Get shirty!

[rogue_mother]

Actually, I don't mean to get shirty, maybe just 'whinge' a bit. I would like to suggest that shirty, which appeared as a common word in yesterday's standard puzzle, is not a common word in the United States. I would go so far as to suggest that it is rare, even, in these parts.

[ensiform]

It's usually hard for me to gauge these usage issues, having an English father who was born in India and a Texan mother who lived in Paris for a long while - but I'll agree that 99% of the time Americans would give you a blank look if you said "get shirty," or assume it was some kind of sexual innuendo.

[Linda]

V. common over here, RM!   

[birdy]

not used here, that I've ever heard.

[Tom44]

OK - I'm one of those Americans who hasn't a clue.  Someone want to fill me in on what get shirty means?

[pat]

Tom, I think it's derived from the expression 'Keep your shirt on', meaning 'Don't lose your temper'. So someone who's getting shirty is becoming annoyed.

[Alan W]

RM, the evidence supports your whinge quite strongly. In the 400 million word Corpus of Contemporary American English, the word shirty appears only twice - and both of these are from non-American writers.

The word, meaning bad-tempered or angry, has been around since the 1840s, and is possibly related to keep your shirt on, as Pat suggests. It may also be related to a slang expression which seems to have dropped out of use, to get one's shirt out, meaning to become angry. Jonathon Green, in Cassell's Dictionary of Slang, gives the derivation of this expression as "the disarrangement of one's clothes that may follow a fit of arm-brandishing fury".

As a word that is more-or-less non-existent in the largest English-speaking territory, shirty should certainly be re-classified as rare.

[greenone]

I don't consider it to be a rare word at all.  Lots of the American words that are considered common are ones I don't, so I think if words that are common in one part of the globe are allowed, then ones that are common in another part should be too.

[Alan W]

GEO, it is my intention to make words rare if they're not common outside the US, just as I feel words should be rare if they're not common within the US. No doubt there are plenty of common words remaining that should be rare under that rule, but there have been quite a few American words re-graded to rare after queries were raised: coed, veep, narc, moxie, vise, realty, tony, etc.

Of course, tricky issues arise where a word that originated in one country has started to get some use in the rest of the English-speaking world. Each issue raised has to be looked at on its merits, but I tend to lean towards making a word rare if there is some doubt about it. That's because the disadvantage is not so great if a player finds that a word that is common to her is treated as rare in the puzzle, compared with the situation of a player confronted with a "common" word they've never heard of.

Of course, I'm always happy (and never shirty) to look into any words queried by forumites.

[rogue_mother]

GEO, any time you feel that an American word should not be classified as common, you should speak up. That's what the Forum is for, after all.

As Alan has pointed out, numerous American words have been reclassified after others have questioned them (and he should know!) He carefully researches all requests and is very fair in making his determinations.  So don't be shy about it. Come join in the fun!