American Language

by H. L. Mencken

  is not artificial product, contained in books and dictionaries and governed by the strict rules of impersonal grammarians. It is the living expression of the mind and spirit of a people, ever changing and shifting, whose sole standard of correctness is custom and the common usage of the community.… The first lesson to be learned is that there is no intrinsic right or wrong in the use of language, no fixed rules such as are the delight of the teacher of Latin prose; What is right now will be wrong hereafter; what language rejected yesterday she accepts today.14

  2. WHAT IS AN AMERICANISM?

  John Pickering was the first to attempt to draw up a schedule of Americanisms. In his “Vocabulary or Collection of Words and Phrases Which Have Been Supposed to be Peculiar to the United States of America” (1816) he divided them into three categories, as follows:

  1. “We have formed some new words.”

  2. “To some old ones, that are still in use in England, we have affixed new significations.”

  3. “Others, which have been long obsolete in England, are still retained in common use among us.”

  John Russell Bartlett, in the second edition of his “Glossary of Words and Phrases Usually Regarded as Peculiar to the United States” (1859), increased these three classes to nine:

  1. Archaisms, i.e., old English words, obsolete, or nearly so, in England, but retained in use in this country.

  2. English words used in a different sense from what they are in England. “These include many names of natural objects differently applied.”

  3. Words which have retained their original meaning in the United States, though not in England.

  4. English provincialisms adopted into general use in America.

  5. New coined words, which owe their origin to the productions or to the circumstances of the country.

  6. Words borrowed from European languages, especially the French, Spanish, Dutch and German.

  7. Indian words.

  8. Negroisms.

  9. Peculiarities of pronunciation.

  Some time before this, but after the publication of Bartlett’s first edition in 1848, William C. Fowler, professor of rhetoric at Amherst, devoted a brief chapter to “American Dialects” in “The English Language” (1850) and in it one finds the following formidable classification:

  1. Words borrowed from other languages.

  a. Indian, as Kennebec, Ohio, Tombigbee, sagamore, quahaug, sucotash.

  b. Dutch, as boss, kruller, stoop.

  c. German, as spuke [?], sauerkraut.

  d. French, as bayou, cache, chute, crevasse, levee.

  e. Spanish, as calaboose, chaparral, hacienda, rancho, ranchero.

  f. Negro, as buckra.

  2. Words “introduced from the necessity of our situation, in order to express new ideas.”

  a. Words “connected with and flowing from our political institutions,” as selectman, presidential, congressional, caucus, mass-meeting, lynch-law, help (for servants).

  b. Words “connected with our ecclesiastical institutions,” as associational, consociational, to fellowship, to missionate.

  c. Words “connected with a new country,” as lot, diggings, betterments, squatter.

  3. Miscellaneous Americanisms.

  a. Words and phrases become obsolete in England, as talented, offset (for set-off), back and forth (for backward and forward).

  b. Old words and phrases “which are now merely provincial in England,” as hub, whap [?], to wilt.

  c. Nouns formed from verbs by adding the French suffix -ment, as publishment, releasement, requirement.

  d. Forms of words “which fill the gap or vacancy between two words which are approved,” as obligate (between oblige and obligation) and variate (between vary and variation).

  e. “Certain compound terms for which the English have different compounds,” as bank-bill (bank-note), book-store (bookseller’s shop), bottom land (interval-land), clapboard (pale), sea-board (sea-shore), side-hill (hill side).

  f. “Certain colloquial phrases, apparently idiomatic, and very expressive,” as to cave in, to flare up, to flunk out, to fork over, to hold on, to let on, to stave off, to take on.

  g. Intensives, “often a matter of mere temporary fashion,” as dreadful, might, plaguy, powerful.

  h. “Certain verbs expressing one’s state of mind, but partially or timidly,” as to allot upon (for to count upon), to calculate, to expect (to think or believe), to guess, to reckon.

  i. “Certain adjectives, expressing not only quality, but one’s subjective feelings in regard to it,” as clever, grand, green, likely, smart, ugly.

  j. Abridgments, as stage (for stage-coach) turnpike (for turnpike-road), spry (for sprightly), to conduct (for to conduct one’s self).

  k. “Quaint or burlesque terms,” as to tote, to yank, humbug, loafer, muss, plunder (for baggage), rock (for stone).

  L. “Low expressions, mosdy political,” as slang-whanger, loco foco, hunker, to get the hang of.

  m. “Ungrammatical expressions, disapproved by all,” as do don’t, used to could, can’t come it, Universal preacher (for Universalist), there’s no two ways about it.

  Alfred L. Elwyn, in his “Glossary of Supposed Americanisms” (1859), attempted no classification. He confined his glossary to archaic English words surviving in America, and sought only to prove that they had come down “from our remotest ancestry” and were thus undeserving of the reviling lavished upon them by English critics. Scheie de Vere, in his “Americanisms” (1872), followed Bartlett, and devoted himself largely to words borrowed from the Indian dialects, and from the French, Spanish and Dutch. But John S. Farmer, in his “Americanisms New and Old” (1889), ventured upon a new classification, prefacing it with the following definition:

  An Americanism may be defined as a word or phrase, old or new, employed by general or respectable usage in America in a way not sanctioned by the best standards of the English language. As a matter of fact, however, the term has come to possess a wider meaning, and it is now applied not only to words and phrases which can be so described, but also to the new and legitimately born words adapted to the general needs and usages, to the survivals of an older form of English than that now current in the mother country, and to the racy, pungent vernacular of Western life.

  He then proceeded to this classification:

  1. Words and phrases of purely American derivation, embracing words originating in:

  a. Indian and aboriginal life.

  b. Pioneer and frontier life.

  c. The church.

  d. Politics.

  e. Trades of all kinds.

  f. Travel, afloat and ashore.

  2. Words brought by colonists, including:

  a. The German element.

  b. The French.

  c. The Spanish.

  b. The Dutch.

  e. The Negro.

  f. The Chinese.

  3. Names of American things, embracing:

  a. Natural products.

  b. Manufactured articles.

  4. Perverted English words.

  5. Obsolete English words still in good use in America.

  6. English words, American by inflection and modification.

  7. Odd and ignorant popular phrases, proverbs, vulgarisms, and colloquialisms, cant and slang.

  8. Individualisms.

  9. Doubtful and miscellaneous.

  Sylva Clapin, in his “New Dictionary of Americanisms” (1902), reduced these categories to four:

  1. Genuine English words, obsolete or provincial in England, and universally used in the United States.

  2. English words conveying, in the United States, a different meaning from that attached to them in England.

  3. Words introduced from other languages than the English: — French, Dutch, Spanish, German, Indian, etc.

  4. Americanisms proper, i.e., words coined in the country, either representing some new idea or peculiar product.

  Richard H. Thornton, in his “American Glossary
” (1912), substituted the following:

  1. Forms of speech now obsolete or provincial in England, which survive in the United States, such as allow, bureau, fall, gotten, guess, likely, professor, shoat.

  2. Words and phrases of distinctly American origin, such as belittle, lengthy, lightning-rod, to darken one’s doors, to bark up the wrong tree, to come out at the little end of the horn, blind tiger, cold snap, gay Quaker, gone coon, long sauce, pay dirt, small potatoes, some pumpkins.

  3. Nouns which indicate quadrupeds, birds, trees, articles of food, etc., that are distinctively American, such as ground-hog, hang-bird, hominy, live-oak, locust, opossum, persimmon, pone, succotash, wampum, wigwam,

  4. Names of persons and classes of persons, and of places, such as Buckeye, Cracker, Greaser, Hoosier, Old Hickory, the Little Giant, Dixie, Gotham, the Bay State, the Monumental City.

  5. Words which have assumed a new meaning, such as card, clever, fork, help, penny, plunder, raise, rock, sack, ticket, windfall.

  In addition, Thornton added a provisional class of “words and phrases of which I have found earlier examples in American than in English writers;… with the caveat that further research may reverse the claim”— a class offering specimens in alarmist, capitalize, eruptiveness, horse of another colour [sic!], the jig’s up, nameable, omnibus bill, propaganda and whitewash.

  Gilbert M. Tucker, in his “American English” (1921) attempted to reduce all Americanisms to two grand divisions, as follows:

  1. Words and phrases that originated in America and express something that the British have always expressed differendy if they have mentioned it at all.

  2. Words and phrases that would convey to a British ear a different meaning from that which they bear in this country.

  To this he added seven categories of locution not to be regarded as Americanisms, despite their inclusion in various previous lists, as follows:

  1. Words and phrases stated by the previous compiler himself to be of foreign (i.e., chiefly of English) origin, like Farmer’s hand-me-downs.

  2. Names of things exclusively American, but known abroad under the same name, such as moccasin.

  3. Names of things invented in the United States, like drawing-room car.

  4. Words used in this country in a sense hardly distinguishable from that they bear in England, like force for a gang of laborers.

  5. Nonce words, like Mark Twain’s cavalieress.

  6. Perfectly regular and self-explanatory compounds, like office-holder, planing-machine, ink-slinger and fly-time.

  7. Purely technical terms, such as those employed in baseball.

  Only a glance at these discordant classifications is needed to show that they hamper the inquiry by limiting its scope — not so much, to be sure, as the extravagant limitations of White and Lounsbury, noted in Chapter I, Section 5, but still very seriously. They leave out of account some of the most salient characters of a living language. Only Bartlett and Farmer establish a separate category of Americanisms produced by the shading of consonants and other such phonological changes, though even Thornton, of course, is obliged to take notice of such forms as bust and bile, and even Tucker lists buster. It must be obvious that many of the words and phrases excluded by his Index Expurgatorius are quite genuine Americanisms. Why should he bar out such a word as moccasin on the ground that it is also known in England? So is caucus, and yet he includes it. He is also far too hostile to such characteristic American compounds as office-holder and fly-time. True enough, their materials are good English, and they involve no change in the meaning of their component parts, but it must be plain that they were put together in the United States and that an Englishman always sees a certain strangeness in them. Pay-dirt, panel-house, passage-way, patrolman, night-rider, low-down, know-nothing, hoe-cake and hog-wallow are equally compounded of pure English metal, and yet he lists all of them. Again, he is too ready, it seems to me, to bar out archaisms, which constitute one of the most interesting and authentic of all the classes of Americanisms. It is idle to prove that Chaucer used to guess. The important thing is that the English abandoned it centuries ago, and that when they happen to use it today they are always conscious that it is an Americanism. Baggage is in Shakespeare, but it is not often in the London Times. Here Mr. Tucker allows his historical principles to run away with his judgment. His book represents the labor of nearly forty years and is full of shrewd observations and persuasive contentions, but it is sometimes excessively dogmatic.15

  The most scientific and laborious of all these collections of Americanisms, until the Dictionary of American English got under way, was Thornton’s. It presents an enormous mass of quotations, and they are all very carefully dated, and it corrects most of the more obvious errors in the work of earlier inquirers. But its very dependence upon quotations limits it chiefly to the written language, and so the enormously richer materials of the spoken language are passed over, and particularly the materials evolved during the past generation. In vain one searches the two fat volumes and their pedestrian appendix for such highly characteristic forms as near-accident and buttinski, the use of sure as an adverb, and the employment of well as a sort of general equivalent of the German also. These grammatical and syntactical tendencies lay beyond the scope of Thornton’s investigation, and some of them lie outside the field of the American Dictionary, but it is plain that they must be prime concerns of any future student who essays to get at the inner spirit of the American language. Its difference from Standard English is not merely a difference in vocabulary, to be disposed of in an alphabetical list; it is also a difference in pronunciation, in intonation, in conjugation and declension, in metaphor and idiom, in the whole fashion of using words. Some of the aspects of that difference will be considered in the following pages. The vocabulary, of course, must be given first attention, for in it the earliest American divergences are embalmed and it tends to grow richer and freer year after year, but attention will also be paid to materials and ways of speech that are less obvious, and in particular to certain tendencies in vulgar American, the great reservoir of the language, and perhaps the forerunner of what it will be on higher levels, at least in one detail or another, in the years to come.

  1 W. W. Skeat distinguishes 9 principal dialects in Scotland, 3 in Ireland and 30 in England and Wales. See his English Dialects From the Eighth Century to the Present Day; Cambridge, 1911, p. 107 ff.

  2 F. L. Pattee: A History of American Literature Since 1870; New York, 1916. See also The American Novel, by Carl Van Doren; New York, 1921.

  3 Rather curiously, the two authorities who were most influential, during the Nineteenth Century, in keeping it to a rigid pattern were both Americans. They were Lindley Murray (1745–1826) and Joseph E. Worcester (1784–1865). Murray, a Pennsylvanian, went to England after the Revolution, and in 1795 published his Grammar of the English Language. It had an extraordinary sale in England, and was accepted as the court of last resort in usage down to quite recent times. Worcester’s Universal and Critical Dictionary of the English Language, 1846, divided the honors of authority in England with B. H. Smart’s Dictionary, published during the same year. It was extensively pirated. Thus, says Thomas R. Lounsbury (The Standard of Pronunciation in English; New York, 1904, p. 220), “the Londoner frequently got his pure London pronunciation from a citizen of this country who was never outside of New England for more than a few months of his life.” Worcester was also accepted at Harvard and at the University of Virginia, but elsewhere in the United States Webster prevailed.

  4 See the chapter, Interlude on Jargon, in Quiller-Couch’s On the Art of Writing; New York, 1916. Appropriately enough, large parts of the learned critic’s book are written in the very Jargon he attacks. See also Ch. VI of Growth and Structure of the English Language, by O. Jespersen, 3rd ed., rev.; Leipzig, 1919, especially p. 143 ff. See also Official English, in English, March, 1919, p. 7; April, p. 45, and Aug., p. 135, and The Decay of Syntax, in the London Times Literary Supplement, May 8, 1919, p.
1.

  5 Alexander Francis: Americans: An Impression; New York, 1900.

  6 Breaking Priscian’s Head, by J. Y. T. Greig; London, 1929.

  7 Pomona, or The Future of English, by Basil de Sélincourt; London, 1929.

  8 Speech before the Chamber of Commerce Convention, Washington, Feb. 19, 1916.

  9 Speech at a workingman’s dinner, New York, Sept. 4, 1912.

  10 Wit and Wisdom of Woodrow Wilson, comp. by Richard Linthicum; New York, 1916, p. 54.

  11 Speech at Ridgewood, N. J., April 22, 1910.

  12 Wit and Wisdom … p. 56.

  13 New Republic, Dec. 24, 1919, p. 116, col. 1.

  14 Introduction to the Science of Language, 4th ed.; London, 1900, Vol. II, pp. 33–4. All this, of course, had been said long before Sayce. “Language,” said Quintilian in his Institutiones Oratorias, I (c. 95), “is like money, which becomes current when it receives the public stamp.” “Custom,” said Ben Jonson in his Grammar (1640) “is the most certain mistress of language.” “Language,” said George Campbell in The Philosophy of Rhetoric, II (1776), “is purely a species of fashion, in which by the general, but tacit, consent of the people of a particular state or country, certain sounds come to be appropriated to certain things as their signs.” “Established custom,” said Hugh Blair in his Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres (1783), “is the standard to which we must at last resort for determining every controverted point in language.” To which Noah Webster added in his Dissertations on the English Language (1789): “The general practise of a nation is the rule of propriety.”

  15 Tucker falls into a number of rather astonishing errors. P.D.Q. is defined as an abbreviation of “pretty deuced quick,” which it certainly is not. Passage (of a bill in Congress) is listed as an Americanism; it is actually very good English and is used in England every day. Standee is defined as “standing place”; it really means one who stands. Sundœ (the soda-fountain mess) is misspelled sunday; it was precisely the strange spelling that gave the term vogue. Mucker, a brilliant Briticism, unknown in America save in college slang, is listed between movie and muckraker.