American Language

by H. L. Mencken

  Store, shop, lumber, pie, dry-goods, cracker, rock and partridge among nouns and to haul, to jew, to notify and to heft among verbs offer further examples of changed meanings. Down to the middle of the Eighteenth Century shop continued to designate a small retail establishment in America, as it does in England to this day. Store was applied only to a large establishment — one showing, in some measure, the character of a warehouse. But in 1774 a Boston young man was advertising in the Massachusetts Spy for “a place as a clerk in a store” (three Americanisms in a row!). Soon afterward shop began to acquire its special American meaning of a factory, e.g., machine-shop. Meanwhile store completely displaced shop in the English sense, and it remained for a late flowering of Anglomania, as in the case of boot and shoe, to restore, in a measure, the status quo ante. Lumber, in Eighteenth Century English, meant disused goods, and this is its common meaning in England today, as is shown by lumber-room. But the colonists early employed it to designate cut timber, and that use of it is now universal in America. Its familiar derivatives, e.g., lumber-yard, lumber-man, lumber-jack, greatly reinforce this usage. Dry-goods, in England, means, “non-liquid goods, as corn” (i.e., wheat); in the United States the term means “textile fabrics, cottons, woolens, linens, silks, laces, etc.”30 The difference had appeared before 1725. Rock, in English, always means a large mass; in America it may mean a small stone, as in rock-pile and to throw a rock. The Puritans were putting rocks into the foundations of their meeting houses so early as 1712.31 cracker began to be used for biscuit before the Revolution. Tavern displaced inn at the same time. In England partridge is applied only to the true partridge (Perdix perdix) and its nearly related varieties, but in the United States it is also often used to designate the ruffed grouse (Bonasa umbellus), the common quail (Colinus virginianus), and various other tetraonid birds. This confusion goes back to colonial times. So with rabbit. Zoölogically speaking, there are no native rabbits in the United States; they are all hares. But the early colonists, for some unknown reason, dropped the word hare out of their vocabulary, and it is rarely heard in American speech to this day. When it appears it is almost always applied to the so-called Belgian hare, which, curiously enough, is not a hare at all, but a true rabbit. Bay and bay berry early acquired special American meanings. In England bay is used to designate the bay-tree (Laurus no-bilis); in America it designates a shrub, the wax myrtle (Myrica cerifera). Both the tree and the shrub have berries, and those of the latter are used to make the well-known bay berry candles. Other botanical and zöological terms to which the colonists gave new significances are blackbird, beech, hemlock, lark, laurel, oriole, swallow and walnut.

  To haul, in English, means to move by force or violence; in the colonies it came to mean to transport in a vehicle, and this meaning survives in American. To jew, in English, means to cheat; the colonists made it mean to haggle, and devised to jew down to indicate an effort to work a reduction in price. To heft, in English, means to lift up; the early Americans made it mean to weigh by lifting, and kept the idea of weighing in its derivatives, e.g., hefty. Finally, there is the vulgar American misuse of Miss or Mis’ (pro. miz) for Mrs. It was so widespread by 1790 that on November 17 of that year Webster denounced it as “a gross impropriety” in the American Mercury. The schoolmarm has made war on it ever since, but it survives unscathed in the speech of the common people.

  4. ARCHAIC ENGLISH WORDS

  Most of the colonists who lived along the American seaboard in 1750 were the descendants of immigrants who had come in fully a century before; after the first settlements there had been much less fresh immigration than many latter-day writers have assumed. According to Prescott F. Hall, “the population of New England … at the date of the Revolutionary War … was produced out of an immigration of about 20,000 persons who arrived before 1640,”32 and we have Franklin’s authority for the statement that the total population of the colonies in 1751, then about 1,000,-000, had been produced from an original immigration of less than 80,000. Even at that early day, indeed, the colonists had begun to feel that they were distinctly separated, in culture and customs, from the mother country, and there were signs of the rise of a new native aristocracy, entirely distinct from the older aristocracy of the royal governors’ courts.33 The enormous difficulties of communication with England helped to foster this sense of separation. The round trip across the ocean occupied the better part of a year, and was hazardous and expensive; a colonist who had made it was a marked man — as Hawthorne said, “the petit maître of the colonies.” Nor was there any very extensive exchange of ideas, for though most of the books read in the colonies came from England, the great majority of the colonists, down to the middle of the century, seem to have read little save the Bible and biblical commentaries, and in the native literature of the time one seldom comes upon any reference to the English authors who were glorifying the period of the Restoration and the reign of Anne. “No allusion to Shakespeare,” says Bliss Perry,34 “has been discovered in the colonial literature of the Seventeenth Century, and scarcely an allusion to the Puritan poet Milton.” Benjamin Franklin’s brother, James, had a copy of Shakespeare at the New England Courant office in Boston, but Benjamin himself seems to have made little use of it, for there is not a single quotation from or mention of the bard in all his voluminous works.35 “The Harvard College Library in 1723,” says Perry, “had nothing of Addison, Steele, Bolingbroke, Dryden, Pope and Swift, and had only recently obtained copies of Milton and Shakespeare.… Franklin reprinted ‘Pamela’ and his Library Company of Philadelphia had two copies of ‘Paradise Lost’ for circulation in 1741, but there had been no copy of that work in the great library of Cotton Mather.” Moreover, after 1760, the eyes of the colonists were upon France rather than upon England, and Rousseau, Montesquieu, Voltaire and the Encyclopedists began to be familiar names to thousands who were scarcely aware of Addison and Steele, or even of the great Elizabethans.36

  During the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries England was wracked by a movement to standardize the language, alike in vocabulary, in pronunciation and in spelling, and it went far enough to set up artificial standards that still survive.37 The great authority of Samuel Johnson gave heavy support to this movement, though he was wise enough in the preface to his Dictionary (1735) to admit somewhat sadly that “sounds are too volatile and subtile for legal restraints” and that “to enchain syllables, and to lash the winds, are equally the undertakings of pride, unwilling to measure its desires by its strength.” But Johnson could never resist the temptation to pontificate, and so he thundered idiotically against to wobble, to bamboozle, to swap, to budge, to coax, touchy, stingy, swimmingly, fib, banter, fop, row (in the sense of a disturbance) and even fun and chaperon, all of them then somewhat novel.38 He also permitted himself to read the death-warrants of many archaisms that were not really archaisms at all, for example, glee, jeopardy and to smoulder. The Americans, in the main, were cut off from this double policing, and in consequence they went on making new words freely and cherishing old ones that had come under the ban in England. A minority along the coast, to be sure, tried to keep up with the latest dictates of English fashion, but it was never large, and its speech habits had but small influence upon those of the majority. There was obviously only rhetoric in James Russell Lowell’s saying that “our ancestors, unhappily, could bring over no English better than Shakespeare’s,” for relatively few of them had ever heard of Shakespeare, and to even fewer was he anything more than a vague name;39 but it is nevertheless a fact that their way of using the language had something in it of his glorious freedom and spaciousness.40 If they had any written guide it was the King James Bible (1611). Whenever an English reform or innovation percolated to them they were inclined to remain faithful to the sacred text, not only because of its pious authority but also because of the superior pull of its imminent and constant presence. Thus when fashionable prudery in English ordered the abandonment of the Anglo-Saxon sick for the later and more elegant ill, the c
olonists refused to follow, for sick was in both the Old Testament and the New;41 and that refusal remains in force to this day.

  A large number of words and phrases, many of them now exclusively American, are similar survivals from the English of the Seventeenth Century, long since obsolete or merely provincial in England. Among nouns Thornton notes fox-fire, flap-jack, jeans, molasses, shoat, beef (to designate the live animal), chinch, cord-wood and home-spun; Halliwell42 adds andiron, bay-window, cesspool, clodhopper, cross-purposes, greenhorn, loop-hole, ragamuffin and trash; and other authorities cite stock (for cattle), fall (for autumn), offal, din, underpinning and adze. Bub, used in addressing a boy, is very old English, but survives only in American. Flap-jack goes back to “Piers Plowman,” but has been obsolete in England for two centuries. Muss, in the sense of a row, is also obsolete over there, but it is to be found in “Antony and Cleopatra.” Char, as a noun, disappeared from Standard English long ago, save in the compound, charwoman, but it survives in American as chore. Among the verbs similarly preserved are to whittle, to wilt and to approbate. To guess, in the American sense of to suppose, is to be found in “Henry VI”:

  Not all together; better far, I guess,

  That we do make our entrance several ways.

  In “Measure for Measure” Escalus says “I guess not” to Angelo. The Oxford Dictionary offers examples much older — from Chaucer, Wycliffe and Gower. To loan, in the American sense of to lend, is in 34 and 35 Henry VIII, but it dropped out of use in England early in the Eighteenth Century, and all the leading dictionaries, in both English and American, now call it an Americanism. To fellowship, once in good American use but now reduced to a provincialism, is in Chaucer. Even to hustle, it appears, is ancient. Among adjectives, homely was used in its American sense of plain-featured by both Shakespeare and Milton. Other such survivors are burly, catty-conered, likely, deft, copious, scant and ornate. Perhaps clever also belongs to this category, that is, in the American sense of amiable.

  Most of the English archaisms surviving in American seem to be derived from the dialects of Eastern and Southern England, from which regions, in fact, a large percentage of the original English settlers came. Sir William Craigie says43 that in New England three areas are chiefly represented — Yorkshire and Lincolnshire, East Anglia, and the Southwestern counties. The Rev. Edward Gepp, of Colchester, who has made comparative studies of the Essex dialect and the common speech of the United States, says that the latter shows a “striking absence of words and forms characteristic of Scotland, and of the North and West of England.”44 Since the early colonial period there has been an accession of Northern forms, chiefly through the so-called Scotch-Irish influence, but the older archaisms are nearly all Southern or Eastern. Another English observer, the Rev. H. T. Armfield, has found many Essex place-names in New England, among them, Hedingham, Topsfield, Wethers-field, Braintree, Colchester, Haverhill and Billerica.45 Among the vulgar forms now common in the United States which still survive in the Essex dialect Mr. Gepp notes kilter, kiver, yarb, ary, nary, ellum, tonguey, pesky, snicker, bimeby, cowcumber, invite (for invitation) and hoss, and the verbs to argify, to slick up and to scrimp. His word-lists also show a number of words that are now good American, e.g., chump, given-name and heft. But such archaisms are naturally most common on the lower levels of speech, and in remote and uncultured settlements. “It is a commonplace of the study of cultural history,” says George Philip Krapp,46 “that isolated communities tend to remain relatively stable. They retain their customs, their occupations, their speech, all their cultural traditions, very much as they were at the time when the members of the community seated themselves within the confines of the prison house which they call their home.” Thus it is no wonder that the American spoken by the mountaineers of Appalachia shows an unusually large admixture of ancient forms, usually English but often Scottish, not only in its vocabulary, but also in its syntax and pronunciation. Archaic forms continue to flourish in such remote regions just as the Rheno-Franconian dialect of the Seventeenth Century survives among the more bucolic Germans of the lower counties of Pennsylvania. We shall encounter some of them in Chapter VII.

  1 A number of such Indian words are preserved in the nomenclature of Tammany Hall and in that of the Improved Order of Red Men, an organization with more than 500,-000 members. The Red Men, borrowing from the Indians, thus name the months, in order: Cold Moon, Snow, Worm, Plant, Flower, Hot, Buck, Sturgeon, Corn, Travelers’, Beaver and Hunting. They call their officers incohonee, sachem, wampum-keeper, etc. But such terms, of course, are not in general use.

  2 Sylva Clapin lists 110 Indian loanwords in his New Dictionary of Americanisms; New York, c. 1902, and Alexander F. Chamberlain lists 132 in Algonquin Words in American English, Journal of American Folk-Lore, Vol. XV. But only 24 of Clapin’s words would have any meaning to the average American today. The rest either survive only as proper names, e.g., tupelo, tuckhoe, tammany, michigouen, sing-sing, netop, catawba, or are obsolete altogether. An elaborate dictionary of Indian loan-words, compiled by the late W. R. Gerard, is in the possession of the Smithsonian Institution, but it remains in manuscript. Parts of it are almost unintelligible, and there is little likelihood that it will ever be printed. The literature of the subject is rather meager. Probably the best discussion of it is in the first chapter of Scheie de Vere’s Americanisms; New York, 1872.

  3 Clapin lists 131 loan-words from the French in his Dictionary, but not more than 20 of them would be generally recognized today. Most of the rest survive only along the Canadian border. A curious obso-letism is movey-star, from the French mauvaises terres. It is still used in the translated form of badlands, but movey-star went out many years ago.

  4 (a) A chest of drawers, (b) a government office. In both senses the word is rare in England, though its use by the French is familiar. In the United States its use in (b) has been extended, e.g., in employment-bureau.

  5 Cole-slaw was quickly converted into cold-slaw by folk etymologv. Thornton’s first example of the latter is dated 1794, but it must have appeared earlier. Later on a warm-slaw was invented to keep cold-slaw company.

  6 From Sant Klaas (Saint Nicholas). Santa Claus has also become familiar to the English, but the Oxford Dictionary still calls it an Americanism. It is always pronounced, of course, Santy Claws.

  7 The Term State-House, Dialect Notes, Vol. II, Pt. IV, 1902.

  8 Dutch Contributions to the Vocabulary of English in America, by William H. Carpenter, Modern Philology, July, 1908. Mr. Karl von Schlieder of Hackensack, N. J., sends me a list of curious forms encountered near Kingston, N. Y. It includes pietje-kamaakal (unreasonable), surallikus (so-so), zwok (soft, slippery), connalyer (crowd), klainzaric (untidy), haidang (nothing), onnozel (outlandish), poozly (whining), feaselick (undesirable), kanaapie (child), aislick (no-account), brigghity (impudent), and bahay (confusion). That all of these are of Dutch origin is not certain, but some of them seem to be duplicated in the Jersey Dutch once spoken in Bergen and Passaic counties, New Jersey. See The Jersey Dutch Dialect, by J. Dyneley Prince, Dialect Notes, Vol. III, Pt. IV, 1910. Krapp in The English Language in America, adds a few Long Island obsoletisms, e.g., scule, from fiskaal, meaning a public prosecutor (Hempstead Records, 1675–84); morgen, a measure of land (do. 1658); schepel, a bushel (do. 1658); and much, from mutsje, a liquid measure (do. 1673). Morgen survived until 1869, and is to be found in the annual report of the Federal Commissioner of Agriculture for that year.

  9 Of the 46 Dutch loan-words listed by Clapin in his Dictionary only a dozen or so remain in general use. See also A Dictionary of the Low-Dutch Element in the English Vocabulary, by J. F. Bense; Oxford, 1926; and The Dutch Influence on the English Vocabulary, by G. N. Clark, S.P.E. Tracts, No. XLIV, 1935

  10 “The commonest there,” says Reed Smith, in Gullah, Bulletin of the University of South Carolina, Nov. 1, 1926, “are the exclamation ki (or kai) to express wonder or to add emphasis to a statement, and buckra for white man.… To these
may be added nyam, oona, swanga (or swongger), du-du, goober, pinder, cooter, okra, geechy, cymbi, bakalingo (obsolescent), guffer, penepne, da, da-da. Malafee for whiskey has been noted on St. Helena Island.” How many of these are actually African I don’t know. See also Gullah: a Negro Patois, by John Bennett, South Atlantic Quarterly, Oct., 1908, and Jan., 1909; and The Black Border, by Ambrose E. Gonzalez; Columbia, S. C., 1922. The latter contains a Gullah glossary.

  11 See The Cambridge History of American Literature, Vol. I, pp. 14 and 22.

  12 For example, Chevy Chase, Boston Common, the Back Bay Fens, and cranberry-bog.

  13 A long list of compounds based on back, from the collection of the editorial board of the Dictionary of American English, is to be found in American Speech, Oct., 1930. It runs to no less than 120 terms, all of them of American origin. In addition, there is a list of eleven peculiarly American uses of back as a verb, and five of its uses as an adjective.

  14 Log-cabin came later. Thornton’s first quotation is dated 1818. The Log-Cabin campaign was in 1840.

  15 I am indebted here to Mr. Maury Maverick, of San Antonio, Tex., a diligent searcher of the early laws of the Republic. A thorough investigation of them might yield materials of value to the philologian. Some of the early town-records were explored by George Philip Krapp (The English Language in America, Vol. II), but his interest was in pronunciation rather than in vocabulary. There are leads to other material in E. G. Swem’s monumental Virginia Historical Index; Roanoke Va., 1934, which indexes words as well as names.