American Language Supplement 1

by H. L. Mencken

  Bristed The English Language in America; in Cambridge Essays, Contributed by Members of the University; London, 1855.

  Burke The Literature of Slang, by W. J. Burke; New York, 1939.

  Cairns British Criticisms of American Writings, by William B. Cairns; Madison, Wis., 1918.

  Clapin A New Dictionary of Americanisms, by Sylva Clapin; New York, n.d.

  College Standard The College Standard Dictionary, abridged from the Standard Dictionary by Frank H. Vizetelly; New York, 1922.

  Concise Oxford The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Current English, adapted by H. W. Fowler and F. G. Fowler, third ed., revised by H. W. Fowler and H. G. Le Mesurier; Oxford, 1934.

  DAE A Dictionary of American English on Historical Principles, edited by Sir William Craigie and James R. Hulbert; four vols.; Chicago, 1938–44.

  Dunglison Americanisms, in the Virginia Literary Museum and Journal of Belles Lettres, Arts, Sciences, &c., signed Wy and supposed to be by Robley Dunglison; Charlottesville, Va., 1829–30.

  Farmer Americanisms Old and New, by John S. Farmer; London, 1889.

  Farmer and Henley Slang and Its Analogues, by John S. Farmer and W. E. Henley; seven vols.; London, 1890–1904.

  Grose A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, by Francis Grose; London, 1785; new edition edited by Eric Partridge; London, 1931.

  Horwill A Dictionary of Modern American Usage, by H. W. Horwill; Oxford, 1935.

  Humphreys Glossary appended to The Yankey in England, by David Humphreys; n.p., 1815.

  Jespersen A Modern English Grammar, by Otto Jespersen; three vols.; Heidelberg, 1922–27.

  Joyce English As We Speak It In Ireland, by P. W. Joyce; second ed.; London, 1910.

  Krapp The English Language in America, by George Philip Krapp; two vols.; New York, 1925.

  LA Linguistic Atlas of the United States; Linguistic Atlas of New England, by Hans Kurath, Miles L. Hanley, Bernard Bloch, Guy S. Lowman, Jr., and Marcus L. Hansen; Providence, R. I., 1939.

  Leonard The Doctrine of Correctness in English Usage, 1700–1800, by Sterling Andrus Leonard; Madison, Wis., 1929.

  Maitland The American Slang Dictionary, by James Maitland; Chicago, 1891.

  Marryat A Diary in America, by Frederick Marryat; three vols.; London, 1839.

  Mathews The Beginnings of American English, by M. M. Mathews; Chicago, 1931.

  NED A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles, edited by Sir James A. H. Murray, Henry Bradley, W. A. Craigie, and C. T. Onions; ten vols.; Oxford, 1888–1928.1

  NED Supplement A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles; Introduction, Supplement and Bibliography; edited by Sir James A. H. Murray, Henry Bradley, William A. Craigie and C. T. Onions; Oxford, 1933.

  Nevins American Social History as Recorded by British Travelers, compiled and edited by Allan Nevins; New York, 1923.

  Partridge A Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, by Eric Partridge; second ed.; New York, 1938.

  Pickering A Vocabulary or Collection of Words and Phrases Which Have Been Supposed to be Peculiar to the United States of America, by John Pickering; Boston, 1816.

  Schele de Vere Americanisms: The English of the New World, by M. Schele de Vere; New York, 1871; second edition, 1872.

  Sherwood Gazetteer of the State of Georgia, by Adiel Sherwood; third ed.; 1837.

  Shorter Oxford The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles, prepared by William Little, H. W. Fowler and J. Coulson, and revised and edited by C. T. Onions; two vols.; Oxford, 1933.

  Thornton An American Glossary, by Richard H. Thornton; two vols.; Philadelphia, 1912. Vol. III published serially in Dialect Notes, 1931–39.

  Ware Passing English of the Victorian Era, by J. Redding Ware; London, n.d.

  Warfel Noah Webster, Schoolmaster to America, by Harry R. Warfel; New York, 1936.

  Warrack A Scots Dialect Dictionary, by Alexander Warrack; London, 1911.

  Webster 1806 A Compendious Dictionary of the English Language, by Noah Webster; New Haven, 1806.

  Webster 1828 An American Dictionary of the English Language, by Noah Webster; New York, 1828.

  Webster 1852 An American Dictionary of the English Language, by Noah Webster; revised and enlarged by Chauncey A. Goodrich; Springfield, Mass., 1852.

  Webster 1934 Webster’s New International Dictionary of the English Language, edited by William Allan Neilson, Thomas A. Knott and Paul W. Carhart; Springfield, Mass., 1934.

  Weekley An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, by Ernest Weekley; New York, 1921.

  Weseen A Dictionary of American Slang, by Maurice H. Weseen; New York, 1934.

  Wright Dictionary of Obsolete and Provincial English, by Thomas Wright; London, 1857.

  Wyld A History of Modern Colloquial English, by Henry Cecil Wyld; London, 1920.

  In some cases the authors whose principal works are listed above are also the authors of other works. All references to the latter are in full.

  1 This work is often referred to as the OED or OD (Oxford Dictionary), but it seems to me to be preferable to use an abbreviation of its actual title.

  I

  THE TWO STREAMS OF ENGLISH

  I. THE EARLIEST ALARMS

  4. [By 1754 literary London was already sufficiently conscious of the new words arriving from the New World for Richard Owen Cambridge … to be suggesting that a glossary of them would soon be in order.] Cambridge’s suggestion is reprinted in “British Recognition of American Speech in the Eighteenth Century,” by Allen Walker Read,1 and it is from that reprint that I take the following extract:

  I wish such a work had been published in time enough to have assisted me in reading the following extract of a letter from one of our colonies.… “The Chippeways and Orundaks2 are still very troublesome. Last week they scalped one of our Indians; but the Six Nations continue firm;3 and at a meeting of sachems it was determined to take up the hatchet and make the war-kettle boil.4 The French desired to smoke the calumet of peace,5 but the half king would not consent. They offered the speech-belt, but it was refused.6 Our governor has received an account of their proceedings, together with a string of wampum and a bundle of skins to brighten the cabin.” … A work of this kind, if well executed, cannot fail to make the fortune of the undertaker.1

  Read’s paper, just cited, is a valuable review of the impact of Americanisms upon the English in the Eighteenth Century, and I have made further use of it in what follows. He undertook a diligent search, not only of the more obvious English literature of the time, but also of many obscure books and periodicals. In the Connoisseur for 17602 he found a brief humorous sketch showing that the English were beginning to find a certain pungency in such American locutions as sachem, wampum, war-whoop and to scalp, and a little while later references to them multiplied. In the 1780s, says Read, John Wilkes was greatly struck by the American sense of cleared, relating to woodland, and in 1794 Thomas Cooper, in his “Some Information Respecting America,” was explaining that it meant “the small trees and shrubs grubbed up, and the larger trees cut down about two feet from the ground.” The American delight in cleared land rather amazed these Englishmen, for in their own country forests were cherished, and one of the standing English objections to Scotland was that it was almost bare of trees. Dr. Johnson, as everyone knows, hated all things American, and it was hardly to be expected that he would admit any Americanism into his Dictionary of the English Language (1755); nevertheless, according to Edmund Malone, he quoted an American-born author, Charlotte Lennox, as authority for the use of two words,3 one of which, talent, had a satellite adjective, talented, that was to be denounced as a vile and intolerable Americanism when it began to be used toward the end of the century.1 Johnson himself once condescended to use an Americanism in the Idler2 to wit, tomahawk, but he at least had the decency to change it into tom-ax. In 1756, a year after his Dictionary was published, he was sneering in a review in the London Magazine at the “mixture of the American dialect” in Lewis
Evans’s “Geographical, Historical, Philosophical and Mechanical Essays,”3 and calling it “a tract4 of corruption to which every language widely diffused must always be exposed.” “Johnson,” says Read, “probably was offended by such of Evans’s words as portage, statehouse, creek, gap, upland, spur (glossed as ‘spurs we call little ridges jetting out from the principal chains of mountains, and are of no long continuing’), branch, back of, or fresh (noun).”

  But not all Englishmen of that era were as hostile to American speechways as Johnson. I have heard of none, in the Eighteenth Century, who actually praised American neologisms, but there were some, at least, who noted with approval that most educated Americans used very few of them. Thus Sir Herbert Croft, Bart., in 1797:

  [The] natives write the language particularly well, considering they have no dictionary yet, and how insufficient Johnson’s is. Washington’s speeches seldom exhibited more than a word or two, liable to the least objection; and, from the style of his publications, as much, or more accuracy may be expected from his successor, Adams.5

  The Monthly Review, which is described by William B. Cairns1 as “always kindly toward America,” praised the contents of “Addresses and Recommendations of the States,” issued by Congress, as “pieces of fine, energetic writing and masterly eloquence.” It would be, it said, “a curious speculation for the philosophical inquirer to account for the perfections to which the English language has been carried in our late colonies, amidst the distresses, the clamors and horrors of war.”2 Benjamin Franklin’s writings were nearly always praised by the English reviewers, but Franklin had spent so much time in England that he wrote like an Englishman, and was himself dubious about most Americanisms. Paine also got a pretty good press, probably on the score of his English birth, though his atheism alarmed the more orthodox reviewers, but even the friendly Monthly protested that many of his words and phrases were “such as have not been used by anybody before, and such as we would not advise anybody to use again.” Jefferson was also cried down because of his free-thinking, but even more because of his free use of such Americanisms as to belittle.3 Most of the English travelers before 1800 reported that the Americans, at least of the educated class, spoke English with a good accent. Indeed, one of them, Nicholas Cresswell,4 declared that they spoke it better than the English. But this favorable verdict was mainly grounded on the discovery that there were no marked dialects in America. “Accustomed as he was to the diversity of dialect in his own island,” says Read, “the Englishman found a principal subject of comment in the purity and uniformity of English in America.”5 This was before the Oxford dialect of today had appeared in England, and there was but little uniformity of pronunciation, even in the court circles of London.

  4. [The first all-out attack on Americanisms came in 1781 from a Briton living in America, and otherwise ardently pro-American. He was John Witherspoon, president of Princeton, a member of the Continental Congress, and a signer of the Declaration of Independence.] His observations were printed in the Pennsylvania Journal and Weekly Advertiser of Philadelphia on May 9, 16, 23 and 30, 1781, under the general heading of “The Druid.” He began by admitting that “the vulgar in America speak much better than the vulgar in Great Britain, for a very obvious reason, viz., that being much more unsettled, and moving frequently from place to place, they are not so liable to local peculiarities either in accent or phraseology. There is a greater difference in dialect,” he went on, “between one county and another in Britain than there is between one state and another in America.” But in sharp dissent from some of the Englishmen lately quoted, he argued that “gentlemen and scholars” in the new Republic were much less careful and correct in their “public and solemn discourses” than the corresponding dignitaries of the Old Country. He coined the word Americanism1 to designate the novelties they affected, and explained that he did not mean it to be opprobrious but simply desired it to be accepted as “similar in its formation and signification to the word Scotticism.” “There are many instances,” he explained, “in which the Scotch way is as good, and some in which every person who has the least taste as to the propriety or purity of a language in general must confess that it is better than that of England, yet speakers and writers must conform to custom.” He then proceeded to list Americanisms in seven classes, the first of which included “ways of speaking peculiar to this country.” Of these ways he presented twelve examples, as follows:

  1. The United States, or either of them. This is so far from being a mark of ignorance, that it is used by many of the most able and accurate speakers and writers, yet it is not English. The United States are thirteen in number, but in English either does not signify one of many, but one or the other of two. I imagine either has become an adjective pronoun by being a sort of abbreviation of a sentence where it is used adverbially, either the one or the other. It is exactly the same with ekateros in Greek, and alteruter in Latin.

  2. This is to notify the publick; or the people had not been notified. By this is meant inform and informed. In English we do not notify the person of the thing, but notify the thing to the person. In this instance there is certainly an impropriety, for to notify is just saying, by a word of Latin derivation, to make known. Now if you cannot say this is to make the public known, neither ought you to say this is to notify the public.

  3. Fellow countrymen. This is a word of very frequent use in America. It has been heard in public orations from men of the first character, and may be daily seen in newspaper publications. It is an evident tautology, for the last word expresses fully the meaning of both. If you open any dictionary you will find the word countryman signifies one born in the same country. You may say fellow citizens, fellow soldiers, fellow subjects, fellow Christians, but not fellow countrymen.

  4. These things were ordered delivered to the army. The words to be are omitted. I am not certain whether this is a local expression or general in America.

  5. I wish we could contrive it to Philadelphia. The words to carry it, to have it carried, or some such, are wanting. It is a defective construction; of which there are but too many that have already obtained in practice, in spite of all the remonstrances of men of letters.

  6. We may hope the assistance of God. The word for or to receive is wanting. In this instance hope, which is a neuter verb, is turned into an active verb, and not very properly as to the objective term assistance. It must be admitted, however, that in some old English poets, hope is sometimes used as an active verb, but it is contrary to modern practice.

  7. I do not consider myself equal to this task. The word as is wanting. I am not certain whether this may not be an English vulgarism, for it is frequently used by the renowned author of “Common Sense,”1 who is an Englishman born; but he has so happy a talent of adopting the blunders of others, that nothing decisive can be inferred from his practice. It is, however, undoubtedly an Americanism, for it is used by authors greatly superior to him in every respect.

  8. Neither to-day or to-morrow. The proper construction is, either the one or the other, neither the one nor the other.

  9. A certain Thomas Benson. The word certain, as used in English, is an indefinite, the name fixes it precisely, so that there is a kind of contradiction in the expression. In England they would say a certain person called or supposed to be Thomas Benson.

  10. Such bodies are incident to these evils. The evil is incident or ready to fall upon the person, the person liable or subject to the evil.

  11. He is a very clever man. She is quite a clever woman. How often are these phrases to be heard in conversation! Their meaning, however, would certainly be mistaken when heard for the first time by one born in Britain. In these cases Americans generally mean by clever only goodness of disposition, worthiness, integrity, without the least regard to capacity; nay, if I am not mistaken, it is frequently applied where there is an acknowledged simplicity or mediocrity of capacity. But in Britain, clever always means capacity, and may be joined either to a good or bad disposition. We
say of a man, he is a clever man, a clever tradesman, a clever fellow, without any reflection upon his moral character, yet at the same time it carries no approbation of it. It is exceeding good English, and very common to say, He is a clever fellow, but I am sorry to say it, he is also a great rogue. When cleverness is applied primarily to conduct and not to the person, it generally carries in it the idea of art or chicanery not very honourable; for example — Such a plan I confess was very clever, i.e., sly, artful, well contrived, but not very fair.

  12. I was quite mad at him, he made me quite mad. This is perhaps an English vulgarism, but it is not found in any accurate writer, nor used by any good speaker, unless when poets or orators use it as a strong figure, and, to heighten the expression, say, he was mad with rage.

  Looking back from the distance of more than a century and a half, it seems rather strange that Witherspoon should have been able to amass so few “ways of speaking peculiar to this country.” Of the twelve that he listed, Nos. 5, 6 and 10 have long since vanished, No. 11 is pretty well played out, and Nos. 1 and 8 are still belabored by the American schoolma’am.1 The others remain sound American to this day. To notify did not, in fact, originate in America, but was in use in England in the Fifteenth Century, though by the end of the Seventeenth it had dropped out there; since then it has been an Americanism. Fellow countrymen must have been a novelty in Witherspoon’s time, for the DAE’s first example is taken from his denunciation of it, but it is now in perfectly good usage. So is the omission of to be in “These things were ordered delivered to the army,” though purists may often restore it; and so, again, is the omission of as from “I do not consider myself equal to this task.” Witherspoon’s objection to the use of certain before a full name was mere pedantry. There may be, in fact, more than one Thomas Benson; indeed, there may be more than one Franklin D. Roosevelt. Mad, in England, is commonly used to designate what we call crazy, but it is by no means unknown in the sense of angry. The NED traces it in that sense to the Fourteenth Century and says that it is the ordinary word for angry in some of the English dialects. But it is much more commonly heard in the United States than in England, and most Englishmen regard it as an Americanism.