American Language Supplement 1

by H. L. Mencken

  17. [John Pickering said, so late as 1816, that “in this country we can hardly be said to have any authors by profession.”]2 He added:

  The works we have produced have, for the most part, been written by men who were obliged to depend upon other employments for their support, and who could devote to literary pursuits those few moments only which their thirst for learning stimulated them to snatch from their daily avocations. Our writings, therefore, though not deficient in ability, yet too frequently want that finishing, as artists term it, which is to be acquired only by long practise in writing, as in other arts; and this is a defect which, with scholars accustomed to highly-finished productions, can only be compensated by an extraordinary degree of merit in the substance of a work.

  This was already something of an exaggeration, for Irving’s “Knickerbocker” had been published in 1809, the North American Review had been set up in 1815, and the Federalist, the writings of Franklin, Jefferson, Paine and Jonathan Edwards and all the novels of Charles Brockden Brown were behind Pickering as he wrote. But the great burgeoning was still ahead. In 1817 came Bryant’s “Thanatopsis”; in 1818, the poems of Samuel Woodworth, including “The Old Oaken Bucket”; in 1819, Irving’s “Sketch-Book”; in 1820, Cooper’s “Precaution”; in 1821, “The Spy”; in 1822, “Bracebridge Hall”; in 1823, three Cooper novels, and in 1824, “Tales of a Traveler” and the début of several lady poets who were destined to enchant not only Americans but also a wide circle in England.1 By 1828 so much progress had been made that Noah Webster was able to say in the preface to his American Dictionary that one of his aims in preparing it was to call attention to the writings of various American authors. He went on:

  I do not indeed expect to add celebrity to the names of Franklin, Washington, Adams, Jay, Madison, Marshall, Ramsay, Dwight, Smith, Trumbull, Hamilton, Belknap, Ames, Mason, Kent, Hare, Silliman, Cleaveland, Walsh, Irving, and many other Americans distinguished by their writings or by their science; but it is with pride and satisfaction that I can place them, as authorities, on the same page with those of Boyle, Hooker, Milton, Dryden, Addison, Ray, Milner, Cowper, Davy, Thomson and Jameson.

  It will be noted that Webster omitted Cooper, who had published seven novels by 1828, and that he also overlooked Jefferson, Paine, Edwards, Paulding, Bryant, Halleck, Schoolcraft, Audubon, Ticknor and Edward Everett, not to mention Poe, whose “Tamerlane and Other Poems” had come out pianissimo in 1827. Some of the names he listed so proudly are now forgotten by all save pedagogues, e.g., Ramsay, Belknap, Hare, Cleaveland and Walsh.

  23. [After 1824, when the North American Review gave warning that if the campaign of abuse went on it would “turn into bitterness the last drops of good-will toward England that exists in the United States,” even Blackwood’s became somewhat conciliatory.]2 But this letting up did not last. Toward the end of the 30s the English reviews began again to belabor all things American, and especially American books, and during the decade following they had the enthusiastic support of a long line of English travelers, headed by Frances Trollope and Charles Dickens.3 During the 50s Harper’s Magazine made frequent protests against the unfairness of the current English notices of new American books. In October, 1851, for example, it took the London Athenaeum to task for a grossly prejudiced notice of Henry Theodore Tuckerman’s “Characteristics of Literature,”1 and complained that it was “systematically cold to American writers.” The month following2 Harper’s quoted and denounced a patronizing and idiotic review of Francis Parkman’s “History of the Conspiracy of Pontiac.”3 In 1864 Tuckerman struck back in “America and Her Commentators,” a well documented and very effective counterblast, but now so far forgotten that the Cambridge History of American Literature does not so much as mention it. To this day the English reviewers are generally wary of American books, and seldom greet them with anything properly describable as cordiality. In particular, they are frequently denounced on the ground that the Americanisms which spatter them are violations of the only true enlightenment.4

  3. AMERICAN “BARBARISMS”

  24. [Captain Thomas Hamilton, in his “Men and Manners in America, 1833,5 reported that even Americans “of the better orders” assumed “unlimited liberty in the use of expect, reckon, guess and calculate” and perpetrated “other conversational anomalies with remorseless impunity.”] Nearly every other English traveler of the first half of the century was likewise upset by the prevalence of the verbs mentioned. For example, John Palmer, who, in his “Journal of Travels in the United States of North America and in Lower Canada”; London, 1819, put his report into the following imaginary dialogue between himself and “a New England man settled in Kentucky” as an innkeeper:1

  On arriving at the tavern door the landlord makes his appearance.

  Landlord. Your servant, gentlemen. This is a fine day.

  Answer. Very fine.

  Landlord. You’ve got two nice creatures;2 they are right elegant3 matches.

  Answer. Yes, we bought them for matches.

  Landlord. They cost a heap4 of dollars (a pause and a knowing look) — 200, I calculate.

  Answer. Yes, they cost a good sum.

  Landlord. Possible!5 (A pause). Going westward to Ohio, gentlemen?

  Answer. We are going to Philadelphia.

  Landlord. Philadelphia, ah! That’s a dreadful1 large place, three or four times as big2 as Lexington.

  Answer. Ten times as large.

  Landlord. It is, by George! what a mighty heap of houses. (A pause). But I reckon3 you were not reared4 in Philadelphia.

  Answer. Philadelphia is not our native place.

  Landlord. Perhaps away up5 in Canada?

  Answer. No, we are from England.

  Landlord. Is it possible! Well, I calculated you were from abroad. (Pause). How long have you been from the old country?6

  Answer. We left England last March.

  Landlord. And in August here you are in Kentuck. Well, I should have guessed you had been in the state some years; you speak almost as good English as we do.1

  Hamilton was one of the most amiable of the English travelers of the first half of the century, and described his adventures in the United States, says Nevins, “in a spirit of picturesque enjoyment rather than of censure.… Only rarely do we catch a captious accent in his book.” But he nevertheless found American English somewhat disconcerting, and in addition to noting the pestiferous prevalence of to expect, to reckon, to guess and to calculate, recorded the fact that he was vastly puzzled by hollow-ware, spider (in the sense of a skillet or frying-pan) and fire-dog. Hollow-ware was not actually an Americanism, despite the fact that it appeared strange to him. But spider, in the sense noted, seems to have originated in this country, and the DAE’s first example is dated 1790. Regarding fire-dog, in the sense of andiron, there has been some dispute. The DAE does not call the term an Americanism, but its first example, dated 1792, precedes by three-quarters of a century the first English example so far unearthed. In a catalogue of the exhibits of furniture and objects of arts at the Paris Exhibition of 1867 is the following:

  M. Morisot is one of the most eminent of the Paris manufacturers of fenders, if so we are to term those indispensable necessaries that suit only the fireplaces of France and which resembled the ancient fire-dogs of England.2

  Fender may be an Americanism, though this is also uncertain. The DAE’s first example, dated 1647, antedates the first recorded English example by forty-one years. In the sense of a fire-screen the word is undoubtedly American, and also in the sense of a bumper or cowcatcher. The English usually call an automobile fender a mudguard or wing.

  25. [Captain Frederick Marryat, in “A Diary in America” (1839), observed that “it is remarkable how very debased the language has become in a short period in America,” and then proceeded to specifications.] This was the same Captain Marryat who wrote “Mr. Midshipman Easy,” “Jacob Faithful,” “Peter Simple” and various other nautical tales, and has been declared by at least one critic1 to
have been, “excepting Walter Scott, the only [English] novelist of his period who might lay claim to eminence.” He had put in twenty-four years in the English Navy, and had served against the United States in the War of 1812, but the new Republic interested him greatly, and he came out in 1837 to have a look at it. His observations were recorded in two books, both published in the United States.2 What he had to say about American speechways was in his first book, under the heading of “Remarks, &c. &c. — Language.” It is reprinted in full by Mathews, and in part by Nevins, but it is sufficiently interesting to be summarized here, with annotations. Marryat refused to countenance the common boast of the Americans of his time that they spoke better English than the English: their speech, he argued, was actually a gallimaufry of all the dialects of England, and the fact that this heterogenous mixture had been “collected and bound up” in a dictionary by Noah Webster did not suffice to make it, in his judgment, a Kultursprache. Every Americanism that he investigated, he said, turned out to be either “a provincialism of some English county, or else obsolete English.”1 “The upper class of the Americans,” he went on, “do not speak or pronounce English according to our standard; they appear to have no exact rule to guide them, probably from the want of any intimate knowledge of Greek or Latin. You seldom hear a derivation from the Greek pronounced correctly, the accent being generally laid upon the wrong syllable. In fact, everyone appears to be independent, and pronounces just as he pleases. But it is not for me to decide the very momentous question as to which nation speaks the best English. The Americans generally improve upon the inventions of others; probably they may have improved upon our language.… Assuming this principle of improvement to be correct, it must be acknowledged that they have added considerably to our dictionary; but … this being a point of too much delicacy for me to decide upon I shall just submit to the reader the occasional variations, or improvements, as they may be, which met my ears during my residence in America, as also the idiomatic peculiarities, and having done so, I must leave him to decide for himself.” And then:

  I recollect once talking to one of the first men in America, who was narrating to me the advantages which might have accrued to him if he had followed up a certain speculation, when he said, “Sir, if I had done so I should not only have doubled and trebled, but I should have fourbled, and fivebled my money.”2

  The Americans dwell upon their words when they speak — a custom arising, I presume, from their cautious, calculating habits; and they have always more or less of a nasal twang. I once said to a lady: “Why do you drawl out your words in that way?” “Well,” she replied, “I’ll drawl all the way from Maine to Georgia rather than clip my words as you English people do.”

  Many English words are used in a different sense from that which we attach to them; for instance, a clever person in America means an amiable, good-tempered person, and the Americans make the distinction by saying, “I mean English clever.” Our clever is represented by the word smart.

  The verb to admire is also used in the East instead of the verb to like. “Have you ever been at Paris?” “No; but I should admire to go.”3

  The word ugly is used for cross, ill-tempered. “I did feel so ugly when he said that.”1

  Bad is used in an odd sense; it is employed for awkward, uncomfortable, sorry:

  “I did feel so bad when I read that” — awkward.

  “I have felt quite bad about it ever since” — uncomfortable.

  “She was so bad I thought she would cry” — sorry.

  And as bad is tantamount to not good I have heard a lady say: “I don’t feel at all good this morning.”2

  Mean is occasionally used for ashamed. “I never felt so mean in my life.”3

  The word handsome is oddly used. “We reckon this very handsome scenery, sir,” said an American to me, pointing to the landscape.4

  “I consider him very truthful” is another expression. “He stimulates too much.” “He dissipates awfully.”5

  And they are very fond of using the noun as a verb, as — “I suspicion that’s a fact,” “I opinion quite the contrary.”1

  The word considerable is in considerable demand in the United States. In a work in which the letters of the party had been given to the public as specimens of good style and polite literature, it is used as follows: “My dear sister, I have taken up the pen early this morning, as I intend to write considerable.”2

  The word great is oddly used for fine, splendid. “She’s the greatest gal in the whole Union.”3

  But there is one word which we must surrender up to the Americans as their very own, as the children say. I will quote a passage from one of their papers: “The editor of the Philadelphia Gazette is wrong in calling absquatiated a Kentucky phrase. (He may well say phrase instead of word.) It may prevail there, but its origin was in South Carolina, where it was a few years since regularly derived from the Latin, as we can prove from undoubted authority. By the way, there is a little corruption in the word as the Gazette uses it: absquatalized is the true reading.” Certainly a word worth quarreling about!4

  “Are you cold, miss?” I said to a young lady, who pulled the shawl closet-over her shoulders. “Some” was the reply.1

  The English what?, implying that you did not hear what was said to you, is changed in America to the word how?2

  Like all the other English travelers of his time Marryat noted the large use of guess, reckon and calculate in America. “Each term,” he said, “is said to be peculiar to different States, but I found them used everywhere, one as often as the other.”3

  He gave a dialogue showing how to guess was used, following the lines of that offered by Henry Bradshaw Fearon in 1818. He noted the tendency in America for technical words and phrases to enter into the general speech by metaphor. For example:

  In the West, where steam navigation is so abundant, when they ask you to drink they say, “Stranger, will you take in wood?” — the vessels taking in wood to keep the steam up, and the person taking in spirits to keep his steam up.

  The roads in the country being cut through woods, and the stumps of the trees left standing, the carriages are often brought up by them. Hence the expression, “Well, I am stumped this time.”1

  I heard a young man, a farmer in Vermont, say, when talking about another having gained the heart of a pretty girl, “Well, how he contrived to fork into her young affections2 I can’t tell, but I’ve a mind to put my whole team on, and see if I can’t run him off the road.”

  The old phrase of straining at a gnat and swallowing a camel3 is, in the Eastern States, rendered straining at a gate and swallowing a saw mill.

  To strike means to attack. “The Indians have struck on the frontier.” “A rattlesnake struck at me.”4

  To make tracks — to walk away. “Well, now, I shall make tracks” — from footprints in the snow.5

  Clear out, quit and put — all mean be off. “Captain, now, you hush or put” — that is, “either hold your tongue or be off.” Also “Will you shut, mister?”, i.e., will you shut your mouth, i.e., hold your tongue?6

  Curl up — to be angry — from the panther and other animals when angry raising their hair.7 “Raise my dander up,” from the human hair, and a nasty idea.8 Wrathy is another common expression.9 Also, “savage as a meat-ax.”10

  Here are two real American words — sloping, for slinking away; splunging, like a porpoise.1

  In the Western States, where the raccoon is plentiful, they use the abbreviation coon when speaking of people. When at New York I went into a hairdresser’s shop2 to have my hair cut, there were two young men from the West, one under the barber’s hands, the other standing by him. “I say,” said the one who was having his hair cut, “I hear Captain M—– is in the country.” “Yes,” replied the other, “so they said. I should like to see the coon.”

  “I’m a gone coon” implies “I am distressed — or ruined — or lost.”3

  But one of the strangest perversions of the meaning of a word
which I ever heard of is in Kentucky, where sometimes the word nasty is used for nice. For instance, of a rustic dance in that State a Kentuckian said to an acquaintance of mine, in reply to his asking the name of a very fine girl, “That’s my sister, stranger; and I flatter myself that she shows the nastiest ankle in all Kentuck.” … From the constant rifle practice in that State a good shot or a pretty shot is termed also a nasty shot, because it would make a nasty wound: ergo, a nice or pretty ankle becomes a nasty one.4

  The term for all baggage, especially in the South or West, is plunder. This has been derived from the buccaneers, who for so long a time infested the bayores,5 and creeks near the mouth of the Mississippi, and whose luggage was probably very correctly so designated.6 …

  The gamblers on the Mississippi use a very refined phrase for cheating — playing the advantages over him. But, as may be supposed, the principal terms used are those which are borrowed from trade and commerce. The rest, or remainder, is usually termed the balance. “Put some of those apples into a dish, and the balance into the storeroom.”

  When a person has made a mistake, or is out in his calculations, they say, “You missed a figure that time.” …

  There is sometimes in American metaphors an energy which is very remarkable. “Well, I reckon that, from the teeth to the toenail, there’s not a human of a more conquering nature than General Jackson.” One gentleman said to me, “I wish I had all hell boiled down to a pint, just to pour down your throat.”1

  27. [After 1850 the chief licks at the American dialect were delivered, not by English travelers, most of whom had begun by then to find it more amusing than indecent, but by English pedants who did not stir from their cloisters.] The first traveler to show a genuine liking for all things American seems to have been Lady Emmeline Stuart Wortley, who published “Travels in the United States” in 1851. She met many notables during her stay in 1850, including Agassiz, William H. Prescott the historian, N. P. Willis, and President Zachary Taylor, and gushed over all of them. She was naturally astonished to hear that Prescott, despite “The Conquest of Mexico” and “The Conquest of Peru,” had never visited either country, but insisted that he was nevertheless “one of the most agreeable people” she had ever encountered, and “as delightful as his own delightful books.” Taylor gave her a cordial reception at the White House, advised her to visit St. Louis, which he described as “altogether perhaps the most interesting town in the United States,” and bade her farewell in a manner which she thus recounted: