Galoshes is such a weird word for Americans to have landed on, that I suspect it's a case of 'we're using the original British term, you just changed how you did things after we splintered away' situation.
If that's the case, it could be an example of the wave model; fundamentally, the idea is that the place with most influence generates new words, which then expand like circular waves to the more peripheral areas. So the more peripheral areas end up using older words, while the more influential one uses and propagates new ones. The process can break down once the influential area loses its influence, and sometimes you can see the now immobile circular waves around a certain area.

The typical examples are with Latin, with central areas like Italian and French using words derived from more recent inventions in Latin, e.g. derivatives of "plus", which means, well, plus, while Spanish, Portuguese and Romanian say plus using words coming from the older "magis". The switch from magis to plus happened in Rome; Italy and Gaul could be reached by the innovation in Roman speech, but it didn't have time to reach more peripheral areas on both sides of the Latin-speaking empire before Rome lost its influence.

Something similar happened with words meaning "cheese", where both Italian and French use words from the more recent "formaticum" while Spanish and Portuguese (and also English and German, although I'm not sure why) use words derived from the older word "caseus" (also meaning cheese).

I don't really know when UK English lost its charm over America, but Lovecraft wrote with a British spelling because it was still considered more prestigious (The Colour Out of Space). Maybe the British switched to the new word too late for the Americans to acquire it.
Quote Originally Posted by Peelee View Post
We have nurseries. It's just that our nurseries are the bedrooms/playroom for babies.
I think there's a Tolkien letter in which he says "we have no nursery" with this meaning. (letter 15).