American Language
Page 40
Euphemisms for things are almost as common in the United States as euphemisms for avocations. Dozens of forlorn little fresh-water colleges are called universities, and almost all pawn-shops are loan-offices. When movie-cathedral came in a few scoffers snickered, but by the generality of fans it was received gravely. City, in England, used to be confined to the seats of bishops, and even today it is applied only to considerable places, but in the United States it is commonly assumed by any town with paved streets, and in the statistical publications of the Federal government it is applied to all places of 8000 or more population. The American use of store for shop, like that of help for servant, is probably the product of an early effort at magnification. Before Prohibition saloons used to be sample-rooms, buffets, exchanges, cafés and restaurants; now they are taverns, cocktail-rooms, taprooms, American-bars, stubes and what not. Not long ago the Furnished-Room Guide undertook to substitute hotelette for rooming-house,161 and in 1928 President E. L. Robins of the National Fertilizer Association proposed that the name of that organization be changed to the National Association of Plant Food Manufacturers or the American Plant Food Association.162 In Pasadena the public garbage-wagons bear the legend: Table-Waste Disposal Department. The word studio is heavily overworked; there are billiard-studios, tonsorial-studios, candy-studios, and even shoe-studios.163 Nor is this reaching out for sweet and disarming words confined to the lowly. Some time ago, in the Survey, the trade journal of the American uplifters, Dr. Thomas Dawes Eliot, associate professor of sociology in Northwestern University, printed a solemn argument in favor of abandoning all such harsh terms as reformatory, house of refuge, reform school and jail. “Each time a new phrase is developed,” he said, “it seems to bring with it, or at least to be accompanied by, some measure of permanent gain, in standards or in viewpoint, even though much of the old may continue to masquerade as the new. The series, alms, philanthropy, relief, rehabilitation, case work, family welfare, shows such a progression from cruder to more refined levels of charity.” Among the substitutions proposed by the learned professor were habit-disease for vice, psycho-neurosis for sin, failure to compensate for disease, treatment for punishment, delinquent for criminal, unmarried mother for illegitimate mother, out of wedlock for bastard, behavior problem for prostitute, colony for penitentiary, school for reformatory, psychopathic hospital for insane asylum, and house of detention for jail.164 Many of these terms (or others like them) have been actually adopted. Practically all American insane asylums are now simple hospitals, many reformatories and houses of correction have been converted into homes or schools, all almshouses are now infirmaries, county-farms or county-homes, and most of the more advanced American penologists now speak of criminals as psychopathic personalities. By a law of New York it is provided that “in any local law, ordinance or resolution, or in any public or judicial proceeding, or in any process, notice, order, decree, judgment, record or other public document or paper, the term bastard or illegitimate child shall not be used, but the term child born out of wedlock shall be used in substitution therefor, and with the same force and effect.”165 Meanwhile, such harsh terms as second-hand and ready-made disappear from the American vocabulary. For the former the automobile dealers, who are ardent euphe-mists, have substituted reconditioned, rebuilt, repossessed and used, and for the latter department-stores offer ready-tailored, ready-to-wear and ready-to-put-on. For shop-worn two of the current euphemisms are store-used and slightly-second.
The English euphemism-of-all-work used to be lady. Back in the Seventeenth Century the court-poet Edmund Waller thought it quite proper to speak of actresses, then a novelty on the English stage, as lady-actors, and even today the English newspapers frequently refer to lady-secretaries, lady-doctors, lady-inspectors, lady-golfers and lady-champions. Women’s wear, in most English shops, is ladies’ wear. But this excessive use of lady seems to be going out, and I note women’s singles and women’s ice hockey on the sports pages of the London Daily Telegraph.166 The Times inclines the same way, but I observe that it still uses Ladies’ International to designate a golf tournament, ladies’ round and ladies’ championship (golf and fencing).167 In the United States lady is definitely out of favor. The salesladies of yesteryear are now all saleswomen or salesgirls, and the female superintendent of a hospital is not the lady-superintendent, but simply the superintendent. When women were first elected to Congress, the question as to how they should be referred to in debate engaged the leaders of the House of Representatives. For a while the phrase used was “the lady from So-and-so,” but soon “the gentlewoman” was substituted, and this is now employed almost invariably. Its invention is commonly ascribed to the late Nicholas Longworth; if he actually proposed it, it was probably jocosely, for gentlewoman is clumsy, and in some cases, as clearly inaccurate as lady. The English get round the difficulty by using the hon. member in speaking of women M.P.’s, though sometimes the hon. lady is used.168 A member who happens to be a military or naval officer is always, by the way, the hon. and gallant member, and a legal officer, say the Attorney-General or Solicitor-General, or a lawyer member in active practise, is the hon. and learned member. The English use gentleman much more carefully than we do, and much more carefully than they themselves use lady. Gentleman-author or gentleman-clerk would make them howl, but they commonly employ gentleman-rider and gentleman-player in place of our amateur, though amateur seems to be gaining favor. Here the man referred to is always actually a gentleman by their standards.
The English have relatively few aliens in their midst, and in consequence they have developed nothing comparable to our huge repertory of opprobrious names for them. They have borrowed our dago for Italian, and they have been calling Frenchmen frogs or froggies since the Napoleonic wars169 but they quickly dropped the war-time hun and boche for German, they have devised nothing more unpleasant to designate a Scotsman than Sandy, and their worst name for the damned Yankee is simply Yankee. To match these feeble efforts the American language offers:
For Canadian: canuck.170
For Chinese: chink and yellow-belly.
For Czech: bohoe, bohick, bohee, bohunk, bootchkey and cheskey171
For Englishman: lime-juicer or limey.172
For Filipino: gu-gu.
For German: dutchie, squarehead, heinie, kraut, pretzel and limberger.
For Greek: grease-ball.
For Hungarian: bohunk, hunk and hunkie.
For Irishman: mick, harp and turk173
For Italian: dago, wop, guinea and ginzo.174
For Japanese: skibby.175
For Jew: kike, sheenie, arab, goose and yid.176
For Latin-American: spiggoty and spick.177
For Mexican: greaser.178
For Negro: nigger, coon, shine, jigabo, jigaboo, spade, Zulu, skunk, jig, jit, buffalo, boogie, dinge, smoke, moke and snowball.179
For Pole: polack.
For Scandinavian: scoivegian, scoivoogian, scoovy, sowegian, scandihoovian, scandinoovian, squarehead, snooser and herring choker.180
The paucity of aliens in England also makes it unnecessary for the English to pay as much heed as we do to the susceptibilities of organized (and sometimes extremely self-assertive) foreign groups. Thus they are free to laugh at stage Irishmen without bringing down the dudgeon of the Knights of Columbus, and they continue to use the word Jew freely, and even retain the verb to jew in their vocabulary. In the United States, according to Richard Grant White, certain Jews petitioned the publishers of Webster’s and Worcester’s Dictionaries, so long ago as the early 70’s, to omit their definitions of to jew, and the publishers of Worcester’s complied. “Webster’s New International” (1934) still includes the verb, but with the saving observation that it is “used opprobriously in allusion to practices imputed to the Jews by those who dislike them.” To jew down is listed, but it is dismissed as slang. In the Standard Dictionary both to jew and to jew down are called slang. But in the Oxford Dictionary to jew gets the more respectable rank of a colloquialism.
White says that there were also protests from Jews in the early 70’s, both in England and in the United States, against the use of Jew as an adjective in reference to criminals. Both the New York Times and the London Pall Mall Gazette, he says, apologized for using it, and promised to sin no more. To this he objected, saying,
The Jews are a peculiar people, who, in virtue of that strongly-marked and exclusive nationality which they so religiously cherish, have oudived the Pharaohs who oppressed them.… When they are mentioned as Jews no allusion is meant to their faith, but to their race. A parallel case to those complained of would be the saying that a Frenchman or a Spaniard had committed a crime, at which no offense is ever taken. A Jew is a Jew, whether he holds to the faith of his fathers or leaves it.181
But in the United States certain Jews carry on a continuous campaign against the use of Jew, and most American newspapers, in order to get rid of their clamor, commonly use Hebrew instead. Thus, one often encounters such forms as Hebrew comedian, Hebrew holidays and even Hebrew rabbi.182 Some years ago a number of American Jews, alarmed by such incongruities, issued a “Note on the Word Jew” for the guidance of editors. From it I take the following:
1. The words Jew and Jewish can never be objectionable when applied to the whole body of Israel, or to whole classes within the body, as, for instance, Jewish young men.
2. There can be no objection to the use of the words Jew and Jewish when contrast is being made with other religions: “Jews observe Passover and Christians Easter.”
3. The application of the word Jew or Jewish to any individual is to be avoided unless from the context it is necessary to call attention to his religion; in other words, unless the facts have some relation to his being a Jew or to his Jewishness.… Thus, if a Jew is convicted of a crime he should not be called a Jewish criminal; and on the other hand, if a Jew makes a great scientific discovery he should not be called an eminent Jewish scientist.
4. The word Jew is a noun, and should never be used as an adjective or verb. To speak of Jew girls or Jew stores is both objectionable and vulgar. Jewish is the adjective. The use of Jew as a verb, in to jew down, is a slang survival of the medieval term of opprobrium, and should be avoided altogether.
5. The word Hebrew should not be used instead of Jew. As a noun it connotes rather the Jewish people of the distant past, as the ancient Hebrews. As an adjective it has an historical rather than a religious connotation; one cannot say the Hebrew religion, but the Jewish religion.
Dr. Solomon Solis Cohen of Philadelphia calls my attention to the fact that the American Jews themselves are not consistent in their use of Jew and Hebrew. They have Young Men’s Hebrew Associations all over the country, but they also have a Council of Jewish Women and many Jewish Community Centers. They have both a Hebrew Union College and a Jewish Theological Seminary. Their principal weekly is called the American Hebrew and Jewish Tribune. The distinction between the religious significance of Jew and the national significance of Hebrew is by no means always clear. Abraham, says Dr. Solis Cohen, was a Hebrew (’Ibri), but in the course of time his descendants divided into two moieties, the Israelites and the Judeans, and it is from Judeans that we get our word Jew. “When the Northern Kingdom was destroyed by Shalmaneser the name Israel, as a territorial designation, disappeared except from poetry and prayer, until it was recently revived by the Zionists, who speak of all Palestine as Erez Israel”183 Dr. Solis Cohen suggests that the superior respectability of Hebrew in the United States may have been helped by the fact that it was a term of honor among the early Puritan divines, who studied the Hebrew language, and venerated the Hebrew scriptures. The word Jew has been given a dubious significance by “The Merchant of Venice,” by the verb to jew, and by various other unpleasant associations. Whatever the fact, the sort of Jew who devotes himself to visiting editors seems to prefer Hebrew. Even in the advertisements of kosher hotels in the Jewish papers the old term, Jewish cooking, has been abandoned. But I have never observed the use of Hebrew cooking in its place: the popular term seems to be the somewhat incredible Hungarian cuisine. Jewish cookery is actually mainly German, with certain Russian and Polish fancies added. In New York the adjective Jewish seems to be regarded as less offensive than the noun Jew. Thus Jewish boy is often used as a sort of euphemism for Jew. The Jews listed in “Who’s Who in America” sometimes write Jewish religion in their autobiographical sketches instead of Jew, but most of them omit all direct reference to their faith. Among the Cohens in the volume for 1934–35 I find one who describes himself as a Hebrew, one (only partly Jewish) who says he is an Episcopalian, one who puts down Jewish religion, and eight who are silent.
The Jews are not the only indignant visitors to American editorial offices. In Chicago, in the heyday of Al Capone and his assassins, the local Italians made such vociferous objection to the use of Italian in identifying gunmen that the newspapers began to use Sicilian instead. Apparently, the complaints had come chiefly from Northern Italians, and most of the gunmen were actually Sicilians or Neapolitans. But there were also thousands of Sicilians and Neapolitans in the Chicago region who were not gunmen, and why they did not protest in their turn I do not know. The Negroes everywhere carry on a double campaign — first, against the use of nigger, and secondly, for the capitalization of Negro. On March 7, 1930, when the New York Times announced that it would capitalize Negro thereafter, there was jubilation in the Negro press. The Association for the Advancement of Colored People had been advocating the change for a long while, but it was a letter from Major R. R. Moton, president of Tuskegee Institute, that moved the Times. It reported on March 9 that Negro was being used by most of the principal American magazines, and by a number of leading newspapers, including the Montgomery (Ala.) Advertiser, the Durham (N. C.) Sun, the Columbus (Ga.) Ledger, and the Raleigh (N. C.) News in the South. The rejoicing among the dark brethren was not shared by George S. Schuyler, the Negro iconoclast, who argued in the Pittsburgh Courier184 that Negro meant a black man, and that but 20% of the Aframericans were actually black. “The truth is,” he said, “that the American Negro is an amalgam of Caucasian, Amerindian and African.… Geographically, we are neither Ethiopians nor Africans, but Americans. Culturally, we are Anglo-Saxons.” But the prevailing view in Aframerica was set forth three years later by the Negro poet and publicist, James Weldon Johnson, as follows: