As similar as so-and-so

In Saturday's Feedback section of The Times Rose Wild was (as quite often) saying 'Nothing to see here. Both versions are acceptable; calm down  everybody'.  And she cites a few Google searches to justify her equanimity.

A correspondent had objected to the phrase 'dull as dishwater', holding that the phrase should be 'dull as ditchwater' and that the 'dishwater' version was wrong. The columnist said it was all much of a muchness: '"Ditchwater" and "dishwater" have been interchangeably dull for more than 100 years.'

The Google Ngrams Viewer more or less confirms her position: 'dull as ditchwater' used to be the commoner, but recently there's no strong tendency either way – if anything, the trend is in favour of 'dull as dishwater':

The case for interchangeability

But that Viewer also lets you specify whether you are interested in British English or American English, and those results tell a different story.

In the one for American English there is a preference for the 'ditchwater' version until about the beginning of the Second World War, followed by a period of mixed fortunes for about twenty years, and then – since about 1960 – there is an increasingly strong preference for the 'dishwater' version. And since about 2010 the two have been diverging, with 'dishwater' waxing and 'ditchwater' waning:

The state of the nation

I wonder why. The recent (strong) preference for 'dishwater" might suggest some environmental explanation: could there be fewer ditches in the USA? Of course not. 

<parenthesis>
(Although I suppose there may be fewer miles of ditch per unit area or per capita, because of the distribution of farmland...? Perhaps I'm overthinking this.)
</parenthesis>

Besides, 'ditchwater' was the preferred comparator for over 100 years before that.

Meanwhile, in the Ngram for British English there is a marked preference for the 'ditchwater' version throughout the two phrases' coexistence, though the 'dishwater' version seems to have had a growth spurt after the war: in 1945 it was about ten times less common than the 'ditchwater' version, but by the time the Ngrams data runs out 'dishwater' has risen to about two thirds of the level of 'ditchwater'.

So it's tempting to conclude that the many contributors to The Times's online Comments (which I don't have access to) who decried 'dull as dishwater' as an error were sticklers for British English.

A preference for ditchwater

<shibboleth-warning>
Of course this all depends on how the Google Ngrams people define 'British/American English'. There's a whiff of the No true Scotsman ...

<glossary>
'No true Scotsman puts sugar on his porridge.'

'But what about N?'

'He can't be a true Scotsman.'

'Why not?'

'Because no true Scotsman puts sugar on his porridge.'

</glossary>

...fallacy here. A lot of self-styled Guardians of the King's English call a lot of things 'American English' although they have strong and healthy roots in British English.

<autobiographical-note>
When I worked at OUP (whose house style was to use -ize endings where there was an option...

<innocent-bystanders>
(This is a crucial proviso, 'televize' is just wrong [and 'analyze' is an abomination – though admittedly {not to say lamentably} standard in some parts of the world]. Many innocent bystanders are caught in the zeal for 'modernizing' spellings by making s-endings zs)

</innocent-bystanders>

....) Professor Richard Cobb, a Francophile who wrote chiefly about things French (and in French there is no -izer option for -iser verbs), had a dispensation.

<suspicion>
I doubt if their present  editorial policies (presumably more automated and unbending than they were in the more humane [some would say wet] 1980s) would allow this if he were writing today.

</suspicion>

He alone among OUP authors was allowed to use '-ise' spllings. His editors knew this, but other departments (publicity, production etc.) occasionally caused friction by 'correcting' his aberrant ss.
</autobiographical-note>

In a previous post  I wrote: 

<prescript> 

In a UsingEnglish discussion many years ago on this sadly common issue I wrote

There's nothing unBritish about the spelling 'apologize'. It has been the house style of The Times for well over a hundred years, and is used by many large and influential publishers (Oxford University Press, for example). I'm tired of being accused of flirting with modernity and excessive American influence, just because I use a spelling that millions of British people use (so long as they haven't been got at by generations of school-teachers peddling misinformation).

That may have been true of The Times at the time of writing, but 'the times they are a-changin'. A few cases of '-ize' pass the scrutiny of the subs' eyes - especially when there is a strong etymological justification - as in the case of 'baptize' (where there is a zeta rather than a sigma in the original Greek); but fewer and fewer. 

</prescript>

But I suspect the Google Ngrams definitions of British and American English are purely geographic.

</shibboleth-warning> 

Later in the column she writes about her use of the expression 'carloads of cash', which had prompted a correspondent (who obviously has too much time on his hands) to point out that the usual metaphor for an inordinate amount was 'shedloads'. 'I'm not sure why I opted for carloads' she writes. Well  I have a possible answer: alliteration. And alliteration explains the popularity of 'dull as di...hwater'. Many other similes (most? Discuss) are alliterative– 'bold as brass', 'cool as a cucumber', 'dead as a dodo/doornail', 'fit as a fiddle', 'good as gold', 'hungry as a hunter'...

<admission-of-defeat type="alphabetical">
(And speaking of defeat, who does Pope Francis think he is – Pius XII? But I digress...)
J has me foxed, and I suspect that the second half of the alphabet is less fruitful, so I'll go on to a few digraphs.
</admission-of-defeat

'cheap as chips', 'thick as thieves'... (there must be more: where's Brewer when you need it?) 

But that's enough for the time being.

b

Update: 2024.03.12.19:50 – Added Pius XII link