American Language Supplement 1

by H. L. Mencken

  3 Abraham Lincoln: The War Years, II; New York, 1939, p. 305.

  1 Let’s Look It Up In the Dictionary, by Spencer Armstrong, Saturday Evening Post, March 6, 1926, p. 16.

  2 Daily Coinage of Words, American Speech, Sept., 1926, pp. 687–88.

  3 Our Tongue Stabilized? New York Herald Tribune (editorial page), March 31, 1944. Interesting discussions of neologisms are in Word-Coinage, by Leon Mead; New York, 1902; New Words Self-Defined, by C. Alphonso Smith; Garden City, 1919; and Nature and Art in Language, by Otto Jespersen, American Speech, Dec., 1929, pp. 80–103. Dr. Louise Pound and her colleagues report a large number of current novelties in every issue of American Speech.

  1 For example, scorcher, in the neck, upper ten, over the left, shad-bellied, hired girl and plug-ugly. The chief cause of the obsolescence of nouns, of course, is the disappearance of the things they designate, e.g., antimacassar, lambrequin, ear-pick, pulse-warmer, scholars-companion. An interesting discussion of the subject is in Obsolete Words, by Edwin Berck Dike, Philological Quarterly, April, 1933, pp. 207–19. A bibliography is in the footnotes thereof.

  2 The New Yorker noted on May 23, 1942 that the New York Times and Sun were still putting gas in discreet quotes, but that all the other New York papers had accepted it as established. The English petrol is also a back-formation, from petroleum. The London Daily Express, April 24, 1944, reported that it was coined by F. R. Simms, a pioneer English motorist, who is also credited with motor-car. I am indebted here to H. W. Seaman.

  3 High-brow was coined by Will Irwin, c. 1905, and first used in the New York Sun. It was suggested by low-brow, which had been in student use at Leland Stanford, Jr., University, c. 1895. I am indebted here to Samuel Hopkins Adams. Both high-brow and low-brow had been preceded by the corresponding adjectives. High-browed is traced by the NED Supplement to 1875 and low-browed to 1855. The search for a term to designate persons neither high-brows nor low-brows has led to the suggestion of mizzen-brow and mezzo-brow (the latter by the Literary Supplement of the London Times, Nov. 12, 1925, p. 751), but they have not caught on. One R.W.H. reported in S.P.E. Tract No. XXVII, 1927, p. 218, that the pedagogues of Harvard then divided students into highbrows, low highbrows, high lowbrows, lowbrows and solid ivories.

  4 Flu for influenza is not an Americanism. In the earlier form of flue it was used by Southey in 1839.

  1 Also called portmanteau-words, telescope-words, amalgams, etc. See Twenty-nine Synonyms for Portmanteau-word, by Harold Went-worth, American Speech, Dec., 1933, p. 78. See also More Portmanteau Coinages, by Robert Withington, American Speech, Feb., 1932, pp. 200–03 (with a brief bibliography), and AL4, p. 172, n. 2.

  2 Reported in American Speech, Dec., 1940, p. 371, where it is credited to Kalends, house-organ of the Waverly Press, Baltimore, Sept., 1940, p. 12.

  3 The date here is from New Evidence on Americanisms, by Woodford Heflin, American Speech, Feb., 1942, p. 65. The DAE’s first example is dated 1882.

  4 Coined by Ward McAllister. He said to Cecil Jerome Allen, a society reporter, “There are only 400 people in New York that one really knows,” and Allen gave the term currency. See Cecil Allen, N. Y. Sun Society Editor, Dies, Editor and Publisher, Dec. 18, 1937. McAllister died in 1895.

  5 American Notes and Queries, Dec., 1943, p. 134, says on the authority of the New York Times, July 18, 1942, that cafe-society was coined by the late Maury Paul (Cholly Knickerbocker) of the New York Journal American.

  6 Fox-trot is really much older. It appeared so early as 1900 in an article on the once-famous Cherry Sisters in the Des Moines Leader. The sisters sued for libel, but lost the case. See Cherry Sister’s Death Recalls Libel Decision, Editor and Publisher, Aug. 12, 1944, p. 48.

  7 In Know-How, American Speech, Feb., 1944, pp. 65–66, Louise Pound presents a discussion of this term by Clifton P. Williamson. It includes a definition by the U. S. District Court for the District of New Jersey, March, 1942.

  8 A railroad term signifying the makeup of a train of cars, extended in recent years to mean the make-up of a meal on a dining-car. See Consist, Noun, by Philip M. Wagner, American Speech, Oct., 1940, p. 342.

  1 Said to be used by Tammany as a folksy equivalent of the tattered conference.

  2 Shut-in, meaning a person confined to the house by illness or infirmity, is not listed by the DAE, but the NED marks it “U.S.” The NED’s first example is dated 1904; it is actually much older.

  3 In the sense of a Socialist less radical than a red. The DAE does not list pink, but the first example of the NED Supplement, dated 1924, is from the United States.

  4 Usually, young marrieds. Vogue, quoted in New Words for Old, Baltimore Evening Sun, (editorial page), March 8, 1939: “Young marrieds are building.”

  5 A mystery story or film. In Who Done Whodunit, Publishers’ Weekly, April 11, 1942, pp. 1405–06, C. B. Boutell presented evidence that whodunit was launched by Donald Gordon in American News of Books, July, 1930. I am indebted here to Mr. Jacob Blanck.

  6 Apparently a shortened form of great I-am. Inside Stuff — Legit, Variety, Jan. 12, 1944: “People who saw the ams then attended the professional show to see the difference with Karloff in action.”

  7 Julia Bumry Jones in Pittsburgh Courier, Feb. 5, 1938: “Many prominentals visited with us last week.”

  8 See A Contribution to the Study of the Conversion of Adjectives Into Nouns in English, by Carl Bergener; Lund (Sweden), 1928.

  9 The use of high and low as meteorological and stock-market terms seems to be American. Neither is listed by the DAE, but the NED Supplement’s first example of low (weather) is from the Popular Science Monthly, July, 1878, p. 310, and its first of high (stock market), from the London Weekly Dispatch, June 3, 1928, was long antedated in the United States. Its first of low (stock market), from the London Observer, 1929, was also antedated in this country. Said a writer in John o’ London’s Weekly, 1938, “An American does not turn a hair when he reads that ‘American Can [i.e., Tin] was nearly twenty points below its high of the year,’ or ‘What the fate of psychology will be now that it has hit its new low is difficult to predict.’ ” Both terms are used in numerous figurative senses.

  10 The Do-gooder Defined, St. Louis Post-Dispatch (editorial), Jan. 18, 1927.

  11 American Speech, April, 1930, p. 328.

  12 The American Drive, by C. D. P., American Speech, Oct., 1929, p. 51.

  13 In the New Yorker, Jan. 10, 1942, W. E. Farbstein ascribed the introduction of this term to H. B. Chamberlin of Chicago, but without hazarding the date.

  1 Dude is an Americanism of unknown origin, traced by the DAE to 1883. Originally it meant a dandy, but now it is used in the West to indicate any tourist. See Dude, Dudine, Duding, by J. D., American Speech, April, 1935, p. 158.

  2 Not listed by the DAE. The NED Supplement traces it to 1896, and Partridge says that it had reached England by 1902.

  3 The antonym of dirt-farmer is suitcase- or sidewalk-farmer. Says Robert Diller in Farm Ownership, Tenancy, and Land Use in a Nebraska Community; Chicago, 1941 (quoted in American Speech, Oct., 1941, p. 239): “Suitcase-farmer is used of farmers on the Great Plains who put in a crop of wheat in the Fall and come back to harvest it the next Summer, after having spent the Winter in their permanent homes elsewhere. A sidewalk-farmer … seems to be merely a farmer who lives in town and goes out to farm his fields in the neighboring countryside.” The prefix dirt- has been attached metaphorically to other nouns, e.g., dirt-lawyer, dirt-musician, dirt-sailor.

  4 The DAE traces grass-roots, in the sense of “the soil immediately below the surface of the ground,” to 1880. The Republican grass-roots conference was held at Springfield, Ill., early in June, 1935. See Grass-Roots, by Atcheson L. Hench, American Speech, Oct., 1936, p. 231, and Grass-Roots, by James Rorty, American Speech, Dec., 1936, p. 376.

  5 First applied, c. 1876, to Louisiana viligantes who specialized in flogging Negroes seeking to vote; later, 1881, applied to a revolver; still later to any persons applyin
g duress to another; finally to a machine for pushing earth.

  6 First applied to the Guion Line steamer Arizona, which crossed the Atlantic in 1870 at an average speed of 17.3 knots an hour. I am indebted here to my brother, August Mencken.

  7 Said to have been named by T. A. Dorgan, c. 1900. See Harry Stevens, Park Caterer, is Dead at 78, New York Herald Tribune, May 4, 1934. In an editorial, The Hot-Dog Mystery, June 2, 1931, the Herald Tribune reported that the Coney Island Chamber of Commerce, in 1913, “passed a resolution forbidding the use of the derogatory term dog” by concessionaires on the boardwalk. It added that hot-dog had reached England by that year.

  8 Proposed by Gelett Burgess in The Sulphitic Theory, Smart Set, April, 1906. This essay was reprinted as a book, under the title of Are You a Bromide? or, The Sulphitic Theory; New York, 1907. It was dedicated “to Gertrude McCall, chatelaine of Mac Manor and discoverer of the Sulphitic Theory.” A bromide was defined as one who “does his thinking by syndicate, follows the main-traveled roads, goes with the crowd”; his marks were his use of such clichés as “I don’t know much about art, but I know what I like” and “It’s bad enough to see a man drunk — but, oh! a woman!” A sulphite was defined as “a person who does his own thinking, a person who has surprises up his sleeve.” Sidphite gained but little vogue, but bromide had an immediate success, and now appears in most dictionaries. The NED Supplement shows that it was in use in England — by the professor of English literature at Oxford! — by 1909.

  9 On Oct. 13, 1941, Albert Law, editor of the Dalhart (Texas) Texan, broadcasting from Station KGNG at Amarillo, offered a reward of $50 for information as to who first used dust-bowl in print. There were various claimants, but the man whose claim seemed most valid to Mr. Law was nominated by others and refused to take the money. He was Robert Geiger, an Associated Press staff writer, who used the term in the introductory matter to a dispatch from Guymon, Okla., April 15, 1935. His disinclination to accept credit for originating it was due to fear that he might have picked it up from some one else. But the evidence seems to be clear that it was new in 1935. The money was handed to the Last Man’s Club of Dalhart, which gave it to the Boys’ Ranch at Old Tascosa, nearby. I am indebted here to Mr. Law.

  1 A fraternal order. See Over 100 Take Part in Dokkie Gathering, Greensboro (N. C.) News, Aug. 16, 1939, p. 12.

  2 Such words are called acronyms. See Initials Into Words, by Basil Davenport, American Notes and Queries, Feb., 1943, p. 167.

  3 Oomph is defined by Peter Tamony, in Origin of Words, San Francisco News Letter and Wasp, Aug. n, 1939, as “an articulation of a common male appraisal of a personable girl.” He says that “Walter Winchell used the present spelling in 1936, but changed to umph.” The word apparently originated in Hollywood, and Tamony says that the first “oomph girl of America” was Ann Sheridan, who was awarded the honor in 1937.

  4 Biff, as an interjection, is traced by the DAE to 1847, but it did not take on the sense of a blow until c. 1890.

  5 The DAE traces ki-yi as a verb to 1850, but its first example of the noun is dated 1883.

  6 Signifying an encomium of a book on the slip-cover. Coined by Gelett Burgess in 1907. The story was thus told in Footnotes to a Publisher’s Life, by B. W. Huebsch, in the Colophon, quoted in Word Study, May, 1938, pp. 5–6: “Burgess had come to me with a copy of an essay of his that had appeared in the Smart Set, entitled, ‘The Sulphide Theory,’ and suggested my issuing it in book form.… Under the name of ‘Are You a Bromide?’ it was published.… It is the custom of publishers to present copies of a conspicuous current book to booksellers attending the annual dinner of their trade association, and as this little book was in its heyday when the meeting took place I gave it to 500 guests. These copies were differentiated from the regular edition by the addition of a comic bookplate drawn by the author and by a special jacket which he devised. It was the common practise to print the picture of a damsel — languishing, heroic, or coquettish — anyhow, a damsel, on the jacket of every novel, so Burgess lifted from a Lydia Pink-ham or tooth-powder advertisement the portrait of a sickly sweet young woman, painted in some gleaming teeth, and otherwise enhanced her pulchritude, and placed her in the center of the jacket. His accompanying text was some nonsense about ‘Miss Blinda Blurb,’ and thus the term supplied a real need and became a fixture in our language.” Partridge says that blurb reached England in 1924. On Jan. 9, 1942, Lord Dunedin, an aged Scots peer, upbraided the Edinburgh Scotsman for using it, and demanded to know its meaning. He said he could not find it “in the Bible or in Macaulay or in Walter Scott.” The Scotsman printed a definition of it the same day, and various correspondents spoke of it favorably, but Lord Dunedin would have none of it, and on Jan. 12 denounced it as “a monstrosity imported, like so many others, from America.”

  7 Title of a book by Henshaw Ward; Indianapolis, 1926.

  1 Defined in American Notes and Queries, Aug., 1943, p. 71, as “a new root vegetable — a cross between a carrot and a beet.”

  2 Suggested by Maury Maverick as a substitute for hors d’oeuvres, which most Americans find unpronounceable.

  3 For a long list of such forms see American Indefinite Names, by Louise Pound, American Speech, April, 1931, pp. 257–59. In American Speech, April, 1940, p. 135, James McCune Harrison made some additions.

  4 Chicago and American Slanguage, by John Drury, Chicago Topics, Feb., 1926, pp. 12–36.

  1 A correspondent reports that Renovated was used in 1921 in a book by Lillyan Corbin, but I have been unable to verify this.

  2 A borrowing from the Yiddish (and German) pfui.

  3 Winchell did not invent whoopee, but the verb-phrase, to make whoopee, seems to be his. See Walter Winchell on Broadway, New York Mirror, Jan. 17, 1935. Whoopee, as an interjection, is traced by the DAE to 1862. It was used as a noun by Mark Twain in A Tramp Abroad, 1880, p. 80. Discussions of the term are in American Speech, April, 1930, p. 327; Feb., 1931, p. 234 and June, 1931, pp. 394–95, and in Delver in Dictionaries Believes That Whoopee Has Ancestors, New York Herald Tribune, Sept. 21, 1930.

  1 For example, in A Primer of Broadway Slang, Vanity Fair, Nov., 1927, pp. 67–134, and in his column in the New York Mirror, June 20, 1936. He has been the frequent subject of other students of the subject, as in Winchellese, by Paul Robert Beath, American Speech, Oct., 1931, pp. 44–46; Portrait of Walter Winchell, by Henry F. Pringle, American Mer cury, Feb., 1937, pp. 137–44; The Vocabulary of Columnists, by P. R. Beath, American Speech, April 1932, pp. 312–13; Walter Winchell, American Speech, Oct., 1937, p. 194; More Winchellisms, American Speech, April, 1942, p. 105, and Newly-Wedded Words, by Lester V. Berrey, American Speech, Feb., 1939. pp. 3–10.

  2 Winchell hailed him as “my tutor of the slanguage he helped me perfect” in an obituary notice in the New York Graphic, Oct. 4, 1928.

  3 The decree reducing the gold-content of the dollar from 25 8/10 grains to 15 5/21 was issued on Jan. 31, 1934. See A Note on Baloney, by Macklin Thomas, American Speech, Dec., 1935, pp. 318–19. There is some uncertainty about the spelling, and Berry and Van den Bark in their American Thesaurus of Slang record bolony, balony, bologna and ba-log-na. Al Smith apparently preferred baloney.

  4 The provenance of to scram is disputed, and Conway may have borrowed it from the cant of criminals, with which he was well acquainted. See Scram — “a Swell Five-Letter Woid,” by V. Royce West, American Speech, Oct., 1937, pp. 195–202. Partridge lists it as an Americanism and says that it reached England through the movies by 1930, but suggests that it may be related to an English dialect verb, to scramble, meaning “to get away with, with a notion of fear or stealth.”

  1 Some examples of their hard effort are given in Varying the Football Jargon, by Willis Stork, American Speech, Oct., 1934, pp. 237–39, and Color Stuff, by Harold E. Rockwell, American Speech, Oct., 1927, pp. 28–30.

  2 See AL4, p. 561; Cartoon Cavalcade, by Thomas Craven; New York, 1943, p. 18, and Tad, by Peter Tamony, San Francisco News Letter and Wasp, M
ay 26, 1938.

  3 A Word-Creator, by Jeffrey Fleece, American Speech, Feb., 1943, pp. 68–69, and Hamburger Progeny, by Arnold Williams, American Speech, April, 1939, p. 154.

  4 Billy De Beck Dies, Editor and Publisher, Nov. 14, 1942. See also How Snuffy Smith Became a Yard Bird, by Joseph Willicombe, Jr., Washington Times-Herald, Nov. 16, 1941. There are interesting discussions of the comic-strip vocabulary in Character Names in the Comic Strips, by Helen Tysell, American Speech, April, 1934, pp. 158–60, and The English of the Comic Cartoons, by the same, Feb., 1935, pp. 43–55. In the second of these papers Miss Tysell calls attention to the fondness of comic-strip artists for onomatopes, e.g., whap, zam, sputtt, tsk-tsk, urr-r-ruff, bam, yazunk and wham-bo. The effects of comic strips upon the vocabulary and thinking of American school children have been discussed by George E. Hill in Children’s Interest in Comic Strips, Educational Trends, March-April, 1939, pp. 11–14; Relation of Children’s Interests in Comic Strips to the Vocabulary of These Comics, Journal of Educational Psychology, Jan., 1943, pp. 48–87; Word Distortion in Comic Strips, Elementary School Journal, May, 1943, pp. 520–25, and The Vocabulary of Comic Strips, Journal of Educational Psychology, Feb., 1943, pp. 77–87. Dr. Hill’s conclusions were summarized in Comic-Strip Language, Time, June 21, 1943, p. 96.

  5 See AL4, p. 560.

  6 The Brighter Side, New York Mirror, Dec. 30, 1937, p. 10: “We never invent slang in fiction, or anywhere else. We merely report the language of our characters.” Runyon is very popular in England, and on Jan. 22, 1938, p. 59, the London Times Literary Supplement praised him as it has seldom praised an American author. “The capital interest in his stories,” it said, “lies in his use of words, particularly in his use of cant terms which, by allusion or analogy, are given fresh or vivid meaning.”

  1 It was admitted to Webster 1934 in the headline sense of “an investigation or inquiry directed to the discovery of evidence of wrongdoing.” See Recent Developments in Usage Evident From a Comparison of the First and Second Editions of Webster’s New International Dictionary, by W. Paul Jones, summarized in Word Study Suggestion Leaflet, issued by the publishers of the dictionary, May, 1938.