American Language Supplement 1

by H. L. Mencken

  The Ozarker very seldom uses virgin or maiden, since these terms carry a too direct reference to sex. A teacher of botany tells me that he is actually afraid to mention the maidenhair fern in his high-school classes.

  The word bed is seldom used before strangers, and the Ozark women do not go to bed; they lay down.…

  The innocent verb alter is never used in the presence of women, because alter in the Ozarks means to castrate, and is never used in any other sense.… A paper bag is always a sack or poke, since bag means the scrotum in the hill country.… The sex organs in general are known as the prides, and the word pride has thus acquired an obscene significance.… A midwife is always called a granny-woman, and granny is often used as a verb, designating the actual delivery of the child. It is sometimes employed with reference to the lower animals.…

  Many of the hill people still shy at the word leg, and usually say limb, particularly if the speaker is a woman.… hove is considered more or less indecent, and the mountain people seldom use the term in its ordinary sense, but nearly always with some degrading or jocular connotation. The noun ass must be avoided because it sounds exactly like the Southern pronunciation of arse, and even aster is sometimes considered suggestive.

  Along with this extreme delicacy there goes an innocent freedom in the use of words ordinarily frowned upon as vulgar outside the mountains. Says Randolph:

  A woman who would be highly insulted if bull was used in her presence will employ God-a-mighty and Jesus Christ freely.… Women of the best families give tittie to their babies in public, even in church.… Such inelegant terms as spit and belch are used freely, and I have heard the wife of a prominent professional man tell her daughter to git a rag an’ snot that young ’un, meaning to wipe the child’s nose.

  The movement, apparently originating in Hollywood, to reintroduce the old four-letter words to polite society by inserting a euphemistic r into them — the substitution of nerts for nuts offers a relatively decorous example — 1 has made but little progress. On one level they have come back unchanged, and on another they are still under the ban. The first effort to treat them scientifically and without moral prepossession, made by Allen Walker Read in 1934,2 has been followed up by Read himself,3 by Partridge4 and by others.5 Such words, says Read,

  are not cant or slang or dialect, but belong to the oldest and best established element in the English vocabulary. They are not even substandard, for they form part of the linguistic equipment of speakers of standard English. Yet they bear such a stigma that they are not even listed in the leading dictionaries of the language. But although they are in such marked disrepute it does not follow that they should be ignored by the student of the language. A sociologist does not refuse to study certain criminals on the ground that they are too perverted or too dastardly; surely a student of the language is even less warranted in refusing to consider certain four-letter words because they are too “nasty” or too “dirty.” For the scientific linguist the propriety or respectability of a word is merely one aspect of its history.

  To which the impeccable Henry Seidel Canby added in 1944:6

  The question is whether the time has not come to end the bootlegging of the so-called four-letter words.… They belong to the honest speech of our Puritan7 forefathers, who, when they were morally aroused, did not make the rhetorical error of calling a whore8 a prostitute. They are certainly not evil, nor wrong in themselves, although, since they have to do with bodily functions, a pornographer can always make wrong, and often evil, use of them.9

  Some of these words are in Shakespeare, and others are in the King James Version of the Bible. All of them are old in English, and nearly all were at one time quite respectable. There are many euphemistic substitutes for them, ranging in repute from terms scarcely more decorous than they are themselves to terms acceptable in any society which does not deny altogether that sexual and excremental functions exist in Homo sapiens. There are also euphemisms for a number of terms that are measurably less shocking to the delicate, but still highly indecorous, e.g., the familiar derivatives of bull and horse, and the common names for flatulence and eructation. The first-named is usually reduced, in the United States, to either bull or b.s.; in Australia it is turned into bullsh or boolsh.1 There are many other substitutes in American use, e.g., bushwah,2 oxiline, pastureine and prairie mayonnaise,3 but they are not tolerated in refined circles, and even bull, on account of its suggestion of the missing second element, is looked upon as somewhat indecorous.4 In 1936–37 Edwin R. Hunter and Bernice E. Gaines inquired into its use among 280 freshmen, 48 seniors and 48 members of the faculty of “a coeducational college in East Tennessee.” They found that about 20% of the males avoided it, and about 40% of the females.5 Other words under the ban of these teachers and students, usually to a much greater extent, were ass, bastard, belch, belly, bitch, bugger, drawers, guts, pregnant, sex, stink and whore. The progress of frankness since the Golden Age of euphemism in America was shown by the fact that 72.3% of the men and 54.6% of the women reported that they saw no impropriety in garter, that 88.6% of the men and 72.8% of the women used sex, that 95.2% and 92.4% respectively used leg, and that 97% and 93.3% used sick. The word most abhorred by the men was puke, and by the women bitch. Bitch was the pet abomination of both sexes taken together, with puke as its runner-up. Only 47.4% reported that they used vomit: what terms the others resorted to to indicate emesis was not indicated.

  The number of euphemisms for forbidden words in use in the United States is still large, but so far as I know they have never been investigated at length. Various correspondents inform me that single child is used by colored people in Baltimore to designate a bastard, that bastrich is used in the Duluth region as a happy compound of bastard and son-of-a-bitch, that the older rustics of Virginia use Durham for bull, that to castrate is to cut in the Middle West and to make a Baptist minister of him in Georgia, that to be pregnant is to walk uphill in Southern Illinois, that male-cow serves for bull in Tennessee, top-cow in Missouri and simple male in Texas, and that she is a derogatory prefix in many parts of the country and is felt to be more or less indecent.1 Many disarming names for a house of prostitution are in common use, e.g., sporting-house, cat-house,2 fancy-house, crib, and call-house.3 There are even more for prostitute.4 Euphemisms are by no means confined to slang and dialect: they also exist on the highest levels, e.g., intestinal fortitude for guts, to burp for to belch,5 derrière for the female backside,6 to make, to lay, and so on. Derrière, borrowed from the French, is one of many such loans in the argot of fashion writers, e.g., brassière;7 other familiar euphemisms are thoroughly American, e.g., step-in and undie.1 But the general tendency, as I have noted, is toward ever plainer speech, and many words that were under the ban only a few years ago are now used freely. I have encountered an impassioned defense of bastard in the Washington Post,2 and seen womb in a two-column head in the Baltimore Sun.3 Rupert Hughes, in an amusing essay on the relative respectability of the various organs and regions of the body,4 calls attention to the fact that a few such words as womb have been “sanctified when used metaphorically,” but are still frowned upon in “literal usage.” He finds that “so long as you speak of the north and south ends of the human machine you may go pretty nearly as far as you like,” but that “when you enter the intermediate region you must watch your every step.” The reason, of course, is obvious. When such areas must be discussed willy nilly, the common device of decorum is to resort to Latin or Greek names, usually polysyllabic. “A long word,” says Hughes, “is considered nice and a short word nasty.” And as with terms for organs and functions, so with terms for voluntary acts. “You can refer to anything under the sun if you will call it illicit relations, soliciting, perversion, contributing to juvenile delinquency. But the police will be after you if you print the short words.” I myself published a somewhat similar study in 1915.5 In it I undertook to arrange the parts of the body in eight classes, beginning with the highly respectable and ending with the unmentiona
ble. Into the highest class I put the heart, brain, hair, eyes and vermiform appendix; into Class II, the collar-bone, stomach (American), liver (English), bronchial tubes, arms (excluding elbows), tonsils, ears, etc.; into Class III, the elbows, ankles, teeth (if natural), shoulders, lungs, neck, etc., and so on. My Class VI included the thighs, paunch, esophagus, spleen, pancreas, gall-bladder and caecum, and there I had to stop, for the inmates of Classes VII and VIII could not be listed in print in those high days of comstockery.

  The difference between English and American ideas of propriety, noted in this buffoonery, have caused embarrassment to unwarned travelers since the earliest days. As I have noted elsewhere in this book, many words that are quite innocuous in the United States have a flavor of impropriety, sometimes marked, in England, e.g., bum, bug1 and bloody. The English aversion to bug has been breaking down of late, however, probably under the influence of such naturalized Americanisms as jitterbug,2 but it yet lingers in ultra-squeamish circles, and a lady-bird is never called a lady-bug. So, to a more limited extent, with bum. Contrariwise, there are many English words and phrases that have indecent significances in the United States, quite lacking in England, e.g., to be knocked up (to be tired),3 to stay with (to be the guest of),4 screw (as a noun, in the sense of salary or pay),5 to keep one’s pecker up,6 douche (shower-bath), and cock (a male chicken). The English use bitch a great deal more freely than Americans, mainly, I suppose, because they are in more frequent contact with animals.7 Now and then an American, reading an English newspaper, is brought up with a start by a word or phrase that would never be used in the same way in the United States. I offer two examples. The first is from an advertisement of a popular brand of smoking-tobacco in the News of the World. “Want a good shag?”8 The second is from the Literary Supplement of the London Times: “On the whole we may congratulate ourselves on having chosen not to be born in that excellent and indispensable century when an infant of six could be hanged … and schoolboys were encouraged to match cocks.”1

  8. EXPLETIVES

  313. [In 1931, writing in American Speech, L. W. Merryweather observed that “hell fills so large a part in the American vulgate that it will probably be worn out in a few years.”]2 Merryweather regarded this deterioration as so likely that he proposed that “clerical circles should take it upon themselves, as a public duty, to invest some other theological term with a shuddering fearsomeness that will qualify it as the successor to hell, when the lamentable decease of the latter actually takes place.” Fortunately, his fears have not been borne out by the event. Hell still flourishes in the Republic, in so far as profanity flourishes at all, and every one of the combinations and permutations of it that he listed remains in use. I borrow his grand divisions:

  1. Hell as “the equivalent of negative adverbs,” or as an intensifier thereof, as in the hell you say and like hell I will.

  2. As a super-superlative, as in colder than hell.

  3. As an adverb of all work, as in run like hell and hate like hell.

  4. As an intensifier of questions, as in what the hell,? who the hell?, where in hell?, etc.3

  5. As an intensifier of asseverations, as in hell, yes!

  6. As an intensifier of qualities, as in to be hell on, and hell of a price.4

  7. As an indicator of intensified experience, as in hell of a time,5 get the hell, and to play hell with.

  8. In a more or less literal sense, as in wouldn’t it be hell?, go to hell, the hell with, hell on wheels, hell to pay, like a snowball in hell, till hell freezes over, and to beat hell.

  9. As a synonym for uproar or turmoil, as in to raise hell, to give him hell, and hell is loose.

  10. As a verb, as in to hell around.

  11. As an adjective, as in a hellish hurry and hell-bent.

  12. In combination with other nouns, as in heli’s bells, hell and red niggers, bell and high-water, hell and Maria, hell-raiser, hell-diver, hell-bender, and hell-to-breakfast.

  13. In derivatives, as in hellion, hell-cat and heller.

  14. As a simple expletive, as in Oh, hell.1

  Nearly all the examples I have cited are of American origin: the English have a much less inspiring répertoire of terms in hell. The DAE traces to give him hell to 1851, to be hell on to 1850, hellion to 1845, hell-diver (a bird)2 to 1839, hell-bent to 1835, and hell of a to 1776, and marks them all Americanisms. It records a number of forms that have since become obsolete, e.g., hell-face and hell-to-split (1871), to smell hell and hellabaloo (1840), hell-sweat (1832) and hell-kicking (1796). It also records some forms that have flourished only in relatively restricted areas, e.g., hell-rotter and hell-west. Merryweather says that hellion seems to have been invented by the Mormons, along with by hell and son of hell. He adds that the use of these terms by the saints is apparently grounded on the theory that “if it is evil to use celestial names profanely, it must be good to take infernal names in vain. Hellion and son of hell are obvious substitutes for a pair of common obscene epithets, and by hell takes the place of by God.”3 New combinations embracing hell are being launched all the time, and old and forgotten ones are frequently revived. In 1944, for example, a United States Senator got a flattering editorial notice in the New York Times for springing “The hardtack was as hard as the hubs of hell” in the course of a Senate debate on the Army K ration. It was, said the Times, “a striking number.” A few days later a correspondent wrote in to say that the simile was used by the soldiers during the Spanish-American War, and that hubs should have been hobs.4

  Dwight L. Bolinger has called attention to the fact that hell and its derivatives make much milder oaths in English5 than in other languages. They are not as innocuous as the terms in heaven, but nevertheless they fall below those in God, e.g., goddam.1 It would be an exaggeration, however, to say that they have lost altogether the character of profanity. The contrary is proved by the continued use of euphemisms, e.g., heck, blazes and thunder. By heck is not listed as an Americanism by the DAE, but the NED Supplement calls it “dial. and U. S.” and traces it in American use to 1865, more than twenty years before the date of the first English dialect example.2 The provenance of blazes is uncertain, for though the DAE’s earliest example is dated 1837 it appeared in England only a year later. Among the phrases embodying it that are recorded are by blazes, as blue as blazes, as black as blazes, as hot as blazes, as cool as blazes (cf. as cold as hell), like blazes, oh blazes, where in blazes and what in blazes. Thunder is undoubtedly an Americanism and the DAE traces it to 1841. It seems to have been preceded by thunderation, which was obviously a euphemism for damnation, but it had taken on the definite sense of hell by 1848. Some of the thunder-phrases recorded by the DAE are by thunder, go to thunder, why (how or what) in thunder, and to give him thunder. There is also thundering, which James Russell Lowell defines waggishly, in the vocabulary attached to the second series of “The Biglow Papers,” as “a euphemism common in New England for the profane English devilish.” He adds: “Perhaps derived from the belief, common formerly, that thunder was caused by the Prince of the Air, for some of whose accomplishments consult Cotton Mather.” Go to Halifax and go to Guinea are not Americanisms; they belong to an English series of which go to Jericho is perhaps the most familiar example. An anonymous correspondent of American Speech, in August, 1927, p. 478, sought to connect the former with the name of the Nova Scotian capital, which had an evil reputation in the Eighteenth Century, but the NED traces it in English use to 1669, more than a century before the first recorded American example. It apparently owes its origin to the fact that there was a famous gibbet at Halifax, England, in the Seventeenth Century. Thornton and the DAE indicate that Jesse, as in give him Jesse, is a euphemism for hell. It has had, from time to time, many congeners, now mainly obsolete, e.g., Zachy, Moses, Israel, Peter, and saltpetre. Sometimes it is preceded by particular, as is hell itself. Its origin is unknown. Bartlett and Thornton call all-fired a softened form of hell-fired. It is traced by the DAE to 1835 and marked an Americanism. Th
ornton also lists jo-fired and traces it to 1824. It has been obsolete since the Civil War era.

  The only comprehensive collection of American swear-words is in “A Dictionary of Profanity and Its Substitutes,” by M. R. Walter, of Dalton, Pa. It has not been published, but a typescript is in the Princeton University Library and may be consulted there by learned men of reasonable respectability.1 Walter’s list is especially rich in euphemisms. Some of them follow, along with a few from other sources:2

  For damn: drat, bang, blame, blast, bother, darn, cuss, dang, ding, bean, bang.

  For damned: all-fired, blamed, blasted, blowed, confounded, darned, dashed, cursed, cussed, danged, deuced, dinged, switched, swiggered.

  For damnation: botheration, thunderation, perdition, tarnation.

  For goddam: goldarn, doggone, consarn, goldast, goshdam, and various terms in dad-, e.g., dad-blame, dad-blast, dad-burn, dad-shame, dad-sizzle, dad-rat, dad-seize, dad-swamp, dad-snatch, dad-rot, dad-fetch, dad-gum, dad-gast.

  For hell: Sam Hill,3 blazes.

  For Lord: land, law, lawks, lawdy, lawsy.

  For God: gosh, golly, (great) guns, (great) Scott, (great) horn spoon, (great) snakes, (good) grief, gum, Godfrey.

  For God Almighty: goshamighty, gorramity.

  For Jesus: gee,4 jeez, jiminy (or jeminy) or gimini,5 Jemima, Jerusalem, Jehosaphat, jiminy-whizz, gee-whizz, gee-whillikins,6 gee-whittaker.

  For Christ: cripes, crickey, Christmas, cracky, Christopher.

  For Jesus Christ: jiminy-crickets, jiminy-crackers, Judas priest, Judas Christopher.1

  Many of these are Americanisms, but not all. The DAE traces blasted in the sense of damnably to 1854, blamed to 1863, consarn to 1825, cussed to 1840,2 cracky to 1851, dinged to 1843, dad-blamed to 1884, dad-burn to c. 1845, dad-shamed to 1834, dad-seized to 1844, dad-blasted to 1890, dad-sizzled to 1898, dad-swamped to 1866, switched to 1838, goldarn to 1853, gum to c. 1815, goldast to 1888, great snakes to 1862, great guns to 1884, gee-whizz to 1888, Jemima to 1887, land (in land’s sake) to 1834, good land to 1845, law (in law sakes) to 1846, Jerusalem to 1861 and gosh to 1857.3 Walter notes some Irish euphemisms, familiar to all Americans, but now obsolete, e.g., bedad, faith, bejabers and begorrah. He also notes some extensions of Jesus and Jesus Christ, e.g., ke-rist, Jesus H. Christ, Jesus H. Particular Christ, Jesus Nelly, holy jumping Jesus, Jesus Christ and his brother Harry, Jesus Christ and John Jacob Astor, and G. Rover Cripes. He lists nearly 400 picturesque oaths in the by form, e.g., by hell’s peekhole, by all the ten legions of divils of Killooly, by Amerigo Vespucci, by hatchet-heads and hammer-handles, by St. Boo gar and all the saints at the backside of the door of Purgatory, by the devil and Tom Walker, by the double-barreled jumping jiminetty, by the high heels of St. Patrick, by the holy cinders, by the holy St. Mackerel, by the piper that played before Moses, and by the ripping, roaring, jumping Jerusalem. Finally, he notes that the Old Testament makes Jahveh Himself swear gently on occasion, as the pious will discover in Ezekiel XVIII, 3.