George Bernard Shaw once wrote, “England and America are two countries separated by a common language.” This isn’t true of my own household, though. I married an unapologetic Brit, and our common language doesn’t separate us. It just makes things interesting. For instance, around my house, I hear British terms such as “have a go” (“go for it” or “take a turn,” in American English), “your room is a tip!” (“clean up that pigsty!”), “stop pissing and moaning” (“quit your complaining”), “go on!” (“no way!”), “peckish” (“hungry”), “don’t get your knickers in a twist” (“chill”), and, perhaps my all-time favorite, “Bob’s your uncle!” (“And there you have it!”).

If Ben Yagoda is to be believed, it’s not just my family that has absorbed numerous Britishisms in recent years, but American society as a whole. In Gobsmacked!, Yagoda’s entertaining and carefully researched chronicle of the British invasion of American English, the reader is treated to the who, what, when, where, why, and even whilst of this phenomenon. A onetime English professor and the current steward of the immensely popular blog Not One-Off Britishisms (or NOOBs), Yagoda plumbs etymological origins and Google Ngram analysis alike to explain exactly how British English has penetrated the United States after decades of American cultural colonialism in the British Isles.