Matthew Barzun, the engaging US ambassador to Britain, returns home in January. He has pledged to take back mementos in the form of his three favourite English words. He said at the book launch for Tom Fletcher’s Naked Diplomacy that he’ll only add them to the American lexicon if we adopt three Americanisms in return. “I’ll go first,” he said. “I’ll go with ‘gutted’ and ‘sorted’.” Perhaps inspired by his run-ins with Boris Johnson over the embassy’s unpaid congestion charge bill, he added: “I don’t know my third one yet. Maybe ‘pillock’.” As for Americanisms, he suggested “y’all”, “hella” (meaning “very”), and “the s***” (to mean “the best”). He added: “I want to ask TMS readers what are the three American words they would bring to the UK.” The gauntlet has been thrown down.

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