American English vocabulary

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The United States has given the English lexicon thousands of words, meanings, and phrases. Several thousand are now used in English as spoken internationally. Some words are only used within North American English and American English.

Creation of an American lexicon

The process of coining new lexical items started as soon as the colonists began borrowing names for unfamiliar flora, fauna, and topography from the

American English has always shown a marked tendency to use nouns as verbs.^[13] Examples of verbed nouns are interview, advocate, vacuum, lobby, pressure, rear-end, transition, feature, profile, spearhead, skyrocket, showcase, service (as a car), corner, torch, exit (as in "exit the lobby"), factor (in mathematics), gun ("shoot"), author (which disappeared in English around 1630 and was revived in the U.S. three centuries later) and, out of American material, proposition, graft (bribery), bad-mouth, vacation, major, backpack, backtrack, intern, ticket (traffic violations), hassle, blacktop, peer-review, dope and OD, and, of course verbed as used at the start of this sentence.

Many compound nouns have the form verb plus preposition:

The mandative subjunctive (as in "the City Attorney suggested that the case not be closed") is livelier in American English than it is in British English. It appears in some areas as a spoken usage and is considered obligatory in contexts that are more formal. The adjectives mad meaning "angry", smart meaning "intelligent", and sick meaning "ill" are also more frequent in American (these meanings are also frequent in Hiberno-English) than British English.^[17][18][19]

Regionally distinct vocabulary within the United States

Linguist Bert Vaux created a survey, completed in 2003, polling English speakers across the United States about the specific words they would use in everyday speech for various concepts.^[20] This 2003 study concluded that:

• For a "long sandwich that contains
  cold cuts, lettuce, and so on", the most common term found in the survey, throughout the country (preferred by 77% of the participants), was the word sub (an abbreviation for submarine sandwich). The New York metropolitan area
  shows the greatest variety of terms for this idea in one single region, largely counting for the 5% of the survey who preferred the term hero, nearly 7% (which is even more prevalent in the Pittsburgh and Philadelphia metropolitan areas, including southern New Jersey as well as eastern Pennsylvania) who preferred hoagie, and just less than 3% (also notably prevalent throughout New England, except Maine) who prefer grinder.
• The U.S. is largely divided about the "generic term for a sweetened carbonated beverage". Nearly 53% of the surveyed sample preferred soda, particularly in the Northeast,
  Midwest (including the Great Lakes region) and the Western regions along the Canada–United States border. Over 12% preferred coke (which is also trademarked for a specific cola product), particularly scattered throughout the South. Urban, coastal California speakers use all three terms, though especially soda. Speakers of the West generally use soda or pop.^[21]
• The most common word or phrase "to address a group of two or more people" (in the second person) was you guys at almost 43%, particularly throughout the Northeast and Great Lakes region (along with simply you at nearly 13%). Y'all was preferred by 14%, particularly in the South, but reaching somewhat noticeably into the Northern regions as well. Yous(e) was largely confined to the New York and Philadelphia metropolitan areas, at just over 0.5%. The expression "yinz" is a distinctive feature of Western Pennsylvania speech.
• The most common term for generic, rubber-soled shoes worn for athletic activities is sneakers as said by 46% of those surveyed throughout the country, but particularly in the Northeast. 41%, particularly outside the Northeast, said tennis shoes. Several much rarer other terms were also documented in various regions of the country.
• Nearly 68% of the participating speakers make no distinction between dinner and supper, or simply never use the term supper.
• 64% of the participants said they use "Where are you at?" to mean "How are you coming along?" This also incorporated the 34% who use "Where are you at?" in any context, for example, to even mean "Where are you physically located right now?"
• Freshwater "miniature lobsters" were identified by 40% of polled speakers as crawfish, 32% as crayfish, and 19% as crawdads within no particular regional boundaries, except that crayfish was especially uncommon in the South. 5% reported having no term for this animal.
• The most common nicknames for grandparents were grandpa/grampa and grandma/gramma.
• Nearly all American English speakers called the
  lampyrid insect
  a firefly or lightning bug, with nearly 40% using the two terms interchangeably.
• The use of the word anymore with a positive sense, simply as a synonym for nowadays (e.g. I do only figurative paintings anymore), was reported as sounding acceptable to 5% of participants. However, in example sentences with a clearly disheartened tone or dismissive attitude, the positive use of anymore sounded acceptable to as many as 29% of participants (e.g. Forget your baby wearing nice clothes anymore). This rare use of the word was observed much more around Pennsylvania and going westward into the Midland region.
• The "wheeled contraption" for carrying groceries was identified by 77% of participants as a shopping cart and by nearly 14% as a grocery cart. 4% preferred the term buggy: a clearly Southern phenomenon.

References