Of hurt or rancor or ill-will.
To no D.D. do I pretend,
Though Doctor doth some honor lend,
Preacher, Pastor, Rector, Friend,
Titles almost without end
Never grate and ne’er offend;
A loving ear to all I bend.
But how the man my heart doth rend.
Who blithely calls me Reverend!134
To which may be added a denunciation of Reverend in direct address which shows, incidentally, that the author, a Methodist bishop, does not object to the omission of the the in writing:
She was well dressed. Her manner was womanly. Her voice was gende. She seemed intelligent and cultured. She approached me and said, “Is this Rev. Moore?” I was amazed at such a transgression against good usage. Anyone should know better than to say Rev. Moore or Rev. Smith. That word Rev. cannot be attached in speech or writing to a surname; it can be used only with the given name, or the initials, or with some title such as Mister, Doctor, Professor or Bishop. One may say Rev. Mr. Smith, or Rev. Dr. Smith, or Rev. Prof. Smith, or Rev. G. W. Smith, but never Rev. Smith. It is discreditable to transgress such usage.135
When it came into use in England, in the Seventeenth Century,136 Rev. was commonly written without the article, and immediately preceding the surname. Thus, Bishop Joseph Hall (1574–1656) did not hesitate to write Reverend Calvin. But at the beginning of the Eighteenth Century the and the given-name began to be added, and by the end of the century that form was almost universal in England. Here, as in many other cases, American usage is archaic.137 It should be added that English practice, in late years, has been somewhat corrupted, maybe by American example. In the list of members printed in the first tract of the Society for Pure English (1919) Rev., Very Rev., Hon. and Rt. Hon. appeared without the the, and it is commonly omitted by the English Methodists and Baptists. In the United States there has arisen recently a habit of omitting it before the names of corporations. It is, in many cases, not a legal part thereof, and is thus properly omitted in bonds, stock certificates and other such documents, but its omission in other situations makes for a barbaric clumsiness. Among news-agents and advertising agents the article is likewise omitted before the names of magazines, and on Broadway it is omitted before the words show business.138
The use of the plural, Revs., denounced by H. W. Fowler in his Dictionary of Modern English Usage (1926) is quite common in this country. A somewhat curious English custom, unknown here, is that of using Messrs. before single names designating firms. Thus, the Literary Supplement of the London Times often announces that Messrs. Jonathan Cape are about to publish this or that book.
In general, ecclesiastical titles are dealt with somewhat loosely in the United States. In England an archbishop of the Established Church is the Most Rev. and His Grace, and a bishop is the Right Rev. and His Lordship, but there are no archbishops in the American Protestant Episcopal Church and the bishops are seldom called His Lordship. The Methodists, in writing of their ordinaries, often omit the Right, contenting themselves with the simple Rev. Among the Catholics, by a decree of the Sacred Congregation of Rites, dated December 31, 1930,139 an archbishop who is not a cardinal is now the Most Rev. and His Excellency (Excellentia Reverendissima), and so is a bishop. Formerly an archbishop was the Most Rev. and His Grace, and a bishop was the Right Rev. and His Lordship. A cardinal, of course, remains His Eminence. Before the decree it was the custom to address all monsignori as the Right Rev., but now they are divided into two sections, those who are protonotaries apostolic or domestic prelates remaining the Right Rev.140 and those of inferior rank, e.g., papal chamberlains, becoming the Very Rev. The American bishops and archbishops display a dubious Latinity by their assumption of the Most Rev. Reverendissimus, to be sure, is a superlative, but in the situation in which it is used Latin superlatives are understood only in the sense of very, e.g., altissimus mons means a very high mountain, not the highest mountain. Moreover, if the bishops and archbishops are entitled to be called the Most Rev., then so are the monsignori, for Rome applies reverendissimus to all of them alike. But the puissant brethren of the American hierarchy arrogate the Most Rev. to themselves, and the monsignori must be content with the lesser designations.141
In the Salvation Army honorifics follow a somewhat strange pattern. The ordinary member of the Army is called a soldier, and his status in his post is identical with that of a communicant in a church. He is forbidden to belong to any other church. He supports himself at whatever trade he knows, and pays a tenth of his income into the post funds. If he aspires to become an officer he is called a candidate and is sent to a training college, where he becomes a cadet. On his graduation he is made, if unmarried, a probationary lieutenant, or, if married, a probationary captain. He must serve a year in the field before he may hope for promotion to full rank. Above the captaincy the ranks are those of adjutant, major, brigadier (not brigadier-general), lieutenant-colonel, colonel, lieutenant-commissioner, commissioner and general. All ranks are open to women. A married woman always takes her husband’s rank, and is known as Mrs. Major, Mrs. Colonel, and so on. If he dies, her own future promotions begin where his left off. No unmarried officer, whether male or female, may marry anyone save another officer without resigning from the corps of officers. Virtually every officer, after ten years’ service, is promoted to adjutant. But this promotion, and others following it, may come sooner, and an exceptionally useful officer may be put in command of colleagues of higher rank.142
The use of Madame as a special title of honor for old women of good position survived in the United States until the 70’s. It distinguished the dowager Mrs. Smith from the wife of her eldest son. After the Civil War madame became the designation of brothel-keepers, and so fell into bad repute. But it survives more or less among the colored folk, who often apply it to women singers of their race, and sometimes to the more pretentious sort of hairdressers, dressmakers and milliners. Mrs. Washington was commonly called Lady Washington during her life-time, but the title seems to have died with her. When women began to go into politics, after the proclamation of the Twenty-first Amendment in 1920, the widows of male politicians frequently became candidates for their dead husband’s jobs. One of the first of these ambitious relicts, the Hon. Nellie Taylor Ross of Wyoming, made her campaign under the style of Ma, and the title was soon extended to others of her kind.143 Mabel Walker Willebrandt, Assistant Attorney-General in charge of prosecutions under the Volstead Act, was generally know as Ma during her days in office, 1921–29. But the title now seems to be in decay.
6. EUPHEMISMS
The American, probably more than any other man, is prone to be apologetic about the trade he follows. He seldom believes that it is quite worthy of his virtues and talents; almost always he thinks that he would have adorned something far gaudier. Unfortunately, it is not always possible for him to escape, or even for him to dream plausibly of escaping, so he soothes himself by assuring himself that he belongs to a superior section of his craft, and very often he invents a sonorous name to set himself off from the herd. Here we glimpse the origin of a multitude of characteristic American euphemisms, e.g., mortician for undertaker, realtor for real-estate agent, electragist for electrical contractor, aisle manager for floor-walker, beautician for hairdresser, exterminating engineer for rat-catcher, and so on. Realtor was devised by a high-toned real-estate agent of Minneapolis, Charles N. Chadbourn by name. He thus describes its genesis:
It was in November, 1915, on my way to a meeting of the Minneapolis Real Estate Board, that I was annoyed by the strident peddling of a scandal sheet: “All About the Robbery of a Poor Widow by a Real Estate Man.” The “real estate man” thus exposed turned out to be an obscure hombre with desk-room in a back office in a rookery, but the incident set me to thinking. “Every member of our board,” I thought, “is besmirched by this scandal article. Anyone, however unworthy or disreputable, may call himself a real estate man. Why do not the members of our board deserve
a distinctive title? Each member is vouched for by the board, subscribes to its Code of Ethics, and must behave himself or get out.” So the idea incubated for three or four weeks, and was then sprung on the local brethren.144
As to the etymology of the term, Mr. Chadbourn says:
Real estate originally meant a royal grant. It is so connected with land in the public mind that realtor is easily understood, even at a first hearing. The suffix -or means a doer, one who performs an act, as in grantor, executor, sponsor, administrator.
The Minneapolis brethren were so pleased with their new name that Mr. Chadbourn was moved to dedicate it to the whole profession. In March, 1916, he went to the convention of the National Association of Real Estate Boards at New Orleans, and made a formal offer of it. It was accepted gratefully, and is now defined by the association as follows:
A person engaged in the real estate business who is an active member of a member board of the National Association of Real Estate Boards, and as such, an affiliated member of the National Association, who is subject to its rules and regulations, who observes its standards of conduct, and is entitled to its benefits.145
In 1920 the Minneapolis Real Estate Board and the National Association of Real Estate Boards applied to Judge Joseph W. Moly-neaux of Minneapolis for an injunction restraining the Northwestern Telephone Exchange Company from using realtor to designate some of its hirelings, and on September 10 the learned judge duly granted this relief. Since then the National Association has obtained similar injunctions in Virginia, Utah and other States. Its general counsel is heard from every time realtor is taken in vain, and when, in 1922, Sinclair Lewis applied it to George F. Babbitt, there was an uproar. But when Mr. Chadbourn was appealed to he decided that Babbitt was “fairly well described,” for he was “a prominent member of the local board and of the State association,” and one could scarcely look for anything better in “a book written in the ironic vein of the author of ’ Main Street.’ ”146 Mr. Chadbourn believes that realtor should be capitalized, “like Methodist or American,”147 but so far it has not been generally done. In June, 1925, at a meeting of the National Association of Real Estate Boards in Detroit, the past presidents of the body presented him with a gold watch as a token of their gratitude for his contribution to the uplift of their profession. On May 30, 1934, the following letter from Nathan William MacChesney, general counsel of the National Association, appeared in the New Republic:
[Realtor] is not a word, but a trade right, coined and protected by law by the National Association of Real Estate Boards, and the term is a part of the trade-mark as registered in some forty-four States and Canada. Something over $200,000 has been spent in its protection by the National Association of Real Estate Boards in attempting to confine its use to those real estate men who are members of the National Association of Real Estate Boards, subject to its code for ethics and to its discipline for violation. It has been a factor in making the standards of the business generally during the past twenty years, and the exclusive right of the National Association of Real Estate Boards has been sustained in a series of court decisions, a large number of injunctions having been issued, restraining its improper use.
In 1924 the Realtors’ Bulletin of Baltimore reported that certain enemies of realtric science were trying to show that realtor was derived from the English word real and the Spanish word tor, a bull, and to argue that it thus meant real bull. But this obscenity apparently did not go far; probably a hint from the alert general counsel was enough to stop it. During the same year I was informed by Herbert U. Nelson, executive secretary of the National Association, that “the real-estate men of London, through the Institute of Estate Agents and Auctioneers, after studying our experience in this respect, are planning to coin the word estator and to protect it by legal steps.” This plan, I believe, came to fruition, but estator never caught on, and I can’t find it in the Supplement to the Oxford Dictionary. Realtor, however, is there — and the first illustrative quotation is from “Babbitt”! In March, 1927, J. Foster Hagan, of Ballston, Va., reported to American Speech that he had encountered realtress on the window of a real-estate office there, but this charming derivative seems to have died a-bornin’. In 1925 or thereabout certain ambitious insurance solicitors, inflamed by realtor, began to call themselves insurors, but it, too, failed to make any progress.
Electragist, like realtor, seems to be the monopoly of the lofty technicians who affect it: “it is copyrighted by the Association of Electragists International, whose members alone may use it.”148 But mortician is in the public domain. It was proposed by a writer in the Embalmers’ Monthly for February, 1895, but the undertakers, who were then funeral-directors, did not rise to it until twelve years later. On September 16, 1916, some of the more eminent of them met at Columbus, O., to form a national association, on the lines of the American College of Surgeons, the American Association of University Professors, and the Society of the Cincinnati, and a year later they decided upon National Selected Morticians as its designation.149 To this day the association remains so exclusive that, of the 24,000 undertakers in the United States, only 200 belong to it. But any one of the remaining 23,800 is free to call himself a mortician, and to use all the other lovely words that the advance of human taxidermy has brought in. Mortician, of course, was suggested by physician, for undertakers naturally admire and like to pal with the resurrection men, and there was a time when some of them called themselves embalming surgeons. A mortician never handles a corpse; he prepares a body or patient. This business is carried on in a preparation-room or operating-room, and when it is achieved the patient is put into a casket150 and stored in the reposing-room or slumber-room of a funeral-home. On the day of the funeral he is moved to the chapel therein for the last exorcism, and then hauled to the cemetery in a funeral-car or casket-coach.151 The old-time shroud is now a négligé or slumber-shirt or slumber-robe, the mortician’s work-truck is an ambulance, and the cemetery is fast becoming a memorial-park. In the West cemeteries are being supplanted by public mausoleums, which sometimes go under the names of cloisters, burial-abbeys, etc.152 To be laid away in one runs into money. The vehicle that morticians use for their expectant hauling of the ill is no longer an ambulance, but an invalid-coach. Mortician has been a favorite butt of the national wits, but they seem to have made no impression on it. In January, 1932, it was barred from the columns of the Chicago Tribune. “This decree goes forth,” announced the Tribune, “not for lack of sympathy with the ambition of undertakers to be well regarded, but because of it. If they haven’t the sense to save themselves from their own lexicographers, we shall not be guilty of abetting them in their folly.”153 But mortician not only continues to flourish; it also begets progeny, e.g., beautician, cosmetician, radiotrician and bootician.154 The barbers, so far, have not devised a name for themselves in -ician, but they may be trusted to do so anon. In my youth they were tonsorial artists, but in recent years some of them have been calling themselves chirotonsors.155 Practically all American press-agents are now public relations counsel, contact-managers or publicists, all tree-trimmers are tree-surgeons, all milk-wagon and bakery-wagon drivers have become salesmen, nearly all janitors are superintendents, many gardeners have become landscape-architects (in England even the whales of the profession are simple landscape-gardeners), cobblers are beginning to call themselves shoe-rebuilders156 and the corn-doctors, after a generation as chiropodists, have burst forth as podiatrists. The American fondness for such sonorous appellations arrested the interest of W. L. George, the English novelist, when he visited the United States in 1920. He said:
Business titles are given in America more readily than in England. I know one president whose staff consists of two typists. Many firms have four vice-presidents. In the magazines you seldom find merely an editor; the others need their share of honor, so they are associate (not assistant) editors. A dentist is called a doctor. I wandered into a university, knowing nobody, and casually asked for the dean. I was asked, “Whic
h dean?” In that building there were enough deans to stock all the English cathedrals. The master of a secret society is royal supreme knight commander. Perhaps I reached the extreme at a theatre in Boston, when I wanted something, I forgot what, and was told that I must apply to the chief of the ushers. He was a mild little man, who had something to do with people getting into their seats, rather a comedown from the pomp and circumstance of his title. Growing interested, I examined my programme, with the following result: It is not a large theatre, but it has a press-representative, a treasurer (box-office clerk), an assistant treasurer (box-office junior clerk), an advertising-agent, our old friend the chief of the ushers, a stage-manager, a head-electrician, a master of properties (in England called props), a leader of the orchestra (pity this — why not president?), and a matron (occupation unknown).157
George might have unearthed some even stranger magnificoes in other playhouses. I once knew an ancient bill-sticker, attached to a Baltimore theatre, who boasted the sonorous title of chief lithographer. Today, in all probability, he would be called a lithographic-engineer. For a number of years the Engineering News-Record, the organ of the legitimate engineers, used to devote a column every week to just such uninvited invaders of the craft, and some of the species it unearthed were so fantastic that it was constrained to reproduce their business cards photographically in order to convince its readers that it was not spoofing. One of its favorite exhibits was a bedding manufacturer who first became a mattress-engineer and then promoted himself to the lofty dignity of sleep-engineer. No doubt he would have called himself a morphician if he had thought of it. Another exhilarating specimen was a tractor-driver who advertised for a job as a caterpillar-engineer. A third was a beautician who burst out as an appearance-engineer. In an Atlanta department-store the News-Record found an engineer of good taste — a young woman employed to advise newly-married couples patronizing the furniture department, and elsewhere it unearthed display-engineers who had been lowly window-dressers until some visionary among them made the great leap, demolition-engineers who were once content to be house-wreckers, and sanitary-engineers who had an earlier incarnation as garbage-men. The wedding-engineer is a technician employed by florists to dress churches for hymeneal orgies. The commencement-e. arranges college and high-school commencements; he has lists of clergymen who may be trusted to pray briefly, and some sort of fire-alarm connection, I suppose, with the office of Dr. John H. Finley, the champion commencement orator of this or any other age. The packing-e. is a scientist who crates clocks, radios and china-ware for shipment. The correspondence-e. writes selling-letters guaranteed to pull. The income-e. is an insurance solicitor in a new false-face. The dwelling-e. replaces lost keys, repairs leaky roofs, and plugs up rat-holes in the cellar. The vision-e. supplies spectacles at cut rates. The dehorning-e. attends to bulls who grow too frisky. The Engineering News-Record also discovered a printing-e., a furniture-e., a photographic-e., a financial-e. (a stock-market tipster), a paint-e., a clothing-e., a wrapping-e. (a dealer in wrapping-paper), a matrimonial-e. (a psychoanalyst specializing in advice to the lovelorn), a box-e. (the packing-e. under another name), an automotive-painting-e., a blasting-e., a dry-cleaning-e., a container-e., a furnish-ing-e., a socio-religious-e. (an uplifter), a social-e. (the same), a feed-plant-e., a milk-e., a surface-protection-e., an analyzation-e., a fiction-e., a psychological-e. (another kind of psychoanalyst), a casement-njoindow-e., a shingle-e., a fumigating-e., a laminated-wood-e.,zpackage-e. (the packing-e. again), a horse-e., a pediatric-e. (a corn-doctor), an ice-e., a recreation-e., a tire-e., a paint-maintenance-e., a space-saving-e., a film-e. (or filmgineer), a criminal-e. (a criminologist), a diet-kitchen-e., a patent-e., an equipment-e., a floor-covering-e., a society-e., a window-cleaning-e., a dust-e., a hospitalization-e., a baking-e., a directory-e., an advertising-e., a golf-e. (a designer of golf-courses), a human-e. (another variety of psychoanalyst), an amusement-e.) an electric-sign-e., a household-e., a pageant-e., an idea-e., a ballistics-e., a lace-e. and a sign-e.158 Perhaps the prize should go to the dansant-e. (an agent supplying dancers and musicians to night-clubs), or to the hot-dog-e.159 The exterminating-engineers have a solemn national association and wear a distinguishing pin; whether or not they have tried to restrain non-member rat-catchers from calling themselves engineers I do not know. In 1923 the Engineering News-Record printed a final blast against all the pseudo-engineers then extant, and urged its engineer readers to boycott them. But this boycott apparently came to nothing, and soon thereafter it abated its indignation and resorted to laughter.160 Next to engineer, expert seems to be the favorite talisman of Americans eager to augment their estate and dignity in this world. Very often it is hitched to an explanatory prefix, e.g., housing-, planning-, hog-, erosion-, marketing-, boll-weevil-, or sheep-dip-, but sometimes the simple adjective trained- suffices. When the Brain Trust came into power in Washington, the town began to swarm with such quacks, most of them recent graduates of the far-flung colleges of the land. One day a humorous member of Congress printed an immense list of them in the Congressional Record, with their salaries and academic dignities. He found at least one whose expertness was acquired in a seminary for chiropractors. During the John Purroy Mitchel “reform” administration in New York City (1914–18) so many bogus experts were put upon the pay-roll that special designations for them ran out, and in prodding through the Mitchel records later on Bird S. Coler discovered that a number had been carried on the books as general experts.
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