To Be Sure

It's worth dwelling on why "bloodyminded" is good. It's good because it's expressive. It encapsulates a concept that would otherwise take several words to say. It's not just a misspelling of an American word or an inferior version being passed off as the genuine article. It's not annoying or stupid.

By the way, none of this is a knock on the talent of the British people for using the English language. Consider the following passage from one of Churchill's great speeches:

But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new dark age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves, that if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, "This was their finest hour."

This is great British rhetoric that is vastly more effective because it is written in American English. Imagine if Churchill had said:

But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new dark age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves, that if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, "This was their finest hour." Oy!