Comment by exasperaited
4 days ago
It's not a Britishism particularly. My sense was it is coming in part from Indian Standard English but it may well be European english mistranslation. I rather like it, actually. Not least because it is the reciprocal of "teachings", which is long established usage.
"What are the asks" and "what's the offer" are turning up much more than I'd like, and they annoy me. But not as much as other Americanisms: "concerning" meaning "a cause for concern", "addicting" when the word they are looking for is "addictive", and the rather whiny-sounding "cheater" when the word "cheat" works fine. These things can meet the proverbial fiery end, along with "performant" and "revert back" (the latter of which which is an Americanism sourced from Indian English that is perhaps the only intrusion from Indian English I dislike; generally I think ISE is warm and fun and joyful.)
The BBC still put "concerning" in quotes, because the UK has not yet given up the fight, and because people like me used to write in to ask "concerning what?" I had a very fun reply from a BBC person about this, once. So I assume they are still there, forcing journalists to encase this abuse in quotation marks.
Ultimately all our bugbears are personal, though, because English is the ultimate living language, and I don't think Americans have any particular standing to complain about any of them! :-)
ETA: Lest anyone think I am complaining more about Americanisms than other isms, I would just like to say that one of my favourite proofs of the extraordinary flexibility of English is the line from Mean Girls: "She doesn't even go here!"
The other day the varying meaning of "lolly" came up in a discussion. In the UK, when it's not a slang term for money, a "lolly" is either a sticky sweet (candy) on a stick, or a frozen treat on a stick. From "lollipop" and then a shortening of "ice lolly".
In Australia, a "lolly" is more or less any non-chocolate-based sweet (candy).
British people find this confusing in Australia, but this is a great example of a word whose meaning was refined in the UK long after we started transporting people to Australia. Before that, a "lollipop" was simply a boiled treacle sweet that might or might not have been on a stick; some time after transportation started, as the industrialised confectionary industry really kicked off, the British English meaning of the word slowly congealed around the stick, and the Australian meaning did not.