Columbia Encyclopedia World Factbook Columbia Gazetteer American Heritage Coll. The American Language. Page 158 United States the word means, and has meant for years, a meeting of some division, large or small, of a political or legislative body for the purpose of agreeing upon a united course of action in the main assembly. It has a disparaging significance over there, almost equal to that of our words organization and machine. A good many other such Americanisms have got into good usage in England, and new ones are being exported constantly.
Farmer describes the process of their introduction and assimilation.
American books, newspapers and magazines, especially the last, circulate in England in large number, and some of their characteristic locutions strike the English fancy and are repeated in conversation. Then they get into print, and begin to take on respectability. England swarms with Americans, and Englishmen themselves, visiting America, are struck by the new and racy phrases that they hear, and afterward take them home and try them on their friends. The English authors who burden every west-bound ship, coming here to lecture, have especially sharp ears for Note 2. But most other authorities, following Pickering, derive it from caulkers.