Comic actor Mike Myers, who seems to find anything involving the British inordinately funny, has popularized their slang term “shag” on this side of the Big Wet Spot. He’s given it an in-jokey modishness that it generally doesn’t have over there.

Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery, Myers’ 1997 spoof of ’60s spy spoofs, used the word aggressively in its original and trend-spliced forms (“Shagadelic, baby!”).

Well, Myers was only just starting. Next month, with the title of his sequel, Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me, Myers and New Line Cinema will have given “shag” a new level of pop visibility. They’ll basically be getting U.S. newspapers, billboards and TV networks to highlight a British vulgarism for copulation.

Americans who enjoyed the original Austin Powers or laughed through Absolutely Fabulous and Bridget Jones’s Diary must realize that, in these contexts, “shag” does not refer to loose-knit, difficult-to-traverse carpeting. Or, for that matter, to chasing after fly balls in baseball practice.

Yet, as Myers’ co-star Elizabeth Hurley has noted in interviews, many Yanks seem to think “shag” is merely wink-wink naughty or a kitschy joke about retro ’60s fashions. To many Brits, however, it remains thoroughly up-to-date and offensive.

The word’s sexual meaning goes back at least 200 years, notes John Simpson, the editor-in-chief of the Oxford English Dictionary, and it retains its coarseness because of its suggestion of “uncouth violence.”

In fact, Eric Partridge, in his Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, argues that “shag,” which in Old English referred to rough hair, first gained sexual connotations from its cousin, “shake.”

There’s no word from New Line whether Spy will retain “shagged” when released in Britain — or how the title will be translated into other languages.

Some cheeky young Brits are using the word more openly these days, Simpson reports, although he seriously doubts whether most of the British “would expect to find it in the title of a film for popular release.”

“But then, the British were rather surprised by Free Willy.”