Grammar Girl here. I'm In Yon Foghury, your friendly guide to the English language.

Today we're going to look at some fun differences between British English and American English,

and then we'll look at a big trend in advertising language.

December 4th is National Cookie Day in the United States, and from the National

Day calendar website, it sounds like the whole thing got started by Sesame Street in

1976, with Cookie Monster, making an especially big deal about it in a 1980 book, The Sesame Street Dictionary.

So it's a fun day to celebrate everything from chocolate chip cookies to snickerdoodles.

But it got me thinking about the difference between British English and American English,

because we have a cookie conundrum.

In Britain, those same baked treats would usually be called

biscuits. And biscuits in America are completely different, soft, flaky breads that I like served

with gravy. Biscuit is the older word going back to the 1300s, coming from an old French word that meant

twice baked. Biscuits were originally hard rations baked once to cook and then again to dry out,

and they were perfect for sailors and soldiers. But by the mid-1500s, people were using the term

for small, sweet cakes, I would call a cookie.

And in case you're wondering, yes, if you go back far enough, the word biscotti, a twice-baked

cookie, is related to biscuit. But the word biscuit went a different way in the United States in the

1800s, becoming the name for a small

savory baked good made with baking soda or baking powder so the bread was soft and fluffy.

Meanwhile, Dutch settlers in what would eventually become New York had brought the word

kokie, meaning little cake, which turned into cookie

and became the word we use for British biscuits. Now, the word cookie does exist in Britain. Back in 2006,

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