…even though some of these things aren’t Americanisms at all. Deplane (no. 5) is used in both countries and predates commercial air travel. Scotch-Irish (no. 13) is a perfectly acceptable genealogical term that means something decidedly different than Scots-Irish. And “where’s it at?” is acceptable in a variety of English dialects both here and across the pond, since the “can’t end a sentence with a preposition” rule is a load of crap anyway.
British English speakers are apt to dismiss any lexical feature they don’t like as an Americanism. White speakers of American English often do the same thing, but blame it on African-Americans, on politicians they don’t like, or on regional dialect. It seems curmudgeonly and wrongheaded to oppose language change, but everyone does it, even me—and I studied sociolinguistics in undergrad and am a firm believer in the danger of language prescriptivism and of trying to inhibit languages from evolving. Personally, what gets me is the use of obfuscatory business-speak and psychobabble. Issues instead of problems. Core competencies instead of skills. Leverage instead of use, as a verb. Interface. Touch base. Solutions.
Even worse are the cutesy diminutives appearing everywhere: veggie, rezzie (reservation), sammie, EVOO, yummo/yummers, fro-yo, sesh (session), rela (relationship), adorbs, jeals/jelly (jealous), preggers, bestie, hubby, ciggie. You all sound like a bunch of children. Not everything has to be cute all the time.
…and let’s not forget about good ol’-fashioned hyperbole. Orgasmic, foodgasm, amazing, cooked to perfection, transcendent, abundant, special, beautiful. Love where you just intend to like or enjoy. Hate where something moderately irks you. You call it expressive; I call it gushy. It’s a variation on the “euphemism treadmill” by which toilet became bathroom became restroom. Mark my words, by the time I’m 50 it’s going to be called something even more circumlocutory. How are we going to express actual intensity if all of our “intense” words have been reappropriated for routine feelings of slight pleasure and discomfort?
Meanwhile, if you live in a place with distinctive regional dialect words (and everyone does, unless you live in one of those placeless places like Phoenix, McKinney, or Cape Coral that sprang up out of nowhere in the post-TV 20th century), keep using them and celebrating them, in the face of late capitalism’s intent to have us all speaking a bland flavorless mouth-mush. Minnesotans, don’t be embarrassed by hotdish, rubber binder, or gray duck. Bostonians, keep saying wicked and frappe and rotary over the protests of New Yorkers (who should themselves be proud of stoop and bodega and stand on line). And northern Californians, say hella, no matter how much it annoys your SoCal neighbors.
