American Language
Page 28
Possibly the general did use this endorsement, and it may have been used by other people also. But James Parton has discovered in the records of the Nashville court of which Jackson was a judge, before he became President, numerous documents endorsed O.R., meaning Order Recorded. He urges, therefore, that it was a record of that court with some belated business which Major Downing saw on the desk of the Presidential candidate.144 However this may be, the Democrats, in lieu of denying the charge, adopted the letters O.K. as a sort of party cry and fastened them upon their banners.
This last theory, it seems to me, deserves more investigation than it has got. Certainly O.K. must have been in familiar use before 1840, and equally certainly it had some connection with Democrats. But Woodrow Wilson, himself the most eminent Democrat of his day, accepted the Choctaw etymology, and used okeh in approving official papers. His use of the form made it popular, and it became the name of a series of popular phonograph records, and of many shoe-shining parlors, lunch-rooms and hot-dog stands. An Okey Hosiery Company survives in New York along with an Okay Electric Company, an Okay Food Sales Company, an Okay Manufacturing Company, and an Okay Supply Company. O.K. has gone into English,145 and also into all the Continental languages. Some years ago the British Privy Council decided solemnly that it was good English. Ba Maw, manager of a rice mill in Burma, had written O.K. on certain bills to indicate that they had been checked and found correct. The Privy Council agreed that his understanding of the meaning of the term was sound, and in doing so set aside a decree of the High Court of Rangoon, which had ruled that O.K. was not English. English or not, it has become the symbol for “we agree” in the code of the International Telecommunication Convention, signed by the delegates to the International Radio Conference at Madrid, December 9, 1932. “It is estimated,” says a recent newspaper writer, “that O.K. is used [in the United States] not less than a million times a day, even by the most high-hatted of auditors and certified public accountants. It is used in official business at Washington and in the Army and Navy, in the Ford plant, on the railroads, and in the American sections of London and Paris. Regardless of its possible illegitimacy, it has a convincing and captivating ring, and it is undoubtedly the most popular of all American slang or idiom.”146 The figure mentioned by this writer seems to be too modest. According to James A. Bohannon, president of the Peerless Motor Car Corporation, “a half million O.K.’s are included in every motor-car built.”147 A back-formation, oke, appeared about 1930.
Many other abbreviations are in common use in the United States. I have mentioned C.O.D., N.G. and P.D.Q. The first-named has been borrowed by the English, but they always understand it to mean cash on delivery, not collect on delivery. G.O.P. was formerly popular as a designation for the Republican party (Grand Old Party), and also, in the days of the horse-cars, as an abbreviation of get out and push, but it seems to be fading. It was probably suggested by the English G.O.M. for Grand Old Man (W. E. Gladstone, 1882). A No. 1, as in an A No. 1 car, is also an Americanism of English parentage: it is borrowed from A 1, used in Lloyd’s Register to designate ships in first-class condition. Other familiar Americanisms are G.B. (grand bounce), F.F.V. (first families of Virginia), F.O.B. (free on board), G.A.R. (Grand Army of the Republic), S.A. (sex-appeal), D. & D. (drunk and disorderly), on the Q.T. (on the quiet), T.B. (tuberculosis), L (elevated-railway), and B.V.D., the trade-name for a brand of men’s underwear, but now in such wide use that it is applied indiscriminately to the product of other manufacturers.148 Perhaps Q-room (cue-room, i.e., billiard-room), While-U-wait, and Bar-B-Q (barbecue), all of them familiar signs, should be added. There are many secret and semi-secret abbreviations, especially in college slang and other argots,149 and nonce-forms often appear, e.g., w.k. (well-known). The World War brought in a great many novelties, headed by A.E.F. (American Expeditionary Force) and a,w,o,l, (absent without leave). There was a similar abundance of new forms in England: of them D.O.R.A. (Defense of the Realm Act) and wren (a member of the Women’s Royal Naval Service) are examples. After the war the Russians contributed a large number, e.g., cheka (Chrezvychainaya Komissiya, i.e., Extraordinary Commission), N.E.P. (New Economic Plan), and Gay-pay-oo (Gosundarstvennoe Politicheskoe Upravlenie, i.e., Government Political Administration), which last somehow became Ogpu in the Western world. To these was presently added Nazi (National-sozialistische) from Germany. The effect was to encourage the invention of similar forms in America, and when the New Deal dawned, in 1933, scores began to appear, e.g., N.R.A. or Nira (National Recovery Administration), T.V.A. (Tennessee Valley Authority), F.E.R.A. (Federal Emergency Relief Administration), C.C.C. (Civilian Conservation Corps), A.A.A. (Agricultural Adjustment Administration), and so on — enough, in fact, to induce Alfred E. Smith to describe the government as submerged in a bowl of alphabetical soup.150 The advertising brethren are fertile inventors of abbreviations. They seem to have produced I.X.L. many years ago, and of late they have added XLent (a brand of salmon), E.Z. (for easy: part of the name of a brand of shoes), Fits-U (a brand of eye-glasses), and many other combinations of U, e.g., Uneeda, Uneedme (a chair-pad), U-Put-It-On (a weather-strip), U-Rub-It-In (an ointment), While-U-Wait, and “R.U. interested in” — whatever happens to be for sale.151 On the Pacific Coast the barbecues and hot-dog stands run to such signs as Sit ’N Eat, Park ’N Dine and so on.152 In college slang the common abbreviation W.C. (water-closet) is sometimes expanded, ironically, to Wesley chapel. In a similar way sporting writers expand K.O. (knockout) to kayo.
One of the characteristics of slang, as we shall see in Chapter XI, Section 1, is that its novelties are sometimes worked so hard and in so many situations that they lose all definite meaning. This is also true of certain popular words on higher levels: philologians call them vogue- or counter-words. The common adjectives and adverbs of intensification offer examples e.g., grand, dreadful, nice and awfully, and we have seen another in the verb to fix (Chapter I, Section 3) and yet another in the verb to get (Chapter V, Section 3). The noun proposition began to take on wide and often preposterous significances in American during the 90’s, and was soon in a lamentably swollen state. It meant a problem, proposal, person, parallel, premiss, postulate, parley, phenomenon, point, policy, philosophy, prospect, process, petition, paradox or possibility, to mention only a few of its meanings under its own first letter.153 It went into English with the movies, and was denounced by H. W. Fowler in “Modern English Usage,” but it remained distinctively American there, and is now fading out of both languages, at least in its character of counter-word. In 1910 or thereabout the more incompetent newspaper reporters of the United States began to use angle in the sense of any aspect of a person or an event,154 and ten years later they adopted alibi as a synonym for any word signifying an explanation or excuse. Both wore out very quickly, but not, alas, quickly enough. Other counter-words that have flourished since the beginning of the century are gesture, service, reaction, complex, analysis, plus and dingus, the verbs to function and to claim,155 and the adjectives outstanding, meticulous, exciting, conscious and consistent. Some of them began in the argot of a relatively small class, and then extended to the common tongue, e.g., service, which seems to have been launched by the visionaries of Rotary c. 1910. Outstanding began its career among the pedagogues, and they still overwork it cruelly,156 but it is now also used by politicians, the rev. clergy, newspaper editorial writers, and other such virtuosi of bad writing. Consistent came in c. 1925 as an adjective designating every sort of harmony or continuity, and for a while drove out a whole flock of better words. Exciting apparently arose in the jargon of art criticism, but in 1933 it was borrowed by the writers of book reviews, and presently had a great run in publishers’ advertising, especially on the slip-covers of books. Plus seems to have been the child of advertisement writers; it was noticed in American Speech for December, 1927, as in high favor among them. Classic followed a year or so later.157 Dingus seems to have originated in the English of South Africa, but it has been in heavy us
e in the United States since the automobile and the radio brought in a host of novel contraptions, and with it have flourished a number of congeners, e.g., jigger, gadget and doodad.158 Complex, of course, owed its vogue, c. 1915, to the popularity of the Freudian rumble-bumble. The use of gesture as a general indicator of any sort of action, movement, offer, threat or deed began in 1925 or thereabout. The late George Philip Krapp believed that it was suggested by the French beau geste, the title of a popular movie of the period.159
5. FOREIGN INFLUENCES TODAY
The great flow of European immigration to the United States, perhaps the most significant event in human history since the close of the Middle Ages, began with the Irish potato famine of 1847 and the German political disturbances of the two years following. Between 1776 and 1846, a stretch of more than two generations, less than 1,600,000 immigrants from overseas had come into the country, though its population had increased nearly sevenfold, from 3,000,000 to 20,000,000. But after 1850 the movement began in earnest, and thereafter it continued for sixty-five years, with only two considerable interruptions, the first caused by the Civil War and the second by the Depression of 1893. In each of the years 1905, 1906, 1907, 1910, 1913 and 1914 more than a million immigrants were admitted, and by 1927 the total number arriving since 1820 reached 37,000,000. In 1930 there were 13,366,407 white persons in the United States who had been born in foreign countries, 16,999,221 whose parents were both foreign-born, and 8,361,965 of mixed parentage — a total of 38,727,593, or more than 35% of the whole white population. In addition, there were perhaps 200,000 Negroes, Chinese, Japanese, Filipinos, Hindus and Koreans who were either foreign-born or the children of foreign-born parents, and nearly 1,500,000 Mexicans.160
With the passage of the Immigration Act of 1921 the flow of immigration was considerably reduced, and when the Immigration Act of 1924 followed it was virtually halted. Both acts were qualitative as well as quantitative in purpose and effect. The first limited the annual immigration from each country to 3% of “the number of foreign-born persons of such nationality resident in the United States” in 1910, and the second reduced the quota to 2% and changed the year to 1890. The aim of the latter amendment was to diminish the relative number of immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe. Down to 1890 the overwhelming majority of entrants had come from Great Britain, Germany and the Scandinavian countries, but after that year those from Italy, Russia and the Austrian dominions had taken the lead. In 1914, for example, 383,738 came in from Italy, 255,660 from Russia and 278,152 from Austria-Hungary, whereas the arrivals from Germany were but 35,734, from Scandinavia 29,391, and from the United Kingdom and Ireland 73,417. It was generally felt that immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe were harder to assimilate than those from the West and North, and that the country already had enough of them, and to spare. So the number of Italians admitted annually was reduced from 42,128 under the Act of 1921 to 3,845 under the Act of 1924, and the number of Poles from 30,977 to 5,977. A certain amount of anti-Semitism also got into the matter, for a large proportion of the immigrants from Eastern Europe were Jews. The two acts worked so well that by 1930 the year’s immigration was reduced to 241,700, and by 1933 to 23,068. Indeed, since 1930 the number of immigrants coming in annually has been more than once surpassed by the number of former immigrants returning home, and from 1930 to 1935 the total excess amounted to 229,363.161
Of the 13,366,407 foreign-born whites in the country in 1930,162 13,216,928 were ten years old or older, and of this number only 3,907,021 spoke English as their native language. Nevertheless, all save 869,865 of the remainder managed to convince the census enumerators that they had acquired a workable command of the language. No doubt most of them spoke it badly, but at all events they tried to speak it, and their children were being taught it in the schools. The immigrants of the older immigrations had naturally made the most progress. The Scandinavians, about half of whom arrived before 1900, made the best showing, with hardly more than 2% of them unable to speak English, and less than 1% of the males. Next came the Germans: 58.3% of them arrived before 1900, and all save 2.9% (1.8% of males) could speak English. The Poles, Russians, Italians, Greeks and Czechs, and the Baltic and Balkan peoples, most of whom came in between 1900 and 1914, fell much behind. Of the Poles, for example, 12.8% were still unable to speak English in 1930 (7.7% of males and 18.7% of females) and of the Italians 15.7% (8.9% and 25.1%). Here something more than mere duration of residence in the country seems to have had some influence, for though 12.7% of the Germans came in after 1925, only 2.9% were without English in 1930. These late-coming Germans were, on the whole, much better educated than the Eastern and Southern Europeans who arrived at the same time, and large numbers of them had probably received some instruction in English at home. Moreover, they dispersed themselves throughout the country, and did not collect in ghettoes, like a majority of the Italians, Slavs and Jews. Of the 1,808,289 Italians here in 1930 more than 1,500,000 were crowded into relatively few cities, and of the 1,222,658 Jews who reported Yiddish as their native language all save 19,000 were living in cities.163
This concentration of foreign-speaking people in limited areas has naturaly influenced the American of those areas, if only on its lower levels. Now that immigration has been virtually cut off, that influence will diminish, but how long it may be exerted is to be observed in the so-called Pennsylvania-Dutch region of Pennsylvania, where a dialect of German is still a living speech after more than 200 years of settlement, and the local dialect of English shows plain traces of it, both in vocabulary and in pronunciation. In the same way, the everyday speech of lower Louisiana is full of French terms not in use elsewhere, e.g., brioche, praline, lagniappe, armoir, kruxingiol (croquignole), pooldoo (poule d’eau), jambalaya, bogue, gris-gris and briqué.164
In Minnesota and the adjacent States many Swedish terms are in common use, e.g., lutfisk (a fish delicacy), lingon (a berry), lefse (a potato pancake), fattigmand (a pastry), spruts (another), lag (an association of Swedes from the same province), and midsommarfest (commonly Anglicized to midsummer-feast). There is also a considerable borrowing of Swedish idioms, as in to cook coffee (koka kaffee), forth and back (fram och tillbaka), and to hold with in place of to agree with (håller med). A recent observer collected the following among “English-speaking high-school and college graduates of Swedish descent” in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Illinois:
The Expression Heard Standard English The Swedish Original
She poured up the coffee She poured the coffee Hon hällde upp kaffet
The sour hen The setting hen Den sura höna
I cooked soup on that bone I made soup with that bone Jag kokte soppa på detta ben
I studied for him I studied under him Jag studerade för honom
They call him for a fool They call him a fool De kallade honom för en narr
I read for the minister I studied with the minister Jag läste för prädsten
Ready till Christmas Ready by Christmas Fardigt till jul
I am freezing so I am so cold Jag fryser165
To this list a correspondent166 adds the following:
The English of Swedish children often influences the English of their American playmates. A colleague who is a New Englander tells me that his Minnesota-born children used to say, “I want to go with” (Jag vill gå med). A Swedishism frequently heard is “It stands in the paper” (Det står i tid-ningen). “A couple, three dollars” apparently comes from Ett par, tre dollar. I once heard a second-generation university man use the sentence, “He will not live over it,” meaning “He will not get over it.” The Swedish is Det kommer ban inte att överleva.
In the same way Czech words have got into American and Czech idioms have influenced usage in the regions wherein Bohemian immigrants are numerous. One of the former is listed in “Webster’s New International Dictionary” (1934). It is kolach, and it is defined as “variety of kuchen made esp. by Bohemians.” Why the German word kuchen is used in this definition I don’t k
now. Kolach is the Czech kolác, with its accent lost in the melting-pot. Other Czech loan-words and phrases that are in local use are rohlík (a roll brushed with egg-yolk, salted, and sometimes sprinkled with caraway or poppy seeds), povidla (a prune marmalade), buchta (a coffee-cake), počkij (wait, hold on), sokol (literally, a falcon, but used to designate an athletic association), na zdar (good luck), and to soc (from the verb sočiti, meaning to scold or grumble). Another is pantáta (literally, Mr. Father, and signifying a father-in-law). This last was apparently in use in New York at the time of the Lexow investigation to designate a corrupt police-captain, but it has gone out.167 In Bristol county, Massachusetts, where there are many Portuguese immigrants, a number of Portuguese loan-words are encountered, e.g., cabeca (head), Hngreese (Port, linguica, a sausage), and jick or jickie (Englishman).168 If cuspidor is actually an Americanism, which seems probable, then it most likely came from the Portuguese verb cuspir (to spit). The Oxford Dictionary’s first example of its use (spelled cuspadore) is taken from Forrest’s “Voyage to New Guinea,” dated 1779, but after that there is no quotation until 1871, at which time an Englishman named Heath took out a patent for “an improvement in cuspidores.” The word seems to have been in general use in the United States before 1870.169 In New York City the high density of Eastern Jews in the population has made almost every New Yorker familiar with a long list of Yiddish words, e.g., kosher, shadchan, matzoth, mazuma,170 yom kippur, meshuggah and gefilte-fisch, and many non-Jewish New Yorkers have added others that are not generally familiar, e.g., schul, bar-mitzva, blintzes, kaddish, trefa, day yan, goy, dokus, schochet, schmus, schicker, schiksa, mohel, get, hesped, kishkes, kittl, meshummad and pesach. The Yiddish exclamation, oi-yoi, is common New Yorkese, and the Yiddish greetings, mazzaltov and scholom aleichim, are pretty well known and understood. There is also some translation of Yiddish idioms, as in “That’s something else again” and “Did I say no?” In 1915 or thereabout “I should worry” came into use in New York, and quickly spread throughout the country. It was said at the time to be a translation of a Yiddish phrase, ish ka bibble, but about this there is still some mystery. The common Yiddish saying is actually “Es is mein daige” (It is my worry).171 There are not a few Yiddish loan-words in German, and some of them have probably been helped into American by that fact, e.g., kosher, mazuma (money), matzoth, meshuggah (crazy), and dokus (backside). I find mazuma in a word list from Kansas.172 Contrariwise, there are many German words in Yiddish, and one of them, kibitzer, has come into American by the Yiddish route. In German kiebitz signifies the peewit or lapwing (Vancellus cristallus), and has long been in figurative use to designate a looker-on at cards, and especially one who offers unsolicited advice.173 The word apparently acquired the agent suffix, -er, on coming into American. Yiddish has greatly enriched the vocabulary of those trades in which Jews are numerous. In the retail shoe business, “a customer who shops from store to store, trying on shoes but not buying, is known as a schlepper. In Yiddish the word means a mean fellow. Those who bargain in a one-price store are called schnorrers, from the Yiddish for a beggar. The most derogatory of all terms in shoe lingo is the word momzer, also derived from the Yiddish and meaning a bastard. A momzer is one who, after working the salesman to death, decides to buy in a store down the block.”174 The instalment furniture stores have also borrowed from the Yiddish. They are called by their salesmen borax-houses, and the borax apparently comes from the Yiddish borg, meaning credit.” When business is bad it’s shofle, and a sucker is always a schnookel.” When the credit department offers a customer such unfavorable terms that the sale is killed, it is said to be schmiessed.175 In the garment trade Yiddish is probably used more than English, and such English as is employed is full of Yiddish terms.176