Southerners in states of the former Confederacy are supposedly offended when referred to as "Yanks" by Brits. That's because "Yankee" originally denoted New Englanders and, later, all Northerners. During the Civil War, "Yank" and "Yankee" were universally in use in the South to refer to Northerners.

Hence the theoretical "offensiveness" of the term as applied to a Southerner, even when it clearly refers to all Americans, as it has in Britain for 200 years.

Most Americans know this, or used to, and ordinary Southerners may object in a joking way only. At least that's my experience.

There are undoubtedly a few maniacs on the subject, but even in the South they're the exception. While the Confederate generation was still living, of course, the situation was different - understandably.

Even today, though, baseball's New York Yankees could not have been so named if they'd been organized in, say, Atlanta or Dallas. In the U.S. the primary meaning of "Yankee" and "Yank" is still "Northerner."

Few Americans overseas would identify themselves as "Yankees" because it isn't ordinarily a synonym here for "American." And though everyone knows them, the words "Yank" and "Yankee" are just not used much except in discussion about the Civil War.

Like "Scotch," it hasn't been so much the word as the context it's used in.

Language is complicated.