Granted, he thought, ‘dressing gown’ is nicer than ‘bathrobe’; ‘biscuit’ preferable to ‘cookie’; and ‘mackintosh’ superior to ‘raincoat’. But is ‘stick’ really more pleasing than ‘cane’? Or ‘stuff’ better than ‘material’? And is ‘pudding’ any chicer than ‘dessert’? No! he began to scream to himself. ‘Pudding’ is really a very nasty word, no matter what Miss Mitford might say. And as for ‘thriller’! Surely, ‘mystery’ is infinitely less vulgar. If only the tables were turned and it was the British who called a detective story a ‘mystery’, they would not hesitate to label ‘thriller’ a dreadful Americanism.
He remembered that he had read that the most fanatically anglicised of twentieth-century American expatriates had once asked the most fatuously anti-American of English writers how he woul
