More "divided by a common language" stuff

[david_h]

A role in which it would be hard to bluff one's way out of a mischievously induced giggle would be that of a corpse.

[Nanohedron]

A role in which it would be hard to bluff one's way out of a mischievously induced giggle would be that of a corpse.

For sure. A role not to be hoped for, on so many levels.

[david_h]

To be clear, I was meaning that the possible origin suggested in the Wikipedia article seemed sensible to me.

Having said I hadn't heard, I just read it. In the first online newspaper article with one actor talking about another that I have read since the topic started. Possibly the first one I have read all year. I don't normally look at those sections but they were famous enough for me to have heard of them and for the feature to be linked on the home page. First sentence of a paragraph. No explanation given but because of this discussion I knew that the last sentence in the previous pararaph was an example. So maybe sub-editing my someone who didn't think that juxtaposition in the text was required.

I still don't recall ever having read it before, but admit that the co-incidence is rather unlikely.

[Tunborough]

Is "revising for an exam" something that would be widely understood on the LH side of the pond?

Not something I've ever heard around here.

Ditto. Frankly, it would be unintelligible to any local not informed about the RH side of the Pond's usage. And that's most of us. I myself didn't know of it until this thread.

With the meaning of going over something to more firmly memorize or reacquaint oneself, we would instead use "review", "recap", "bone up on", "brush up on", and others. On my soil, "revise" only means "to alter", and nothing else. The difference is so stark that using it in the sense of "review" defies even affectation: I might say "nappies", and someone would knowingly say, "Ah. He watches EastEnders and the like," but if I said "revise for an exam," most would go, "Huh? That makes no grammatical sense." And I too must admit it looks very strange to me!

"Revise" in the sense of "change" of course implies review, but being already understood, the act of review is only peripheral and therefore irrelevant to the core meaning of the word as I am familiar with it.

Consider what North Americans would make of a course description that says, "We will begin by revising Shakespeare's play, The Tempest."

[Nanohedron]

Consider what North Americans would make of a course description that says, "We will begin by revising Shakespeare's play, The Tempest."

[david_h]

Consider what North Americans would make of a course description that says, "We will begin by revising Shakespeare's play, The Tempest."

Since both uses of the word are current in the UK we would use something like "we will begin by revising the work we did on Shakespeare's play 'The Tempest'"

(except I think we could skip "Shakespeare's play" unless we had looked at someone else's The Tempest)

[Tunborough]

Consider what North Americans would make of a course description that says, "We will begin by revising Shakespeare's play, The Tempest."

Since both uses of the word are current in the UK we would use something like "we will begin by revising the work we did on Shakespeare's play 'The Tempest'"

(except I think we could skip "Shakespeare's play" unless we had looked at someone else's The Tempest)

I'll grant you that "Shakespeare" is redundant, necessary only for my own rhetorical purposes.

However, your use of "revise" is still ambiguous. Are we reviewing the work we did, or modifying it?

And suppose that "we" haven't worked on the Tempest before, ... I'm merely assuming that you, as literate speakers of English, would already be acquainted with the play, and need only a quick review of the salient points? Do I have to say, "We will begin by revising the salient points of The Tempest"?

[david_h]

On reflection, your "We will begin by revising Shakespeare's play, The Tempest." comes over as awkward to me not so much because of the ambiguity but because we probably would use "review our work on" in that context. The other usage is more like Q: "Are you coming to the session tonight?" A: "No i want to revise The Tempest before the test" As I think we said above the usage is in the sense of "looking over or examining again" (one of the SOED definitions)

[Nanohedron]

On the pronunciation end of things, last evening on TV a spokeslady with a British accent introduced herself as "Bob". "Whaaaaa...?", said I in a state of whiplash; "I realize there's been some recent cultural leeway for women to have male names, but this? It has now officially gone too far." But after a bit of a listen to the rest of what she had to say, her decidedly non-rhotic pronunciation made me realize she had said her name was "Barb". At least, I hope so.

It took me a while, enough that if my comprehension made the difference in an emergency, there might have been serious trouble.

[Peter Duggan]

coworker

A term I've only recently become aware of when I have colleagues!

[Nanohedron]

coworker

A term I've only recently become aware of when I have colleagues!

That's an interesting one, all right. As a Statesider, for me "colleague" typically means an equal (more or less) in a higher profession such as education, law, or medicine. Two professors in a particular field may never have met, yet they may well refer to each other as colleagues. In the States, the word implies education, gravitas, and authority in kind. A factory or office worker doesn't have colleagues. Colleagues consult, debate, and defer from a position of specialized expertise; coworkers slog for a paycheck from a position of basic employment. It may be highly skilled employment, but here "colleague" doesn't fit the social order unless it's in the context of something like a world conference of master glassblowers. If you are referred to as a colleague, you are acknowledged as a member of standing within an elite group of specialists.

When UK folks use "colleague", it's been easy for me to grasp that they mean the term in a broader sense, but in the US, if I worked in a lumberyard and at a meeting called the crew "my esteemed colleagues" - a very stock, if dated formula - it would be totally tongue-in-cheek (we do retain at least some vestiges of class distinction in the US ), and it might inspire them to start harrumphing and putting on mock airs.

So from the perspective of Yankspeak: Since you are an educator, Peter, you do indeed have colleagues. However, were you to jump ship and take up stonecutting, since it is a trade - albeit a most honorable one - your associates at the quarry would simply be your coworkers.

[benhall.1]

So from the perspective of Yankspeak: Since you are an educator, Peter, you do indeed have colleagues. However, were you to jump ship and take up stonecutting, since it is a trade - albeit a most honorable one - your associates at the quarry would simply be your coworkers.

Well, this does seem to be a genuine difference then. I'm surprised. Nowadays, every person in a company is a colleague, whatever the type of work. The term "colleague" doesn't imply seniority or expertise at all in my experience. Way back, when I used to be a bus driver in Cardiff, if we were talking formally (yes, we did sometimes) then all the bus drivers would have been "colleagues" (talking informally, we were "mates"). The Inspectors were just referred to as "Inspectors", and the management were only ever referred to, by us at least, using fairly extreme insults. So, at that time, there was a divide. By the time I became MD of a print firm, in the early years of the current millennium, everyone employed by the business was a "colleague", and the same applies pretty much everywhere now.

As far as I know - that is, from my own personal experience - the only workplaces using the term "co-worker" are American owned. I must admit, I can't stand the term. It has no implication of solidarity or of people pulling in the same direction. It just implies to me that people are stuck with each other, in the same workplace or business.

[david_h]

What Ben said.

The use of 'co-workers' that first comes to mind was Health & Safety rules for a US-owned firm.

However, in least one UK supermarket we can hear over the PA "Colleague announcement - help needed on the checkouts". That sounds odd and a bit blinkered to me. "Staff announcement" would make sense and be more 'customer oriented'.

I can imagine choosing to say "I will discuss that with the people I work with" rather than "... with my colleagues" and I think the former might be when the context was something other than the work being done.

For me two profs wouldn't be colleagues unless that actually worked together in some way. I would use 'peers' if a term was needed.

[Nanohedron]

As far as I know - that is, from my own personal experience - the only workplaces using the term "co-worker" are American owned. I must admit, I can't stand the term. It has no implication of solidarity or of people pulling in the same direction. It just implies to me that people are stuck with each other, in the same workplace or business.

Given my experience of the realities of the workplace, it could be argued that that is the beauty of the term: It assumes nothing.

But actually, for me "coworker" does carry a certain tone of solidarity. Perhaps that is due to its earthiness in comparison to "colleague"; with "coworker" I get a sense of being in the trenches, shoulder to shoulder, whereas with "colleague" I get a sense of being conveniently at arm's length. But no doubt that would in large part be due to how these words tend to be used in the States.

[Peter Duggan]

So from the perspective of Yankspeak: Since you are an educator, Peter, you do indeed have colleagues. However, were you to jump ship and take up stonecutting, since it is a trade - albeit a most honorable one - your associates at the quarry would simply be your coworkers.

Think they'd be my workmates here if they weren't my colleagues!