Mon, Jul 21
|Washington
Profs & Pints DC: How to Speak British
Profs and Pints DC presents: “How to Speak British,” a crash course on bantering, yammering, waffling and otherwise carrying on like someone across the pond, with Ben Yagoda, professor of English at the University of Delaware, author of Gobsmacked! The British Invasion of American English, and...
Time & Location
Jul 21, 2025, 6:00 PM – 8:30 PM
Washington, 801 E St NW, Washington, DC 20004, USA
About the event
Profs and Pints DC presents: “How to Speak British,” a crash course on bantering, yammering, waffling and otherwise carrying on like someone across the pond, with Ben Yagoda, professor of English at the University of Delaware, author of Gobsmacked! The British Invasion of American English, and editor of the Not One-off Britishisms blog.
The British love to complain the English language is being destroyed by words and phrases imported from America, from “French fries” to “cookies” to “Awesome, man.” But what about the influence going the other way?
Britishisms have been making their way into the American lexicon for more than 150 years, but the process has accelerated since the turn of the twenty-first century, with “cheeky,” “go missing,” “easy peasy,” “spot-on,” “kerfuffle,” and scores of other common British terms routinely popping up in print and conversations.
Join author and language commentator Ben Yagoda as he explains how it’s all…