Feezed

[avevale_intelligencer]

A friend posted a link to an article about Americanisms creeping into British English, and either she or the article writer mentioned "faze" as being one such, meaning to discompose or give pause.

So you can understand why I was fazed when, just the next day, I encountered the word "fazed" in the pages of one writer whom I would imagine would be the very last person to employ a colonial neologism, and employ it, I may say, without comment or even quote marks, just as if it were a real proper English word.

So I went to my trusty OED, and discovered that the word, while marked as a "U.S. transf.", has a pedigree going back at least to 1890, and may indeed be nothing more than a variant form of "feeze," which goes back to about the ninth century, and includes among its definitions "to frighten." In other words, it is a real proper English word, so there. :)

And this, of course, is the point about Americanisms; while many of them may be new coinings or loan-words from other languages (and none the worse for that), many of them started out here and simply fell out of common usage in Britain while remaining alive and well on distant shores.

As I said in the comment there and have said at exhausting length here and in other places, Americanisms in themselves don't bother me in the slightest, any more than local or regional dialects or deliberate assumption of a "folksy" mode of speech or dyslexia or anything else of that sort. I happen to like BBC English myself, but I don't expect everyone else to do the same. What gets my goat, whether it be in America or Australia or the Isle of Man or anywhere English is used, is carelessness in the use of language, and carelessness, I venture to suggest, is something against which we should be wary wherever it may occur. It's human, it's natural, I'm as prone to it as anyone else, but it's not a good thing.

Cries of "snobbery," "fascism," and so on will now doubtless ensue, as they always do. But they will not faze me.

Comments

[redaxe.livejournal.com]

My first boss would cite you for a usage in this very post. She insisted that only people were employed; things were used or utilized. So much for linguistic snobbery!

[keristor.livejournal.com]

My mother used to rail[1] about Americanisms. I once went through every word which she claimed to be in that category, and found that about half of them (to within statistical error) were originally English words the used of which had died out in Britain but been preserved in America (so their usage was older than ours in about the same amount as the other way round). I don't remember 'faze' being one of them, though, thanks for the information.

[1] I suddenly wondered if 'rail' (in the sense of rant or complain) was an 'imported' word. You can (if you so desire) imagine my relief at finding that its origin is "1425–75; late Middle English railen < Middle French railler to deride < Provençal ralhar to chatter < Vulgar Latin *ragulāre, derivative of Late Latin ragere 'to bray'". Phew! Saved by the dictionary...

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

I think this is the first time I've seen "faze" in print. I would have expected it to be spelled "phase"-- that could at least be an idiom for "knocked into another phase", while fase/faze/feeze doesn't seem as though it's connected to other English words.

I'm mostly a descriptivist about English, but people who use "jive" when they mean "jibe" make me crazy.

[melodyclark.livejournal.com]

Well, there you have it, we Americans must also seek out these old Britishisms and stomp them out in our own language. In fact, let's just stop using English altogether. ;) I'm teasing you, Zan, I think you know that by now.

I cannot tell you the number of non-US English words that my young friends use -- "bloody" (though common enough in the US south, it was unheard of in Yankeeland until US peeps started watching Brit media), "wanker" and the rest.

My family having come from Dixie, my own language is replete with old British words (and even some still being used). We tend to "reckon" as well as "go yonder" -- I won't even get into Appalachian English, which also has Gaelic mixed in.

We should all just face it -- English is becoming one language, due to the Internet. Neologisms will pop up but soon be absorbed into the general word population.

redaxe, your mom would have nightmares over my usage. lol

I probably have shared this before, but it's a favorite of mine from YT. It interviews numerous Appalachian English speakers, showing some of the old words that crop up (including a last bit of rhyming slang).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03iwAY4KlIU

[howeird]

Interesting, about faze. From the other side of the pond, when I've been taught about British slang which is not common in America, most of it has been either about different spellings (gaol vs. jail, and all those words with an extra "u") or curses like "bloody" which don't sound like blasphemy over here but do over there. And then there was my London cousin's warning to not call that thing around my waist a "fanny pack".

I had assumed faze was bi-pondal.