American Language Supplement 1
Page 67
1 For the following I am indebted to Dr. M. J. Bach, before cited: “Kibitzer was born, not amongst the Jews, but in the old Austrian Army. Count Karl Schoenfeld (1828–66) left a manuscript of reminiscences, the first part of which, Ein Ordonnanzoffizier Radetskys, was published in 1909. In this he tells how, during the Italian campaign of 1848–49, he was a member of the Adjutantenkorps under General Haizinger, and how the latter had a little dog called Kiebitz, meaning a plover, and how the officers of the line jocularly called those of the Adjutantenkorps Kiebitze. Kiebitz soon became a slang word for anyone who merely looks on at the game, and from the army it spread to the cafés of Vienna.” The connection, of course, arose from the fact that, to line officers, staff officers seem to be mere onlookers. In a newspaper article, Feb. 13, 1935, noted in American Speech, April, 1935, p. 128, Ely Culbertson reported two variations of kibitizer — dorbitzer, signifying “one who has asked and received the permission of the kibitzers to join them,” and tsitser, meaning “one who has asked permission of no one” and whose rights “are restricted to hovering in the background and expressing himself by Ts! ts! ts!” In Lighting Fixtures and Lighting, Feb., 1927, p. 70, I find kibitzee, designating a player kibitzed. Kibitzer has passed to England, as witness Bridge, by A. E. Manning Foster, London Observer, Aug. 2, 1936: “It was decided to allow kibitzers who pay for admission.”
2 For the last two see Consumer Vocabulary, American Speech, Feb., 1933, p. 80.
3 Both so what? and for why? are also in use in England. I find the latter, for example, in Peter Howard’s column in the London Sunday Express, May 1, 1938, and in an office ad of the Daily Express, June 25, 1936. So What? was the title of a book by an Englishman, Charles Landery, published in London in 1938. In Saturday Night (Toronto), Feb. 5, 1944, p. 9, it appears in an advertisement of the National Trust Company, Ltd., over the signature of J. M. MacDonnell, the president thereof, who is a member of the bar and a former Rhodes scholar. I am indebted here to Mr. J. Ragnar Johnson of Calgary.
4 Mazuma, by H. Heshin, American Speech, May, 1926, p. 456.
5 Sometimes written, incorrectly, tokos, tokus, tochus or dokus. The ch should have the sound in the German ich. I am indebted here to Dr. C. A. Rubenstein of Baltimore.
1 You Speak Yiddish, Too! Better English, Feb., 1938, p. 50.
2 The first edition was published at Augsburg in 1512 or thereabout. Luther’s edition was published at Wittenberg. The material in the book was mainly derived from the records of a series of trials of rogues and vagabonds at Basel in 1475.
3 The Dictionary of the Canting Crew. The author signed himself B. E., and his identity has not been established.
4 I take these from Furniture Lingo, by Charles Miller, American Speech, Dec., 1930, pp. 125–28.
1 See Lingo of the Shoe Salesman, by David Geller, American Speech, Dec., 1934, pp. 283–86. This paper includes a glossary compiled by J. S. Fox. See also Shoe-store Terms, by Erik I. Bromberg, American Speech, April, 1938, p. 150, and Shoe-store Shop-talk Language of Its Own, New York Herald Tribune, July 3, 1936, p. 6.
2 For the former see Department-store Technical Expressions, American Speech, Dec., 1938, pp. 312–13. For the latter see Jewelry Auction Jargon, by Fred Witman, American Speech, June, 1928, pp. 375–76.
3 Some American Idioms From the Yiddish, American Speech, Feb., 1943, pp. 43–48.
4 A Yiddish popular song often sung in 1938 was Bei Mir Bist Du Scheen (By Me You Are Beautiful).
5 I am indebted for help with this Yiddish section to the late Dr. Isaac Goldberg, Dr. Carl Manello of Youngstown, O., Mr. Harry B. Winkeler of St. Louis, Mrs. Louis Silverman of Baltimore, the late Dr. William A. Rosenau of Baltimore, Mr. B. G. Kayfetz of Toronto, Mr. Garrett Oppenheim of New York, Mr. Charles Lam Markmann of New York, Mr. Harry G. Green of Chicago, Dr. John Whyte of Brooklyn, and Dr. J. S. Slotkin of Madison, Wis. The best vocabulary of Yiddishisms that I know of is in Wonder Words, by Benjamin L. Winfield; New York, 1933. A briefer glossary is in So Help Me, by George Jessel; New York, 1943, pp. 228–29. Yidische Oisdrukn in Amerikaner English, by M. Hurvitz, Yivo Bleter (New York), 1934, pp. 187–88, is a discussion of Yiddish loans in American, written in Yiddish.
1 Kaempfer (1651–1716) was a German doctor who entered the Dutch service and traveled extensively in the Far East. The MS. of his History of Japan was translated into English by J. G. Scheuchzer and published in London in 1727. The original German was not published until 1777.
2 The nickname of William H. Murray, Governor of Oklahoma, 1931–35. He gives it in parentheses in his autobiography in Who’s Who in America. Alfalfa, up to c. 1850, was usually called lucern.
3 The Living Language, by Dwight L. Bolinger, Words, Jan., 1938, p. 14.
4 The Spelling of wa-wa or wah-wah, by Mary Elizabeth Fox, American Speech, Oct., 1941, p. 240.
1 Smorgasbord, lutfisk, lefse, by E. G. Johnson, Saturday Review of Literature, July 20, 1940, p. 9.
2 As a proper noun, designating a lake in New York, it goes back to 1749, but as a common noun it is not recorded before 1884. See The Word Chautauqua, by J. R. Schultz, American Speech, Oct., 1934, pp. 232–33.
3 Why Should Not This Policy as Well be Called Spinach?, by Charles Wyer, New York Sun, Sept. 3, 1938.
1 The Idaho Statesman (Boise), July 23, 1939, described yuen as “an important word in the history of Boise Valley and Southern Idaho.… Chinese gardeners began feeding the miners more than half a century ago. They’re still feeding the miners, the bankers, and the general public.… Yuens of the present day are, for the most part, operated by the children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren of the original gardeners.”
2 It is often turned into hari-kari. For its etymology and true spelling see A Distorted Japanese Word, by Eston Everett Ericson, American Speech, Dec., 1936, pp. 371–72.
3 A long list of Japanese words that are more or less understood in England and the United States is in The Influence of Japanese on English, by E. V. Gatenby, Studies in English Literature (Tokyo), Vol. XI, 1931, pp. 508–20, and in Additions to Japanese Words in English, by the same, Oct. 1934, pp. 595–609. The loans used to designate Japanese in California are discussed in Chapter VI, Section 6.
1 I am indebted here to Mr. Carl B. Costello of Duluth, Minn.
2 Norsk Novelties by M. Mattison, American Speech, April, 1934, p. 152.
3 I take this from Czech Influence Upon the American Vocabulary, by J. B. Dudek, Czecho-Slovak Student Life (Lisle, Ill.), June, 1928, p. 12. Monsignor Dudek goes on: “The favorite filling is a typical Czech marmalade made of dried prunes and known as povidla. Sometimes curd, sweetened and flavored, or a cinnamon and sugar mixture, is used; another filling, which however has not proved acceptable to the American palate, is boiled poppy seeds, highly sweetened.” See also AL4, p. 216.
4 AL4, p. 216.
5 Poland Is Not Yet Lost, by Ralph Lane, American Speech, April, 1940, pp. 209–10.
6 Russian Words in Kansas, by G. D. C., Dialect Notes, Vol. IV, Part II, 1914, pp. 161–62. The Indian loans used by anthropologists in describing Indian artifacts and cultural patterns are listed in Some Anthropological Terms Used in the Southwest, by T., M. Pearce, El Palachio (Santa Fe, N. Mex.), June, 1943, pp. 130–41.
VI
AMERICAN AND ENGLISH
I. THE INFILTRATION OF ENGLISH BY AMERICANISMS
223. Sir William Craigie, editor of the Dictionary of American English and one of the editors of the New English Dictionary, is authority for the statement that the infiltration of English by Americanisms began on a large scale more than a hundred years ago. He says:
For some two centuries, roughly down to 1820, the passage of new words or senses across the Atlantic was regularly westward; practically the only exceptions were terms which denoted articles or products peculiar to the new country. With the Nineteenth Century, however, the contrary current begins to set in, bearing with it many a piece of driftwood to the shores of Britain, there to be picked up and incorporat
ed in the structure of the language. The variety of these contributions is no less notable than their number.1
Sir William then proceeds to list some of the principal categories of these adopted Americanisms, as follows:
1. “There are terms which owe their origin to the fresh conditions and experiences of the new country,” e.g., backwoods, blizzard, bluff, canyon, dugout, Indian-file, prairie, squatter.
2. “There are terms of politics and public activity,” e.g., carpet-bagger, caucus, gerrymander, indignation-meeting, lynch-law.
3. “There are words and phrases connected with business pursuits, trades, and manufactures,” e.g., cross-cut saw, elevator, snow-plow, to corner, to strike oil.
4. There is “a large residue of miscellaneous examples,” e.g., at that, to take a back seat, boss, to cave in, cold snap, to face the music, grave-yard, to go back on, half-breed, lengthy, loafer, law-abiding, whole-souled.
How many such Americanisms have actually got into accepted English it would be impossible to say, for on that point there is sharp disagreement among Englishmen. But a large number have become so thoroughly naturalized that the English dictionaries no longer mark them aliens, and even the most intransigent Englishmen have ceased to denounce them, e.g., reliable, lengthy, prairie, caucus and bluff. Others still have the sharp tang of novelty and are avoided by all persons careful of their speech, and in the middle between these two extremes there is a vast twilight zone of Americanisms that have more or less current popularity but may or may not find lodgment in the vocabulary hereafter. In the early days the chief exchanges in both directions were on the upper levels of usage, and most of the Americanisms adopted in England were sponsored on this side of the ocean by such men as Jefferson, John Adams, J. Fenimore Cooper and Noah Webster, but since the beginning of the present century the chief English borrowings have been from American slang. It is generally agreed by English observers that American movies have been mainly responsible for this shift, but it is not to be forgotten that the American comic-strip and American pulp-magazines have also had a powerful influence, and that the American popular humorists of the post-Civil War era opened the way long before movies, comic-strips or pulp-magazines were thought of.1 When the silent movies began to be supplanted by talkies many hopeful Englishmen rejoiced, for they believed that the American accent would be unendurable to their countrymen, that English-made talkies would thus prevail over those from Hollywood, and that the inundation of Americanisms would be stayed at last. But this hope turned out to be in vain, for the Hollywood producers quickly trained their performers to speak what passed sufficiently as English, and in a little while they were deluging the English plain people with even more and much worse Americanisms than had ever appeared in the legends on the silent films.2 The battle between English and American talkies that ensued came to highly significant issues in both countries. In England the commonalty rejoiced in the new influx of American neologisms and soon adopted large numbers of them, but in America the movie fans refused to tolerate the pseudo-Oxford accent and frequent Briticisms of the English actors,1 and in consequence the English films, with relatively-few exceptions, failed dismally. Simultaneously, the educated classes in England resented and resisted the American talkies, and the Anglo-maniacs of the United States welcomed the English talkies with colonial enthusiasm. The educated Englishmen, always powerful in their government, procured the enactment of laws limiting the importation of American films,2 and carried on a violent war upon them in the newspapers, but the English middle and lower classes found them perfectly satisfying, and soon the Americanisms they introduced in such large number were in wide use, and many began to penetrate to the higher levels of speech.3 In the linguistic interchanges between England and the United States this curious dichotomy has been witnessed for a long while. Americanisms get into English use on the lower levels and then work their way upward, but nearly all the Briticisms that reach the United States first appear on the levels of cultural pretension, and most of them stay there, for the common people will have none of them.
As we have already seen in Chapter I, Section 4, the old English battle against the American invasion, which began violently in the closing years of the Eighteenth Century and raged on with frequent bursts of fury for more than a hundred years, has now begun to abate, and a considerable number of Englishmen appear to be convinced that the American tail is destined to wag the English dog hereafter; indeed, there are plenty who try to convince themselves that the inevitable is also the agreeable, and had better be enjoyed as much as possible. It seems to be generally agreed that nothing can be done, short of pumping up a war with the United States, to shut off the flow of Americanisms, at all events on the lower levels of the population. Nor has anyone devised any plausible scheme to keep them from penetrating upward. English newspapers, even the most stiff-necked, admit them constantly and in large number, they are eagerly seized upon by native imitators of the American comic-strips,1 advertisement writers make eager use of them, and it becomes the sign of bonhomie for politicians and other public entertainers to play with them, albeit they usually do so somewhat ponderously, as will appear. Such familiar Americanisms as chain-store, can (for tin), to rattle, to put across, back number, boom, crook, to feature, filling-station, O.K., mass-meeting, up against and up to have now become so familiar in England too that it is no longer necessary to interpret them, and many others, perhaps to the number of thousands, seem destined to make the grade hereafter. So late as 1932 the New York correspondent of the London Observer2 was at pains to explain that hot-dogs were “broiled sausages in split rolls,” but since then the austere London Times has given its countenance to high-brow, the Daily Express has quite nonchalantly characterized the chaplain to a bishop as a fence-sitter,3 the eminent News of the World has adopted gate-crasher,4 the Birkenhead Advertiser has given its imprimatur to to scram,1 the Air Ministry has used hooch in a warning to the gentlemen of the R.A.F.,2 Gilbert Frankau has printed a moving defense of lousy,3 and Edward Shanks has gone earnestly to the bat for alibi, in the American sense of any dubious excuse.4 The list of such yieldings and embracings might be lengthened greatly. New Americanisms are being taken in all the time, sometimes with a time lag, sometimes with a change (or, more accurately, a misunderstanding) of meaning, but usually very promptly and in their native sense. The English newspapers frequently report and philosophize upon a recent novelty, and usually they advise their readers to avoid it, but most of them seem to be convinced that stemming the influx has now become hopeless. In 1935 a contributor to a sedate provincial paper attempted a round-up of the Americanisms “that we constantly employ,” including some “that we hardly recognize as of American origin, so rooted in standard English have they become.”5 Under the letters from H to O his list showed the following:
half-baked
halfbreed6
hand it to him (verb)7
hang out (verb)8
handy9
happen in (verb)10
happy hunting-ground11
hash, to settle his12
have the floor (verb)
have the goods on13
hayseed14
headed for disaster1
headlight2
head off (verb)3
head-on (collision) help (servant)
he-man4
hike, hiker
hard-boiled (in the figurative sense)
highfalutin5
high old time6
hitch (verb, usually with up)7
hitched (married)8
hobble (verb)9
holding company
hold on (imperative)10
hold-up11
home-folks
homely
homesick12
homespun13
honk (verb)14
hook, one’s own15
hoot, to care a16
horse-sense17
house-keep (verb)
house-clean (verb)
hunch18
hurr
y up
hustler, to hustle19
Indian Summer
influential
inside1
interview
iron out (verb)
it2
jack-knife3
jam4
jay-walker
jazz
jell (verb)5
jeopardize6
jiggered7
joker (in card games)8
jolly (verb)9
joy-ride
jugged (jailed)10
jumping-off place11
jump on with both feet
junk (in the sense of refuse)12
just13
keep company with14
keep tabs on15
keep your shirt on16
key man
kick (as in “something with a kick in it”)
kick the bucket17
kid (verb)18
kitchenette
knickers
knife (verb)1
knock about (to wander)2
know him like a book
know the ropes3
kodak
kow-tow4
landslide (political)5
laugh in one’s sleeve
laugh on me
law-abiding6
lemon, to hand him a7
lengthy
let it slide8
level best9
level-headedness10
lid on, to put the
limelight, in the
limit (“the last stage of endurance”)
lip, to keep a stiff upper11
loaf (verb), loafer
lobby (verb)
lounge-lizard lynch (verb)
machine (political)
mad (angry)
make a get-away12
make oneself scarce13