As an Englishman who generally tries to use American spellings in Kickstart, I am fascinated by the differences in words that are used in ‘British English’ compared to those used in ‘American English’.
Here in the UK, we tend to assume that, what are to our ears, strange American words, are johnny-come-lately barbarisms. But I am sorry to tell my fellow Brits that in a lot of cases, Americans use words that we invented!
Fall or Autumn?
Take ‘Fall’, for example. Although we all know that Americans mean Autumn, it still seems odd that they have their own word.
Or do they? It turns out that up to the 15th Century, what we now call Autumn was called Harvest. As the English population became less rural in the 16th and 17th centuries, townsfolk started calling the third season Fall.
Emigration to America started at that time, so the colonists naturally exported the word with them.
By the 1700s, polite English society – and in particular the Royal Court – began to embrace French and Latin more and more. The Latin word ‘autumnus’, meaning the passing of the year, came into use.
Aluminium or Aluminum?
Another word we wonder at is Aluminium (UK) versus Aluminum (US).
This one is even more interesting (if you are a word geek).
The metal was first refined by Sir Humphrey Davy in 1807. He had the right to name his ‘new’ element so he promptly called it Alumium.
However, he was not a very decisive chap and quickly changed the spelling to Aluminum.
Classically trained scientists of the time preferred their elements to end in ‘-ium’ so persuaded him to yet again change the name to Aluminium in 1812.
Aluminum and Aluminium were used interchangeably, particularly in America. U.S. newspaper mentions of the metal during the 1800s used both spellings almost 50/50. But, for no known reason, U.S. newspapers used the ‘-um’ version almost exclusively after around 1900.
So it seems, we are both right!
Tap or Faucet?
Finally comes the word faucet. While most ‘International English’ speakers know that Americans mean ‘tap’, nobody in the UK would ever dream of turning on their bathroom faucet.
To non-American ears, it is just plain odd!
However, like ‘fall’, ‘faucet’ is actually a late Middle-English word that means a hole in a barrel or a tap for drawing liquor from a casket. It comes from the French fausset, which meant ‘to bore a hole’.
The Pilgrim Fathers took more than colonists on the Mayflower – they took their language too.
