Needless pedantry...
Sick, refering to a state of health, is unlikely to be an Americanism (being in popular usage a full 600 years before discovery of said continent).

The 'bugs' thing I have some sympathy with (also a biologist) but here the popular use precedes the scientific use. Indeed, according to my dictionary, ants and beetles were being described as bugs (bugges) before linnaeus was even born!

Mine is people who say 'genetically modified' when they mean 'transgenic', but that's pretty much everyone, so I try not to let it bother me.
(silene, Wed 7 May 2008, 11:30, Reply)