Grammar Girl here. I'm Injohn Fogarty, your friendly guide to the English language. Today,

we're going to talk about British and American differences between math and maths and in the hospital versus in hospital.

And then we'll talk about the term spendthrift. Today, we're going to answer

two related listener questions. First, Aaron asked whether we have ever done a tip about

maths versus math. I say I like math, Aaron wrote, but I increasingly see more people saying,

I like maths with an S.

Is it regional? And another listener asked why she hears some people say in the hospital

and others in hospital. In regard to the first question, there's a short answer and a long one.

The short answer is that this is a regional difference

between the U.S. and the U.K. In the U.S., we tend to talk about math, and in the U.K.

people talk about maths. Here's why. Let's start by establishing that both these words are

short for mathematics, the science of numbers and their operations.

The word comes from the ancient Greek, Mathematicos. Its root means to learn. As an aside,

if you've ever wondered why someone who seems to know everything is called a polymath, it's because

the math part of polymath ultimately goes back to the same root. So a polymath, it's because the math part of polymath ultimately goes back to the same

route. So a polymath is simply someone who's learned a lot. Now in the U.S., mathematics was first

shortened to math in the mid-1800s. The Journal of the American Education Society from

1829, for example, lists math, ret, and hiss, short for mathematics, rhetoric, and history, as sophomore classes.

In 1890, Jack London wrote a letter describing his soon-to-be wife, Bestdern, as, quote, well up in the higher math,

but not in general culture, unquote. His attitude may hint at why their marriage lasted five

short years and ended in a contentious divorce. In the UK, around the same time, a different

abbreviation was taking hold. Citations from 1911 onward

...