From: "Joe" <joe@...>
Subject: Re: Country Names -- Local Pronunciations
> > It used to be regularly denounced throughout the 19th and first half of
> > the 20th centuries as a hideous Americanism, despite the copious
evidence
> > from Chaucer and Shakespeare among many others that it was old and
> > deep-rooted in the common tongue.
>
> Old, perhaps, but still an Americanism. I'm pretty sure it was wiped out
> from English English by the 19th century.
I guess that'd make it an Americanism only in the sense that it was never
dropped in America, as opposed to an American innovation in the language.
And I just realized that I used "I guess" above in this sense.