American Language Supplement 1
Page 68
make the fur fly14
make tracks15
mark, easy
mark up (verb)
mass-meeting16
medicine, to take your17
melon18
mending19
mileage
mixer (in the social sense)20
monkey with (verb)
mossback
mutt1
nearby (close at hand)2
N.G.3
nigger in the woodpile4
nothing doing
not on your life
O.K.
old-timer5
one-horse6
on the job
on the level7
on the q.t.
out for8
overcoat9
This list, obviously, was by no means exhaustive. It might have been doubled in length, or tripled, or even quadrupled without putting any strain on the record. Most of the borrowings of the 1930s were probably on the level of slang, but even on that level many of them were so pungent and useful that they quickly found lodgment. “It is difficult to imagine,” wrote Professor Ernest Weekley of Nottingham in 1930,10 “how we got on so long without the word stunt, how we expressed the characters so conveniently summed up in dope-fiend and high-brow, or any other possible way of describing that mixture of the cheap pathetic and the ludicrous which is now universally labeled sob-stuff.”11 Other English philologues of the era were a good deal less hospitable. In 1931 Dr. C. T. Onions, one of the editors of the NED, described it as a “grievance” that English was being “invaded — and degraded — by the current idiom from the United States,”12 and so late as 1936 he was trying to get rid of that grievance by arguing stoutly that the extent of the invasion was “much exaggerated.”13 But even Dr. Onions had to admit that “a certain proportion of the American language of the film caption” would “catch on1 and become permanent.” He noted that to put it across, to get it across, and to put it over2 were already “firmly-domiciled” in England and apparently “entered upon a large career of metaphorical use.” Other Americanisms that he spoke of politely, if not enthusiastically, were bedspread,3 to make good,4 grape-fruit,5 dope,6 mass-meeting, best girl,7 to fire (an employé)8 and to fizzle out.9 But he refused to have any truck with to stand for, glad rags or hot squat, and he described to spill a bibful as “tinged with vulgarity.” Sir William Craigie made it plain in 1936 that he did not agree with Dr. Onions that the number of Americanisms taken into English was “much exaggerated.” To the contrary, he told a correspondent of the London Morning Post10 that “current English contains many more real Americanisms than most people imagine.” Many other authorities, high and low, agreed with him, then and afterward. “England,” wrote Alistair Cooke in 1935,11 “has been absorbing American words at an unbelievable rate.… There are thousands of these borrowings — debts which I am afraid we are never going to pay back to America.… Every Englishman … unconsciously uses thirty or forty Americanisms a day, however much he is opposed to American idiom on principle.” In 1936 H. W. Horwill reported from London in the New York Times12 that the sales of American books were increasing in England, and ascribed it to the ever wider English familiarity with and use of Americanisms. “However much the pedants may rail and the grammarians quake,” wrote an observant Englishman in 1939,1 “American is steadily entering more and more into the Englishman’s written and spoken language. Nobody now would jibe at governmental, hold-up or junk, and the use in conversation of such a phrase as ‘an idea resurrected2 from the Nineteenth Century’ breaks no one’s heart except the ultra-purist’s, while the Times Educational Supplement (of all papers), has used to enthuse in its book reviews.” “The English language,” added a resigned Scotswoman in 1944, “is probably unique in being a blend of two languages — not counting Latin and Greek — and is rapidly absorbing a third — American.”3
The English newspapers frequently print anecdotes designed to show the extent to which American slang has been absorbed from the movies by English children, especially on the lower levels. One tells of a schoolboy who was asked to put the following sentences into his own words: “I see a cow. The cow is pretty. The cow can run.” His reply was: “Boy, lamp de cow. Ain’t she a honey? An’ I ask you, kin she take it on de lam!”4 Another has to do with a boy arrested at Southend for riding a bicycle without lights. His defense was that someone had pinched his dynamo, i.e., his generator.
The Magistrate. You mean stolen it.
The Prisoner. That’s right — pinched it.
The Magistrate. Stolen.
The Prisoner. Yes. Pinched it. Pinched it at the railway-station.5
The arrival of American troops in England and Northern Ireland in 1942 helped along the process that American movies and comic-strips had started. A correspondent of the Belfast News-Letter, early in 1943,6 reported that the erstwhile sonsy wee lassies of the Scotch-Irish North had become swell dames, and that “farmers’ children deep in the heart of Ulster” had learned “Aw, lay off.” A month or so later a correspondent of the Belfast Telegraph7 reported that truck for lorry had come into universal use in Ulster, and that the American guy, meaning simply anybody, had begun to displace the English guy, meaning a grotesque and ridiculous person. Says H. W. Horwill:1
The naturalization of American usage in England … is a process that never slackens.… (1) The use of adverbs to intensify the meaning of verbs, e.g., to close down, to test out, has made rapid headway among English writers and speakers since the beginning of the present century. (2) There is an increasing tendency to adopt those combinations of verb and adverb which Americans prefer to a single verb or a more roundabout expression, e.g., to turn down rather than to reject, and to put across rather than to secure the adoption of. (3) Those sections of the English daily press which have been becoming more and more Americanized in other respects are following the American example in the choice of short words for headlines. (4) Certain uses of familiar words, which at the beginning of the century (or, at the outside, fifty years ago) were peculiar to the United States, are now either completely naturalized … or evidently on their way to naturalization. (5) … Many words and locutions invented in America … have become so thoroughly incorporated in the language that few of us are aware that they are actually American coinages. Every one recognizes, of course, that such terms as banjo, blizzard, bogus, bunkum and lynch law came to us from across the Atlantic, but it would surprise most Englishmen to be told that they owe to American to belittle, boarding-house, business man, governmental, graveyard, hurricane-deck, law-abiding, lengthy, overcoat, telegram and whole-souled.2
Horwill, after discussing the influence of the movies and talkies in this Americanization of English, adds that two other factors have had an important effect: “the increasing attention … paid in England to American books and magazines,” and “the fact that … many members of the staffs of English newspapers are either Americans or English journalists who have spent several years in the practice of their profession in the United States.”3 An example of this class is provided by H. W. Seaman. His ten years of American experience made him a master of the American language, and since his return to England he has recorded a large number of observations of its influence upon English. I leave the subject by offering some of his notes:1
To stop, meaning to stay, has not been adopted in England, but the railways issued stopover tickets.
Peanut has completely ousted monkey-nut.
Chain-store is heard much more often than multiple-shop.2 A stores is almost obsolete. Woolworth’s is a store, not a stores, or even a shop. The corner grocery, however, remains a shop. We speak of the Army and Navy Stores and the Civil Service Stores, but of Selfridge’s store or Gamage’s store: these are department-stores.3 A department-stores sounds old-fashioned.
Cooler, meaning a jail, is now fairly current in England, and even calaboose is understood, thanks to a popular song.
No English dramatic critic would shrink from writing of a
flop.
Snag is much used here of late, but only in its figurative sense. Few Englishmen have any idea that it means a sunken or half sunken log in a river.4
Headline in Daily Express, May 16, 1944: Russia Puts Heat on Sweden. No quotes or explanation now necessary.
I came across hamburger, in Roman, with no quotes, in the Times the other day. No eating-place here serves hamburgers, but everybody knows what they are, or nearly. All same hot-dogs. But barbecue, word and thing, is still unknown.
The Daily Chronicle recently explained that a baloney was a sort of breakfast sausage, but all movie-goers know the use of the word.
Kids now say choo-choo instead of puff-puff.5
Boys write “So-and-so is a sap,” or a sis, on walls.
These are now used without a thought of their American origin: bat, to bawl out, blowhard, bunk, darn, golly, gosh, grouch, hick (old English, but apparently reintroduced from America), ice-cream soda, to knock, lid, once-over, peach (of a), pull (influence), roughneck, simp and wop.
These are used as conscious Americanisms: to beat it, bootlegging, dumb-bell, to jail for, to fix, four-flusher, go-getter, good mixer, graft, hunch, nut, room-mate, whale of a.
Tuxedo was used without quotes in the head and body of a story on the sports page of the London Sunday Chronicle, May 14, 1944.6
Bathing-suit is now heard far more often than swim-suit.1
Through, meaning finished, is now respectable English. This has come to pass within ten years or less.2
London Daily Express, May 20, 1944: “The Abbey is an ashcan.” Ashcan is now preferred to dustbin.
Radio has driven wireless virtually out of use. Even the London Times, which clings to aether, has surrendered to radio.
Stag-party is understood, but has not been widely adopted. Stag alone, as an adjective or noun in the American sense, is unknown.
Punch’s theatre article used to be headed “Our Booking Office.” Today everybody speaks and writes of the box-office of a theatre. Only a railway ticket-office is a booking-office.
What it takes is now used freely. Few Englishmen realize that the idiom in “Britain can take it” is American.
Double-cross and four-flush are now respectable English, though poker is not an English popular game.
Good-looker is now fairly common in England, but not good buy for a bargain.
Pin-up girl is in wide use.
To lay off, meaning to desist from, is used editorially in the London Sunday Times, June 11, 1944.
Racket, for a swindling conspiracy, is well known and much used, but so is its English equivalent, ramp.3
2. SURVIVING DIFFERENCES
Despite the evidence offered in the preceding section that American has had a heavy influence upon English in recent years, it remains a fact that the two languages still show many differences, not only in vocabulary but also in idiom, accent and intonation. When an untraveled American finds himself among Englishmen for the first time these dissimilarities inevitably puzzle him. The English in many cases use different words for the same common objects, they give to common words quite different meanings, they make frequent use of words and phrases that are seldom or never heard in America, they have different répertoires of everyday intensives and cuss-words, they pronounce many words differently and their talk is based upon different speech-tunes.1 The same thing, of course, runs the other way, but I believe that Englishmen, talking one with another, find American considerably less difficult than Americans find English, if only because they have become so familiar with large numbers of American terms and idioms. Unhappily, not a few of them, especially on the more literate levels, resent the notion that English and American are different quite as much as they resent the notion that American is influencing their speech, and anyone who undertakes to investigate either subject is pretty sure to be denounced for his pains. In each of the four editions of “The American Language” I have printed lists of the surviving differences between the current vocabularies of American and English, and each time I have been belabored by such chauvinists as a false prophet, and, indeed, an idiot. More than one of them has added the suggestion that my real motive in undertaking such cruel labors was to drive a wedge between the two great branches of the Anglo-Saxon peoples, and thus prosper the enemies of democracy and Christianity, and more than one American Anglomaniac has played with the same idea. There is in each country, in fact, a highly articulate group which holds that any notice of linguistic disparities between them, however academic, is seditious, immoral and against God. Fortunately, this doctrine does not seem to be shared by their official spokesmen, for when World War II brought American and British troops into contact for the second time in a generation, the General Staffs of both armies, recalling the unpleasantness that had followed misunderstandings in World War I, proceeded at once to issue what amounted, in substance, to American-English dictionaries.2
That of the American Army was included in a pamphlet entitled “A Short Guide to Great Britain,” prepared by the Special Service Division, Service of Supply, and first published in 1942. It did not pretend to be exhaustive, but nevertheless it managed to present a list of no less than 183 everyday American terms, unknown or unfamiliar in England, that are represented in English by equivalents similarly strange in the United States. Soon afterward the Special Service Division prepared like pocket-guides to Northern Ireland, Australia and New Zealand, each containing notes on language differences, and all three were issued jointly by the Army and Navy. On June 15, 1943 there followed a dictionary for American supply men, published in the various editions of the Army paper, the Stars and Stripes,1 and at other times yet other vocabularies were published for other special purposes.2 Meanwhile, the English brought out various pamphlets of the same general tenor, the most widely circulated of which was “Meet the U. S. Army,” written by Louis MacNeice and issued on July 22, 1943. This was put on sale at the low price of fourpence, and had a large circulation in England, Scotland and Northern Ireland, not only among British troops but also among civilians. It was not the first thing of its sort to appear in England under official auspices. Early in 1942, when R.A.F. cadets began coming to the United States for training, the Air Ministry prepared a little pamphlet for them under the title of “Notes For Your Guidance,” and soon afterward the Ministry of Information issued a word-list for the information of British artists invited to exhibit at an Anglo American show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In January, 1943 the N.A.A.F.I.1 brought out a pamphlet for the guidance of its staff in dealing with American soldiers, and later a number of other such treatises were published by other organizations. The pamphlet for air cadets contained this:
What can we say about studying the American people as a whole?… The best key to a nation’s mind is its language. That, you will say, is English. Not at all. It may be called English, but it is American.
The guide for N.A.A.F.I. girls warned them not to be shocked if American soldiers opened a conversation with “How-ya, baby?” If this, it said, seemed saucy, let them remember that it was just as normal to a lad from Iowa as “Lovely day, isn’t it?”2 To these English guides to speech differences the New Zealanders presently added a glossary headed “How We Talk” in a pamphlet entitled “Meet New Zealand.” It explained for the information of American soldiers sent to the Dominion the meaning of such characteristic New Zealanderisms as to argue the toss, benzine (for gasoline), to feel crook, dinkum, jakealoo, lollies, pommie, to shout, to right and up the pole.3
So far as I know, the English foes of the notion that American and English differ have not complained of any of these official lists, but they are sure to denounce any list less authoritatively supported, so I have sought to baffle them by basing the one that follows on the vocabulary in the War Department’s “Short Guide to Great Britain,” and by offering printed evidence, usually English, for most of the other differences noted. In not a few cases it is genuinely difficult to establish the facts, for a great many Americanisms
, as we saw in the last section, have got into English use in recent years, and not a few terms that seem distinctively American today are actually English archaisms. It is easy for the English guardians of the language to produce evidence that these archaisms were used, say, by Chaucer or Shakespeare, and to argue thereby that they are not Americanisms at all. In case after case the attitude of such earnest but humorless men toward a given Americanism recalls that of Holy Church toward embarrassing scientific discoveries, as described by Andrew D. White, viz., they first denounce it violently, then admit it quietly, and then end by denying that they were ever against it. This, in brief, has been the history in England of the early reliable and caucus, and no doubt many an Americanism that is still below the salt will follow the pattern. That there are still wide divergences between American and English usage on the level of everyday speech, despite the powerful influence upon the English vocabulary of American movies, was demonstrated beyond cavil by Horwill in his “Dictionary of Modern American Usage” and again in his “Anglo-American Interpreter.”1 There are slips and misunderstandings in both books, and inevitably so,2 but on the whole Horwill is well-informed and painstaking, and I am glad to acknowledge a debt to him. In the following list3 all doublets taken from the Army’s “Short Guide to Great Britain” are indicated by an asterisk (*).
American English
A.B. (bachelor of arts) B.A.4
*absorbent cotton cotton wool5
ad (advertisement) advert6
admit to the bar (law) call to the bar1
advertising manager (or director) advertisement manager2
*aisle (theatre) gangway3
*alcohol-lamp spirit-lamp
*ale beer, or bitter
Almshouse workhouse4
alumnus (of a college) graduate5
A.M. (master of arts) M.A.6
ambulance-chaser accident tout7
anxious-bench, or -seat, or mourners-bench, or –seat penitent-form8