There are plenty of English words used in the UK that started life in America, jumped the pond and have largely replaced the traditional English word (a bit like the grey squirrels taking over from the red squirrels). Who takes a portfolio to the office nowadays, when you can put all your papers in a briefcase – always supposing you don’t have every document stored on a laptop / tablet tucked into your rucksack?
A battery would power the said laptop for sure; but if the English language guardians of yore had had their way, an accumulator would power it. The word accumulator was replaced by battery so long ago I don’t remember it being used in this context.
Words like accumulator may have disappeared almost completely, but many words from the US seem interchangeable with UK ones. Like Americans, I sometimes ‘call’ people rather than ring them or phone them; declare myself ‘sick’ rather than ill, and take the odd ‘tough,’ rather than difficult, decision. But some words and phrases don’t trip comfortably from my tongue. For example, I still ‘get in touch with’ people, rather than ‘reach out to’ them.
(With the above nuggets of information, somebody smart could probably work out my age pretty accurately!)
Smart, as an alternative word for clever, is an Americanism in common use in the UK. Its actual origins are in the old German word schmerzen / Old English smeorten, meaning to sting or hurt (‘my eyes smart after swimming if I forget my goggles’). The word gradually evolved to also mean – sharp (‘the teacher gave him a smart rap on the knuckles,’) and by the eighteenth century it was also being used to refer to people’s outfits – ‘she was wearing a smart suit and her best shoes.’
Not a big leap therefore, linguistically speaking at least, for smart to become an alternative word for clever. One might even call it a smart move.
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