No country has a closer association with the language of Olde Englande than the USA. From the days of the first Puritan settlers to recent cross-Atlantic tweetings, the two countries have shared in the development of English.

Many words and phrases used in the USA have retained their Elizabethan English meanings and pronunciations that have long disappeared in England itself. There are many American phrases which are used in the USA but haven’t been adopted anywhere else. Example of this are:

BLUE PLATE SPECIAL: Webster’s Dictionary defines ‘blue plate’ as a restaurant dinner plate divided into compartments for serving several kinds of food as a single order and a main course (as of meat and vegetable) served as a single menu item.

One early citation of the phrase is in this advert for the Young Women’s Christian Association, printed in the Illinois newspaper The Decatur Daily Review, September 1924. However, it is believed that the term blue plate special first appeared on menus of the Fred Harvey chain of restaurants in 1892. These were located at stations along the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad. The blue plate special was designed to allow passengers to grab a quick bite to eat when the train stopped.

LEAD-PIPE CINCH: The ‘cinch’ that this expression derives from is the Spanish/Mexican word for a horse’s saddle-girth – cincha. The word is recorded in English, as ‘synch’ and later ‘cinch’ in various Canadian and US sources from the 1860s onward. From the 1880s the use was extended into a verb form and things which were tightly secured were said to be ‘cinched’ – for example, this piece from The Manitoba Daily Free Press, December 1882: “The next movement was to throw the bull, and then cinch a lasso and rope tightly around his body.”

The word cinch was also used in the USA as the name of sturdy fixing brackets, which were secure and unlikely to come loose.

The figurative use of cinch, meaning to tie-up or make certain, in non-animal contexts began around the same time. The usage was often in contexts where the rich and powerful used their status to form monopolies or indulge in insider trading in order to cheat the general public. An example of this comes from the Illinois newspaper The Morning Review, December 1889: “The briber and bribed would sit down to a game of poker and a lead-pipe cinch was nothing to the sure thing the legislators had.”

The common usage of ‘cinch’ now, that is, to mean ‘easy’ rather than ‘secure’, comes from this ‘easy money’ association. In October of 1891, The Daily Morning Republican, listed a number of ‘cinch’ superlatives to describe a punter’s certainty that his horse Firenzo would win the next day:

“The track will be heavy tomorrow, and I’ve got a copper riveted, lead pipe, copyrighted, air tight cinch. Firenzo in the mud – she swims in it.”

EIGHTY-SIXED: The term is American and originated in the restaurant trade. Both meanings loosely refer to something that was previously okay becoming not okay. The earliest known example of the expression in print is found in the journal of the American Dialect Society -American Speech, 1936: “Eighty-six, item on the menu not on hand.”

The actual origin is uncertain but is often suggested to be one of these: (1) Chumley’s Bar and restaurant at 86 Bedford Street in Greenwich Village NYC; (2) a reference to article 86 of the New York state liquor code which defines when bar patrons should be refused service; and (3) from Delmonico’s Restaurant in New York City. Item number 86 on their menu, their house steak, was often unavailable during the restaurant’s early years.

PRESTO CHANGO: Presto chango is a variant of the earlier exclamation ‘hey presto,’ which is used primarily in the USA. Before either expression was coined, conjurers and other stage performers simply said ‘presto!’ to draw attention to the culmination of a trick.

Presto is an Italian word meaning ‘quickly’ and it was used in England with that sense from the 13th century. “Hey Presto” began being used in England in the 18th century. The English writer Henry Fielding used it in 1732 in his farce The Lottery.

We go forward to the 19th century and ‘presto chango’ began being used in the USA. It took various spellings – ‘presto change’, ‘presto changeo’ and ‘presto chango’. ‘Presto! change’ is recorded in England in 1824 and it soon migrated to the USA and became ‘presto chango.’ One early US example can be found at the Pensacola Gazette & West Florida Advertiser April, 1824: “A tailor cannot drop his bodkin, a brick mason his trowel, or a grocer his cent per cent on coffee and candles; and become my Lord Coke or Hale by a presto change” Another was in the Ohio newspaper The Huron Reflector, February 1844: “Hey! presto! chango! as the juggler says – Kitty Grimes was not to be married to James Duncan after all.” Although ‘presto change’ was first used in the UK, the ‘presto chango‘ form can be said to be American – in fact, few people outside the USA would know what it meant.

Considering the debacle of an election we just experienced, I thought the following words were appropriate!!!!

CHEAT: Under medieval law a title to real estate could lapse in many ways. Property affected by such a lapse was called an “escheat” and became forfeit to the king. These cases were so numerous that some rulers employed escheators to look after their interests. Usually working on a commission basis, these fellows seized property at every opportunity. If they didn’t violate laws, they certainly trifled with justice. Because of the questionable practices of these royal agents, it became customary to call any dishonest person a cheat.”

CON MAN: Hard times following the Civil War forced criminals to resort to all sorts of tricks to gain relatively small amounts of money. One of the most common was the sale of fraudulent mining stock. Investors were reluctant to advance funds without examining property, so swindlers adopted the practice of asking a victim to make a small deposit “just as a gesture of confidence.” The full amount was to be paid only after a trip to the West on the part of the purchaser.

A swindler would take the money advanced and decamp. This type of trick became known as the “confidence game” because it worked only if the victim had confidence in the proposal. Anyone who practiced confidence games came to be called a con man. This title was applied to many types of swindlers and is now used to describe a shrewd thief who finds suckers [voters] by means of the Internet or e-mail.

FEET OF CLAY: Nebuchadnezzar II was the Babylonian king who captured Jerusalem in 587 BD, destroyed the city, and took the Hebrew people into captivity, ending the Judean kingdom. The book of Daniel tells how the young Hebrew captive explained one of the king’s strange dreams. Nebuchadnezzar had seen a giant image with a golden head, silver arms and breast, brass thighs, and iron legs. Every part was metal except the feet, which were compounded partly of iron and partly of potter’s clay.

Daniel said that his feet made the metal figure vulnerable, meaning that Babylon would be broken into pieces. Impressed by this dramatic story, English readers of the Bible seized upon the weak spot of the strange figure as a symbol of weakness in general. Today, any noted person with a vulnerable point is still said to have feet of clay.

KANGAROO COURT: When the English explorer Capt. James Cook returned from Australia in 1771, he was branded a liar. People disbelieved his reports of a strange animal that hopped about on two legs and stood as high as a man, which he reported the natives called a “kangaroo.” Many who heard his accounts doubted their truth and there was great joking about kangaroos.

When a few specimens were brought to Europe, they created a sensation. Anything marvelous or unusual was likely to be termed “kangaroo.” For example, an 1835 issue of the Gentleman’s Magazine described an eccentric horseman as holding his reins with “kangaroo attitude.” Settlers in the New World used the word to stand for any type of irregular gathering. During Reconstruction following the Civil War, a “kangaroo convention” held in Virginia made national headlines.

Criminals who adopted the odd word applied it to a “court” held by inmates of prisons. In such a proceeding, old-timers charged newcomers with such offenses as breaking into jail or being lousy and trying to scratch. Influenced by the prominence of irregular political gatherings, any extra-legal sham hearing came to be known as a kangaroo court.

SMARMY: “Smarmy,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary, dates back to 1909 as an adjectival form of the word “smarm” or “smalm” which had been around for 100 years. Originally just a verb for smoothing, especially of hair, its meaning gradually moved to include the implication of a real smoothie. If you describe someone as smarmy, you dislike them because they are unpleasantly polite and flattering, usually because they want you to like them or to do something for them.