Into the University Challenge semi finals with a convincing win.

"Alma Mater" - you've spend too long in the States JK

according to 'usingenglish.com' -
It's correct, but we don't use it, so it would be a conscious import from American English. We could use it sarcastically- I have heard it used meaning 'prison' in the UK. Because it's not a normal usage, there would have to be a reason, and humour, irony, etc, are, as Mr Pedantic says, the most obvious reasons.


So perhaps you should reserve the term for Maidstone Prison

Gnomo wrote:
"Alma Mater" - you've spend too long in the States JK

according to 'usingenglish.com' -
It's correct, but we don't use it, so it would be a conscious import from American English. We could use it sarcastically- I have heard it used meaning 'prison' in the UK. Because it's not a normal usage, there would have to be a reason, and humour, irony, etc, are, as Mr Pedantic says, the most obvious reasons.


So perhaps you should reserve the term for Maidstone Prison

I think Mr King is half-American and has special dispensation to say " Alma Mater" and "Movie"

Otherwise, he would be flicked with a wet tea-towel!

Oh yes! - I forgot his Father was American, but I would have thought Charterhouse and Oxford would have knocked all those damned foreign tendencies out of him.
That raises an interesting question - do you have a US passport as well as a UK one JK? Or do you have to apply for a VISA (presumably difficult).

If anything it's fallen out of fashion these days, as the language has, but I can assure you it's still fairly common at Cambridge (whose graduates exported it to New England and other places in the 17th century).

Oxford, Gnomo? Oxford? Apart from the obvious horror, that would rather render the entire thread pointless!