Standard American English

[ stan-derd uh-mer-i-kuhn ing-glish, or, often, -lish ]

noun

1. the form of the English language used in the United States in formal and professional speech and writing, as taught in schools and heard on newscasts, adhering to fixed norms of spelling, grammar, and usage in written and spoken contexts, and neutralizing nonstandard dialectal variation. : SAE

Word History and Origins

Origin of Standard American English¹

First recorded in 1930–35

Example Sentences

While “ain’t” is commonly utilized by AAE speakers, the use of the word is still frowned upon in formal use as it clashes with “Standard American English.”

From Seattle Times

For one thing, the ubiquitous Standard American English accent I observed on "General Hospital" and "The Young & the Restless" was all I could ever hear when I spoke.

From Salon

Indeed, recent studies have discovered that Americans with Southern accents, like me, have lower incomes and job attainment outcomes than those who speak with the Standard American English accent.

From Salon

This means that someone using the app to speak English, for example, isn’t stuck listening to someone in Standard American English.

From The Verge

The first modern corpus, the Brown Corpus of Standard American English, was compiled in 1964 and included 1m words, sampled from 500 texts including romance novels, religious tracts and books of “popular lore” – contemporary, everyday sources that dictionary-makers had barely consulted, and which it had never been possible to examine en masse.

From The Guardian