But this authoritarianism, says Whitehall, despite its powerful support by popular education, has never succeeded in quite breaking the free spirit of American English.
Its spoken forms have always veered so sharply from its most elevated literary form that they could develop almost untrammeled. American colloquial speech, constantly modified and enriched by the changing patterns of American life, has served the modern American literary language as an inexhaustible reservoir. By contrast, the equivalent influence of British colloquial English has been a thin, attenuated stream. Of all the differences between the two national languages, this is the most significant.2
More than one observer has noted the likeness between the situation of American English today and that of British English at the end of the Sixteenth Century. The Englishmen of that time had not yet come under the yoke of grammarians and lexicographers, and they were thus free to mold their language to the throng of new ideas that naturally marked an era of adventure and expansion. Their situation closely resembled that of the American pioneers who swarmed into the West following the War of 1812, and they met its linguistic needs with the same boldness. By a happy accident, they had at hand a group of men who could bring to the business of word-making a degree of ingenuity and taste running far beyond the common; above all, they had the aid and leading of a really first-rate genius, Shakespeare. The result was a renovation of old ways of speech and a proliferation of new and useful terms that has had no parallel, to date, save on this side of the Atlantic. Standard English, in the Eighteenth Century, succumbed to pedants whose ignorance of language processes was only equalled by their impudent assumption of authority, and, as Dr. Whitehall says, their influence still survives more or less, even in the United States. But here the national spirit, as everyone knows, has resisted stoutly, and the schoolma’am who carries the torch of Samuel Johnson has certainly not prevailed against it. The following description of what was going on in Shakespeare’s time, by an English scholar, George Gordon, might well be used as a description of the situation in the United States today:
The first quality of Elizabethan English … is its power of hospitality, its passion for free experiment, its willingness to use every form of verbal wealth, to try anything. They delighted in novelties, and so exultingly that prudent word-fearing men became alarmed. The amusing thing is that even the alarmists were unable to deny themselves the very contraband they denounced; in this matter of language they were all smugglers. Thanks to this generous and unlicensed traffic we discover a quite astonishing number of words, introduced, apparently, by the Elizabethans, which today we could not do without. We observe also — what is not without some practical interest for us — the impossibility of predicting, of any new words at any given moment, which of them were going to last.1
Mr. Gordon gives some curious examples, from Shakespeare and other writers of the time, of neologisms that have come to seem so necessary and so commonplace that we could hardly imagine English without them, e.g., scientific, idiom, prolix, figurative, obscure, delineation, dimension, audacious, conscious, jovial, rascality, to effectuate, negotiation and artificiality. Shakespeare himself either invented or introduced to good literary society a large number, e.g., aerial, auspicious, assassination, bare-faced, bump, clangor, countless, critic, disgraceful, to dwindle, fretful, gloomy, gnarled, hunchbacked, ill-starred, laughable, pedant, seamy and sportive. Like all the other writers of his time, he made extremely free with prefixes and suffixes, and disregarded altogether the irrational rule, still maintained by the less intelligent sort of pedagogues, that they must agree in origin with the roots they modify, i.e., Greek with Greek, Latin with Latin, and so on. He employed dis-, re- and en- with the utmost daring, and made frequent and effective use of the old English suffixes -full, -less and -y. Word-making was in the air, along with phrase-making, and there was emulation and imitation of one writer by another,1 and, as in any other such natural process, a high percentage of failure and wastage, with only a minority surviving. A great many of the novelties of the time, says Gordon,
were made quite casually. It was easy enough; a man once started could turn them out forever. Shakespeare made them and forgot them, coining disgraceful, for example, at the beginning of his career, and never using it again. But there was more than casual fertility in the matter.… The reason why so many adjectives were made was partly, no doubt, because they were needed, but still more because they were fancied: because Golding2 and Spenser, among others, had deliberately cultivated them, and because Shakespeare and all the other young expression-hunters of the 1590s had Golding’s Ovid and Spenser’s poems in their heads. It is amusing to see how smartly they borrow each other’s finds; how Golding’s heedless and careless, for example, reappear inevitably in Spenser and Shakespeare, and Sackvill’s luckless in all three; or how Spenser and Marlowe almost dispute by their nimbleness as connoisseurs the Shakespearian paternity of gloom. For they were collectors as well as inventors, and hunted words and verbal patterns as bibliophiles hunt first editions.
There was some ostentation in Lowell’s saying that “our ancestors could bring over no English better than Shakespeare’s,” but it is a fact that the first immigrants brought in the precise attitude toward word-making that was the mark of his time. “The American language,” says a recent Irish observer,3 “developed its distinctive note because it was three thousand miles away from Europe, and began its course four years after Shakespeare died.” The long arm of the Eighteenth Century pedants reached out to police it, but the wide and thin dispersal of population hobbled their effort, and when the great Western trek began there was enough of the Elizabethan spirit left to flower again. This spirit was given a powerful reinforcement by the appearance of Webster’s American Dictionary in 1828, for until it provided Americans with a standard of their own they were necessarily more or less dependent upon the authority of Samuel Johnson, who was not only bitterly hostile to everything American but also the grand master of all the pedantic quacks of his time. No eminent lexicographer was ever more ignorant of speech-ways than he was. In his dictionary of 1755 he thundered idiotically against many words that are now universally recognized as sound English, e.g., to wabble, to bamboozle, and touchy. To wabble he described as “low, barbarous,” and to bamboozle and touchy as “low,” and at other times he denounced to swap, to coax, to budge, fib, banter, fop, fun, stingy, swimmingly, row (in the sense of a disturbance), chaperon and to derange. Thus Sir John Hawkins, editor of his Collective Edition of 1787:1
He would not allow the verb derange, a word at present much in use, to be an English word. “Sir,” said a gentleman who had some pretensions to literature, “I have seen it in a book.” “Not in a bound book,” said Johnson; “disarrange is the word we ought to use instead of it.”
The NED’s first example of to derange is from Adam Smith’s “The Wealth of Nations,” 1776. In the United States the verb acquired the special meaning, now obsolete, of to remove from office, and was so used by George Washington. To bamboozle had been under fire before Johnson tackled it. It was used by Colley Cibber in “She Wou’d and She Wou’d Not” in 1702, but eight years later Jonathan Swift was listing it in the Tatler2 among corruptions introduced into English by “some pretty fellow” and “now struggling for the vogue,” along with banter, sham, mob, bubble and bully. Dr. John Arbuthnot, one of Swift’s intimates, used it in 1712 in his political satire, “The History of John Bull,” but it remained below the salt until the end of the Eighteenth Century, and Grose listed it as slang in 1785. Not until toward the middle of the Nineteenth Century did it come into general usage in England. In America it got into circulation at about the same time, and presently the perfect participle took on the special meaning of drunk, never used in England and now obsolete here. The NED says that its origin is unknown, but that it was probably borrowed from the cant of rogues. It has been ascribed to the gipsies, but does not occur in any vocabulary of their language that I am aware of. Banter, noun an
d verb, is equally mysterious. Swift, in “A Tale of a Tub,” 1710, says that it was “first borrowed from the bullies in White Friars, then fell among the footmen, and at last retired to the pedants.” Samuel Pepys had used it in his diary, December 24, 1667, and John Locke had mentioned it in his “Essay Concerning Human Understanding” in 1690, and by 1700 it had worked its way into respectable society, but Swift and Johnson continued to denounce it. Its origin, like that of to bamboozle, is unknown, and the NED is uncertain whether the noun or the verb appeared first. In the United States, early in the Nineteenth Century, it acquired a number of special meanings, unknown in England. First, as a verb, it came to signify to haggle, to bargain, and in that sense is traced by the DAE to 1793. Then, after the turn of the century, it came to signify a challenge or to challenge. In the original sense of to chaff, to make fun of, to provoke by ridicule, it is now perfectly sound English.
To budge is old in English, and was in good usage in the Seventeenth Century, but for some reason unknown the purists of the Eighteenth took a dislike to it, and their opposition was so effective that the word was listed as slang by Grose in 1785. Its origin remains in dispute. Weekley derives it from a French verb, bouger, meaning to stir, but admits that “this etymology is rather speculative.” Apparently it did not come from the old English noun, budge, meaning a kind of fur, which is traced by the NED to 1382. That noun was originally spelled bugee, bugeye, bogey, huge or bogy, and did not acquire its present spelling until c. 1570. In Virginia, early in the Nineteenth Century, budge picked up the special meaning of nervous irritation or fidgetiness, and in that sense the DAE traces it to 1824. Miss Ellen Glasgow used it in her novel, “The Deliverance,” in 1904, but apparently it has not made any progress elsewhere in the United States. Chaperon, a loan from the French, originally had the meaning of a hood or cap, and in that sense is traced by the NED to c. 1380. In its present figurative sense of a duenna it appeared in 1720 or thereabout,1 and was soon in good usage, though the pedants denounced it for years afterward — mainly, I gather, because they mistook it for a recent importation from the French, and were against all loanwords. To coax, in the modern sense of to wheedle or blandish, is traced by the NED to 1663, but in other senses it is older. It seems to have come originally from a noun, cokes, signifying a fool, but that is uncertain. It has no special American meanings, but when the first coachers appeared in baseball, c. 1890,2 they were often called coaxers by the fans, to whom coacher (later reduced to coach) and to coach were novelties, though the DAE shows that coach had been used in football, as a conscious loan from English, so early as 1871.
That fib, fop, and fun were once under fire may seem incredible today, but it is a fact. Fib, in the sense of a venal falsehood, was used by Dryden, Defoe and Goldsmith. Perhaps its disrepute in the Eighteenth Century arose from the fact that it had, as a verb, acquired the sense of to beat, and was used in that sense by the criminals of the time. Grose gives this specimen of their jargon: “to fib the cove’s quarron in the rumpad for the lour in his bung,” and translates it thus: “to beat the fellow in the highway for the money in his purse.” The origin of the word is unknown, but the NED suggests that it may be a shortened form of fible-fable, a reduplication of fable. Weekley, dissenting, inclines to think that it is a thinned form of fob, an old English word signifying an imposter. The origin of fop is equally uncertain, though all authorities agree that it may be related to the German verb foppen, meaning to fool. In the sense of a fool it is traced by the NED to c. 1440. It did not acquire the special meaning of a person overattentive to his dress until the end of the Seventeenth Century. Johnson’s effort to put it down was in vain, and it is now perfectly good English. Derivatives of the word in its earlier sense were used by Shakespeare, Greene and the Foxe who wrote the once celebrated “Book of Martyrs,” and derivatives in the present sense were used by Hume, Fielding, Evelyn and Addison. Fun, though it seems commonplace today, is a relatively recent word. It appeared toward the end of the Seventeenth Century in the sense of a cheat or hoax, and in that meaning was listed by the mysterious B. E. in his “Dictionary of the Canting Crew,” 1698. Grose testifies that it was still thieves’ cant so late as 1785, but it had also acquired a more innocent significance by 1727, when Swift used it.
Row, in the sense of a violent disturbance or commotion, is traced by the NED to 1787, but it is undoubtedly older. The NED calls it “a slang or colloquial word of obscure origin,” but Weekley thinks it is a back-formation from rouse, which, in the sense of a carousal or drinking-bout, was used by Shakespeare in “Hamlet,” 1601. Row was used by Byron without any apparent sense of its vulgarity in 1820, and by Dickens in 1837. It is now in good usage, though Webster 1934 still marks it “colloquial.” Stingy, in the sense of avaricious, mean, close-fisted, was something of a novelty in Johnson’s day, and his dislike for it seems to have worked against its adoption, but by the end of the Eighteenth Century it had forced its way into the language, and today not even the most extravagant pedant would question it. Weekley says that it is apparently derived from stinge, a dialectical form of sting. The softening of the g is a phenomenon not infrequently encountered in English.1 To swap, in the sense of to exchange, goes back to the end of the Sixteenth Century, and the NED says that it was “probably orig. a horsedealer’s term.” It has always been in more general use in the United States than in England, and it occurs in one of the most famous of American sayings — Abraham Lincoln’s “Don’t swap horses crossing a stream.” Swimmingly goes back to 1622, when it appeared in one of the plays of Fletcher and Massinger, and touchy to 1605. Why the Eighteenth Century purists disliked them I do not know: they are both sound English today. So is to wabble (or wobble), which is traced by the NED to 1657, when it was used by Richard Ligon in describing the gait of the cockroaches of the West Indies.2 To wabble is derived by the NED from a Middle High German verb, wabblen, signifying to move restlessly, but Weekley prefers to relate it to the Middle English quappen, meaning to tremble.
Johnson and Swift, of course, were not the only illuminati of their time to fling themselves against new words that were destined to flourish in America and gradually make their way in England. Another was Horace Walpole, who, in a letter dated February 4, 1759, took William Robertson to task for using interference in his “History of Scotland.”1 In this letter Walpole indicates that he thought Robertson coined the word, and it is possible that he did, for the NED’s first example of it, from Edmund Burke, is dated 1783. Thus Walpole:
If the accent is laid where it should be, on the second syllable, it forms an un-couth-sounding word; if on the third syllable a short-cut is made long. In most places intervention will express interference; in others, intermeddling.2
Walpole also objected to stripped piecemeal, to independency and to paction, the last-named a Scotch form of compact. Thomas Gray, author of the Elegy, was another furious purist; indeed, his dudgeon was aroused not only by neologisms, but also by various words that had been long in use, and by writers of the first chop. In 1741, for example, he wrote to Richard West denouncing John Dryden’s use of beverage, roundelay, ireful, disarray, wayward, furbished, smouldering, crone and beldam. Gray admitted that Shakespeare and Milton had “enriched” the language with “words of their own composition or invention,” but argued that “the affectation of imitating Shakespeare may be carried too far.” The NED traces roundelay to 1573, beldam(e) to c. 1440, crone and disarray to c. 1386, furbished to 1382, wayward to c. 1830, beverage to c. 1325, and ireful to c. 1300.
The authority of Johnson continued in both England and America for more than half a century after the first edition of his Dictionary appeared in 1755.3 Other dictionaries came out during that time, but they were all poor things, and it was not until the publication of Webster’s Compendious Dictionary in 1806 that the Great Cham was ever really challenged. The Rev. H. J. Todd’s two revisions of the Johnson dictionary of 1755, in 1818 and 1827, showed a disposition to break away from his implacable dogmatism, b
ut it remained for Webster to deliver the fatal blow to him in 1828, when the first edition of the American Dictionary, the father of all the Websters of today, was published. But the effect of the American Dictionary, though it was to be felt eventually in England, was chiefly noticeable at the start in the United States only, and down to the middle of the Nineteenth Century the majority of the English learned continued to hold to Johnson’s doctrine that the English language was already copious enough and ought to be protected against change and novelty. All the more respectable English writers stuck to the vocabulary that he had approved, and kept within hailing distance of his orotund and menacing style.1 When Thomas Carlyle began printing “Sartor Resartus” in Fraser’s Magazine, in 1833, the pother it made was produced by its strange words and disregard of Johnsonian “elegance” more than by the ideas in it. Although “Sketches by Boz,” “The Ingoldsby Legends”2 and “The Yellowplush Papers” were only ’round the corner, the paralyzing influence of Johnson still prevailed in England, and Carlyle was taken to task by even his friend John Sterling, whose life he was later to write, for the saucy liberties he was taking with what was still regarded as sound English. Thus Sterling wrote to him:
First as to the language.3 A good deal of this is positively barbarous. Environment, vestural, stertorous, visualized, complected, and others to be found, I think, in the first twenty pages, — are words, so far as I know, without any authority; some of them contrary to analogy; and none repaying by their value the disadvantage of novelty. To these must be added new and erroneous locutions: whole other tissues for all the other, and similar uses of the word whole; orients for pearls; lucid and lucent employed as if they were different in meaning; hulls perpetually for coverings, it being a word hardly used, and then only for the husk of a nut; “to insure a man of misapprehension;” talented, a mere newspaper and hustings word, invented, I believe, by O’Connell.1
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