U AND NON-U

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U AND NON-U. Upper-class and non-upper-class usage, linguistic and social: terms first used by the philologist A. S. C. Ross for academic purposes and then popularized through inclusion in Noblesse Oblige (1956), edited by Nancy Mitford, a work whose lists of expressions that served as social clues inspired over the next few years a search for further U-isms and non-U-isms: ‘Fault, also, Balkans are pronounced by the U as if spelt fawlt, awlso, Bawlkans’ ( Ross, in Noblesse Oblige); ‘“I don't think he's really U, though, do you?”—“Oh no. Shabby genteel, maybe”’ ( Alison Lurie, Love and Friendship, 1962).