British intellectuals enjoy bewailing the influx of Americanisms into the language of the mother country.
The BBC once asked British readers to send in the Americanisms that annoyed them most
and was flooded with thousands of entries, including "24/7", "deplane" and "touch base".
Matthew Engel, a writer who had kicked off the conversation with an article on unwanted Americanisms,
even turned the idea into a book, "That's the Way It Crumbles", in 2017.
The furore—which Americans would call a furor—seemed to die down.
But in September Simon Heffer of the Daily Telegraph revived it with a column and book exploring Americanisms,
a trend he situates "in the past 15 years".
His language evokes violence, bemoaning American words' "poisoning", "linguistic assault", "conquest" and "penetration".
In the end, though, even the hyperbolic Mr Heffer concedes that Brits are, in fact, "willingly adopting" these words,
especially via two channels associated with America: digital technology and "corporatespeak".
He just wishes his countrymen would stop.
But linguistic exchange can also be seen in a more upbeat way.
This is the approach of Ben Yagoda, emeritus professor of English at the University of Delaware, in "Gobsmacked!"
The trend is older and more extensive than many think.
Mr Yagoda describes Britishisms like "it's early days" and "gone missing" taking hold in America
almost entirely below the radar in the 1980s and 2000s, respectively.
Mr Yagoda identifies the intensifier "awfully" (as in "awfully tired") as the first Britishism,
having been noticed (disapprovingly) by an American commentator in the 19th century.
The early 20th century saw many more Britishisms take hold, especially via military contact: