Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A word, phrase, or idiom characteristic of or peculiar to English as it is spoken in Great Britain.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun A word, phrase, or idiom of the English language peculiar to the British.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun A word, phrase, or idiom peculiar to Great Britain; any manner of using a word or words that is peculiar to Great Britain.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun A
word orfigure of speech used inBritain exclusively orprimarily .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun an expression that is used in Great Britain (especially as contrasted with American English)
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
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Examples
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He even used the term Briticism to designate an English locution rejected by 100% Americans.
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By the way, is the term "maths" in general usage, or is it just a Briticism?
Steven Levitt, Arnold Kling | EconLog | Library of Economics and Liberty
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To use a Briticism, it was "cruel"; the corresponding Americanism was more appropriate -- it was "fierce."
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Those poets and pundits tiring of the voguish mushy in its meaning of “excessively sentimental” might try the Briticism soppy, which means “dreamily silly” or “emotionally overboard,” as in this recent Times of London assessment of “canine and feline transition” in Washington: “Mr. Bush genuinely seems to be as soppy about animals as any of his predecessors.”
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Those poets and pundits tiring of the voguish mushy in its meaning of “excessively sentimental” might try the Briticism soppy, which means “dreamily silly” or “emotionally overboard,” as in this recent Times of London assessment of “canine and feline transition” in Washington: “Mr. Bush genuinely seems to be as soppy about animals as any of his predecessors.”
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I wondered what Phidias would have said to the "cuttings," and whether the Miss Binghams imagined it a Briticism.
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Mucker, a brilliant Briticism, almost unknown in America, is listed between movie and muckraker.
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In the midst of his best American, George drops into Briticism after Briticism, some of them quite as unintelligible to the average American reader as so many Gallicisms.
Chapter 5. International Exchanges. 1. Americanisms in England
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59 The American derivative verb, to guy, is unknown in English; its nearest equivalent is to spoof, which is used in the United States only as a conscious Briticism.
Chapter 4. American and English Today. 5. Expletives and Forbidden Words
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If English journalists make a show of arrogant and self-righteous Briticism, it is quite possible that a certain class of American journalists may retaliate by setting afoot a deliberately anti-British movement and attempting (as an American has wittily put it) to deserve well of mankind by making two languages grow where only one grew before.
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