American Language Supplement 1

by H. L. Mencken

  In a conversation with a friend, a Negro missionary from Portuguese West Africa, I learned that among his tribe oku-tuta means to carry something a long way. The root -tuta may be the parent of tote.… The abbreviation might be of Negro origin, an adaptation by speakers of different dialects. Or it might be a shortening by the labor bosses who heard the longer word from slaves. The further simplification to a monosyllable might likewise occur in the speech of the Negroes by analogy with the short English words used by the whites in communication with the workers; or it might be the result of the practise of the whites to use only the basic, or stressed syllable of a word taken from the dialects.

  Mr. Tillman called attention to the fact that the DAE’s first recorded use of the word in writing is from the South. Witherspoon, in his pioneer treatise on Americanisms, 1781, listed it as prevailing “in some of the Southern States,” and Webster, in his Compendious Dictionary of 1806 marked it “Virginia.” But it had spread to New England by 1769, as the DAE shows, though Pickering, in 1816, said that it was still “much more used in the Southern than in the Northern States.” Dunglison, in 1829, said that it was then “common in Massachusetts and in the Southern States.” “Its early spread in New England, its general use throughout the cotton section of the South, and its survival still in Southern folk-speech,” says Tillman, “seems to indicate a geographical distribution that coincides with the slave trade in this country.”

  Tote, in the sense of to carry, occurs in various American combinations, e.g., to tote fair, traced by the DAE to 1866; tote-road, traced to c. 1862; tote-bag, tote-load, tote-team, pistol-toter and gun-toter. Some of these have been made more or less familiar to the English by American movies and talkies. Tote as a shortened form of totalizer or totalization is a Briticism, little used in the United States, where the tote system of betting on races is usually called pari-mutuel. The word occurs in various senses in English and Scotch dialects, e.g., signifying to bulge (Somerset), fat or large (Gloucestershire), and a boy’s game resembling leapfrog (Norfolk), but its etymology in all such cases is obscure. It was formerly used in England as a short form of total abstainer, but in that sense appears to have passed out.

  Half a dozen other early terms may be worth noticing, though some of them are not certainly of American origin. They are bobolink, bootee, bundling, sophomore, Jimson-weed and harmonica. The DAE calls bobolink an Americanism and the NED’s first example is from America, but it has a decidedly English sound and may have been borrowed from some English dialect. Among the recorded forms are boblincon, bob-on-linkhorn, bob-a-linkum, boblink, bob-a-link bob-o-link and bob-o’-linck. The DAE and the NED agree that the term probably arose by onomatopoeia, and the former calls it “an imitation of the metallic clinking note of the bird,” i.e., the reed- or rice-bird (Dolichonyx oryzivorus). The DAE’s first example is from the writings of John Adams, 1774. He used it in a figurative sense in speaking of a foppish young man. Reed-bird, in England, is the name of a quite different bird. In AL4, p. 12, I described bootee as “now obsolete,” but that was an error, for a revival of it had begun at the time I wrote. The DAE defines the original bootee as “a half boot or high shoe, covering the ankle but not the leg” and traces it to 1799. Bootees were issued to the Federal troops during the Civil War, but soon afterward they began to disappear, and with them their name, though it was still listed by the Century Dictionary in 1889. The revived bootee is defined in “The Language of Fashion,” by Mary Brooks Picken,1 as “a boot having a short leg; for men, usually made with elastic gore over ankle or with laced front; for infants, usually knitted and tiny or half-leg length.” I am informed by a correspondent2 that the modern bootee is “usually knitted or crocheted, and is used for very small babies. It is used by some mothers with strings, and by some alone. It is usually white, pink or pale blue in color, and made of a fine quality wool yarn. It comes about half-way to the knees, and usually has a drawstring at the ankle, so that the baby can’t kick it off.” Sometimes bootee is spelled booties.3

  The art of bundling was not an American invention, and the DAE does not mark the term an Americanism, but both art and word flourished in this country more luxuriantly than in the British Isles. The DAE’s definition is “the practice of unmarried couples (partly undressed) occupying the same bed” and its first American example is dated 1781. That example comes from Samuel Peters’s “General History of Connecticut,”4 a work remembered today mainly because in it the author printed a list of ferocious Connecticut Blue Laws that have been denounced by other historians as imaginary,5 but are still generally accepted as authentic. Peters says that bundling, in 1781, had prevailed in New England since “the first settlement in 1634,” but that it went on “only in cold seasons of the year.”1 The NED’s first example of to bundle comes, as I have noted, from his book, but the practise seems to have existed in the remoter parts of Britain, especially Wales, some time before he wrote. It attracted, however, but little attention from the primeval sociologists of the time, and Grose did not mention it in the first edition of his “Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue,” 1785. But soon afterward news of it began to reach England from America, and when his third edition appeared in 1796 Grose defined it as follows:

  A man and woman sleeping in the same bed, he with his small clothes and she with her petticoats on; an expedient practised in America on a scarcity of beds, where, on such an occasion, husbands and parents frequently permitted travelers to bundle with their wives and daughters.

  To this Partridge adds the following gloss in the edition of Grose that he brought out in 1931:

  In America the practise, strangely enough, prevailed only in New England, but it existed also in Wales, c. 1870. In Cumberland and Westmoreland the word was applied to another practise — that of a betrothed couple going to bed together in their clothes.

  It was in this latter sense that the word was chiefly used in America. The chief authority on it is Henry Reed Stiles, who published “Bundling: Its Origin, Progress and Decline in America” in 1871. Stiles, who was a medical man, was a native of New York, but came of a long line of Connecticut ancestry, and always thought of himself as “truly a Connecticut man.” He had first referred to bundling in a book called “History and Genealogies of Ancient Windsor, Conn.,” published in 1859, in the following words:

  Then came war,2 and young New England brought from the long Canadian campaigns stores of loose camp vices and recklessness, which soon flooded the land with immorality and infidelity. The church was neglected, drunkenness fearfully increased, and social life was sadly corrupted. Bundling — that ridiculous and pernicious custo which prevailed among the young to a degree which we can scarcely credit — sapped the fountain of morality and tarnished the escutcheons of thousands of families.

  These words, said Stiles in the preface to his later work, produced “a bussing around my ears. Divers good sons of Connecticut winced under the soft impeachment of having a bundling ancestry, and intimated that my sketch of society in the olden times was somewhat overdrawn.” He thereupon decided to amass proofs of his statement, and the result was “Bundling: Its Origin, Progress and Decline.” In that book he showed that there were references to bundling in the French romances of the Fourteenth Century, and that it had been reported by travelers, not only in Britain, but also in Holland, Switzerland and among various savage tribes. Stiles believed and argued that, in the early days, bundling was quite innocent, and quoted the following in substantiation from Peters:

  People who are influenced more by lust than a serious faith in God, who is too pure to behold iniquity with approbation, ought never to bundle. If any man, thus a stranger to the love of virtue, of God, and the Christian religion, should bundle with a young lady in New England, and behave himself unseemly towards her, he must first melt her into passion, and expel Heaven, death and Hell from her mind, or he will undergo the chastisement of Negroes turned mad — if he escape with life it will be owing to the parents flying from their bed to prote
ct him.

  But with “the increased laxity of public morals,” said Stiles, bundling was “more frequently abused,” and its “pernicious effects became constantly more apparent, and more decidedly challenged the attention of the comparatively few godly men who endeavored to stem and to control the rapidly widening current of immorality which threatened to overwhelm the land.” One of these godly men was the celebrated Jonathan Edwards, who “thundered his anathemas upon it.” The bundlers, however, went on bundling, and the Revolution only augmented the saturnalia that had begun with the French and Indian War. “Not before the close of that struggle,” said Stiles, “may the custom be said to have received its death-blow, and even then it died hard.” The italics are his. He believed that two non-theological events had most to do with exterminating it in New England. The first was the “improved condition of the people after the Revolution, enabling many to live in larger and better warmed houses,” and the second was the appearance, in an almanac in 1785 or thereabout, of a satirical ballad against bundling which had a wide circulation and produced “such a general storm of banter and ridicule that no girl had the courage to stand up against it, and continue to admit her lovers to her bed.” This ballad, printed by Stiles in full, ridiculed the theory that petticoats or even full clothing were sufficient protection against an infidel swain, and closed with the following sad story:

  A bundling couple went to bed

  With all their clothes from foot to head;

  That the defense might seem complete

  Each one was wrapped in a sheet.

  But oh, this bundling’s such a witch

  The man of her did catch the itch,

  And so provoked was the wretch

  That she of him a bastard catch’d.

  Stiles’s book was reprinted in 1928 by A. Monroe Aurand, Jr., who added a great deal of interesting new matter.1 Mr. Aurand, who is an authority upon Pennsylvania German antiquities, has also published three pamphlets upon the subject.2 He says, challenging Partridge, that bundling was widespread among the Pennsylvania Germans in the early days, and is not unknown in their remoter settlements today. He suggests that the episode described in Ruth III, 6–13 may offer a primeval example of the practise.3

  Sophomore, designating a second-year student in a four-year college course, is probably an Americanism, though the evidence is not altogether convincing. The DAE’s first example is from a Latin document of Harvard, dated 1654. By 1684 it was appearing in the Harvard records as an English word, but it is recorded in England only four years later, with every sign of being in familiar university use. It had bred the adjective sophomoric by 1837, and sophomorical by 1839, in each case in the United States. It seems to have been extended to second-year students in high-schools during the 90s, and has since been used to designate even post-freshmen in kindergartens. Freshmen, which the DAE traces in American use to 1682, again at Harvard, is not an Americanism: the NED records it in England so early as 1596, and it is still in use there. Junior and senior, however, are both credited to American English by the DAE; the first is traced to c. 1764 and the second to 1741. In American Speech in 1930 Dr. Louise Pound published a curious note upon the difficulties that American students have with sophomore.4 She said:

  The word seems peculiarly unable to get itself pronounced by high-school and college students. The tendency to syncopate the middle syllable is not a new one, for sophmore occurs in the diary of Nathaniel Ames, a second year student at Yale in 1758. But much happens to the word besides syncopation. Many speakers say sothamore or sothmore,… like those who say syntheny for symphony, or nimth for nymph. The contrary substitution, f for th, is that common among children, as fum for thumb or fred for thread. A few speakers … say southamore or southmore.… Further, many speakers that I once tested (six in a group of about thirty) said solphomore or solphmore.… When I first heard the intrusive l I found it as hard to give credence to it as I did to the inserted r of langridge for language or sandridge for sandwich. Still another frequent pronunciation (and spelling) is sopamore or sopmore.

  Campus is marked an Americanism by the DAE and traced to 1774. All its early examples are taken from a classical monograph on the term by Albert Matthews.1 Matthews surmises that the term may have been introduced by John Witherspoon, and with this the DAE agrees. At all save a few colleges, e.g., Harvard, it has displaced the earlier yard.

  Jimson-weed or Jimpson-weed is a degenerate form of Jamestown-weed, which the DAE traces to 1687. The plant (Datura stramonium) was discovered growing at Jamestown in Virginia by the English settlers who landed there in 1607, but they seem to have been unaware of the kick in it until 1676, when Nathaniel Bacon’s rebellion reduced them to short commons and they ate it. What happened was thus described by Robert Beverley in his “History and Present State of Virginia,” 1705:2

  This being an early Plant, was gather’d very young for a boil’d salad, by some of the Soldiers sent thither, to pacifie the troubles of Bacon; and some of them ate plentifully of it, the effect of which was a very pleasant Comedy; for they turned natural Fools upon it for several Days. One would blow a Feather in the Air; another would dart straws at it with much Fury; and another stark naked was sitting up in a Corner, like a Monkey grinning and making Mows at them; a Fourth would fondly kiss and paw his Companions, and snear in their Faces, with a Countenance more antik than any in a Dutch Droll. In this frantik Condition they were confined, lest they in their Folly should destroy themselves; though it was observed that all their Actions were full of Innocence and Good Nature. Indeed, they were not very cleanly; for they would have wallow’d in their own Excrements, if they had not been prevented. A Thousand such simple Tricks they play’d and after Eleven Days, return’d themselves again, not remembering anything that had pass’d.

  The poisonous alkaloids in the Jimson-weed are hyoscyamine, atropine and scopolamine, all of which have important medical uses. The dried leaves, seeds and flowers are a constituent of many proprietary powders for the relief of asthma. Burned for their smoke, which the sufferer inhales, they help him by dilating and drying his bronchial tubes.1 In view of the wide distribution of the weed it is surprising that so few cases of poisoning are reported.2

  The harmonica was invented in 1762 by Benjamin Franklin who first called it the armonica (from the Italian armonico, harmonious), but had changed its name by 1765. It was no more than an improvement of the musical glasses mentioned in an oft-quoted passage in “The Vicar of Wakefield,”3 which had been introduced to England by an Irishman named Richard Pockrich in 1744. Their original inventor seems to have been an anonymous German of the Seventeenth Century. Franklin heard them played in London in 1760 or thereabouts, and resolved to improve them. In their crude form they consisted simply of goblets filled with different amounts of water, and the musical notes produced by rubbing the rims of these goblets varied according to the height of the water in them. Franklin substituted a series of revolving glass basins operated by a treadle. Below them was a trough full of water, and as they revolved they picked it up. Musical notes were then produced by touching their wet rims. This contrivance was superior to the old musical glasses in two particulars: the glass basins were of fixed tonality, and more than one tone could be produced at the same time. The new instrument interested Mozart and Beethoven so much that both wrote pieces for it, and it produced virtuosi in Marianna Davies and Marianna Kirchgessner, but it is now forgotten. The modern harmonica or mouth-organ was invented in 1829 by a Viennese named Damien. It is a reed instrument and bears no sort of relation to the musical glasses.4

  3. CHANGED MEANINGS

  Many common English words were given new meanings by the English colonists in America, e.g., store, shop, corn, rock, cracker, block, creek, spell, lumber, college, city, boot, shoe, bluff and bureau Store, in the sense of a retail establishment, began to be substituted for the English shop early in the Eighteenth Century, and by 1741, as the DAE shows, had bred store-keeper. To the English, store means primarily a
large establishment, corresponding roughly to what we call a warehouse,1 but they have been using the word in the American sense, to designate a coöperative retail store, since about 1850, and in later years they show a tendency to adopt it in the form of department-store. Contrariwise, there has been an increasing use of the English shop in the United States, not infrequently in the elegant form of shoppe. The DAE traces book-store to 1763, grocery-store to 1774, hardware-, shoe- and drygoods-store to 1789, to keep store to 1752, store-book to 1740, and storekeeping to 1774, but most of its first examples of the other familiar derivatives of store are later, e.g., store-clothes, 1840; store-cheese, 1863; store-boy, 1845; store-front, 1880; store-window, 1896; store-hours, 1857; store-street, 1879; and store-teeth, 1891. In some of these cases a more intensive search of the smaller and more remote newspapers would undoubtedly turn up much earlier examples.