American Language Supplement 1

by H. L. Mencken

  Even the common measures differ in England and the United States, sometimes in name but more often in value. When, in 1942, World War II took officers and men of the Quartermaster Corps, U.S.A., to England, they were greatly puzzled by these differences until Colonel Wayne Allen prepared his bilingual glossary, already mentioned, for the Quartermaster Review.1 I quote the following from his accompanying discourse:

  Goods or produce usually sold in the United States by capacity, such as bushels, are here sold by weight, sometimes expressed in stones or scores. A stone is equivalent to 14 pounds, and a score is equal to 20 pounds. Packaging of articles in half-stone (7 lbs.) or quarter-stone (3½ lbs.) weights is customary.…

  We refer to nails in terms of pennyweights, which is a vestige of the past and originally meant the weight of a silver penny, equivalent approximately to½0 ounce. The British describe nails by their length. We had a great deal of difficulty in correlating these two methods, because our people never knew how long a six-penny nail was, but after getting together with the British and inspecting samples of our nails and samples of theirs we were able to arrive at a common understanding.…

  We describe rope in measurements of the diameter and the weight in pounds, whereas the British describe it in measurement of circumference and the length in fathoms.… Rope, manila, 5/16" diameter is, in British terminology, cordage, sisal, white, 1" circumference.2

  Colonel Allen seems to have been in error about the value of a stone, which is actually a variable quantity. Said a writer in the London Observer in 1935:3

  Whilst a stone-weight of a living man is 14 lb., that of a dead ox is 8 lb. A stone of cheese is 16 lb., of glass 5 lb., of iron 14 lb., of hemp 32 lb., of wool sold by growers and woolstaplers 14 lb., but sold to each other 15 lb.

  The same writer offered the following notes upon other English weights and measures:

  A barrel of beef is 200 lb., butter 224 lb., flour 196 lb., gunpowder 100 lb., soft soap 256 lb., beer 36 gallons, and tar 26½ gallons, while a barrel of herrings is 500 fish.

  Butter in England is sold by the pound of 16 oz., by the roll of 24 oz., by the stone and by the hundredweight, which is not 100 lb., as in Canada and the United States, but 112 lb.

  Even the English gallon differs from the American gallon. In 1937, when large numbers of Americans went to London for the coronation of King George VI, some of them taking their automobiles, a writer in the London Daily Express thus sought to enlighten them:1

  Gallon: you will receive 277½ cubic inches of petrol. In the States you would have to be content with 231 cubic inches of gas.

  Pint: English, 20 fluid ounces; American, 16 ditto.2

  One of the most striking differences between even nearly related languages is their varying use of fundamentally identical prepositions: it is almost unheard of for both members of an apparent pair to be used similarly in all situations. The German über, for example, may serve for above, over, across or about (concerning) in English, and the English to may call for zu, nach or um zu in German.3 A few examples will show how, in this field, English usage sometimes differs from American:

  Helstonleigh, Emsworth, Hants … will be offered to auction in October.4

  Since the sale of the property it has been offered for resale by auction.5

  He knows everything it contains off by heart.6

  Strube … was entertained to dinner by his colleagues of the Express.7

  “What is the use of waving a red flag to a bull?” he asked.8

  31 ft. 6 in. frontage to Curzon St.9

  Many other examples might be cited. An Englishman, as we have seen, does not live on a street, but in it, though he lives on a road. He does not get on a train or aboard it, but in it, and when he leaves it he does not get off it but out of it.1 There are also curious differences in the use of up and down. Says R. Howard Claudius:2

  Our general rule is to say up when we are going north and down when we go south; with the English, in most of their goings about, a quite different idea underlies their feeling of direction. It is an idea they inherit, through their railroads, from old stagecoach days, that of one end of the run being of more importance than the other, and, consequently, being the up end. London is up for points lying around it for many miles in all directions, and every other city enjoys the same prerogative. Every railroad running into a city has its up-line and its down-line, and every Englishman knows which is which — as long as he is in that particular city. But how far can he go from that city, toward the city at the other end of the run, before the up-line becomes the down-line and the down-line the up-line? When in London he may freely speak of going down to Liverpool, but in Liverpool that would be patronizing.3

  In the United States up and down tracks are not unknown, but it is much more common to use eastbound, westbound, northbound, and southbound. The latter terms are also used in the London underground, but otherwise they are foreign to English practise. The DAE, rather curiously, marks eastbound, westbound and southbound, in railroad use, Americanisms, but not northbound; that, however, may be only one more proof that lexicography is not yet an exact science. It traces all four to the early 80s, but I suspect that they are actually much older. There are some other peculiarities, in American, in the use of indicators of geographical direction. Our downtown and uptown are seldom, if ever, encountered in England: the DAE records both in American use in the early part of the last century.4 Down East, as noun, adjective and adverb, dates from the same period, and so does down-country, but up-country seems to have been in English use, at all events in the colonies, for many years. The DAE does not list up-State, but it shows that up-boat is recorded in 1857, upbound in 1884, and up-river in 1848. Up-south and up-east are also to be found, but only, apparently, as nonce-words. Down is in common use in New England when the journey is to Boston or to Maine. Says Claudius:

  Out to the coast is to the Pacific what down to the shore is to the Atlantic except that you must not be too near the Pacific when you say the former nor too far from the Atlantic when you say the latter. This out seems to be a survival from frontier days; its opposite is back. In Denver we say we are going back to Omaha. Up applies to altitude as well as to latitude; in Colorado Springs we go up to Cripple Creek. Over very obviously applies where some water must be crossed by bridge or ferry; New Yorkers go over to Jersey City or Brooklyn. But, not so obviously, Philadelphians go over to New York, and New Yorkers return the compliment, if that is what it is.

  The use of at before points of the compass, as in at the North, is an Americanism, and Bartlett, in his second edition of 1859, recorded that it then “offended an English ear.” The DAE traces at the East in American use to 1636, at the southward to 1697, at the South to 1835, at the West to 1839 and at the North to 1841. The form seems to be going out, though Atcheson L. Hench has recorded its use so recently as 1910.1 The English West End, which the NED traces to 1807, is in common use in the United States, but West Side seems to be preferred, and East End, traced to 1883 in England, is almost unknown. East Side is traced by the DAE to 1894, but is probably much older, for West Side is traced to 1858. North Side and South Side are also in use in the United States, though the DAE lists neither of them.

  In 1939 the late Dr. Stuart Robertson of Temple University published in American Speech2 an interesting discussion of other differences in American and British usage in dealing with the minor coins of speech — a subject not often studied, for most observers seem to be chiefly interested in disparities in vocabulary. For example, the English rule3 that to may be omitted when the accusative object is a pronoun, e.g., “Give it me” instead of the usual American “Give it to me.” There are also some curious differences in the use of the definite article. The English commonly insert it before High street, and use it in situations wherein Americans would use a, e.g., “ten shillings the bushel.” Contrariwise, they omit it altogether before government and out of window. Robertson called attention to the fact that this last struck Mark Twain as one of the sali
ent differences between American and English usage.1 In late years there has been a war upon the article in American journalistic writing, chiefly, as I have recorded, under the influence of Time, and the English have begun to join in it. They have also imitated the American present subjunctive, as in “It was moved that the meeting stand adjourned,” where orthodox English usage would ordain “should stand adjourned.”2 The English plural verb following collective nouns seems to be holding out better, though even here there are some signs of yielding. Nearly all the English newspapers still use the plural after government, committee, company, ministry and vestry, and even after proper names designating groups or institutions.3 In 1938 a Tasmanian journalist specializing in cricket and football news wrote to the lexicographer of John o’ London’s Weekly asking for advice about the use of the plural after, say, Eton and Harrow, and was told that he should use the singular when referring to “the team as a whole” and the plural when speaking of “the individual players in that team.” “As a matter of literary grace,” said the John o’ London expert, “it is going too far to attach a plural verb to the name of the team.”4 Nevertheless, plenty of English sports writers still do it, and such headlines as “Jesus Outplay All Souls” are still common in the newspapers.5 “The real proof for the existence of an American language,” said the New York Times less than two months after the Tasmanian called for help, “is not that we say suspenders and elevator and the British say braces and lift. These are mere dialectical differences. The rub comes when the British newspapers say that their government have been exploring all possible channels, whereas we say our government has been exploring. The British say that Kent face an emergency, by which they mean that the Kent county cricket team faces an emergency. Reporting one of our own boat faces, the British papers would say that Harvard have a big advantage over Yale.”1 The English are also fond of using are after United States. This was also the American custom in the early days, but is was substituted before the War of 1812. In 1942 a magazine called Philippines, published by the Philippine resident commission at Washington, protested against the use of are after Philippines. It said:

  The constitution of the Philippines, formulated in English and approved by the President of the United States, employs a singular verb to predicate the Philippines. For the phrase Philippine Islands, however, the plural verb is used. Thus, the Philippines is, and the Philippine Islands are.2

  The House of Lords has a watchman, Lord Bertie of Thame, who devotes himself to seeing that consistency in number is maintained in drawing up government bills. He does not object to the singular verb per se, but insists that when a bill starts off with a plural verb, which is usually, it must so continue to the end. In 1936, when the National Health Insurance bill was before a joint committee of Lords and Commons, he kicked up such a pother on the subject that the newspapers took notice.3 Lord Bertie also insists that who instead of which shall be used in referring to the government. The majority of Englishmen, in fact, seem to prefer who after all collective nouns, and there are some curious specimens in my collections, e.g., “Many big concerns who are excellent employers,”1 and “The Bank of France, who today lowered the bank rate.”2 But, with that dogged inconsistency which is one of their chief national glories, they use which in reference to God in their official version of the Lord’s Prayer, and in 1944 the London Times actually dismissed the use of who therein as “American idiom.”3

  Two common words that differ widely in meaning in England and the United States are guy and homely. The English guy, which signifies a grotesque and ludicrous person, owes its origin to the effigies of Guy Fawkes, leader of the Gunpowder Plot of 1605, which used to be burned by English schoolboys on November 5; the American word, which may designate anyone and is not necessarily opprobrious, seems to be derived from the guy-rope of a circus tent, and first appeared in the forms of main-guy and head-guy. This etymology was first suggested by Thomas P. Beyer in American Speech in 1926,4 and though the DAE casts doubts upon it I am inclined to cling to it. The effort to connect the word with the English guy has always come to grief; they are too far apart in meaning to be the same.5 The English word was in some use in the United States before the American guy was born, and it survives today in the verb to guy. That verb gave birth to the verb-phrase to guy the life out of not later than 1880, and by 1890 to guy itself was being used by American actors in the sense of to trifle with a part. But the noun guy, in the simple sense of a man, a fellow, with no derogatory significance, seems to have come in a bit later and the DAE’s first example is from George Ade’s “Artie,” 1896. Partridge says that it began to be heard in England c. 1910, and soon afterward it was made familiar by American movies, but it still strikes the more elegant sort of Englishman as rather strange. In 1931 Dr. Walther Fischer of Giessen suggested in Anglia6 that it may have come from the Yiddish goy, meaning a heathen and hence a Christian, but this etymology seems to me to be improbable, for goy always carries a disparaging significance. The essence of the American guy is that it is not necessarily opprobrious.

  Homely, in the United States, always means ill-favored, but in England its principal meaning is simple, friendly, home-loving, folksy. The American meaning was formerly familiar to the English, and in 1590 Shakespeare wrote:

  Hath homely age th’ alluring beauty took

  From my poor cheek?1

  The NED offers other English examples from 1634 (Milton), 1669 (William Penn), 1706 (John Phillips, nephew of Milton), 1797 (Horace Walpole), 1873 (Ouida) and 1886 (Mrs. Linn Lynton), but the use of homely in this sense of “commonplace in appearance or features, not beautiful, plain, uncomely” has been rare in England since the Eighteenth Century, and the Englishman of today always understands the word to be complimentary rather than otherwise. The following from the London News Review, an imitator of the American Time, no doubt seemed patriotic and felicitous on its home-grounds, but must have struck American readers, if any, as in very bad taste:

  Homely Queen Elizabeth, First Lady of England, spends much time planning the deft touches which take the formal austerity out of state visits paid by European rulers to the court of St. James.2

  The English meaning may be discerned in certain phrases that have survived in America, e.g., homely fare and homely charm,3 but no American, without hostile intent, would apply homely to a woman. Its opprobrious significance seems to go back a long way, for on October 19, 1709 William Byrd of Westover wrote in his diary:

  About ten o’clock we went to court, where a man was tried for ravishing a very homely woman.4

  A number of very common American words, entering into many compounds and idioms in the United States, are known in England only as exoticisms, for example, swamp. The NED suggests that swamp may have been in use in some English dialect before it was adopted in this country, but the first example so far unearthed is from Captain John Smith’s “General History of Virginia,” 1624, a mine of early Americanisms. The word is old in English as an adjective meaning lean, unthriving, and it is possible that the American noun was derived from this adjective, but Weekley prefers to connect it with the German noun sumpf, which means precisely what Americans call a swamp. The late George Philip Krapp, in “The English Language in America,”1 suggested that the word, to the early colonists, was occasionally used to designate quite dry ground, and in support of this he cited various passages in the town records of Dedham, Mass. But a careful study of those records by Miss Martha Jane Gibson2 has demonstrated that Dr. Krapp was in error. The word was invariably used, she says,

  to mark off a certain condition of soil — not inundated intermittently, as were meadows; not extremely boggy, as were marshes; and yet a soil too wet for easy going on foot, or for actual cultivation with the plow, but one at the same time rich and productive of either trees, underwood, or grass for pasturage.

  Swamp has produced many derivatives in the United States, e.g., to be swamped in the sense of to be overwhelmed, traced by NED to 1646; swamp-angel and swamper, a dwel
ler in a swamp, traced to 1857 and 1840 respectively;3 swamp-apple, a gall growing on the wild azalea, 1805; swamp ash, any one of various ashes growing in swamps, 1815; swamp-blackbird, 1794; swamp-chestnut-oak, 1801; swamp-grass, 1845; swamp-hickory, 1805; swamp-honeysuckle, 1814; swamp-huckleberry, 1800; swamp-land, 1663; swamp-laurel, 1743; swamp-lily, 1737; swamp-lot, 1677; swamp-maple, 1810; swamp-milkweed, 1857; swamp-oak, 1681; swamp-pine, 1731; swamp-pink, an azalea, 1784; swamp-prairie, 1791; swamp-rabbit, 1845; swamp-rose, 1785; swamp-sassafras, 1785; swamp-sparrow, 1811; swamp-warbler, 1865; swamp-willow, 1795; and swamp-wood, 1666. During the Revolution the South Carolina leader, Francis Marion, was called the Swamp Fox. Swampoodle, after the Civil War, came to be the designation of a city slum.