Next to Spanish, German has probably made the heaviest donations to the American vocabulary. They range all the way from such familiar words as sauerkraut, hamburger, frankfurter, noodle, gesundheit,1 delicatessen, kindergarten, pretzel, nixy and ouch to such phrases as so long, wie geht’s and rous mit ’im. Unhappily, there has never been any really scientific investigation of their history, and only too often, especially since 1916, their discussion has been incommoded by partisan heat. The NED’s first example of sauerkraut is from the “Itinerary” of Fynes Moryson, 1617, but Moryson recorded it as the foreign name of a foreign comestible, and both name and comestible retain a foreign smack in England to this day.2 The thing itself seems to have been introduced to Americans by the Pennsylvania Germans, but the date is unknown, even approximately. The first occurrence of the word recorded by the DAE is in Alexander Wilson’s poem “The Foresters,” published in 1818 but probably written in 1813. There is then a hiatus until 1863, but sauerkraut must have been in frequent use in the interval,3 and was familiar to many Americans, in all probability, long before 1813. The word is sometimes spelled saurkraut, sourkraut, sourkrout or sourcrout, but both the DAE and Webster 1934 prefer sauerkraut, which is the correct German form. It is hardly likely that it was taken into American from the Dutch, for the Dutch form is zuurkool. There has been a considerable controversy over shyster, formerly assumed to be a German loan but now in dispute. The DAE marks it “origin uncertain,” as does Webster 1934. It has been traced to 1849. Webster 1909 suggested that it may have come from the Gaelic siostair, meaning a vexatious litigant, and the late Dr. Frank H. Vizetelly, editor of the Standard Dictionary, once proposed a Gipsy origin, but the matter remains undetermined.4 The American bum, a shortened form of an earlier bummer, is commonly believed to have been suggested by the German verb bummeln, meaning to waste time, but the connection has not been established.5 The DAE, whose first example of bummer is dated 1856, says that “in early use” the term was “confined to San Francisco,” but it offers no etymology. During the Civil War bummer was used to designate a soldier who went foraging on his own. Bumming, in the sense of going on a carouse, is traced to 1860, but the DAE’s first example of bum to designate such a carouse, is from 1871. To bum in the sense of to loaf or wander about is traced to 1863. On the bum and to bum a ride apparently did not come in until the last decades of the century. To the English bum means the backside, and is hence an inelegant term, but they use it without blushes in such pejorative compounds as bum-bailiff and bum-boat. The NED traces bum to 1387, bum-bailiff (used by Shakespeare) to 1601, and bum-boat to 1671. There is no evidence that the American permutations of bum owe anything to the English bum. Loafer is another possible German loan that remains in dispute. It is apparently derived from the German landläufer, meaning a vagabond, and on its first appearance in print, in the 30s, was sometimes landloafer and sometimes simple loafer. The DAE traces the verb form, to loaf, to 1837. The following early discussion of the term1 is offered for what it is worth:
Loafer … only found its way into writing about the year 1830, but it had been in use long before, especially in the vicinity of the [New York] markets. It is equivalent to vagabond intensified, and its personal application is one of the greatest insults that can be offered to an American — something like calling a Frenchman canaille. It is singular that the verb (of later formation) has not necessarily a bad meaning; a man will say of himself, “have been loafing about” — that is, “I have been lounging or idling.” We must seek the root in Dutch. It may be from loof, primarily weary, tired, thence faint-hearted, lazy, cowardly; but it more probably comes from loopen (= German laufen; compare in English inter-loper). The term loper, applied to deserters from South Sea whalers, and Jack-tar’s familiar land-lubber, are probably connected. Looper in old Dutch, such Dutch as honest old Peter Stuyvesant may have used, meant a running footman, so that perhaps the idea of lackey or flunkey was mixed up with the term of contempt.
The DAE is anything but strong in the department of German loans, and passes over many of them without mention, e.g., zwieback, pumpernickel, Sauerbraten, stein (as in the Maine Stein Song), gesund-heit (as a toast), spieler, maennerchor, wanderlust, hausfrau, katzen-jammer and Schweizer-cheese. It traces dumb, in the American sense of stupid (a borrowing from the German dumm) to 1825;2 smearcase to 1829; lifts fresh (from frech), in the sense of impertinent, from Bartlett, 1848;1 and runs ouch (from autsch) back to 1837,2 bower (in cards, from bauer) to 1844, lager to 1855, and turnverein to 1856, but its first example of pretzel is dated 1874, of beer-garden 1870, of bock-beer 1883,3 of delicatessen 1893, of wienerwurst and frankfurter 1899, of rathskeller 1900, and of hamburger 1901. Check, in the sense of a restaurant bill, is traced to 1868, but there is no mention of its probable relation to the German zeche. To dunk, from the Pennsylvania German dunke, a dialect form of the German tunken, is not listed.4 So long is traced to 1860 (when Whitman used it in a revision of “Leaves of Grass”), but there is no mention of its possible borrowing from the German so lange, a shortened form of adieu so lange.5 Nix, nixie and nixy are recorded, but their relation to the German nichts is not noted, nor is there any mention of aber nit and nitwit.6 It is noted, however, that the American bub, used as “a playful form of address to boys,” is probably related to the German bub(e), and its American history is traced to 1846, with a hint that it was probably known in 1837. It is also noted that bushelman, meaning a repairer of men’s clothes, is probably related to the German böscheln. Scattered in the etymological literature, professional and lay, are discussions of various other possible American loans from the German. It has been suggested, for example, that and how may be a translation of the German und wie;1 that cant-hook, first recorded in 1848, may be from the German kanthaken;2 that it listens well may be from es hört sich gut an;3 that hold on may be an imitation of halt an; that the substitution of the American shoe for the English boot may have been helped by the German schuh;4 that to cut a face may be from er schneidet ein gesicht;5 that bake-oven may come from the German backofen;6 that slim (as in slim chance) may be the German schlimm;7 that such shortened and characteristically American forms as cook-book, barber-shop and sail-boat (for the preferred English cookery-book, barber’s shop and sailing-boat, etc.) may have been promoted by German example;8 and that the numerous American terms in ker- may owe something to the German ge-.9
In some of these suggestions, of course, there are signs of folk-etymology,10 and all of them are to be received with extreme caution, but they at least reveal the lack of a scientific investigation of the subject. The number of German words and phrases that have been completely assimilated into American is quite large, and there is in addition a formidable number that are generally understood, though not altogether assimilated, e.g., eins, zwei, drei, hofbrau, knackwurst, leberwurst, hoch, wie geht’s, ganz (or sehr) gut, auf wiedersehen, gemütlichkeit and seidel. The vocabulary of the latter class is greatest in the big cities of the Middle Atlantic and Middle Western States, and smallest in the South. In the regions heavily settled by Germans, e.g., Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, the common stock is largely augmented, and many German phrases are understood.1 A diligent inquiry would probably develop the fact that not a few German loans, once flourishing in American, have since passed out. Shenk-beer has been noted, and schützenfest suggests itself at once. In Harper’s Magazine, 1861,2 I find cylinder for a plug hat, probably from the German zylinder, but it is not listed in any dictionary and is now quite extinct. Many nonce-words have gone the same way, e.g., kindergraph, meaning a photograph of a child.3
The influence of Irish English upon American also awaits investigation. The before-mentioned Bristed, in 1855, declared that the only Irish mark upon the speech of New York at that time was the general abandonment of shall for will, but this was a palpable underestimate. It is highly likely, in fact, that the speechways of the Irish immigrants who swarmed in after 1847 really had a powerful effect upon the general language of the country, at least ab
ove the Potomac; indeed, not a few Irish observers detect that effect in both the American phonology and the American vocabulary of today.4 I have given some of the evidence in AL4, pp. 160 ff. The American liking for intensives, especially marked during the pre-Civil War period, undoubtedly got a lift from the Irish newcomers. The DAE traces no sir-ee to 1851 and yes sir-ee to 1852.
The Dutch, after the opening of the Nineteenth Century, contributed few additions to the American vocabulary. The DAE traces to snoop (Dutch snoepen) to 1832, and bedspread (probably from the Dutch beddesprei) to c. 1845, but offers no example-of dope (apparently from the Dutch doop, a sauce) before 1872. At the start dope meant a harmless drug, but by the end of the century it had taken on the special meaning of a narcotic, especially opium. It has, in late years, come to signify any composition of unknown ingredients, and since the turn of the century it has also signified information. Like German, Dutch has provided many additions to the local vocabulary in regions where immigrants speaking the original language have settled.1 After the Louisiana Purchase and the settlement of the Mississippi valley and the Great Lakes region there was a considerable accession of new French terms, not a few of them geographic. The D.A. traces butte to 1805, chute to 1806, coulee to 1807, sault to 1809 and crevasse to 1814. Cache and picayune are first recorded in 1805, shanty in 1822, depot (railroad) in 1832, shivaree in 1843, lagniappe in 1849, and to sashay in 1860. There have been bitter etymological battles over shanty. P. W. Joyce, in “English As We Speak It in Ireland,”2 claims it for his native land and says that it is “probably from Irish sean, old, and tigh, house,” but the DAE and Webster 1934 both derive it from the Canadian French chantier. Shivaree is described by the DAE as “a corruption of charivari,” which appeared in American simultaneously.3 Lagniappe came into American from the French, but is not actually a French word. William A. Read in “Louisiana-French,”1 defines it as meaning “a trifling gift presented to a customer by a merchant,” and says of it:
Lagniappe is composed of the French la, the, and a French adaptation of Spanish ñapa, which is taken in turn from Kechuan yapa, a present made to a customer. From Peru the word was carried to other parts of South and Central America, appearing as ñapa in Venezuela, Costa Rica and Colombia, but maintaining the form yapa in Ecuador. ñapa is heard in the eastern part of Cuba, but this word is replaced by contra2 in the rest of the island.
Kechuan (usually spelled Quichuan) is the name of one of the South American Indian language stocks. Its principal dialect was the tongue of the Incas of Peru, and thus became the common speech of a large area. It is still spoken by 3,000,000 or more Indians in Peru and Ecuador. “As an English word,” says Read, “lagniappe is pronounced lanyap, with the stress usually on the second syllable, but sometimes on the first. The first a has the value of that in land, and the second of the vowel in gap. As a French word lagniappe is pronounced in French fashion, save that the palatal gn is often replaced by the sound of ny.” The DAE traces it in American use to 1849, but it is probably older. It is one of a large number of French or pseudo-French loans that survive in the speech of the lower Mississippi region, but are seldom heard elsewhere.3 Similar loans are to be encountered in the English of the French-speaking sections of Canada.4 To sashay, from the French chassé, is defined by the DAE as “to glide or move around, to go about, to go.” The first example quoted is from Oliver Wendell Holmes’s “Elsie Venner,” 1860. Mark Twain used the verb in “Sketches Old and New,” 1865.
1 New York, 1920. Turner (1861–1932) was professor of history at Wisconsin from 1889 to 1910 and at Harvard from 1910 to 1924. In his later years he was a research associate at the Henry E. Huntington Library.
1 Forty Years of American Life, 1821–1861; London, 1864; reprinted, London, 1874; New York, 1937. Nichols (1815–1901) was a New Englander by birth, and had a large hand in the numerous “reform” movements that racked the country before the Civil War. He was, in turn, a water curist, a vegetarian, a spiritualist, an advocate of free love, and a pacifist. In the end he became a convert to Catholicism. He left the country for England in 1861 because he was opposed to the military coercion of the South. Despite his vagaries his book is a fair and illuminating picture of the American Kultur of his time. Say Stanley J. Kunitz and Howard Haycraft in American Authors, 1600–1900; New York, 1938, p. 565: “With republication in 1937, it has come into its own as an excellent piece of autobiography and social history.” Long extracts from its discussion of speech are reprinted in Tall Talk in America Sixty Years Ago, by Mamie Meredith, American Speech, April, 1929, pp. 290–93.
2 The DAE traces down on, in the sense of to show disapproval or dislike of, to 1851, and marks it an Americanism. To down (in the sense of to gulp or swallow hastily) is also an Americanism, and so are to be down sick, traced by the DAE to 1745; down cellar, to 1805; down river, to 1853; down country, to 1823; down East, to 1825; down grade, to 1872; down South, to 1835; down town, to 1835.
3 The DAE’s first example is from Marryat, 1839: “In the Western States … ‘I’m a gone coon’ implies ‘I’m distressed — or ruined — or lost.’ ”
4 Cussed is discussed in Chapter VI. Section 8. Varmint is not an Americanism.
5 More examples of Western talk from Nichols are in AL4, p. 137.
1 i.e., a panther.
2 Traced by the DAE to 1843. From corn-shuck.
3 Traced to 1830 as a noun and to 1844 as a verb. It is an Americanism.
4 The use of powerful as a general intensive goes back to the 1820s.
5 Howdy and to howdy are Americanisms.
6 Londoner’s Slang Intrigues Yank Forces in England, by Hal Boyle, Boston Traveler, June 2, 1944.
1 Frontier Tall Talk, American Speech, Oct., 1934, p. 187.
2 Tall Talk of the Texas Trans-Pecos, by Haldeen Braddy, American Speech, April, 1940, pp. 220–22.
3 New York, 1944, p. 273.
1 Says Bristed, p. 71: “The infinite variety of Western phraseology embraces every sort of expression from the clumsiest vulgarity to the most poetic metaphor; from unintelligible jargon to pregnant sententiousness. Sometimes it luxuriates in elongation of words and reduplication of syllables, as if the mother-English were not sufficiently strong and expressive, — cantankerous for rancorous, salvagerous for savage. The barbarous cant word teetotal was doubtless thus coined by some Western speaker at a ‘temperance’ meeting.”
2 Said a (presumably reverend) writer in the Church Standard of Sydney, Australia, Nov. 27, 1936: “So far as we are concerned, the only American coinage which has left us breathless with admiration is hornswoggle.”
1 A suggestion that it may have been introduced by immigrants from Ireland, Wales or England appears in American Notes and Queries, Sept., 1942, p. 88.
2 Pages From the Notebook of a Gourmet, Chicago Daily News, May 4, 1944, p. 21.
1 Sherrivarrie is not to be confused with sherry-vallies, meaning, according to Bartlett, “pantaloons made of thick velvet or leather, buttoned on the outside of each leg, and generally Worn over other pantaloons.” Bartlett says that the word comes from the French chevalier, but the DAE derives it from a Polish word, szara-wary, meaning loose trousers. If this etymology is sound, then sherry-vallies seems to be the only Polish loan made by American English. The DAE traces it to 1778, and it seems to have been picked up from Polish volunteers during the Revolution. It was becoming obsolete by the time Bartlett listed it in 1848.
2 Belling the Bridal Couple in Pioneer Days, by Mamie Meredith, American Speech, April, 1933, pp. 22–24.
3 Serenade in New England, by Miles L. Hanley, American Speech, April, 1933, pp. 24–26.
4 See Callithumpians, by Louise Pound, American Speech, Oct., 1942, p. 213.
1 New York, 1935. The Oklahoma backwash was dealt with sentimentally in Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck; New York, 1939, and more realistically in Prairie City, by Angie Debo; New York, 1944.
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