Grammar Girl here. I'm In Jan Fogarty, and today I have a bonus segment from my interview with Ben Yagoda back in September.

Ben is the author of the book Gobsmacked, the British Invasion of American English, and we talked about the words Tui, Vet, the two spellings of gray, the

surprising origins of soccer and football, and more.

Grammar-Paloosians who support this show get these segments right when they come out.

And, you know, in today's really tough podcasting environment, they help us keep going and

produce these bonus segments. So many thanks

to all you wonderful grammar pelusians. Let's continue the discussion. One of the words that really,

I thought this is wonderful. So Tui is another word that sounds really pretentious to me when people

say it. But the origin of Tui absolutely surprised me.

Yeah. If I remember correctly, it's an approximation of a little toddler trying to say sweet.

Yeah. And it shows up in novels of the 1920s and 30s and then got established. And if you look at

and so it's, I was going to say almost always, but always used in a negative context that something's too sweet, too saccharin, too precious.

And if you Google it, probably 75% of the references are for the Scottish band Bell and Sebastian,

who are after a bit I've never listened to, but they are considered the height of Tweed Pop.

Tweed Pop, who knew?

There was such a thing.

Another one, gray. So you have the two spellings of gray. Gray with A is typically the American spelling and E is typically the British spelling. I've noticed that people tell me they think they're two different colors. People argue with me that they are not just different spellings. They're different colors. And I thought that was new. But in your book, you say it goes way back to people assigning different colors. Essentially, you as the conduit are still getting that. Yeah.

Right. American spelling from Noah Webster days when he differentiated, tried to differentiate

American spelling from the British, was

G-R-A-Y. G-R-E-Y was always more common in Britain. In the age of not one of Britishisms,

the G-R-E-Y has become popular, possibly thanks in part to Grey's Anatomy, which is spelled

that way in grape upon mustard.

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