When someone from Britain speaks, Americans hear a "British accent"...

[Steve Holden]

Terry Hancock wrote:
> On Friday 07 October 2005 03:01 am, Steve Holden wrote:
> 
>>OK, so how do you account for the execresence "That will give you a 
>>savings of 20%", which usage is common in America?
> 
> 
> In America, anyway, "savings" is a collective abstract noun 
> (like "physics" or "mechanics"), there's no such
> noun as "saving" (that's present participle of "to save"
> only).  How did you expect that sentence to be rendered?
> Why is it an "execresence"?
> 
Precisely because there *is* such a thing as a saving. If I buy a $100 
gumball for $80 I have achieved a saving of 20%.

> By the way, dict.org doesn't think "execresence" is a word,
> although I interpret the neologism as meaning something like 
> "execrable utterance":
> 
> dict.org said:
> 
>>No definitions found for 'execresence'!
> 
> 
Nonetheless, Google finds 369 hits for "execrescence" and 67 for 
"execresence".

My Complete Oxford is still packed in a cardboard box, so I can't offer 
any more convincing evidence.

If there isn't such a word, all I can say is there *ought* to be :-)

regards
  Steve
-- 
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