Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
The same is true with many words we think of today (in the UK) as "Americanisms"; they are, in fact, ordinary English words which were commonplace in the 18th century, and which have remained in use in the US, but become obsolete here. A good example is the past participle of the verb "get" - "gotten". We think of it today as "American", but it's simply a grammatical form that we've stopped using in the UK (it occurs frequently in Shakespeare), but which has stayed in use in the US.
(And we still use it in expressions like "illgotten gains").
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Also true of a lot of the spellings that the British English grammar police despise - the "...ize" word ending for example is often thought of as a horrible Americanism, but many such spellings pre-date "...ise" spellings, which are thought by many Brits to be "proper".