Ben Yagoda's Books
- "About Town: The New Yorker and the World It Made"
- "How to Not Write Bad: The Most Common Writing Problems and the Best Ways to Avoid Them"
- "Memoir: A History"
- "The Art of Fact: A Historical Anthology of Literary Journalism"
- "The Sound on the Page: Style and Voice in Writing"
- "When You Catch an Adjective, Kill It: The Parts of Speech, for Better and/or Worse"
- "Will Rogers: A Biography"
Blogroll
Yagodiana
Search
Top Posts & Pages
Archives
Top Clicks
Blog Stats
- 600,176 hits
Category Cloud
Tweets
- These champions league crowd shots are creeping me out. 10 hours ago
- RT @elisewho: Not gonna pretend I have any plans this Memorial Day wknd besides binge watching Arrested Development. #annyeong 1 day ago
- RT @arikaokrent: Man, Mark Twain would have had the best twitter feed. 1 day ago
- RT @PurplePenning: Don't miss the latest @Copyediting Q&A with author and teacher @byagoda! bit.ly/1afA85y 1 day ago
- Gotta read this RT @DanBarryNYT An Oklahoma way of life: A tick-tock by @jswatz and me on racing time with a tornado. nyti.ms/11etBTl 1 day ago
Well lit ?
Wasn’t there a commercial aired in the US, I believe it was for beer, perhaps even Guinness, that used the term “Brilliant!” for its bearded character?
As with most things in the Twitter age, many people in UK now use the term ‘brill’ when they mean ‘Brilliant’ ( excellent, very good, etc etc ), but don’t shorten the word when they mean that someone is extremely clever or skilful. Its also used sarcastically when something goes wrong “Oh Brilliant !”
Aye, Mike S is correct, Brilliant gets shortened to Brill a lot of the time, especially by younger people from the south-east of england.