You're listening to Away with Words, the show about language and how we use it. I'm Grant Barrett.

And I'm Martha Barnett. If I call my umbrella a bumblehoot, I suspect that most people in this country would say,

oh, she's using a Britishism.

But they wouldn't say that if they'd read the wonderful new book by Lynn Murphy.

It's called The Prodigal Tongue, The Love Hate Relationship between American and British English.

Murphy is a linguist who grew up in New York State,

but she's lived for the past 18 years in Brighton,

and Grant, as you know, her book is a delight, and it goes far, far beyond the usual tired treatments

of the differences between these two kinds of English. We've all heard, for example, the stories of how the trunk of your car is a boot.

Right, yeah, or the bonnet and so forth, right?

Or knock me up in the morning, which in Britain means to wrap on my door to wake me up.

Or could mean that, but doesn't have to mean that, and she kind of gets to that.

Right.

But the prodigal tongue shows us how much more there is to understand about these kinds of differences.

For example, in the case of Bumber Shoot,

this term for umbrella originated not in England,

but right here in the United States

in the early 20th century.

And it became associated with British Prime Minister

Neville Chamberlain, who's often depicted in cartoons

with an umbrella.

And then there was the 1968 Disney movie chitty chitty bang

...