Cross-pollination …

… Cripes, a bumbershoot! | Lionel Shriver on transatlantic linguistic confusion. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

The Prodigal Tongue takes head-on this supposed American contamination of British English. Murphy’s online search for “an ugly Americanism” turned up 7,780 hits; “a lovely Americanism”, 227. Citations of “horrible”, “vile”, “awful” and “dreadful” Americanisms were many times more common than “nice”, “useful”, “apt” and “delightful” ones. Paranoia about the corruption of the mother tongue – what Murphy calls “amerilexidophobia” – by a relentless assault from Netflix, Hollywood and books with American spelling (indeed, my British publisher no longer bothers to convert “harbor” to “harbour” in text edited in New York) is not constrained to young fogeys at the Telegraph. For a host of British purists, Murphy notes, American English is “an invasive species that will choke and supplant the native wordlife”.