Americanisms

IN the three articles of this brief series upon Americanisms which have been already published,¹ some positions were taken, and, I believe, some points were established, which, for the sake of old readers no less than of new, it may be well to reconsider. The first of these is that in language whatever is distinctively “ American ” is bad. That is, the language of the country being English, all deviations from the best English usage are solecisms, provincialisms, or, in the original sense of the word, barbarisms. This seems indisputable so long as we profess to speak English and do not set up for ourselves a standard of our own, in which case our speech would be not English but “ American,” — a dialect of the English language. It is true that English is our language by inheritance, our mother tongue, and that therefore it is ours, to do what we please with it, and to use as it suits our convenience, just as it is that of the English people. Its literature is ours just as it is theirs, and for the same reasons. Our political severance from the mother country did not affect our rights in this matter; for language and literature are questions of race, not of politics. The distinction sometimes made between English literature and American literature is factitious. English literature is the literature of all the English-speaking peoples. As well talk of Australian literature or Canadian literature as of American literature; of Prussian and Austrian literature, both being simply German; for place has as little to do with the question as politics. But in all languages there is, and must be, a standard; and this is the usage of the best society, that is, the most intellectually and socially cultivated society, by which it is spoken. Now, in regard to the English language, that society is the aristocracy and the upper middle class of England; the mass of people who have their education chiefly at the great English universities, and all the members of which, if not personally educated at those great schools, are constantly under their influence. Moreover, in addition to this point of higher culture, there is the fact that English is, and must of necessity be, the speech of the English people. Another language might be supposably better, but if it were other, however good it might be, it would not be English. But the American people, although to all intents and purposes an English people, at least until within the last twenty-five years, are not the English people. That distinction pertains peculiarly to the people of England, and must continue to do so until they emigrate in a body and leave that country as bare of Englishmen as their forefathers left, a thousand years ago, the little scrap of the earth’s surface known of late years, to the confusion of politicians and historians, as Schleswig-Holstein, which is the cradle of the English people, — an England older than Old England herself.

When, however, we come to decide the question, What is an Americanism? a difficulty at once presents itself. For we have to decide what is American and what is an American. For myself, I avow that the word “ American,” as applied to a man, is entirely without meaning, except in the sense (itself quite conventional and illogical) of a citizen of the United States of America. To call a man an American because he happens to be born in America, or rather in a certain part of North America, is entirely to reverse the natural and logical order of things. It brings up the old joke of calling a man a horse because he was born in a stable. Countries have their names from the people who inhabit them: England is the country of the Angles, the English,— Angle-land; France, the country of the Franks, and so forth. An Englishman is so called not because he was born in England, but England is so called because he and his forefathers were born there. Mr. Thackeray was born in India; but no one thinks of calling him an Indian or a Hindoo. He was a British subject, and he might have been a citizen of the United States of America. In the latter case would he have been any the less English ? There is this strange and anomalous peculiarity about the name “ American: ” that whereas, for example, a British subject may be an Irishman, a Scotchman, a Welshman, a Hindoo, a Parsee, or what not, and if any one of these he preserves his proper name as such, if a man is a citizen of the United States, particularly if he be born so, be is called “ an American,” and nothing else. If birth in what is merely for convenience called “ America ” makes an American, we have then no distinction between Henry W. Longfellow, Patrick MacShane, Han^Breitmann, Bone Squash Diavolo, and the lately arrived son of Ah Sin; and what is the worth, the distinguishing value, of a name which lumps AngloSaxon, Celt, Teuton, Negro, and Mongol together? The name “ American ” lias a certain rough eonveniency; but it also has a very decided inconveniency when we come to use it with any thought or exactness, and that inconveniency is felt in a very perplexing way when we undertake to decide what is American, particularly in language.

Assuming the name, however, as it seems we must, the question What is an Americanism in language? is still to be answered. We may instructively work down to the point we seek by throwing out of consideration what are not Americanisms. And first, words and phrases which are now, or have ever been, received in the current speech or literature of England in the modern period cannot justly be called Americanisms. A word in use in America which was brought here from England may be out of fashion in cultivated circles there, but it is difficult to see how that can make it in any way American. Words pass out of use from mere caprice, and sometimes come in again with as little reason. This being the case, if mere fashion is to decide this question as to a word of indisputably English origin and acceptance, we might be reduced to the absurdity of classing a word of purest Anglo-Saxon lineage as English in one generation, an Americanism in the next, and as English again in the third.

Words which are the names of things peculiar to this country are not Americanisms, except under certain conditions. Maize, potato, moccasin, squaw, wigwam., are not Americanisms. They are merely the names of things peculiar to the aborigines of this country (with whom we have no relations of race, society, or language), and which are necessarily adopted by speakers and writers of all languages in describing or mentioning those things. If these and their like are Americanisms, elephant, crocodile, upas, tea, banyan, and the like are Orientalisms, which no one pretends or would admit. If, however, any such word is adopted here as the name of a thing which had already an English name, as, for example, wigwam for hut, moccasin for shoe, squaw for wife, or papoose for child, it then becomes properly an Americanism.

Strictly, therefore, that is, according to reason, an Americanism in language is a word or phrase found in the speech of the descendants of the European settlers of this country which is peculiar to them, either in itself or in the sense in which it is used, and which is not the name of anything peculiar to the land itself or to its aboriginal inhabitants. We shall find that a very small proportion of the words and phrases which are loosely called Americanisms, and even of those which are classified as such by the compilers of glossaries and dictionaries, are within these limits. Of the books upon this subject, the one which is best known, and which, from the extent of its compiler’s researches and the fullness of its illustrations, has become what is called an authority, Bartlett’s Dictionary of Americanisms, of which a fourth edition enlarged and corrected has lately appeared, is the most misleading. With high respect for the author of this work, and admiration of his patient and conscientious investigations, I cannot but regard the result of his labors as misleading, and therefore pernicious in its effect. Fault enough may be justly found with English as it is generally spoken in this country; but the presentation of this huge collection of words and phrases as a dictionary of Americanisms is, in part at least, a gross misrepresentation of the language of the people of the United States. Apart from the slang and the cant words and phrases which swarm upon its pages, and which, although a considerable number of them are correctly classified as Americanisms, should have been collected by themselves and labeled as slang and cant, the volume is crowded with other words and phrases which are English pure and simple, English by origin, English by continued usage from time immemorial to the present day, either in colloquial use or in literature, or in both, and which in fact lack nothing required for the completeness of their Englishood. The effect of such a publication is one of gross and injurious misrepresentation. It supports and confirms the erroneous assumption in England and on the continent of Europe that the language spoken by Americans generally is a barbarous, hybrid dialect of which English is only the stock, upon which Indian, Dutch, French, German, Irish, and Negro stems and branches have been freely grafted. Dictionaries and glossaries are not read through; they are merely glanced at or referred to; and the discovery in this careful and copious collection of a few examples of such perversion as that mentioned above leads to, if it does not warrant, the inference that the whole book is filled with such examples. Here, it is said, is a dictionary of Americanisms compiled by an American, a New England man, and it is a large, closely printed octavo volume. To what a condition has the English language been brought in America! I have heard such remarks made more than once by intelligent Englishmen; I have seen them more than once in print. Now, no intelligent American who knows anything of English, past and present, as spoken and written in England and in the United States, will for a moment admit the truth of such an assumption. Every such person knows that a very few pages of such a volume as Mr. Bartlett’s dictionary would contain all the words and phrases, not slang or cant, which are properly American, either by origin or by peculiarity of use.

The favor with which this work has been received and the authority which has been accorded to it are due to two causes. First, it is a collection made with careful and laborious research, which is manifest upon its every page; and all such collections have some value, and are apt to attain a certain authoritative position. They are almost sure to do so, unless their defects or faults are so great as at once to provoke exposure; and this position they maintain until they are superseded by something of the same kind which is better and more trustworthy. Mr. Bartlett is not exactly a pioneer in this field, for he was preceded by Pickering many years ago; but his book is much more pretentious than its predecessor, which is almost forgotten, except by students of language; and it is in its kind and for the present generation as authoritative as Webster’s Unabridged. It would have been so even if its merits were less and its faults — faults of design, not of execution, be it observed — greater than they are.

Next, this dictionary wins favor by satisfying, or seeming to satisfy, a certain uneasy craving for Americanism which is very common the world over, and which exists in a great degree among intelligent and thoughtful Englishmen. There is constantly manifest in Europe, and particularly in England, a desiring expectation of the development of something new in America, some peculiar and characteristic traits, moral, mental, social, political, physical. What, it is asked, is the use of your great experiment in a new country, if it does not produce something new? If you merely adhere to the old forms and the old ideas, and work upon the old models, you are unprofitable servants; you do not fulfill your function. Give us something new; something peculiar to yourselves in philosophy, in polities, in art, in literature, even in language. Europe fails, or seems to fail, to see that Americans are merely Europeans who have been transplanted to a country in which they have sought first, and thus far chiefly, their material prosperity, their physical well-being, freed from the restraints which were imposed upon them by the political, social, and physical conditions of the countries in which they or their immediate progenitors were born. European inquirers do not accept the attainment of these ends as at all a satisfactory result of what they call our “experiment.” The diffusion of comfort, of a moderate degree of education, among thirty or forty millions of people, a large proportion of whom, if there were no America, would be in poverty and ignorance, is well enough, and indeed is to be regarded with a certain degree of satisfaction; but this, which is to these Americans themselves the chief, if not the only, object of their wishes and their exertions, is a minor matter to the European writer of essays and leading articles and criticisms. He looks ever for some “new departure.” Hence there is a craze for “the American thing.” There is a cry for the novel of American society, for the American poem, the American what-not. What is welcomed with interest is that which is peculiar. That which is a mere repetition, probably a pale and distorted reflex, of the society and the literary models of Europe is looked upon with eyes cold and unsatisfied, if not averted. Let the American thing be bad, only let it be something new. To this uneasy craving it may charitably be attributed that certain poets and humorists and immoral moralists, of whom few of us are very proud, have received marked attention in Europe. far more than they have received at home. These Old World quid nuncs would be delighted if a new language were rapidly developed here; and as that has not yet happened, and is not rationally to be looked for, they regard with interest, if not with favor, an enormously large collection of words and phrases which shows, or seems to show, to what a monstrous degree we have perverted and degraded the language that we inherited from our forefathers.

Nor are they alone in this desire. It exists to a certain degree among Americans themselves. But it is futile. It must be so. Originality, true and worthy originality, never comes by striving to be original. It springs spontaneously, unconsciously, into being. It is the utterance of that which seeks expression only for its own sake. The man who says within himself, “ Go to, I will be original,” may possibly produce something which is unlike what has been produced before; but that the thing will be of any intrinsic value or beauty is, to say the least, extremely improbable. It is likely to be only grotesque and monstrous. Literature and art and language in America will assume peculiarity and originality just as soon as Americans themselves develop unconsciously peculiar and original traits of intellect and morals. Whether they are now in the way to do this, or in that of assimilating themselves to the rest of the world, every careful observer may decide for himself.

Strangely enough, however, the very first manifestation of this desire for originality was in regard to language. This was strange, because language is of all things that in which originality is most nearly impossible. For language must endure. It is transmitted from generation to generation, with only such change as comes from what may be called the wear and tear of use. It cannot be otherwise. If it were otherwise, communication between one generation and another would be impaired, or become impossible, and language would fail in its only function. Yet when the constitution of the United States was adopted, at the celebration of the event in New York, a book was borne in procession by the philological society of that city, on which was inscribed, “ The Federal Language.” What it was supposed that language might be, and how it was to be formed, is beyond the reach of human conjecture. But Noah Webster himself was the advocate at that time of an American form of the English language. As to his views in particular I must refer those of my readers who care to have further information upon this subject to the article in the Galaxy of November last. Suffice it here to say that he plainly supposed that there could and should and would be a divergence between the language of America and that of the mother country, consequent upon their political separation. It is almost needless to say that the result has been exactly the reverse of what he supposed and wished that it might be. The language of the two countries has not only remained the same, but time and freedom of intercourse, physical and intellectual, have removed gradually any differences that existed. There are provincialisms, vulgarisms, barbarisms, and solecisms in both countries; but the standard of speech in both is exactly the same, and so it must and will remain.

I shall now refer very briefly to the more important and significant of the so-called Americanisms which I have previously shown to be entirely without the limits assigned above to the meaning of that term, and shall then pass on to the consideration of others, taking my examples chiefly, but not altogether, from Mr. Bartlett’s dictionary.

Notion, in the sense of small, trifling wares, is probably the word which of all Americanisms is regarded as the most absolutely American, both in origin and in usage. 4 4 Yankee notions ” is a phrase known the world over. But so grave and didactic a poet as Young, than whom none could be less American, used it nearly a hundred and fifty years ago exactly in the sense in which it is now used in New England: —

(Night Thoughts. Night II.)

Guess, in the sense of believe, suppose, think, which is regarded almost as the Yankee shibboleth, is used exactly in that sense by Wycliffe, by one of his followers (name unknown), by Chaucer, by Bishop Jewell, in an old north of England or Lowland Scotch ballad, in the Mirror for Magistrates (1587), by Bishop Hale (1599), by John Locke twice, and by one of the personages in Anthony Trollope’s Orley Farm. Doubtless many other examples from standard English authors might be produced, and I am sure that I have memorandums of others, but they are not at hand.1 These are, however, quite enough to show that this so-called Americanism is not American in any proper sense of the word.

Fall, for autumn, which has been regarded almost as absolutely American as guess and notion, is used by Dr. Cains (1552), by Vaughan (1624), by Gilbert White repeatedly in his Natural History of Selborne (1771, 1775), and by Froude in his History of England (vol. vi., chap. xxi.). With what semblance of propriety is a word which was in use in England at least two generations before the sailing of the Mayflower, and which has continued in use there until now by authors of repute, called an Americanism? And our very " Indian summer,” which so many of us regard as peculiar to our country, is known in Europe, and is mentioned under various names from the time of the Greek poets to the present day.

Admire (as, I admire to see, I admire that, etc.) has long been set down among Americanisms of the most emphatic sort; and not only so, but is regarded by ourselves as being more than a mere Americanism, — a Bostonism. I should not hesitate to say even in Beacon Street or on Boston Common that I cannot regard it as an altogether lovely phrase; but it is used by Chapman in his translation of Homer, in the Comical History of Francion (1655), by Charles Cotton in his translation of Montaigne, by Charles James Fox in the fragment of his History of England, in Ashley’s Cyropædia (1811), and by many other old English writers of high standing.

Baggage, meaning the impedimenta of a traveler, which is frequently scoffed at by British writers as an Americanism, and is so set down by Mr. Bartlett, is used by Fielding, by Sterne, by Walter Scott, by Thomas Hughes in Tom Brown, and by many other British writers of recognized position.

Blackberry, as to which Mr. Bartlett says that “ this term is universally used in the United States for the English brambleberry,” has been used in England just as we use it for nearly a thousand years, — from the earliest AngloSaxon times to the present, both by the people at large and by writers of the best repute. Indeed, blackberry is the rule and brambleberry the exception during all that period.

Blow, meaning to boast, to brag, to talk big, and bluff, as a noun meaning a bold prominence, and as a verb meaning to bluster, to attempt to put down an opponent by big pretension, are known to English literature from its earliest days down to the present.

Bug, for beetle, is another test Americanism, according to the average British critic and book-writing traveler. And yet it was so used in England more than two centuries ago, and has continued in use there both in literature and in folkspeech. Mr. Jennings, in his lately published book of Walks through Field Paths and Green Lanes, mentions having heard it so used in the south of England.

Catamount, which we ourselves regard as not only American but peculiarly Western, has the support of at least two centuries of English usage; and crevasse, which we look upon as a Southwestern Americanism, is used by Chaucer.

The Rev. Archibald Geikie read, in 1857, before the Canadian Institute, a paper in which he undertook to instruct Canadians, Americans, and the world at large upon Americanisms; and from this paper Mr. Bartlett has taken what he sets forth as some “ excellent illustrations.” One of Mr. Geikie’s points is that in England “ great offenders are hanged,” but that in America “they are all hung.” That in England beef, gates, and curtains are hung, but felons are hanged; while in America all are hung. Now, this is a beautiful and a characteristic example of the way in which men write about Americanisms; for, so far is what Mr. Geikie says on this point from being true, that hung was used in England to express death by hanging in Queen Elizabeth’s days, and later, down to the present time, as I have showed by examples from Ben Jonson, Shakespeare, Fuller, Southey, Hartley Coleridge, Mrs. Trollope, Froude, Mr. Bain, M. P., Sir Henry Holland. Charles Reade, William Morris, Smiles, The Greville Memoirs, Anthony Trollope, the London Spectator, the Saturday Review, and the London Times; and on the other hand inanimate objects have been said to be hanged, as I showed in like manner.

These instances of the exposure of gross errors in the classification of words and phrases as Americanisms are selected from the previous papers of this series for reference here because they are characteristic, and because it should seem that they are well suited to lead the mind of the reader into a healthy condition of doubt as to the Americanism of much that is so labeled, and of receptiveness as to what will be hereafter presented to him.

At the same time it must not he supposed that I appear as an advocate to get a verdict of “ Not guilty of Americanism ” for words and phrases invented or perverted in this country. On the contrary, to show that there are such, and which they are, will be one of my objects. Among such words, as I have already shown, is corn, which is here perverted from its proper function as a general name for all cereal grain, wheat, rye, oats, barley, to mean maize, a kind of corn unknown to the people who made and used the word for centuries. Another is creek, which, meaning properly an indentation greater or less in a coast line, and hence a narrow inlet from the sea, is used by many Americans, and in some parts of the country by all the inhabitants, to mean a running stream of fresh water, which in English is called a brook or a river. These are examples of genuine Americanisms in single words. Of like phrases is right away, absurdly used for at once, now, instantly, immediately, and so generally thus used that it is to be feared that there is no hope of its future exclusion even from the speech of educated people. Its absurdity is so great as to be ridiculous, as any intelligent person will see by reflecting upon it briefly; and yet the immovable barrier between its right and its wrong use is very thin and transparent. For to say that a person went right away is good English and good sense; but to tell a person to do a thing right away is neither sense nor English. This perversion of the phrase is an Americanism, and one of the worst and most generally diffused that deform our speech.² I may now resume the examination in detail of examples of Americanisms real and pretended.

Darn is one of the slang words which we ourselves long regarded as an Americanism of pure New England origin; why, it is difficult to imagine, except that we assumed that any deviation on our part from standard English must be of our own motion, a step toward that originality and independent Americanism for which some of us are pining. The word as a euphemism for damn is known all over England, and is freely used by the rustic population, as it is here. And I found even Anthony Trollope using it thus, “that darned lecture,” in the Fortnightly Review. Mr. Bartlett cites from the artificial ballad of Noakes and Styles, in the Essex dialect, an example of its use. The follow’ing stanza is from a ballad, doubtless genuine, given in Mr. William Black’s charming Princess of Thule, chap. ii. Its dialect is not sufficiently marked to be distinguished from that of many parts of England.

1 quote this, not because it is needed to show that darn is not an Americanism, but to call attention to du, the Yankee pronunciation of do. I have heretofore suggested that this sound, which is not oo, — that is, the Italian u, — nor the French u, nor yet the English iotaized u (e-oo), but something between the first two, and which is very unlike the snarling nasal caricature of it which is heard upon the stage, is the original English u. When in England I found that this sound was apparently quite unknown to the British phonologists, and I spent some time in teaching one of the most distinguished of them how to utter it. And indeed there are not many Americans who can do so correctly unless they have lived in rural New England and caught the sound unconsciously.

Deck, meaning a pack of cards, appears in Mr. Bartlett’s collection; and yet he himself says “ deck is defined by Ash, a pack of cards piled one upon another.” This makes it almost superfluous to remark that it probably did not occur to him that in Henry VI., Part iii., Act v., Sc, 1, is the following passage:—

which, by the way, shows that the game at which Ah Sin so effectually demonstrated the ruinous effects of Chinese cheap labor is not of American origin. But with what propriety does a word used by Shakespeare and defined by Ash appear at all in a dictionary of Americanisms? Its only proper place is in a glossary of words which are not American.

Department. Of this word we are told that “ the principal offices of the federal government at Washington are called departments,” and that the word is “ borrowed from the French,” But it is in constant use in England, where I heard it frequently; and countless examples of its use in literature might be produced, but I have at hand only the following : —

“If it was one of the younger clerks, you know, we should tell him it was discreditable to the department.” (A. Trollope. Small House, etc., ii. 14.)

[Mr. Kissing, a martinet, speaks.] “ Somerset House is not a department. The treasury is a department; the home office is a department.” (Idem, iii. 5.)

“ I was for ten years a clerk in the department, of the public service, — civil service we liked to have it called.” (London Society, August, 1864.)

“ At present the British government, of which the secretary for India is only a member, whether he likes the position or not, and the India House only a department.” (London Spectator, July 20, 1867.)

Deputize is possibly of American origin; but I notice it chiefly for the purpose of pointing out that it and its congener jeopardize are spurious, words that are not words, formed by adding ize to depute and jeopard, two good and sufficient verbs, instead of which the monsters are used without any variation of meaning. But they, particularly the latter, are in common use now by good writers in England; and an Oxford LL.D and bright light of the Athenæum Club (the swell literary club of London) not long ago wrote to me complaining of my censure of his use of jeopardize, and saying that he did not know that there was any objection to it; certainly there was none in England, although there mghit be in America. This was putting the saddle on the other horse with a vengeance.

Different from. Mr. Bartlett gives this as an Americanism, with the remark that “ we say one thing is different from another. In England this expression is different to.” This is quite incorrect. I must not repeat myself too much even on this occasion, and I shall merely now remark that, as I have heretofore shown, “different from” is the form in use by the best English writers, “ different to ” being in general a mark of the second or third rate writer, and that the form “different to” was censured so long ago as A. D. 1770, by Robert Baker, in his Remarks on the English Language. Yet the erroneous assertion abounds unmodified in Mr. Bartlett’s fourth edition of his dictionary just published.

Dod rot it and Dod drat it arc given as American euphemistic forms of swearing. On the contrary, the softening of God into Dod is an English verbal trick of long standing, and continues to the present day. In Cartwright’s Poems, ii. 73, we find even “Dod’s blessing on’t;” and in a recent number of Punch, a sentry being asked by an officer “ Why don’t you salute, sir? ” replies, “ Dod, man, I clean forgot.” Rot and drat, too, are peculiarly British forms of objurgation, rarely heard in this country.

Dove for dived is possibly a genuine Americanism. It is unjustifiable; but, like many other Americanisms, it is creeping into use in England among careless speakers and writers. But it is to be remarked that the strong preterit, as it is called (hung is strong, hanged is weak), is used in provincial English speech in the case of many verbs which are properly of the weak conjugation.

Drink for river, as “the big drink,” meaning the Mississippi, is Western American slang. It is an interesting and comical illustration of the assumption that the chief use of any fluid is for potation; although, as the rivers of the West do not yet run whisky, the application of the word to them in that quarter is remarkable.

“It beats the Dutch” is an American phrase, peculiar, as Mr. Bartlett correctly remarks, to New England and New York. It is, however, passing, or has passed, out of use. Not uncommon thirty years ago, it is now rarely or never heard. It has a historical value and interest, as it is a relic of the old animosity between the Dutch of New Amsterdam and the English settlers of New England, which Irving has so humorously recorded and illustrated. It was applied by the latter to anything monstrous, extravagant, and inexplicable.

Richard Grant White.