How It's Used

“His predecessor, Burchall, was more a Kipling-and-none-of-this-damned-poofery sort of chap, indeed he actually straight-facedly taught U and Non-U pronunciation and usage as part of lessons: ‘A gentleman does not pronounce Monday as Monday, but as Mundy. Yesterday is yesterdi. The first 'e' of interesting is not sounded,’ and so on.”

—Stephen Fry, Moab Is My Washpot, (Soho Press, 2003), pp. 280-1.

“Because the class system here [in the U.S.] is more complicated than in England, less amenable to merely binary categorization, language indicators are more numerous and subtle than merely those accepted as ‘U’ (i.e., upper) or stigmatized as ‘non-U’ by Nancy Mitford in her delightful 1955 essay in Encounter, ‘The English Aristocracy.’”

—Paul Fussell, Class: A Guide Through the American Status System Class, (Touchstone, 1992), p. 153.

“Many of these usages were recorded in 1955 in Nancy Mitford’s ‘The English Aristocracy,’ the essay that first popularised the idea of U and non-U vocabulary.  Some of her stipulations now seem archaic:  dentures is non-U (say false teeth); glasses is non-U (say spectacles); Bye-bye (rather than goodbye), she advises, is ‘dreadful’.”

—John Mullan, “Nice boys don’t say ‘pudding,’” The Guardian Weekly, 17-23 September 04, p. 22.

“When Nancy Mitford published her famous essay, on the differences between ‘U and non-U’ in 1954, being an air hostess was an incredibly glamorous career.”

—no author, “Class snobbery:  a thing of the past?,” The Week (UK), 28 Apr 07, p. 21.

“It's a tradition learned by generations of toffs at Oxford and Cambridge, where it is the default drink of the spring and summer. 'Pimm's can only be drunk during the punting season,' The American Oxonian -- a publication for Rhodes scholars -- once advised, 'so don't ask for it in February.' It's still the drink of 'the season,' that gaggle of warm-weather events -- the Derby, Ascot, Wimbledon, the Henley Regatta and the Glyndebourne Opera Festival -- that anchor the British social calendar. The New York Times's R.W. Apple Jr. was once at Glyndebourne with a French friend who, looking at the dinner-jacketed men and begowned women sipping Pimm's there on the Sussex Downs, observed: 'You can see why the aristocracy in this country is so desperate to hang on.'

“And yet, Pimm's isn't quite as U as it used to be. This is not just because, after a decade of 'call me Tony' Blairism, Britain is somewhat less class constrained. The effort to democratize Pimm's has come from Diageo, the drinks behemoth: It bought the brand a few years ago and saw no reason sales should be confined to people hosting posh parties.”

—Eric Felten, “A No. 1 Quaff for Toffs,” The Wall Street Journal, 19 May 07, p. P9.

Links

Related on eAlmanac
R-less Speech

Beyond eAlmanac
Wikipedia article on U and Non-U English