Momentarily crossing the Atlantic

Listening to the BBC coverage of the Olympics yesterday, I was a little to surprised to heard the presenter (who is Scottish) say she would be handing over ‘momentarily’ to her colleague.

I haven’t often heard British speakers use with momentarily with its North American meaning of ‘in a short time, very soon’. As I have written before, in British English, momentarily means ‘for an infinitesimally short time’. Short sitting for breakfast – Language Miscellany

I looked in some online dictionaries (Cambridge, Oxford, Collins). They still label the meaning ‘in a short time’ as US or North American. But maybe that will change … momentarily.

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