American Language

by H. L. Mencken

  Ampico clysmic swoboda, pantasote necco britannica

  Encyclopaedia?25

  One of the words here used is not American, but Italian, i.e., fiat, a blend made of the initials of Fabbrica Italiano Automobili Torino, but most of the others are quite familiar to all Americans. Says Matthews:

  Only a few of them would evoke recognition from an Englishman; and what a Frenchman or a German would make out of the eight lines is beyond human power even to guess. Corresponding words have been devised in France and in Germany, but only infrequendy; and apparendy the invention of trade-mark names is not a customary procedure on the part of foreign advertisers. The British, although less affluent in this respect than we are, seem to be a litde more inclined to employ the device than their competitors on the Continent. Every American, traveling on the railways which converge upon London, must have experienced a difficulty in discovering whether the station at which his train has paused is Stoke Poges or Bovril, Chipping Norton or Mazzawattee. None the less it is safe to say that the concoction of a similar ode by the aid of the trade-mark words invented in the British Isles would be a task of great difficulty on account of the paucity of terms sufficiendy artificial to bestow the exotic remoteness which is accountable for the aroma of the American “ode.”

  New words, of course, are no more produced by the folk than are new ballads: they are the inventions of concrete individuals, some of whom can be identified. The elder Roosevelt was responsible, either as coiner or as propagator, for many compounds that promise to survive, e.g., strenuous-life, nature-faker, pussy-footer, weasle-word, 100% American, hyphenated-American, Ananias-Club, big-stick and embalmed-beef. Scofflaw was coined simultaneously in 1924 by Henry Irving Shaw, of Shawsheen Village, Mass., and Miss Kate L. Butler, of Dorchester in the same State.26 Debunking, and its verb, to debunk, were launched by William E. Woodward in his book, “Bunk,” in 1923. Both have been taken over by the English, though protests against them, often bitter in tone, still appear occasionally in the English newspapers.27 Moron was proposed by Dr. Henry H. Goddard in 1910 to designate a feeble-minded person of a mental age of from eight to twelve years; it was formally adopted by the American Association for the Study of the Feeble-minded in May of that year, and immediately came into wide use. In Chicago, at the time of the Leopold-Loeb trial in 1924, the local newspapers began to misuse it in the sense of sexual pervert, and it has retained that meaning locally ever since.28 Many new words, launched with impressive ceremony, have only short lives as nonce-words, or fail altogether. In his “Fifty Suggestions” (c. 1845) Edgar Allan Poe proposed that suspectful be used to differentiate between the two meanings of suspicious, one who suspects and one to be suspected, but though the word is in “Webster’s New International” (1934) it is marked “now rare,” and no one uses it. Most of Walt Whitman’s inventions went the same way. On March 6, 1926, the Pennsylvania Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals awarded a prize to Mrs. M. Mcllvaine Bready, of Mickleton, N. J., for pitilacker, and tried to establish it in the sense of one cruel to animals, but it failed to make the success of scofflaw. In “The Mighty Medicine” (1929) the late Dr. Franklin H. Giddings proposed taboobery and tomtomery’, but neither seized the public fancy. During the heyday of the I.W.W. (1912–1920) one of its chief propagandists was a writer calling himself T-Bone Slim; he wrote for most of the fugitive organs of the movement, but especially for the Industrial Worker. He invented many neologisms, and some of them were popular for a time, but only brisbanality, signifying a platitudinous utterance by Arthur Brisbane of the Hearst papers (or, at all events, one thought to be platitudinous by radicals), has survived. In February, 1927, the Forum issued a general call for new words, and during the months following many were proposed by its readers, but not one of them seems to have got into the American vocabulary.29

  The formation of artificial words of the scalawag, lallapaloosa and rambunctious class goes on constantly. Some of them are blends: grandificent (from grand and magnificent) and sodalicious (from soda and delicious); others are made up of common roots and grotesque affixes: whangdoodle, splendiferous and peacharino; others are arbitrary reversals, as sockdolager from doxologer, and yet others are stretch-forms or mere extravagant inventions: scallywampus, dingus, doodad, supergobsloptious and floozy.30 Many of these are devised by advertisement writers or college students and belong properly to slang, but there is a steady movement of selected specimens into the common vocabulary. The words in -doodle, e.g., whangdoodle and monkey-doodle, hint at German influences, and those in -ino may owe something to Italian or maybe to Spanish. Such suffixes are sometimes worked heavily. The first to come into fashion in the United States was apparently -ery, which appeared in printery in 1638. When beanery followed it I do not know, but it must have been before the end of the next century. Grocery (for grocery-store) has been traced back to 1806, and groggery to 1822. Bakery and bindery also seem to be American. In late years many congeners have appeared, e.g., boozery, bootery and breadery. Condensery is used in the West to indicate a place where milk is condensed. Creamery, though it has now got into English, is listed in the Oxford Dictionary as “first used in U. S.” Dr. Louise Pound reports hashery, drinkery and drillery, the last signifying a cramming-school for the Civil Service, and E. S. Hills adds cakery, car-washery, dough-nutery, lunchery, mendery (a place where clothes are mended), and eatery.31 In Three Rivers, Mich., so I am told by a correspondent, there is a shoe-fixery. In Pasadena, Calif., there is a hattery, in South Pasadena a cyclery, in Los Angeles a nuttery and a chowmeinery, and near San Francisco a squabery.32

  Cafeteria, as everyone knows, has produced an enormous progeny, and some of its analogues are very curious. From the discussions of the word that have appeared in American Speech since 1926 I cull the following: restauranteria, garmenteria, shaveteria (a place where shaving utensils are supplied to wayfarers), shoeteria, resteteria (a rest-room), chocolateria, sodateria, fruiteria, radioteria, bobateria (where hair is bobbed), valeteria, marketeria, caketeria, candyteria, casketeria (an undertaker’s shop), drugteria, basketeria, cleaneteria, groceteria (with the variants grocerteria and groceryteria), healtheteria, farmateria, mototeria (a grocereteria on wheels), cashateria, wrecketeria (a bone-yard for old motor-cars), luncheteria, haberteria, hatateria, kalfeteria or kafateria,33 honeyteria, smoketeria, and even drygoodsteria. A watchful correspondent, Dr. Harley K. Croessmann, reports a millinteria on Sheridan road in Chicago and a scarfeteria in Randolph street, and I myself, in 1928, encountered a spaghetteria in West 46th street, New York. Cafeteria is probably of Spanish origin, but when and where it got into American is still in dispute. Phillips Barry has found it in a dictionary of Cuban-Spanish published in 186234 and other investigators point to analogues in Standard Spanish, in common use along the Mexican border, e.g., barberia (barber-shop), carniceria (butcher-shop) and panaderia (baker-shop). In Cuban-Spanish the word means “a shop where coffee is sold.” It did not get into any American dictionary until 1918, but it had been in general use in Southern California for at least ten years before. I have, however, received a caveat to the California claim to priory from a Chicago correspondent whose name I have unfortunately mislaid. “A Chicago man,” he says, “was planning to open a new lunchroom in that city, with the new feature of the guests serving themselves. He wanted a new and appropriate name for it and applied to my cousin, who had lived in Buenos Aires. This cousin suggested cafeteria, which was adopted. It should be accented on the penultimate, but the patrons immediately moved the accent one place forward. This was about the year 1900.” Another correspondent, Mr. Herbert Spencer Jackson, of Los Angeles, informs me that he remembers seeing a cafeteria in South LaSalle street, Chicago, “about 1895.” There has been an extensive discussion of the word in American Speech and elsewhere, but some gaps in its history remain.35

  Other suffixes that have produced interesting forms are -ette, -dom, -ster, -ite, -ist, -itis, -ician, -orium, -ogist and -or.36 Cellarette has been in English for more
than a century, but kitchenette is American, and so are farmerette, conductorette, officerette and a number of other analogous words. Logan Pearsall Smith says in “The English Language” (1912) that -dom is being replaced in English by -ness, and that the effort made by Thomas Carlyle and others to revive it during the Nineteenth Century was so far a failure that only boredom (c. 1850) made any headway. But in the United States the affix retains a great deal of its old life, and has produced a long list of words, e.g., sportdom, moviedom, flapperdom, dogdom, turfdom, newspaperdom, Elkdom, filmdom and crookdom.37 Now, as in the past, -ster has an opprobrious significance, and so its chief products are such words as gangster, mobster, dopester, ringster, funster, shyster and speedster. From -ist we have monologuist, receptionist, columnist, trapezist, manicurist, electragist, behaviorist and a number of others.38 From -ician we have the lovely mortician and its brothers,39 beautician, cosmetician and bootician, to say nothing of whooptician, a college cheer-leader. In Hollywood they also speak of dialogicians. From -itis come motoritis, golf itis, radioitis, Americanitis and others after their kind.40 From -orium we have beauto-rium, healthatorium, preventorium, barberatorium, bo bat orium (apparently a more refined form of bobateria), lubritorium (a place where motor-cars are greased), infantorium, hatatorium, motortorium, odditorium (a side-show), pantorium or pantatorium (a pants-pressing parlor), printorium, restatorium or restorium, shavatorium, suitatorium and pastorium.41 And from -ogist and -or come boyologist (a specialist in the training or entertainment of boys), truckologist, mixologist (a bartender), clockologist and hygiologist,42 and realtor, furnitor, chiropractor, avigator43 and merchantor (a member of the Merchants’ Bureau of a Chamber of Commerce). In the case of motorcade, autocade, camelcade and aerocade, all suggested by cavalcade, a new suffix, -cade, seems to have come in.44 Others have also begun to show themselves, e.g., -naper (from kidnaper), as in dognaper; -mobile (from automobile), as in health-mobile (a motor-car driven about the country by health officers to instruct the yokelry in the elements of hygiene); -iat, as in professoriat; -ee, as in donee, draftee and honoree;45 and -thon (from marathon), as in walkathon, dancethon, reducathon and speedathon.46 The suffix -ine came in during the middle 80’s, and seems to have been first hitched to dude, itself an American invention of 1883. But both dude and dudine are now obsolete save in the Far West, where they survive to designate the Easterners who come out to cavort on dude-ranches under the guidance of dude-wranglers. During the World War patrioteer, which had been in use in England at least as early as 1913, brought in various words in -eer, but only fictioneer shows any sign of surviving. About the same time -ine had a brief revival, producing doctorine, actorine, chorine, etc., but only the two last named are ever heard today.47 Certain prefixes have come in for heavy service of late, e.g., anti-, super-, semi- and near-. Words in anti- are numerous in English, but they seem to be even more numerous in American, especially in the field of politics. “If it were possible to collect the material completely,” says Allen Walker Read, “a ‘History of Opposition Movements in America’ could be written.”48 Read offers dozens of examples, beginning with anti-Episcopalian (1769) and anti-Federalist (1788) and running down to the present day. The list includes, of course, anti-suffragist (1886), which suffered the curious accident, in 1913 or thereabout, of losing its root and becoming simply anti. The numerous words in near- began to appear about 1900. George Horace Lorimer was writing of near-seal in “Letters of a Self-Made Merchant to His Son” in 1902, and soon thereafter the advertisements in the newspapers bristled with analogues, e.g., near-silk, near-antique, near-leather, near-mahogany, near-silver and near-porcelain. A logical extension quickly produced near-accident, near-champion, near-finish and others after their kind, and in 1920 came near-beer, to flourish obscenely for thirteen long years and then sink into happy obsolescence. Super- has been very popular since 1920 or thereabout. It got a great lift when the movie press-agents began writing about super-productions and super-films, and various analogues have followed, e.g., super-highway, super-cabinet, super-criminal, super-gang and super-love. The last signifies a kind of amour perfected by the virtuosi of Hollywood: it partakes of the characters of riot, delirium tremens and mayhem. Sometimes super- is employed to strengthen adjectives, as in super-perfect and super-American. H. W. Horwill, in his “Dictionary of Modern American Usage,” says that semi- “is in much more frequent use in America than in England.” He cites semi-annual (Eng. half-yearly), semi-centennial (Eng. jubilee), semi-panic, semi-wild, semi-open-air, semi-national and semi-occasional. There has been, of late, a heavy use of air-, as in the adjectives air-cooled, air-conditioned, air-conscious and air-minded, and the nouns air-liner, air-rodeo and air-hostess.49 During the thirteen years of Prohibition pre-Volstead and pre-war threatened to bring in a flock of novelties in pre-, but the prefix seems to have died out of popularity.

  All such neologisms, of course, find ready customers in the headline writers of the newspapers. But the exigencies of their arduous craft force them to give preference to the shorter ones, and they thus propagate back-formations more often than compounds. A veteran of the copy-desk has described their difficulties as follows:

  In writing the headline, the copy-reader must say what he has to say in a definite number of letters and spaces. If the headline has one or more lines — and this is the case at least 90% of the time — each line must balance so that it may be typographically pleasing to the reader’s eye. The size of type and the width of column are also important considerations. Further, what is known as newspaper style may offer difficulties. Each newspaper has a set of rules peculiar to itself. On some papers each line of the head must end in a word of more than two letters and can never begin with a verb. No paper permits the splitting of a word from one line to another.50

  The copy-reader accordingly makes heavy use of very short words, e.g., mob, probe, crash, pact, blast, chief and quiz, and these words tend to be borrowed by the reporters who must submit to his whims and long for his authority and glory. Their way into the common speech thus comes easy. To most Americans, in fact, a legislative inquiry is no longer an investigation but a probe, and a collision is not a collision but a crash. So, again, any sort of contest or combat is a clash or bout, any reduction in receipts or expenditures is a cut, and all negotiations are parleys or deals. Fiends are so common in American criminology simply because the word itself is so short. English is naturally rich in very short nouns, but the copy-readers are not content with them as they stand: there are constant extensions of meaning. For example:

  Ace. In the sense of expert or champion it came in during the World War. It has since been extended to mean any person who shows any ponderable proficiency in whatever he undertakes to do. I have encountered ace lawyers, ace radio-crooners and ace gynecologists in headlines.

  Aid. Its military sense has been extended to include the whole field of human relations. Any subordinate is now an aid.

  Balm. It now means any sort of indemnity or compensation. A derivative, love-balm, means damages paid to a deceived and deserted maiden.

  Ban. All prohibitions are now bans.

  Blast. It has quite displaced explosion in the headlines.

  Boat. It now means any sort of craft, from the Queen Mary to a mud-scow.

  Cache. This loan-word, one of the earliest borrowings of American from French, now signifies any sort of hidden store.

  Car. It is rapidly displacing all the older synonyms for automobile, including even auto.

  Chief. Any headman, whether political, pedagogical, industrial, military or ecclesiastical. I once encountered the headline Church Chiefs Hold Farley over a news item dealing with a meeting of the Sacred College.

  Drive. Any concerted and public effort to achieve anything.

  Edict. An almost universal synonym for command, order, injunction or mandate.

  Envoy. It now signifies any sort of superior agent. Ambassador and minister are both too fat for the headlines.

  Fete. Any ce
lebration.

  Gem. Any jewel.

  Head. It means whatever chief means.

  Hop. Any voyage by air.

  Mecca. Any center of interest. Mecca has an m in it, and is thus troublesome to copy-readers, but it is still shorter than any other word signifying the same thing.

  Plea. It means request, petition, application, prayer, suit, demand or appeal.

  Row. Any sort of dispute.

  Slate. Any programme, agenda, or list.

  Snag. Any difficulty or impediment.

  Solon. Any member of a law-making body.

  Talk. Any discussion or conference.

  In addition to these naturally short nouns many clipped forms are used constantly in headlines, e.g., ad, confab, duo, exam, gas, isle, mart, photo and quake (for earthquake). A Japanese is always a Jap, and the Emperor of Japan is very apt to shrink to Jap Chief. A Russian is often a Russ, and Serb commonly displaces Serbian. In the same way Turk displaces Turkish, Norse displaces Norwegian, and Spaniard becomes don. After Hitler’s advent Nazi took the place of German. The popularity of Hun during the World War was no doubt largely due to its convenient brevity.51 The shorter compounds are also used heavily, e.g., clean-up, fire-bug, come-back and pre-war.52 Onomatopeia, of course, frequently enters into the matter. “Hemmed in by many restrictions,” says Mr. Rockwell, “and ever seeking a way out, the copy-reader, in addition to his constant use of short words, his peculiar phrasing, his bizarre syntax, and his lopping off of all unnecessary sentence members, has adopted, whenever possible, words which not only express the meaning which he wishes to convey but also connote the quality of sound. He believes that crash or smash will signify more to the reader than accident. So with slash, blast, clash, -flay, flit, fling, flee, hurtle, hurl, plunge, ram and spike.” This explosive headline terminology seems so natural today that we forget it is of recent growth. It did not come in, in fact, until the era of the Spanish-American War, and the memorable fight for circulation between Joseph Pulitzer and William R. Hearst. The American newspaper headline of the 70’s and 80’s was very decorous. The aim of its writer was to keep all its parts within the bounds of a single sentence, and inasmuch as it sometimes ran halfway down the column he was inevitably forced to resort to long words and a flowery style. That same flowery style appeared in the text of what was printed below it. Dean Alford’s denunciation of the Newspaper English of 187053 described Newspaper American also. “You never read,” he said, “of a man, or a woman, or a child. A man is an individual, or a person, or a party; a woman is a female, or, if unmarried, a young person; a child is a juvenile, and children en masse are expressed by that most odious term, the rising generation.” It was against such gaudy flowers of speech that William Cullen Bryant’s famous Index Expurgatorius was mainly directed. We owe their disappearance, in part, to Charles A. Dana, of the New York Sun, who produced the first newspaper on earth that was decently written, but also, in part, to Pulitzer and Hearst, who not only brought in the fire-alarm headline-writer, but also the comic-strip artist. The latter has been a very diligent maker of terse and dramatic words. In his grim comments upon the horrible calamities which befall his characters he not only employs many ancients of English speech, e.g., slam, bang, quack, meeou, smash and bump, but also invents novelties of his own, e.g., zowie, bam, socko, yurp, plop, wow, wam, glug, oof, ulk, whap, bing, flooie and grrr. Similar onomatopeic forms of an older date are listed in the Supplement to the Oxford Dictionary as Americanisms, e.g., blah, wow, bust and flipflop.54 All these, and a great many like words, are familiar to every American schoolboy. Their influence, and that of the headline vocabulary, upon the general American vocabulary must be very potent, and no doubt they also have some influence upon American ways of thinking. Says a recent writer: