keep living this liminal life where I'm up, I'm up till 4 a.m.

SPEAKER_05 5:26

and then the NBA does this. No, it's not worth your sleep. You're gonna ha you're gonna like, you know, conk out before the finals.

SPEAKER_03 5:32

It was almost worth it when they almost when I was so like pleased and I've really I've gone into a new routine where like I get under a blanket and I turn the broadcast on mute and I try to get into a like a very zen-like place, even as the the the game is back and forth and super exciting, but it still doesn't I still can't sleep.

SPEAKER_05 5:52

You know, um coming up, we do have, and it might be depending on when we put this episode out, still it might be over by now, but at least as we speak, the Champions League final. There was one match, right? One match to win it all, and it's Arsenal again. So I wish them all the luck against Paris. Yeah. And then you don't also have to don't have to stay up until uh 1 a.m. to actually watch an exciting sport. We also talked about elections and we thought that maybe we gave some bad information. We double checked. No, uh you you can't vote in this country if you're an American, if you're listening, unless you have a passport from the EU, uh Ireland, um uh you know, uh uh any other EU country.

SPEAKER_03 6:35

Aaron Powell Yeah, my my Polish coworker sort of made me um made me paranoid. Yeah, because she was like, I voted and I can vote in local elections, but not in national elections. And you should be able to, because you have indefinite leave. And then Mike sent me the link and was like, no, not you.

SPEAKER_05 6:52

I thought we were giving out misinformation.

SPEAKER_03 6:53

Is that a vestige of it I feel like that's a vestige of pre-Brexit, like that that these EU folks can vote in local elections. Why why hasn't it? I guess when re reform comes in, they'll put that.

SPEAKER_05 7:04

Why they would change that. Um personally, I I didn't vote. And I didn't vote because I stupidly just forgot to register when I moved back to this country. Excuse the point. I did not exercise my I I thought I had. I mean it was complete sort of oversight. I didn't exercise my democratic uh will. But a lot has happened. Um and despite my prediction at the very beginning of this year, when we did the big prediction episode, nobody r i is going to um remember this. But uh I I said nothing was gonna happen, but now clearly there'll be a new Prime Minister soon at some point, probably. Not definite. But it keeps it keeps on hanging on. Um we have the top contenders, the sort of like centrist guy, the sort of slightly more left-wing guy, who knows, some dark horses in there. Um suddenly British politics has become a little bit more exciting again, and um whoever replaces Keir Starmer, it looks like, judging from uh opinion polls, will be more popular than Keir Starmer himself. Um so you know, who knows? Good probably good news if you're not a fan of uh reform and you don't want to wait ten years for your indefinite leave to remain.

SPEAKER_03 8:23

Do you want to touch on this where where I where I just flagged up uh uh the the guy who came out saying like, hey, we should uh maybe consider rejoining the EU? And the the centrists the centrists were like, oh my god, no, no way. And then other people were like, Yeah, why can't we just admit we made a mistake and uh and backtrack it?

SPEAKER_05 8:42

Wes Streeting um who uh perhaps the closest thing to Starmer, he's definitely gonna challenge Starmer for the leadership uh to some degree, has come out with this. Andy Burnham, who's the mayor of Manchester, um and uh thought to be very much popular with the sort of northern labor voter who is also pro-Brexit because they don't like much the European Union and think it's a waste of money or whatnot, has been a little bit more lukewarm about this. Um I don't know. I don't know if it's a real vote winner either way. Um you probably just want to sort of dodge the question like Jeremy Corbyn did in 2017 and then um maybe win some votes on the back of that. I mean, you know, we're only we haven't even sort of started the process here. It's fiendishly complicated. I couldn't even really describe it to you myself. Um but uh clearly changes in the air.

SPEAKER_03 9:37

Yeah. We didn't really touch on that in the ele in the in the you know in the politics episode about you know how the the the leader of the party, you know, for those not schooled in it, the leader of the party, you know, is is a representative and but then they are they are then the chief executive. Yes, another quark of the British system. And then they can be removed without that being you know without that requiring an election and uh Right.

SPEAKER_05 10:02

Nobody nobody has to vote for the Prime Minister.

SPEAKER_03 10:06

Very weird. Do you want to should we just mark history like where we are in history just with a quick like mention of uh of what's going on in the US? Just you know, just if we just wanted to like real low-key mention brazen unprecedented corruption with this creation of a 1.776 see what they did their slush fund for the president's uh allies after he sued his own revenue service. You should check on Mike's Substack, which we should link for for more information on that. I mean, surely this sort of unchecked uh and blatant corruption should spell doom in the in the midterm elections coming up at the end of the year. Surely the voters won't let this stand. Oh, wait, don't worry. The Supreme Court is fine with the Republican redrawing the maps so that with the Republicans redrawing congressional maps so that uh the Trump people continue to stay in power regardless. Meanwhile, dude is is turning the uh is turning the White House physically into a missile-proof fortress. So, yeah, don't don't uh don't worry about that.

SPEAKER_05 11:09

I saw I saw the uh somebody uh one of these um they call them NAFO uh people online. They're sort of like troll warriors on behalf of Ukraine posting a picture of Zelensky and with the caption This is a man who doesn't need a bulletproof ballroom. It's pretty funny. I mean, you know, amidst the war. Uh I think all signs may point to continued um d uh upheaval in the homeland. And um you can always uh come here and listen to our podcast, probably. I think our guest is waiting. Should we amidst all that? Today we're joined by Ben Yagoda, author and scholar, a longtime journalism professor at the University of Delaware. And for our purposes today, the foremost expert on how the British are coming for our lovely American English. Uh he writes the blog, which I highly recommend, not one-off Britishisms. Do you get that acronym? Noob. Um and uh the title of his book is GobSmacked, another beautiful uh British word.

SPEAKER_03 12:15

Ben What sounding word. Welcome to the pod. Love the sound of it in your mouth.

SPEAKER_00 12:21

Thank you so much. Uh it's it's great to be here. And I just want to acknowledge right away, and uh some a person that you're probably aware of named Lynn Murphy, who is a professor of linguistics at Sussex, but a Native American and is really the expert on the broader subject of transatlantic uh differences and similarities and borrowings and so forth, and and writes a blog called Separated by a Common Language.

SPEAKER_05 12:56

Was she first to the scene?

SPEAKER_00 12:58

A great colleague and was doing this before I got into it.

SPEAKER_05 13:01

We'll definitely have to have our on in the future. I'm curious, how did you get on this beat? Um, what sparked your interest in transatlantic translation?

SPEAKER_00 13:13

Well, I have to say that I've come to realize that I've long been from the child age obsessed with language without even knowing it. So, for example, in your brief intro, you said you will have her on in the future. And that made me think about how in British English it's often said in future, not in the future. Yeah. Whereas Americans never say in future. I did a post on this a while back. In British English, there's a difference between in the future and in future. One is more vague and one's more specific. I forget which is which. But anyway, that's just uh to say a little bit about where my head is, language-wise, on this topic. Um very simple. I as you mentioned, I taught journalism for many years at the University of Delaware. And back in the 90s, I started bringing study abroad groups over to London from the US. Um, and one of the courses we had was the British Press, which was uh, you know, uh a notable institution and quite different from the US, as as you know. Because of that, and also because of just being interested, I started reading a lot of uh British newspapers, magazines, and listening to the BBC and so forth, and began to notice all these differences, uh, much more than you're exposed to as someone growing up and coming of age in America when you know Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins or whatever Patron Saint.

SPEAKER_03 14:55

I mean, come on, that's 100% authentic.

SPEAKER_00 14:58

Yeah, exactly. Well, but even um, you know, in American movies, they would have you know Terry Thomas or whoever come on, and there was a very small number of words like telly and lift and chap and and maybe a dozen others that would mark the English person. But I began to realize there were hundreds, if not thousands, of differences big and small, as small as in the future versus in future or driving license versus driver's license, and and so many that you know were were fairly small, but just so many of them. Um so that struck me. And then this is in the mid-90s or so, over the next maybe 10 years or so, I noticed a number of these words and expressions that I had observed in Britain showing up in the US. And over time, it began to be more and more and more to the point where it seemed like a trend. And as one did in those days, I started a blog in 2011, which you mentioned, not one off Britishisms, to just write about these things. And I've been doing it ever since. Uh the uh frequency with which I do new posts has slowed, but there still are some. I'm thinking about doing one right now. I'd done one before about the phrase moving house, which I first heard Tina Brown say to me when I interviewed her in the 90s for my book about the New Yorker, uh, about town. And Americans don't say moving house, we just say moves.

SPEAKER_03 16:45

We're just gonna move moving today. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:48

Moving. Um, but but so I did a post on it hearing Americans say moving house, but lately it's been broadened to moving office. We're moving offices, we're moving apartments, and those are ones I haven't don't recall having heard yet in the US. So it's I'm still doing it. And um I wrote a as you mentioned, I I kind of uh turned it turned it into a book called Gobsmack, it was published a couple of years ago, and it continues.

SPEAKER_05 17:23

Um I'm wondering uh what we can sort of chalk this up to. I mean, as Americans who came to Britain for the first time in the 90s, me and Matt here, um I think I don't know, correct me if I'm wrong, Matt. It was like you you you sort of came here, you picked up the Sun newspaper or whatever newspaper you happen to pick up, not knowing anything about what what was uh the context. And then you were sort of confronted with all these words. Is it basically just pop culture um you know, Brits showing up on um Netflix series, uh the the BBC getting sort of more airtime on uh public radio and you know, sort of uh you know, various trends for like Downton Abbey and other sort of entertainment products? Is it is it basically just like a a a small little story of globalization that's driving the the trend of these uh these British words invading?

SPEAKER_00 18:14

I think all those things you mentioned are part of it. The the biggest thing is the internet, you know, isn't it? And YouTube videos and um you know global English is is is there on the internet, so people are exposed to things. Another factor, I mentioned Tina Brown, but there were a bunch of so-called journos, to use the British term, uh, who came over around that time in the 90s, 2000s, whether it was Christopher Hitchens, Andrew Sullivan, Anna Wintor, um and others uh who brought these some of these things over, pop culture phenomena like the Harry Potter books, the Spice Girls. So uh ginger is a word that wasn't used in the US to talk about a you know what we would call a redhead, but then there was ginger spice and Ron from the Harry Potter books.

SPEAKER_03 19:15

You know, I'll jump in just real quick, like because we we me and Mike came over in '97 for the first time, and a big one for me was Eddie Izzard, Susie Eddie Izzard's specials first showing up on HBO, and he explicitly goes into, especially in Dress to Kill, uh, goes into you know the differences in linguistics, uh, and and was just so so charming that uh yeah, I think stand-up comedians, because they just talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, and you spend that time with them, that's a really good way to just mainline some language.

SPEAKER_00 19:49

John Oliver, uh, right, yeah, of course. And you know, the there's I don't know what the cognitive ice, I don't know whether you call recency effect or just this idea that I was encountering these things, and then all of a sudden it's like that phenomenon, and uh there's a word for it that I don't know, where you hear a concept or a word, and then like you feel like the next day you hear it again. And that that's obviously not the case that it's because you heard it once, and maybe if you had encountered it weeks before, it would have just passed right over you. So I I worried a bit about that, that that it was a cognitive bias, but you know it is to some extent scientific, and that's because really I would not have done the blog or the book without this tool of the Google and Grams viewer, which if you you might if you have show notes, put a link to it. But essentially it's a way using the Google Books database where they've digitized sort of every book ever published, and you can search, you can't read all of them, but you can search for words and phrases in those books, and the Google and Graham viewer will show you a graph of a word or phrase of up to five words, the frequency over time and published material. But the thing that makes me um that that why it made me able to do my projects is that it can break it down to British or American. So you can take uh in future uh, you know, colon British English, comma, colon American English, and it'll show you two lines. And the British one typically will be a sort of lower left, upper right growing, and then the American pops in three quarters of the way through and and then starts growing in this phenomenon of the not one of Britishisms. And that really shows um fairly scientifically the popularity of these words and phrases in both British. British English and American English and comparing one to the other.

SPEAKER_05 22:09

They really show I suppose uh you know you your entries um uh involve uh things that are like just starting their life, right? As sort of British words have uh going gone to America. Um and then ones that sort of um are are more established and have been sort of used in the New York Times several times. Um I I I I my favorite one is football. My f my favorite one is uh or soccer, rather. How soccer started as a British world word, became an American word. Now if you talk to an Amer to a British football fan, they will like butt your head off if you call it a soccer. You know, there's funny stories in there. But I thought I might um mention some of the recent um entries. Uh words like prawn, gesumped, which is a great word, aluminium, which I don't think which I think uh is one of those ones that you've just sort of identified as uh uh starting off uh uh a a little bit, you know, or used in scientific context. Yeah, that's an armed.

SPEAKER_00 23:11

Yeah, fiddly is a perennial. I mean so you mentioned the story of of soccer, and and I guess that's the other thing that's that's made me want to come back to doing this. Like, you know, it's not that totally fascinating that that a word that was used in one country is used in another one, you know. So what? But I I find that there are stories most of the time interesting stories behind us. Uh, you mentioned aluminium, which growing in America, and I'm sure for for you, the norm was aluminum, right?

SPEAKER_04 23:47

Right?

SPEAKER_00 23:48

And then when you started hearing aluminium, actually, one I'm I'm thinking, I don't think I've and one of my problems nowadays is I don't remember that I've done it before, so I'll start start off.

SPEAKER_03 23:59

Hit your own index before you even start.

SPEAKER_00 24:02

I really got to check on this, but um the word orientate. Oh no, you know, it's it's uh we would say we're our home is oriented towards the south or whatever. And um British uh usage often is orientate rather than orient. And I I I've got to find that A, if I've done it before, and B where that extra syllable came in.

SPEAKER_03 24:30

Yeah, this comes this comes up a lot in in my experience, in disoriented, like, oh, I woke up, but I had a fever, I was so disoriented. And and my wife will be like, You mean you were disorientated? And I was like, No, I I did not require that extra syllable because I was so disoriented. And then you're arguing, and then you're becoming even more and more disorientated over time.

SPEAKER_00 24:50

I mean, there's also a trend brought, so I write a lot about language, other aspects of language, as well as other things that aren't language. But one essay I've been working on for a long time, and I've written about a little bit, and it relates to the Britishisms, is just adding syllables, letters, um, to words to make them longer for reasons that aren't immediately clear. So one of the first Britishisms, I noticed when I was teaching my students in the 90s, early 2000s, was saying amongst instead of among. And that is a Britishism, but they weren't, that's not why they used it. They used it because for some reason they wanted to make words longer, and that was a way to do it. And um in in, you know, I do book reviewing, and I'll often now there used to be a thing called an advanced reader's copy. Now advanced, they've added the D to the word. It's not advanced, it's advanced. Um, so the orientate, disorientated, that might be part of that phenomenon as well. But the uh aluminum thing, one of the stories behind that was when that that element was discovered, it was aluminium. That was uh the term that that was invented based on other elements that were found um previously. And then the guy who started the Alcoa, the big American conglomerate, as a kind of marketing move called it aluminum. He took out the extra word in the syllable, and that caught in the U.S. Still, scientists and chemists and and and Bothins, to use another Britishism of one of the many that started in in the world wars and came over here to a greater or lesser extent. Uh, American Bothins still call it a aluminium, but um so the there's very often to me an interesting story behind it.

SPEAKER_03 26:47

I wonder if we can prescribe to Americans at some point, however many generations back, uh a conscious effort to seem, as compared to our you know, colonial parents, uh, less highfalutant, less pretentious by shortening words, by removing extraneous us and and and extra tates and ems um and just abbreviating and being more down-to-earth.

SPEAKER_00 27:14

Yeah, that is a thing that has happened. You know, you mentioned removing the extra ues in words like color and honor and labor and so forth. Um dating to Noel Webster, the ling the language buffin and dictionary maker of the late 1700s and early 1800s, he had this whole uh reformation of spelling for American purposes, and so center instead of R E would be E R and theater and so forth. And he had some ideas that those those all caught on, some didn't. Uh there are famous examples. I forget for the moment what they were. So that that's that's the thing as well. But on the other hand, um there is a a value to sounding fancy sometimes and highfalutin and pretentious and British uh often. So some of my favorite entries are ones that are mistakes. Um uh you mentioned one earlier. I I forget the example you gave, but um so you know, presidents, American presidents, including George W. I think it was George H. W. Bush who did it the first time, but Barack Obama, um you pronounced the words that spelled D-I-V-I-S-I-V-E, started pronouncing divisive.

SPEAKER_05 28:38

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 28:39

And that's a very common American pronunciation now. It sounds British, like you know, vitamin, I think British say, but it's not. It is purely an American creation, you know, to me, clearly meaning to sound British. Um another example of that in terms of spelling is, you know, if you have someone who gives you your financial advice and so forth, um, the traditional spelling is a D V I S E R. Uh, but in America now overwhelmingly it's A D V I S O R, which sounds my financial advisor has recommended. Yeah, exactly. British. Uh but it's not. It's it but I I think in some of these things, like the advisor and divisive, maybe the British have have started to pick up following the Americans. Maybe probably not divisive, but advisor that has been the case.

SPEAKER_05 29:42

Aaron Powell Some of these words are just sort of fun, right? I mean, uh gobsmacked. Obviously, the the title of your book is is uh is fun. Gesumped was which was another one that you did recently, which is um I suppose there's a there's a way to say that in American English. Um depending on what you mean, outbid or um there's I I suppose like various sort of contexts. Um I I'm more familiar with like Gesump, like somebody basically outbids you on a house, you got Gesump there. Uh but then like things like fiddly. It's like do do they hate do they stand a better chance of catching on if um if they sound fun?

SPEAKER_00 30:21

Oh, I th I think so. There's you know, kerfuffle, uh gobsmack, gazump. You know, Gesumped again has a story behind it. And I should mention the two other resources that are essential. Uh Oxford English Dictionary, which has a historical uh list of citations starting with the first one that's been found, and for boffins and geeks like me to so-called antedate there first and find a newer one, um, which I've done on a couple of occasions is like a triumph. Uh, but but Gesumpt, you know, started, and then the other is Green's Dictionary of Slang, which is an uh Oxford English Dictionary is proprietary, so you've got to subscribe to it, you know, the online version. Green's was this man, Jonathan Green, who's the world's foremost authority on slang, an English Englishman, and he's put his entire body of lifetime research online for free for anyone. And it's it's brilliant to use another Britishism that is really caught on here. Um and it's like the OED, and it has the historical uses of that term first to most recent, and he's got a little flag in front of each quote to indicate what country it comes from. But Gazam uh they can't start showing up in in the early 20th century as a word meaning swindled, and the derivation green gives it as Yiddish. Uh, there's some dispute about whether it comes from Yiddish or not. But then in the 70s, the journalists, the journos who really uh not only fun, but but journalists are trying to find some new way that makes them sound clever and cool that no one else has used until finally others pick it up and becomes a cliche, start using it for a specific thing in real estate, not so much outbid, but like a uh a swindly outbid, where the the first one is just, you know, there's sort of a handshake but not sign, and then someone comes out uh and gets the house from under you. So that started calling gesumped. And now it's again used in a a broader, a broader concept. But yeah, so um things like that that have a story and a language history behind it are are are fun. But the journalists are very important, so a lot of these terms are really started and sometimes only used by journalists, not in the broader population. But others really take have taken hold in the US, like Kirfuffel and Gobsmacht, and which you see just regular people using.

SPEAKER_05 32:57

Yeah. Yeah. I mean a lot of Brits are sort of um uh uh populating the uh ranks of uh journalists um at major uh news organizations. It's all a great sort of um mix. I suppose it's uh it's good for the people who are listening to this podcast because uh whereas me and Matt were sort of uh naive and uh needed a little bit maybe of a a translation dictionary, um the the average American coming here for the first time today will probably know some of these words um and be familiar with them already. Trevor Burrus But by the way, you do we know when the next um Oxford English Dictionary uh is gonna come out? When's it dropping? I it's been this long saga, right? Like it's they've been working on it for decades, the next edition.

SPEAKER_00 33:44

Yeah, I really don't know. My my sense is that it's mostly an online thing now and it gets added to and amended by you know dribs and drabs. So I'll look up a post and there'll be a little line uh an a word and it'll be a little line that says updated June 2024 or something like that. But it I I wasn't aware that there's a major edition that will be dropped or that will drop.

SPEAKER_05 34:09

I read something about it in the in the uh it would have been the the Times, the New York Times or the or the New Yorker or something about the people sort of working on it. I was saving up, but maybe I'll just buy a car instead.

SPEAKER_03 34:23

Well you gotta find space for it. I remember specifically in the the mid-90s at Bowling Green State University having to go to for for a a theater assignment and having to go to the massive OED and and look up physically word by word uh in the actual paper thing. We are aging our sides. I know, yeah, but it's also the thing of and and yeah, for Ben as well, having been on both sides of it and you know and seeing the the difference that uh that technology and uh storage space has has made for the repository of all that uh knowledge.

SPEAKER_05 35:00

Um Ben, thanks very much for taking us through this. The blog is not one off britishisms.com. Um I highly suggest that uh uh you take a look. Uh if you're listening to this podcast, you'll be inherently interested in it. Um and despite the uh maybe maybe the slower pace of entries these days, uh there's a wealth of information on there. Um Ben, tell us, you you you have um uh I mean you you have a number of books, not uh limited to gobsmacked. And um uh what are you working on now and and what's your your sort of uh yeah, what's your latest output?

SPEAKER_00 35:39

Well, uh my my latest book was my first novel, which was a historical novel about the main character of which is the American writer O. Henry, famous short story writer of Gift of the Magi. And it turns out well over 300 additional stories, all written in an amazingly productive eight-year period. So this is about his years in New York City in the first decade of the 20th century. Uh and then I've I've just finished a book also for Princeton University Press, which published Gobsmack, about irony. Ooh. Uh taking that concept through the centuries and millennia up to the present day. So that's I hope coming out.

SPEAKER_03 36:30

Definitely useful for people who live in England and also are Gen Xers. Me and Mike are like, I mean, that's you're where your market is.

SPEAKER_05 36:37

This sounds, yeah, this sounds like it could be a whole other episode in itself.

SPEAKER_00 36:43

Well, yeah, the Gen X, so I'm I'm the old uh older, next old next oldest older generation, but just spoiler alert, you know, there are um, as as you're probably familiar, have been claims made that Gen X is the most ironic generation. Um I'm not you know, I'm not sure if that's true or if that could even can be said, but it is it is a thing, that's for sure. And I I go into that in one of my later chapters in the book.

SPEAKER_05 37:22

It's it's also confusing because you know, you you come here as Americans and apparently we don't understand irony.

SPEAKER_00 37:30

Um I've run into that claim as well, which is uh a little puzzling, but I'm not sure it which you know it's it's definitely not true, but there's gotta be some truth to it. Uh you know, there are brand different brands of of irony. And one thing I have to figure out if I'm gonna do interviews with the book is how to pronounce it. Because sometimes I say irony and sometimes I say irony. Right. Irony. So I'm I gotta come up with it.

SPEAKER_03 38:02

I bet irony irony is probably more American. Jesus is gonna be one of these things that I think about. And I just feel like uh yeah, uh Americans not getting irony sometimes is j uh uh is just not reacting well to British people being mean. I I but when they're being mean, they're they're like that's their humor. Right. Just just jokes, mate.

SPEAKER_05 38:27

I think what it is is it is a humor, is a specific humor um aspect. Although you know, you there's a lot of irony in like friends, for instance, you know, or like um gen X. Come on, yeah. Yeah, it's so it's very very specific.

SPEAKER_00 38:46

The American comedy of the 70s, Steve Martin acting like uh, you know, a self-satisfied boob uh idiot. That's ironic. That yeah, absolutely. But you know, but it's it's it's a different thing. Uh yeah, the the national varieties are are for sure different, but they're it's it's rife in in both places and m over multiple generations. So that's one of the things that it there's kind of pendulum shifts over the ages, and you know, back 250, 300 years of embraces of it, you uses of it, and then kind of backlashes, and then people saying we are the most ironic, and then no, and then back. And and the pendulums have have uh become more swifter in in recent years. So the speed of TikTok. That's what I've been working on.

SPEAKER_05 39:50

Excellent. Well, thanks. We'll have to have you back um when that one's out, and we can be ironic yet again. Ben Nicoda. Thank you very much. Thanks.

SPEAKER_00 40:03

Thanks, Ben. Thanks, guys. It's it's been um a lot of fun. I appreciate it.

SPEAKER_05 40:09

That's about enough for today. Uh please remember to email us colddarkmiserablepod at gmail.com.

SPEAKER_03 40:19

Heads up if you ever listen to us on YouTube or follow us on YouTube. I'm finally getting around to uh creating and releasing some shorts, some clips. Uh it's a it's a longer process than I thought it would be to make these things. Um, but uh some of those uh if if not already on there, I'm gonna I'm gonna have the first three dropping maybe this afternoon on the day of recording. So hey, look out for some YouTube shorts you can you can share on on your particular favorite social media site.

SPEAKER_05 40:51

Have we decided on a theme tune yet?

SPEAKER_03 40:54

Uh no. Are you still interested in submissions?

SPEAKER_05 41:00

We're always sort of like trying out new things.

SPEAKER_03 41:02

I am I'm yet to see someone email colddarkmiserable pod at gmail.com with with you know an MP3 attached of their theme song submission, so therefore I just keep producing some until I get the okay from you.

SPEAKER_05 41:15

Yeah, maybe maybe if somebody were to send one in, we would consider it.

SPEAKER_03 41:19

Great. But until then, until then. I'm here for you, Mike.

SPEAKER_05 41:22

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_03 41:23

Uh if there's one thing if there's one thing that white middle-aged guys uh who uh enjoy English things uh appreciate is Anglophiles. Yeah, it's Radiohead. Um so and also words. I was thinking, inspired by our guest, just thinking a lot about, you know, words of the English language and how the same sentiment can be said in in different ways. Um so um with your permission. Uh don't let me gazump you. I'm I'm ungazumpable.

SPEAKER_01 42:01

Bada ding ding ding ding bad aga ding ding ding ding bad aga ding ding ding ding You said two chufts in a week not one off you were proper clever yes your smart All from one London semester and consuming heaps of anglout Mates accuse you of affectation, but you've got the English language L say thanks instead of cheers You will be the keen woman channel glub smacked in the king Num surprised in the line You say you need a wind when it's restroomed the best words that you ever heard the most brilliant words you v level level B spoke bug rublocks bug bluffin bits bin blubs