Once upon a time in America
Image: Cowboy, Western United States, 1898-1905 via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)
Australia, as a former colony of Great Britain, still tends to follow British rather than American forms of the English language. Indeed, Australians are sometimes antagonistic to American words creeping into ‘our’ language. No doubt this is part of the general resistance that less influential nations feel towards global superpowers – the ‘overpaid, oversexed and over here’ trope.
Yet there are many words we use every day that came to us from America, and which Australians probably considered alien at first. Some describe indigenous cultural traditions, flora or fauna, so it is no surprise that a local name was needed: moccasin, papoose, powwow, pecan, skunk, igloo and wigwam are examples. The origins of some other words are less obvious to us today: totem, shack, chocolate, barbecue, hammock, hurricane and cannibal are all of Amerindian derivation.
Like Australia, the United States is now of course a nation of immigrants from many lands. Some European words made a lengthy American detour before landing on our (and in some cases Britain’s) shores: prairie (French); lasso and ranch (Spanish); hamburger, sauerkraut and snorkel (German); smorgasbord (Swedish) and boss (Dutch). African-American words had less choice in their own destiny but include zombie, voodoo (from Benin via Haiti) and juke – as in jukebox (from a Gullah word for wicked or bawdy).
This diversity of sources is part of what makes English such a rich language, but it also makes it a nightmare to spell. The Americans took the lead in spelling reform in the nineteenth century, thanks especially to that great lexicographer Noah Webster. A few of these changes (for example, ‘program’) have caught on in Australia but we have resisted changing centre to center, colour to color and labour to labor (except in the Australian Labor Party).
Even American presidents have been linguistically creative: Teddy Roosevelt coined ‘lunatic fringe’, Thomas Jefferson was the first to use ‘belittle’, and ‘out-of-the-way’ (for a place) is a creation of George Washington.
And who knew that ‘kangaroo court’ is an Americanism? This term for an unauthorised or irregular court that disregards proper principles and procedure was first recorded in California in 1853. According to the Macquarie Dictionary, it was probably coined during the Californian gold rush of the 1840s, which attracted hundreds of hopeful Australians, and arose from an association between a claim ‘jumper’ and a kangaroo.
