FOOTNOTES:

1. Genuine English words, obsolete or provincial in England, and universally used in the United States.2. English words conveying, in the United States, a different meaning from that attached to them in England.3. Words introduced from other languages than the English:—French, Dutch, Spanish, German, Indian, etc.4. Americanisms proper,i. e., words coined in the country, either representing some new idea or peculiar product.

1. Genuine English words, obsolete or provincial in England, and universally used in the United States.

2. English words conveying, in the United States, a different meaning from that attached to them in England.

3. Words introduced from other languages than the English:—French, Dutch, Spanish, German, Indian, etc.

4. Americanisms proper,i. e., words coined in the country, either representing some new idea or peculiar product.

Thornton, in 1912, substituted the following:

1. Forms of speech now obsolete or provincial in England, which survive in the United States, such asallow,bureau,fall,gotten,guess,likely,professor,shoat.2. Words and phrases of distinctly American origin, such asbelittle,lengthy,lightning-rod,to darken one's doors,to bark up the wrong tree,to come out at the little end of the horn,blind tiger,cold snap,gay Quaker,gone coon,long sauce,pay dirt,small potatoes,some pumpkins.3. Nouns which indicate quadrupeds, birds, trees, articles of food, etc., that are distinctively American, such asground-hog,hang-bird,hominy,live-oak,locust,opossum,persimmon,pone,succotash,wampum,wigwam.4. Names of persons and classes of persons, and of places, such asBuckeye,Cracker,Greaser,Hoosier,Old Bullion,Old Hickory, theLittle Giant,Dixie,Gotham, theBay State, theMonumental City.5. Words which have assumed a new meaning, such ascard,clever,fork,help,penny,plunder,raise,rock,sack,ticket,windfall.

1. Forms of speech now obsolete or provincial in England, which survive in the United States, such asallow,bureau,fall,gotten,guess,likely,professor,shoat.

2. Words and phrases of distinctly American origin, such asbelittle,lengthy,lightning-rod,to darken one's doors,to bark up the wrong tree,to come out at the little end of the horn,blind tiger,cold snap,gay Quaker,gone coon,long sauce,pay dirt,small potatoes,some pumpkins.

3. Nouns which indicate quadrupeds, birds, trees, articles of food, etc., that are distinctively American, such asground-hog,hang-bird,hominy,live-oak,locust,opossum,persimmon,pone,succotash,wampum,wigwam.

4. Names of persons and classes of persons, and of places, such asBuckeye,Cracker,Greaser,Hoosier,Old Bullion,Old Hickory, theLittle Giant,Dixie,Gotham, theBay State, theMonumental City.

5. Words which have assumed a new meaning, such ascard,clever,fork,help,penny,plunder,raise,rock,sack,ticket,windfall.

In addition, Thornton added a provisional class of "words and phrases of which I have found earlier examples in American than in English writers; ... with thecaveatthat further research may reverse the claim"—a class offering specimens inalarmist,capitalize,eruptiveness,horse of another colour(sic!),the jig's up,nameable,omnibus bill,propagandaandwhitewash.

No more than a brief glance at these classifications is needed to show that they hamper the inquiry by limiting its scope—not so much, to be sure, as the ridiculous limitations of White and Lounsbury, but still very seriously. They meet the ends of[Pg034]purely descriptive lexicography, but largely leave out of account some of the most salient characters of a living language, for example, pronunciation and idiom. Only Bartlett and Farmer establish a separate category of Americanisms produced by changes in pronunciation, though even Thornton, of course, is obliged to take notice of such forms asbustandbile. None of them, however, goes into the matter at any length, nor even into the matter of etymology. Bartlett's etymologies are scanty and often inaccurate; Schele de Vere's are sometimes quite fanciful; Thornton offers scarcely any at all. The best of these collections of Americanisms, and by long odds, is Thornton's. It presents an enormous mass of quotations, and they are all very carefully dated, and it corrects most of the more obvious errors in the work of earlier inquirers. But its very dependence upon quotations limits it chiefly to the written language, and so the enormously richer materials of the spoken language are passed over, and particularly the materials evolved during the past twenty years. One searches the two fat volumes in vain for such highly characteristic forms aswould of,near-accident, andbuttinski, the use ofsureas an adverb, and the employment ofwellas a sort of general equivalent of the Germanalso.

These grammatical and syntactical tendencies are beyond the scope of Thornton's investigation, but it is plain that they must be prime concerns of any future student who essays to get at the inner spirit of the language. Its difference from standard English is not merely a difference in vocabulary, to be disposed of in an alphabetical list; it is, above all, a difference in pronunciation, in intonation, in conjugation and declension, in metaphor and idiom, in the whole fashion of using words. A page from one of Ring W. Lardner's baseball stories contains few words that are not in the English vocabulary, and yet the thoroughly American color of it cannot fail to escape anyone who actually listens to the tongue spoken around him. Some of the elements which enter into that color will be considered in the following pages. The American vocabulary, of course, must be given first attention, for in it the earliest American divergences are embalmed and it tends to grow richer and freer year after year,[Pg035]but attention will also be paid to materials and ways of speech that are less obvious, and in particular to certain definite tendencies of the grammar of spoken American, hitherto wholly neglected.

FOOTNOTES:[1]Pp. 22-23.[2]America's Coming of Age; New York, 1915, p. 15. See also the preface to Every-Day English, by Richard Grant White; Boston, 1881, p. xviii.[3]The common notion that the Académie combats changes is quite erroneous. In the preface to the first edition of its dictionary (1694) it disclaimed any purpose "to make new words and to reject others at its pleasure." In the preface to the second edition (1718) it confessed that "ignorance and corruption often introduce manners of writing" and that "convenience establishes them." In the preface to the third edition (1740) it admitted that it was "forced to admit changes which the public has made." And so on. Says D. M. Robertson, in A History of the French Academy (London, 1910): "The Academy repudiates any assumption of authority over the language with which the public in its own practise has not first clothed it. So much, indeed, does it confine itself to an interpretation merely of the laws of language that its decisions are sometimes contrary to its own judgment of what is either desirable or expedient."[4]Cf.Scandinavian Studies and Notes, vol. iv, no. 3, Aug. 1917, p. 258.[5]This movement won official recognition so long ago as 1885, when the Storting passed the first of a series of acts designed to put the two languages on equal footing. Four years later, after a campaign going back to 1874, provision was made for teaching thelandsmaalin the schools for the training of primary teachers. In 1899 a professorship of thelandsmaalwas established in the University of Christiania. The school boards in the case of primary schools, and the pupils in the case of middle and high schools are now permitted to choose between the two languages, and thelandsmaalhas been given official status by the State Church. The chief impediment to its wider acceptance lies in the fact that it is not, as it stands, a natural language, but an artificial amalgamation of peasant dialects. It was devised in 1848-50 by Ivar Aasen.VideThe Language Question,London TimesNorwegian Supplement, May 18, 1914.[6]A few such works are listed in the bibliography. More of them are mentioned in Americanismos, by Miguel de Toro y Gisbert; Paris, n. d.[7]Maximilian Schele de Vere: Americanisms: The English of the New World; New York, 1872.[8]Richard H. Thornton: An American Glossary ..., 2 vols.; Phila. and London, 1912.[9]Organized Feb. 19, 1889, with Dr. J. J. Child, of Harvard, as its first president.[10]Author of Travels in North America; London, 1829.[11]A Vocabulary or Collection of Words and Phrases which Have Been Supposed to be Peculiar to the United States of America; Boston, 1816.[12]A Letter to the Hon. John Pickering on the Subject of His Vocabulary; Boston, 1817.[13]4th ed., New York, 1870, p. 669.[14]Op. cit.p. 676.[15]The English Language; New York 1850; rev. ed., 1855. This was the first American text-book of English for use in colleges. Before its publication, according to Fowler himself (rev. ed., p. xi), the language was studied only "superficially" and "in the primary schools." He goes on: "Afterward, when older, in the academy, during their preparation for college, our pupils perhaps despised it, in comparison with the Latin and the Greek; and in the college they do not systematically study the language after they come to maturity."[16]In Recent Exemplifications of False Philology; London, 1872.[17]Americanisms, parts I-VIII, April, May, July, Sept., Nov., 1878; Jan., March, May, 1879.[18]A Glossary of Words and Phrases Usually Regarded as Peculiar to the United States, 4th ed.; Boston, 1877.[19]Feb., March, June, July, Sept.[20]Vol. xiv, pp. 484-5; Cambridge, 1917.[21]Vol. xxv, p. 209.[22]July 18, 1913.[23]Of the words cited as still unfamiliar in England, Thornton has tracedhoboto 1891,hold-upandbuncoto 1887,diveto 1882,dead-beatto 1877,hoodlumto 1872,road-agentto 1866,stagto 1856,drummerto 1836 andflumeto 1792. All of them are probably older than these references indicate.[24]Summarized inLiterary Digest, June 19, 1915.[25]America Today,Scribner's, Feb. 1899, p. 218.[26]London Court Journal, Aug. 28, 1892.[27]In Pastures New; New York, 1906, p. 6.[28]Concerning the American Language, in The Stolen White Elephant; Boston, 1882. A footnote says that the essay is "part of a chapter crowded out of A Tramp Abroad." (Hartford, 1880.)[29]Hartford, 1872, p. 45.[30]The Editor's Study,Harper's Magazine, Jan. 1886.[31]Die englische Sprache in Nordamerika, band iv, heft i; Braunschweig, 1848.[32]Étude sur l'Anglais Parlé aux Etats Unis (la Langue Américaine),Actes de la Société Philologique de Paris, March, 1874.[33]Metoula-Sprachführer.... Englisch von Karl Blattner; Ausgabe für Amerika; Berlin-Schöneberg, 1912.[34]Polyglott Kuntze; Schnellste Erlernung jeder Sprache ohne Lehrer; Amerikanisch; Bonn a. Rh., n. d.[35]Like the English expositors of American slang, this German falls into several errors. For example, he givescockforrooster,bootsforshoes,bracesforsuspendersandpostmanforletter-carrier, and listsiron-monger,joinerandlinen-draperas American terms. He also spellswagonin the English manner, with twog's, and translatesSchweinefüsseaspork-feet. But he spells such words ascolorin the American manner and gives the pronunciation ofclerkas the Americanklörk, not as the Englishklark.[36]Molee's notions are set forth in Plea for an American Language ...; Chicago, 1888; and Tutonish; Chicago, 1902. He announced the preparation of A Dictionary of the American Language in 1888, but so far as I know it has not been published. He was born in Wisconsin, of Norwegian parents, in 1845, and pursued linguistic studies at the University of Wisconsin, where he seems to have taken a Ph. B.[37]American English,North American Review, Jan. 1883.[38]Oct. 1, 1909.[39]J. F. Healy, general manager of the Davis Colliery Co. at Elkins, W. Va., in a speech before the West Virginia Coal Mining Institute, at Wheeling, Dec. 1910; reprinted as The American Language; Pittsburgh, 1911.[40]Westminster Review, July, 1888, p. 35.[41]W. W. Skeat distinguishes no less than 9 dialects in Scotland, 3 in Ireland and 30 in England and Wales.VideEnglish Dialects From the Eighth Century to the Present Day; Cambridge, 1911, p. 107et seq..[42]Art.Americanisms, 2nd ed.[43]F. L. Pattee: A History of American Literature Since 1870; New York, 1916.[44]A. H. Sayce: Introduction to the Science of Language, 2 vols.; London, 1900. See especially vol. ii, ch. vi.[45]Cf.the chapter, Interlude: On Jargon, in Quiller-Couch's On the Art of Writing; New York, 1916. Curiously enough, large parts of the learned critic's book are written in the very Jargon he attacks.[46]Alexander Francis: Americans: an Impression; New York, 1900.[47]G. Lowes Dickinson, in theEnglish Review, quoted byCurrent Literature, April, 1910.[48]Speech before the Chamber of Commerce Convention, Washington, Feb. 19, 1916.[49]Speech at workingman's dinner, New York, Sept. 4, 1912.[50]Wit and Wisdom of Woodrow Wilson, comp. by Richard Linthicum; New York, 1916, p. 54.[51]Speech at Ridgewood, N. J., April 22, 1910.[52]Wit and Wisdom ..., p. 56.[53]Henry Sweet: A New English Grammar, Logical and Historical, 2 parts; Oxford, 1900-03, part i, p. 224.[54]Despite this fact an academic and ineffective opposition to it still goes on. On the Style Sheet of theCentury Magazineit is listed among the "words and phrases to be avoided." It was prohibited by the famousIndex Expurgatoriusprepared by William Cullen Bryant for theNew York Evening Post, and his prohibition is still theoretically in force, but the word is now actually permitted by thePost. TheChicago Daily NewsStyle Book, dated July 1, 1908, also bans it.[55]Scientistis now in the Oxford Dictionary. So arereliable,standpointandgubernatorial. But theCentury Magazinestill bansstandpointand theEvening Post(at least in theory) bans bothstandpointandreliable. TheChicago Daily Newsacceptsstandpoint, but bansreliableandgubernatorial. All of these words, of course, are now quite as good asoxorand.[56]Art.Changes in the Language Since Shakespeare's Time, Cambridge History of English Literature, vol. xiv. p. 491.[57]Introduction to the Science of Language, vol. ii, pp. 333-4.[58]Op. cit., pp. 119-28.[59]Alfred L. Elwyn, M. D.: Glossary of Supposed Americanisms ...; Phila., 1859.[60]John S. Farmer: Americanisms Old and New ...; London, 1889.[61]Sylva Clapin: A New Dictionary of Americanisms, Being a Glossary of Words Supposed to be Peculiar to the United States and the Dominion of Canada; New York, 1902.

[1]Pp. 22-23.

[2]America's Coming of Age; New York, 1915, p. 15. See also the preface to Every-Day English, by Richard Grant White; Boston, 1881, p. xviii.

[3]The common notion that the Académie combats changes is quite erroneous. In the preface to the first edition of its dictionary (1694) it disclaimed any purpose "to make new words and to reject others at its pleasure." In the preface to the second edition (1718) it confessed that "ignorance and corruption often introduce manners of writing" and that "convenience establishes them." In the preface to the third edition (1740) it admitted that it was "forced to admit changes which the public has made." And so on. Says D. M. Robertson, in A History of the French Academy (London, 1910): "The Academy repudiates any assumption of authority over the language with which the public in its own practise has not first clothed it. So much, indeed, does it confine itself to an interpretation merely of the laws of language that its decisions are sometimes contrary to its own judgment of what is either desirable or expedient."

[4]Cf.Scandinavian Studies and Notes, vol. iv, no. 3, Aug. 1917, p. 258.

[5]This movement won official recognition so long ago as 1885, when the Storting passed the first of a series of acts designed to put the two languages on equal footing. Four years later, after a campaign going back to 1874, provision was made for teaching thelandsmaalin the schools for the training of primary teachers. In 1899 a professorship of thelandsmaalwas established in the University of Christiania. The school boards in the case of primary schools, and the pupils in the case of middle and high schools are now permitted to choose between the two languages, and thelandsmaalhas been given official status by the State Church. The chief impediment to its wider acceptance lies in the fact that it is not, as it stands, a natural language, but an artificial amalgamation of peasant dialects. It was devised in 1848-50 by Ivar Aasen.VideThe Language Question,London TimesNorwegian Supplement, May 18, 1914.

[6]A few such works are listed in the bibliography. More of them are mentioned in Americanismos, by Miguel de Toro y Gisbert; Paris, n. d.

[7]Maximilian Schele de Vere: Americanisms: The English of the New World; New York, 1872.

[8]Richard H. Thornton: An American Glossary ..., 2 vols.; Phila. and London, 1912.

[9]Organized Feb. 19, 1889, with Dr. J. J. Child, of Harvard, as its first president.

[10]Author of Travels in North America; London, 1829.

[11]A Vocabulary or Collection of Words and Phrases which Have Been Supposed to be Peculiar to the United States of America; Boston, 1816.

[12]A Letter to the Hon. John Pickering on the Subject of His Vocabulary; Boston, 1817.

[13]4th ed., New York, 1870, p. 669.

[14]Op. cit.p. 676.

[15]The English Language; New York 1850; rev. ed., 1855. This was the first American text-book of English for use in colleges. Before its publication, according to Fowler himself (rev. ed., p. xi), the language was studied only "superficially" and "in the primary schools." He goes on: "Afterward, when older, in the academy, during their preparation for college, our pupils perhaps despised it, in comparison with the Latin and the Greek; and in the college they do not systematically study the language after they come to maturity."

[16]In Recent Exemplifications of False Philology; London, 1872.

[17]Americanisms, parts I-VIII, April, May, July, Sept., Nov., 1878; Jan., March, May, 1879.

[18]A Glossary of Words and Phrases Usually Regarded as Peculiar to the United States, 4th ed.; Boston, 1877.

[19]Feb., March, June, July, Sept.

[20]Vol. xiv, pp. 484-5; Cambridge, 1917.

[21]Vol. xxv, p. 209.

[22]July 18, 1913.

[23]Of the words cited as still unfamiliar in England, Thornton has tracedhoboto 1891,hold-upandbuncoto 1887,diveto 1882,dead-beatto 1877,hoodlumto 1872,road-agentto 1866,stagto 1856,drummerto 1836 andflumeto 1792. All of them are probably older than these references indicate.

[24]Summarized inLiterary Digest, June 19, 1915.

[25]America Today,Scribner's, Feb. 1899, p. 218.

[26]London Court Journal, Aug. 28, 1892.

[27]In Pastures New; New York, 1906, p. 6.

[28]Concerning the American Language, in The Stolen White Elephant; Boston, 1882. A footnote says that the essay is "part of a chapter crowded out of A Tramp Abroad." (Hartford, 1880.)

[29]Hartford, 1872, p. 45.

[30]The Editor's Study,Harper's Magazine, Jan. 1886.

[31]Die englische Sprache in Nordamerika, band iv, heft i; Braunschweig, 1848.

[32]Étude sur l'Anglais Parlé aux Etats Unis (la Langue Américaine),Actes de la Société Philologique de Paris, March, 1874.

[33]Metoula-Sprachführer.... Englisch von Karl Blattner; Ausgabe für Amerika; Berlin-Schöneberg, 1912.

[34]Polyglott Kuntze; Schnellste Erlernung jeder Sprache ohne Lehrer; Amerikanisch; Bonn a. Rh., n. d.

[35]Like the English expositors of American slang, this German falls into several errors. For example, he givescockforrooster,bootsforshoes,bracesforsuspendersandpostmanforletter-carrier, and listsiron-monger,joinerandlinen-draperas American terms. He also spellswagonin the English manner, with twog's, and translatesSchweinefüsseaspork-feet. But he spells such words ascolorin the American manner and gives the pronunciation ofclerkas the Americanklörk, not as the Englishklark.

[36]Molee's notions are set forth in Plea for an American Language ...; Chicago, 1888; and Tutonish; Chicago, 1902. He announced the preparation of A Dictionary of the American Language in 1888, but so far as I know it has not been published. He was born in Wisconsin, of Norwegian parents, in 1845, and pursued linguistic studies at the University of Wisconsin, where he seems to have taken a Ph. B.

[37]American English,North American Review, Jan. 1883.

[38]Oct. 1, 1909.

[39]J. F. Healy, general manager of the Davis Colliery Co. at Elkins, W. Va., in a speech before the West Virginia Coal Mining Institute, at Wheeling, Dec. 1910; reprinted as The American Language; Pittsburgh, 1911.

[40]Westminster Review, July, 1888, p. 35.

[41]W. W. Skeat distinguishes no less than 9 dialects in Scotland, 3 in Ireland and 30 in England and Wales.VideEnglish Dialects From the Eighth Century to the Present Day; Cambridge, 1911, p. 107et seq..

[42]Art.Americanisms, 2nd ed.

[43]F. L. Pattee: A History of American Literature Since 1870; New York, 1916.

[44]A. H. Sayce: Introduction to the Science of Language, 2 vols.; London, 1900. See especially vol. ii, ch. vi.

[45]Cf.the chapter, Interlude: On Jargon, in Quiller-Couch's On the Art of Writing; New York, 1916. Curiously enough, large parts of the learned critic's book are written in the very Jargon he attacks.

[46]Alexander Francis: Americans: an Impression; New York, 1900.

[47]G. Lowes Dickinson, in theEnglish Review, quoted byCurrent Literature, April, 1910.

[48]Speech before the Chamber of Commerce Convention, Washington, Feb. 19, 1916.

[49]Speech at workingman's dinner, New York, Sept. 4, 1912.

[50]Wit and Wisdom of Woodrow Wilson, comp. by Richard Linthicum; New York, 1916, p. 54.

[51]Speech at Ridgewood, N. J., April 22, 1910.

[52]Wit and Wisdom ..., p. 56.

[53]Henry Sweet: A New English Grammar, Logical and Historical, 2 parts; Oxford, 1900-03, part i, p. 224.

[54]Despite this fact an academic and ineffective opposition to it still goes on. On the Style Sheet of theCentury Magazineit is listed among the "words and phrases to be avoided." It was prohibited by the famousIndex Expurgatoriusprepared by William Cullen Bryant for theNew York Evening Post, and his prohibition is still theoretically in force, but the word is now actually permitted by thePost. TheChicago Daily NewsStyle Book, dated July 1, 1908, also bans it.

[55]Scientistis now in the Oxford Dictionary. So arereliable,standpointandgubernatorial. But theCentury Magazinestill bansstandpointand theEvening Post(at least in theory) bans bothstandpointandreliable. TheChicago Daily Newsacceptsstandpoint, but bansreliableandgubernatorial. All of these words, of course, are now quite as good asoxorand.

[56]Art.Changes in the Language Since Shakespeare's Time, Cambridge History of English Literature, vol. xiv. p. 491.

[57]Introduction to the Science of Language, vol. ii, pp. 333-4.

[58]Op. cit., pp. 119-28.

[59]Alfred L. Elwyn, M. D.: Glossary of Supposed Americanisms ...; Phila., 1859.

[60]John S. Farmer: Americanisms Old and New ...; London, 1889.

[61]Sylva Clapin: A New Dictionary of Americanisms, Being a Glossary of Words Supposed to be Peculiar to the United States and the Dominion of Canada; New York, 1902.

[Pg036]toc

§ 1

In Colonial Days—William Gifford, the first editor of theQuarterly Review, is authority for the tale that some of the Puritan clergy of New England, during the Revolution, proposed that English be formally abandoned as the national language of America, and Hebrew adopted in its place. An American chronicler, Charles Astor Bristed, makes the proposed tongue Greek, and reports that the change was rejected on the ground that "it would be more convenient for us to keep the language as it is, and make the English speak Greek."[1]The story, though it has the support of the editors of the Cambridge History of American Literature,[2]has an apocryphal smack; one suspects that the savagely anti-American Gifford invented it. But, true or false, it well indicates the temper of those times. The passion for complete political independence of England bred a general hostility to all English authority, whatever its character, and that hostility, in the direction of present concern to us, culminated in the revolutionary attitude of Noah Webster's "Dissertations on the English Language," printed in 1789. Webster harbored no fantastic notion of abandoning English altogether, but he was eager to set up American as a distinct and independent dialect. "Let us," he said, "seize the present moment, and establish a national language as well as a national government.... As an independent nation our honor requires[Pg037]us to have a system of our own, in language as well as government."

Long before this the challenge had been flung. Scarcely two years after the Declaration of Independence Franklin was instructed by Congress, on his appointment as minister to France, to employ "the language of the United States," not simply English, in all his "replies or answers" to the communications of the ministry of Louis XVI. And eight years before the Declaration Franklin himself had drawn up a characteristically American scheme of spelling reform, and had offered plenty of proof in it, perhaps unconsciously, that the standards of spelling and pronunciation in the New World had already diverged noticeably from those accepted on the other side of the ocean.[3]In acknowledging the dedication of Webster's "Dissertations" Franklin endorsed both his revolt against English domination and his forecast of widening differences in future, though protesting at the same time against certain Americanisms that have since come into good usage, and even migrated to England.[4]

This protest was marked by Franklin's habitual mildness, but in other quarters dissent was voiced with far less urbanity. The growing independence of the colonial dialect, not only in its spoken form, but also in its most dignified written form, had begun, indeed, to attract the attention of purists in both England and America, and they sought to dispose of it in its infancy byforce majeure. One of the first and most vigorous of the attacks upon it was delivered by John Witherspoon, a Scotch clergyman who came out in 1769 to be president of Princetonin partibus infidelium. This Witherspoon brought a Scotch hatred of the English with him, and at once became a leader of the party of independence; he signed the Declaration to the tune of much rhetoric, and was the only clergyman to sit in the Continental Congress. But in matters of learning he was orthodox to the point of hunkerousness, and the strange locutions that[Pg038]he encountered on all sides aroused his pedagogic ire. "I have heard in this country," he wrote in 1781, "in the senate, at the bar, and from the pulpit, and see daily in dissertations from the press, errors in grammar, improprieties and vulgarisms which hardly any person of the same class in point of rank and literature would have fallen into in Great Britain."[5]It was Witherspoon who coined the wordAmericanism—and at once the English guardians of the sacred vessels began employing it as a general synonym for vulgarism and barbarism. Another learned immigrant, the Rev. Jonathan Boucher, soon joined him. This Boucher was a friend of Washington, but was driven back to England by his Loyalist sentiments. He took revenge by printing various charges against the Americans, among them that of "making all the haste they can to rid themselves of the [English] language."

After the opening of the new century all the British reviews maintained an eager watchfulness for these abhorrent inventions, and denounced them, when found, with the utmost vehemence. TheEdinburgh, which led the charge, opened its attack in October, 1804, and the appearance of the five volumes of Chief Justice Marshall's "Life of George Washington," during the three years following, gave the signal for corrective articles in theBritish Critic, theCritical Review, theAnnual, theMonthlyand theEclectic. TheBritish Critic, in April, 1808, admitted somewhat despairingly that the damage was already done—that "the common speech of the United States has departed very considerably from the standard adopted in England." The others, however, sought to stay the flood by invective against Marshall and, later, against his rival biographer, the Rev. Aaron Bancroft. TheAnnual, in 1808, pronounced its high curse and anathema upon "that torrent of barbarous phraseology" which was pouring across the Atlantic, and which threatened "to destroy the purity of the English language."[6]In Bancroft's "Life of George Washington"[Pg039](1808), according to theBritish Critic, there were gross Americanisms, inordinately offensive to Englishmen, "at almost every page."

The Rev. Jeremy Belknap, long anticipating Elwyn, White and Lounsbury, tried to obtain a respite from this abuse by pointing out the obvious fact that many of the Americanisms under fire were merely survivors of an English that had become archaic in England, but this effort counted for little, for on the one hand the British purists enjoyed the chase too much to give it up, and on the other hand there began to dawn in America a new spirit of nationality, at first very faint, which viewed the differences objected to, not with shame, but with a fierce sort of pride. In the first volume of theNorth American ReviewWilliam Ellery Channing spoke out boldly for "the American language and literature,"[7]and a year later Pickering published his defiant dictionary of "words and phrases which have been supposed to be peculiar to the United States." This thin collection of 500 specimens set off a dispute which yet rages on both sides of the Atlantic. Pickering, however, was undismayed. He had begun to notice the growing difference between the English and American vocabulary and pronunciation, he said, while living in London from 1799 to 1801, and he had made his collections with the utmost care, and after taking counsel with various prudent authorities, both English and American. Already in the first year of the century, he continued, the English had accused the people of the new republic of a deliberate "design to effect an entire change in the language" and while no such design was actually harbored, the facts were the facts, and he cited the current newspapers, the speeches from pulpit and rostrum, and Webster himself in support of them. This debate over Pickering's list, as I say, still continues. Lounsbury, entrenched behind his grotesque categories, once charged that four-fifths of the words in it had "no business to be there," and[Pg040]Gilbert M. Tucker[8]has argued that only 70 of them were genuine Americanisms. But a careful study of the list, in comparison with the early quotations recently collected by Thornton, seems to indicate that both of these judgments, and many others no less, have done injustice to Pickering. He made the usual errors of the pioneer, but his sound contributions to the subject were anything but inconsiderable, and it is impossible to forget his diligence and his constant shrewdness. He established firmly the native origin of a number of words now in universal use in America—e. g.,backwoodsman,breadstuffs,caucus,clapboard,sleighandsquatter—and of such familiar derivatives asgubernatorialanddutiable, and he worked out the genesis of not a few loan-words, includingprairie,scow,rapids,hominyandbarbecue. It was not until 1848, when the first edition of Bartlett appeared, that his work was supplanted.

§ 2

Sources of Early Americanisms—The first genuine Americanisms were undoubtedly words borrowed bodily from the Indian dialects—words, in the main, indicating natural objects that had no counterparts in England. We findopossum, for example, in the form ofopasum, in Captain John Smith's "Map of Virginia" (1612), and, in the form ofapossoun, in a Virginia document two years older.Mooseis almost as old. The word is borrowed from the Algonquinmusa, and must have become familiar to the Pilgrim Fathers soon after their landing in 1620, for the woods of Massachusetts then swarmed with the huge quadrupeds and there was no English name to designate them. Again, there areskunk(from the Abenaki Indianseganku),hickory,squash,paw-paw,raccoon,chinkapin,porgy,chipmunk,pemmican,terrapin,menhaden,catalpa,persimmonandcougar. Of these,hickoryandterrapinare to be found in Robert Beverley's "History and Present State of Virginia" (1705), andsquash,chinkapinandpersimmonare in documents of the preceding century. Many of these words, of course, were shortened[Pg041]or otherwise modified on being taken into colonial English. Thuschinkapinwas originallycheckinqumin, andsquashappears in early documents asisquontersquash,askutasquash,isquonkersquashandsquantersquash. But William Penn, in a letter dated August 16, 1683, used the latter in its present form. Its variations show a familiar effort to bring a new and strange word into harmony with the language—an effort arising from what philologists call the law of Hobson-Jobson. This name was given to it by Col. Henry Yule and A. C. Burnell, compilers of a standard dictionary of Anglo-Indian terms. They found that the British soldiers in India, hearing strange words from the lips of the natives, often converted them into English words of similar sound, though of widely different meaning. Thus the wordsHassanandHosein, frequently used by the Mohammedans of the country in their devotions, were turned intoHobson-Jobson. The same process is constantly in operation elsewhere. By it the Frenchroute de roihas becomeRotten Rowin English,écrevissehas becomecrayfish, and the Englishbowsprithas becomebeau pré(=beautiful meadow) in French. The wordpigeon, inPigeon English, offers another example; it has no connection with the bird, but merely represents a Chinaman's attempt to pronounce the wordbusiness. No doubtsquashoriginated in the same way. Thatwoodchuckdid so is practically certain. Its origin is to be sought, not inwoodandchuck, but in the Cree wordotchock, used by the Indians to designate the animal.

In addition to the names of natural objects, the early colonists, of course, took over a great many Indian place-names, and a number of words to designate Indian relations and artificial objects in Indian use. To the last division belonghominy,pone,toboggan,canoe,tapioca,moccasin,pow-wow,papoose,tomahawk,wigwam,succotashandsquaw, all of which were in common circulation by the beginning of the eighteenth century. Finally, new words were made during the period by translating Indian terms, for example,war-path,war-paint,pale-face,medicine-man,pipe-of-peaceandfire-water. The total number of such borrowings, direct and indirect, was a good deal larger[Pg042]than now appears, for with the disappearance of the red man the use of loan-words from his dialects has decreased. In our own time such words aspapoose,sachem,tepee,wigwamandwampumhave begun to drop out of everyday use;[9]at an earlier period the language sloughed offocelot,manitee,calumet,supawn,sampandquahaug, or began to degrade them to the estate of provincialisms.[10]A curious phenomenon is presented by the case ofmaize, which came into the colonial speech from some West Indian dialect, went over into orthodox English, and from English into French, German and other continental languages, and was then abandoned by the colonists. We shall see other examples of that process later on.

Whether or notYankeecomes from an Indian dialect is still disputed. An early authority, John G. E. Heckwelder, argued that it was derived from an Indian mispronunciation of the wordEnglish.[11]Certain later etymologists hold that it originated more probably in an Indian mishandling of the French wordAnglais. Yet others derive it from the Scotchyankie, meaning a gigantic falsehood. A fourth party derive it from the Dutch, and cite an alleged Dutch model for "Yankee Doodle," beginning "Yankerdidee doodle down."[12]Of these theories that of Heckwelder is the most plausible. But here, as in other directions, the investigation of American etymology remains sadly incomplete. An elaborate dictionary of words derived from the Indian languages, compiled by the late W. R. Gerard, is in the possession of the Smithsonian Institution, but on account of a shortage of funds it remains in manuscript.[Pg043]

From the very earliest days of English colonization the language of the colonists also received accretions from the languages of the other colonizing nations. The French wordportage, for example, was already in common use before the end of the seventeenth century, and soon after camechowder,cache,caribou,voyageur, and various words that, like the last-named, have since become localisms or disappeared altogether. Before 1750bureau,[13]gopher,batteau,bogus, andprairiewere added, andcaboose, a word of Dutch origin, seems to have come in through the French.Carry-allis also French in origin, despite its English quality. It comes, by the law of Hobson-Jobson, from the Frenchcarriole. The contributions of the Dutch during the half century of their conflicts with the English includedcruller,cold-slaw,dominie(forparson),cookey,stoop,span(of horses),pit(as inpeach-pit),waffle,hook(a point of land),scow,boss,smearcaseandSanta Claus.[14]Schele de Vere credits them withhay-barrack, a corruption ofhooiberg. That they established the use ofbushas a designation for back-country is very probable; the word has also got into South African English. In American it has produced a number of familiar derivatives,e. g.,bush-whackerandbush-league. Barrère and Leland also credit the Dutch withdander, which is commonly assumed to be an American corruption ofdandruff. They say that it is from the Dutch worddonder(=thunder).Op donderen, in Dutch, means to burst into a sudden rage. The chief Spanish contributions to American were to come after the War of 1812, with the opening of the West, butcreole,calaboose,palmetto,peewee,key(a small island),quadroon,octoroon,barbecue,pickaninnyandstampedehad already entered the language in colonial days.Jerked beefcame from the Spanishcharquiby the law of Hobson-Jobson. The Germans who arrived in Pennsylvania in 1682 also undoubtedly gave a few words to the language, though[Pg044]it is often difficult to distinguish their contributions from those of the Dutch. It seems very likely, however, thatsauerkraut[15]andnoodleare to be credited to them. Finally, the negro slaves brought ingumbo,goober,jubaandvoodoo(usually corrupted tohoodoo), and probably helped to corrupt a number of other loan-words, for examplebanjoandbreakdown.Banjoseems to be derived frombandoreorbandurria, modern French and Spanish forms oftambour, respectively. It may, however, be an actual negro word; there is a term of like meaning,bania, in Senegambian. Ware says thatbreakdown, designating a riotous negro dance, is a corruption of the Frenchrigadon. The word is not in the Oxford Dictionary. Bartlett listed it as an Americanism, but Thornton rejected it, apparently because, in the sense of a collapse, it has come into colloquial use in England. Its etymology is not given in the American dictionaries.

§ 3

New Words of English Material—But of far more importance than these borrowings was the great stock of new words that the colonists coined in English metal—words primarily demanded by the "new circumstances under which they were placed," but also indicative, in more than one case, of a delight in the business for its own sake. The American, even in the early eighteenth century, already showed many of the characteristics that were to set him off from the Englishman later on—his bold and somewhat grotesque imagination, his contempt for authority, his lack of aesthetic sensitiveness, his extravagant humor. Among the first colonists there were many men of education, culture and gentle birth, but they were soon swamped by hordes of the ignorant and illiterate, and the latter, cut off from the corrective influence of books, soon laid their hands upon the language. It is impossible to imagine the austere Puritan divines of Massachusetts inventing such verbs asto cowhideandto logroll, or such adjectives asno-accountandstumped, or such adverbs asno-howand[Pg045]lickety-split, or such substantives asbull-frog,hog-wallowandhoe-cake; but under their eyes there arose a contumacious proletariat which was quite capable of the business, and very eager for it. In Boston, so early as 1628, there was a definite class of blackguard roisterers, chiefly made up of sailors and artisans; in Virginia, nearly a decade earlier, John Pory, secretary to Governor Yeardley, lamented that "in these five moneths of my continuance here there have come at one time or another eleven sails of ships into this river, but fraighted more with ignorance than with any other marchansize." In particular, the generation born in the New World was uncouth and iconoclastic;[16]the only world it knew was a rough world, and the virtues that environment engendered were not those of niceness, but those of enterprise and resourcefulness.

Upon men of this sort fell the task of bringing the wilderness to the ax and the plow, and with it went the task of inventing a vocabulary for the special needs of the great adventure. Out of their loutish ingenuity came a great number of picturesque names for natural objects, chiefly boldly descriptive compounds:bull-frog,canvas-back,lightning-bug,mud-hen,cat-bird,razor-back,garter-snake,ground-hogand so on. And out of an inventiveness somewhat more urbane came such coinages aslive-oak,potato-bug,turkey-gobbler,poke-weed,copper-head,eel-grass,reed-bird,egg-plant,blue-grass,pea-nut,pitch-pine,cling-stone(peach),moccasin-snake,June-bugandbutter-nut.Live-oakappears in a document of 1610;bull-frogwas familiar to Beverley in 1705; so wasJames-Town weed(later reduced toJimson weed, as the Englishhurtleberryorwhortleberrywas reduced tohuckleberry). These early Americans were not botanists. They were often ignorant of the names of the plants they encountered, even when those plants already had English names, and so they exercised their fancy upon new ones. So aroseJohnny-jump-upfor theViola tricolor, andbasswoodfor the common Europeanlindenorlime-tree(Tilia), andlocustfor theRobinia pseudacaciaand its allies. TheJimson weeditself was anything but a[Pg046]novelty, but the pioneers apparently did not recognize it, and so we find them ascribing all sorts of absurd medicinal powers to it, and even Beverley solemnly reporting that "some Soldiers, eating it in a Salad, turn'd natural Fools upon it for several Days." The grosser features of the landscape got a lavish renaming, partly to distinguish new forms and partly out of an obvious desire to attain a more literal descriptiveness. I have mentionedkeyandhook, the one borrowed from the Spanish and the other from the Dutch. With them camerun,branch,fork,bluff, (noun),neck,barrens,bottoms,underbrush,bottom-land,clearing,notch,divide,knob,riffle,gap,rolling-countryandrapids,[17]and the extension ofpondfrom artificial pools to small natural lakes, and ofcreekfrom small arms of the sea to shallow feeders of rivers. Such common English geographical terms asdowns,weald,wold,fen,bog,fell,chase,combe,dell,heathandmoordisappeared from the colonial tongue, save as fossilized in a few proper names. So didbracken.

With the new landscape came an entirely new mode of life—new foods, new forms of habitation, new methods of agriculture, new kinds of hunting. A great swarm of neologisms thus arose, and, as in the previous case, they were chiefly compounds.Back-country,back-woods,back-woodsman,back-settlers,back-settlements: all these were in common use early in the eighteenth century.Back-logwas used by Increase Mather in 1684.Log-houseappears in the Maryland Archives for 1669.[18]Hoe-cake,Johnny-cake,pan-fish,corn-dodger,roasting-ear,corn-crib,corn-cobandpop-cornwere all familiar before the Revolution. So werepine-knot,snow-plow,cold-snap,land-slide,salt-lick,prickly-heat,shell-roadandcane-brake.Shinglewas a novelty in 1705, but one S. Symonds wrote to John Winthrop, of Ipswich, about aclapboardedhouse in 1637.Frame-houseseems to have come in withshingle.Trail,half-breed,Indian-summerand[Pg047]Indian-filewere obviously suggested by the Red Men.State-housewas borrowed, perhaps, from the Dutch.Selectmanis first heard of in 1685, displacing the Englishalderman.Mushhad displacedporridgeby 1671. Soon afterwardhay-stacktook the place of the Englishhay-cock, and such common English terms asbyre,mews,weir, andwainbegan to disappear.Hired-manis to be found in the Plymouth town records of 1737, andhired-girlfollowed soon after. So early as 1758, as we find by the diary of Nathaniel Ames, the second-year students at Harvard were already calledsophomores, though for a while the spelling was often madesophimores.Camp-meetingwas later; it did not appear until 1799. Butland-officewas familiar before 1700, andside-walk,spelling-bee,bee-line,moss-back,crazy-quilt,mud-scow,stamping-groundand a hundred and one other such compounds were in daily use before the Revolution. After that great upheaval the new money of the confederation brought in a number of new words. In 1782 Gouverneur Morris proposed to the Continental Congress that the coins of the republic be called, in ascending order,unit,penny-bill,dollarandcrown. Later Morris invented the wordcent, substituting it for the Englishpenny.[19]In 1785 Jefferson proposedmill,cent,dime,dollarandeagle, and this nomenclature was adopted.

Various nautical terms peculiar to America, or taken into English from American sources, came in during the eighteenth century, among them,schooner,cat-boatandpungy, not to recallbatteauandcanoe. According to a recent historian of the American merchant marine,[20]the first schooner ever seen was launched at Gloucester, Mass., in 1713. The word, it appears, was originally spelledscooner.To scoonwas a verb borrowed by the New Englanders from some Scotch dialect, and meant to skim or skip across the water like a flat stone. As the first schooner left the ways and glided out into Gloucester harbor, an enraptured spectator shouted: "Oh, see how she scoons!" "Ascoonerlet her be!" replied Captain Andrew Robinson, her[Pg048]builder—and all boats of her peculiar and novel fore-and-aft rig took the name thereafter. The Dutch mariners borrowed the term and changed the spelling, and this change was soon accepted in America. The Scotch root came from the Norseskunna, to hasten, and there are analogues in Icelandic, Anglo-Saxon and Old High German. The origin ofcat-boatandpungyI have been unable to determine. Perhaps the latter is related in some way topung, a one-horse sled or wagon.Pungwas once widely used in the United States, but of late it has sunk to the estate of a New England provincialism. Longfellow used it, and in 1857 a writer in theKnickerbocker Magazinereported thatpungsfilled Broadway, in New York, after a snow-storm.

Most of these new words, of course, produced derivatives, for example,to stack hay,to shingle,to shuck(i. e., corn),to trailandto caucus.Backwoodsimmediately begatbackwoodsmanand was itself turned into a common adjective. The colonists, indeed, showed a beautiful disregard of linguistic nicety. At an early date they shortened the English law-phrase,to convey by deed, to the simple verb,to deed. Pickering protested against this as a barbarism, and argued that no self-respecting law-writer would employ it, but all the same it was firmly entrenched in the common speech and it has remained there to this day.To table, forto lay on the table, came in at the same time, and so did various forms represented bybindery, forbookbinder's shop.To tomahawkappeared before 1650, andto scalpmust have followed soon after. Within the next century and a half they were reinforced by many other such new verbs, and by such adjectives made of nouns asno-accountandone-horse, and such nouns made of verbs ascarry-allandgoner, and such adverbs asno-how. In particular, the manufacture of new verbs went on at a rapid pace. In his letter to Webster in 1789, Franklin denouncedto advocate,to progress, andto oppose—a vain enterprise, for all of them are now in perfectly good usage.To advocate, indeed, was used by Thomas Nashe in 1589, and by John Milton half a century later, but it seems to have been reinvented in America. In 1822 and again in 1838 Robert Southey, then poet laureate, led two belated attacks upon it, as a barbarous Americanism, but[Pg049]its obvious usefulness preserved it, and it remains in good usage on both sides of the Atlantic today—one of the earliest of the English borrowings from America. In the end, indeed, even so ardent a purist as Richard Grant White adopted it, as he didto placate.[21]

Webster, though he agreed with Franklin in opposingto advocate, gave hisimprimaturtoto appreciate(i. e., to rise in value), and is credited by Sir Charles Lyell[22]with having himself inventedto demoralize. He also approvedto obligate.To antagonizeseems to have been given currency by John Quincy Adams,to immigrateby John Marshall,to eventuateby Gouverneur Morris, andto derangeby George Washington. Jefferson, always hospitable to new words, usedto belittlein his "Notes on Virginia," and Thornton thinks that he coined it. Many new verbs were made by the simple process of prefixing the preposition to common nouns,e. g.,to clerk,to dicker,to dump,to blow, (i. e., to bluster or boast),to cord(i. e., wood)to stump,to roomandto shin. Others were made by transforming verbs in the orthodox vocabulary,e. g.,to cavortfromto curvet, andto snoopfromto snook. Others arose as metaphors,e. g.,to whitewash(figuratively) andto squat(on unoccupied land). Others were made by hitching suffixes to nouns,e. g.,to negative,to deputize,to locate,to legislate,to infract,to compromitandto happify. Yet others seem to have been produced by onomatopoeia,e. g.,to fizzle, or to have arisen by some other such spontaneous process, so far unintelligible,e. g.,to tote. With them came an endless series of verb-phrases,e. g.,to draw a bead,to face the music,to darken one's doors,to take to the woods,to fly off the handle,to go on the war-pathandto saw wood—all obvious products of frontier life. Many coinages of the pre-Revolutionary era later disappeared. Jefferson usedto ambitionbut it dropped out nevertheless, and so didto compromit, (i. e., to compromise),to homologize, andto happify. Fierce battles raged 'round some of these words, and they were all violently derided in England. Even so useful a verb asto locate, now in perfectly good usage,[Pg050]was denounced in the third volume of theNorth American Review, and other purists of the times tried to put downto legislate.

The young and tender adjectives had quite as hard a row to hoe, particularlylengthy. TheBritish Criticattacked it in November, 1793, and it also had enemies at home, but John Adams had used it in his diary in 1759 and the authority of Jefferson and Hamilton was behind it, and so it survived. Years later James Russell Lowell spoke of it as "the excellent adjective,"[23]and boasted that American had given it to English.Dutiablealso met with opposition, and moreover, it had a rival,customable; but Marshall wrote it into his historic decisions, and thus it took root. The same anonymous watchman of theNorth American Reviewwho protested againstto locatepronounced his anathema upon "such barbarous terms aspresidentialandcongressional," but the plain need for them kept them in the language.Gubernatorialhad come in long before this, and is to be found in the New Jersey Archives of 1734.Influentialwas denounced by the Rev. Jonathan Boucher and by George Canning, who argued thatinfluentwas better, but it was ardently defended by William Pinkney, of Maryland, and gradually made its way.Handy,kinky,law-abiding,chunky,solid(in the sense of well-to-do),evincive,complected,judgmatical,underpinned,bloodedandcutewere also already secure in revolutionary days. So with many nouns. Jefferson usedbreadstuffsin his Report of the Secretary of State on Commercial Restrictions, December 16, 1793.Balance, in the sense of remainder, got into the debates of the First Congress.Mileagewas used by Franklin in 1754, and is now sound English.Elevator, in the sense of a storage house for grain, was used by Jefferson and by others before him.Draw, fordrawbridge, comes down from Revolutionary days. So doesslip, in the sense of a berth for vessels. So doesaddition, in the sense of a suburb. So, finally, doesdarkey.

The history of many of these Americanisms shows how vain is the effort of grammarians to combat the normal processes of[Pg051]language development. I have mentioned the early opposition todutiable,influential,presidential,lengthy,to locate,to oppose,to advocate,to legislateandto progress.Bogus,reliableandstandpointwere attacked with the same academic ferocity. All of them are to be found in Bryant'sIndex Expurgatorius[24](circa1870), andreliablewas denounced by Bishop Coxe as "that abominable barbarism" so late as 1886.[25]Edward S. Gould, another uncompromising purist, said ofstandpointthat it was "the bright particular star ... of solemn philological blundering" and "the very counterpart of Dogberry'snon-com."[26]Gould also protested againstto jeopardize,leniencyandto demean, and Richard Grant White joined him in an onslaught uponto donate. But all of these words are in good use in the United States today, and some of them have gone over into English.[27]

§ 4

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