Gobsmacked!

Yagoda has spent years tracking Britishisms creeping into American speech on his blog Not One-Off Britishisms, and this book is that project's payoff: a study of words like "gobsmacked," "kerfuffle," and "one-off" that migrated west and stuck. What reviewers appreciated wasn't just the trivia but the argument underneath it—that this linguistic traffic runs almost entirely one direction, driven by British television, journalism, and a certain American Anglophilia. The tone stays light and anecdotal rather than academic, which some readers found breezier than a full etymological history but which keeps the book moving through what could otherwise be a dry catalogue of loanwords.