At least I've never heard anyone use it here.
I'm surprised you should say that, Elizabeth. Do you recall this?
I thought it was common Aussie slang, more often spelled Prezzie but on looking it up it is described as Informal, British. Probably why when I did a search of the forum, the forumite using it most often was Linda, although I did find one from Anonsi on your side of the pond.
I have no opinion on whether it should be common or not.
OJ, people in the United States truly do not use the word
pressie; well, maybe a few if they have a parent who speaks British English. The instances of United Statesians using it in the forum were, I'm pretty sure, cases where American posters were mirroring the language of their British fellow forumites in a spirit of international friendship. I myself started using the word
whinge, a British word of which I had no previous knowledge before playing Chihuahua.
I'm just surprised its 'common' rating has lasted as long as it has on Chi before, finally, someone has got round to querying it.
In the beginning, MK, we didn't question the British-ness or the American-ness of the common words. We just learned them for next time (or not, depending on how good our memories were). It was only later that people started grousing that words were "too American" or "too British". I imagine that there are still a goodly number of players who are fine with the status quo or, for whatever reason, don't join the forum in order to lodge a protest one way or another. I daresay that the United Statesians who are active in the forum learned
pressie early on and never thought twice about it. Lately I myself have thought twice about it, mainly as a response to numerous recent protests lodged about the American-ness of the common word lexicon and the suggestion that the lexicon skews in that direction. There have been several British words making their debut in the 7 by Many puzzle which in earlier days I would have commented on. I have held off on posting about them given the length of Alan's existing to-do list.