BERKLEY LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA OUR COMMON SPEECH SIX PAPERS ON TOPICS CONNECTED WITH THE PROPER USE OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE, THE CHANGES WHICH THAT TONGUE IS UNDER- GOING ON BOTH SIDES OF THE SEA, AND THE LABORS OF LEXICOGRAPHERS TO EX- PLAIN THE MEANING OF THE WORDS OF WHICH IT IS COMPOSED. BY GILBERT M. TUCKER. NEW YORK: DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY. 1895. Copyright, 1895, By Dodd, Mead and Company. All rights reserved. SEnfoersttg Press: John Wilson and Son, Cambridge, U.S.A. CONTENTS. our Page Locutius in Fabrica: an Admonishing Voice about Language, from a Workshop; Words are Tools, and should be used as such .... i Degraded Words : Formerly employed in a Favorable or an Indifferent Sense, they now convey the Intimation of Reprehension, Contempt or Dislike; Why has the Change occurred? 32 The Revised Version of the New Testament: Were the Translators " Strong in Greek but Weak in English"? 78 Old Dictionaries : Some of Their Character- istics and Curious Features 95 Modern Dictionaries; Which shall I Buy? . . 112 American English : How does the Average Speech of All Parts of the United States Compare with that of all parts of the british Isles? 151 Alphabetical Index of English Words referred to 235 954 OUR COMMON SPEECH LOCUT1US IN FABRICA. Words are those Channels, by which the Knowledge of Things are conveyed to our Understandings : and there- fore, upon a right Apprehension of them depends the Rectitude of our Notions ; and in order to form our Judg- ments right, they must be understood in their proper Meaning, used in their true Sense, either in Writing or Speaking : For, if the Words of the Speaker or Writer, though ever so apposite to the Matter, be taken in a wrong Sense, they form erroneous Ideas in the Mind concerning the Thing spoken or written of ; and if we use Words in a false and improper Sense, this causes Confusion in the Understanding of the Hearer, and renders the Discourse unintelligible. — Introduction to Bailey's Dictionary. TN an office-building which I occasionally visit, * is a dingy little room occupied as a shop by one of those useful men who can turn their hands to almost any mechanical task, from Our Common Speech. repairing a fine clock to building a cow-shed, and do it well. To the casual observer, the place is far from beautiful, and has a " cluttered-up " appearance, suggestive of habits the reverse of orderly. The floor — where not occupied by- benches, lathes, horses, and a rusty stove sur- mounted by a glue-kettle — is nearly concealed by bits of timber, shavings, and miscellaneous - debris. The walls are lined with shelves and racks of many shapes, sizes and colors, obvi- ously put up at different times, and constructed of odds and ends, with no thought of symmetry or harmony in their arrangement. And when one examines the tools themselves, they are found to form a collection almost equally pro- miscuous. No two have handles alike, or look as if they came from the same maker. They are disposed in rude stands, boxes and cases of ir- regular forms, which seem to have been hastily adapted to their present purpose, in default of anything better. Nothing could be more unlike the finely finished and ingeniously arranged " gentlemen's tool-chests " that fascinate the eye of mechanically-disposed visitors in hard- ware stores. Locutius in Fabrica. Yet the occupant of this little shop can lay his hand in a moment on any article in it, by day or by night, and knows the contents as you know the alphabet. And when he puts any implement into service, it is found to answer its purpose to very perfection. The chisels cut like razors ; the saws follow the line without the deflection of a hair's-breadth ; the lathes, run exactly true ; the vices and clamps hold like a bad habit. For all their rude appearance, it would be hard to suggest any improvement in the practical working of this collection of hete- rogeneous apparatus. Now, I have often thought, while watching this mechanic at work, that his position (bar- ring, of course, any question as to relative de- grees of skill) is in some respects not unlike that of the writer of an English book. Is not our language, too, a seemingly disordered and inharmonious assemblage of implements, ap- pliances and raw material ? Our vocabulary is made up of importations from every country under heaven ; our present tenses and their pre- terites, our individual terms and their signifi- cance in idiomatic phrases, our spoken words Our Common Speech. and their representatives in writing, have in scores of- cases about as much seeming con- gruity as my mechanical friend's delicate watch- making lathe with the dirty table on which it stands and the rough box that covers it. And yet, what work can be accomplished with the English language ! What distinction so fine, what conception so grand, what mental creation so lovely, that this unsymmetrical and in many respects unbeautiful tongue is inadequate (if one only knows how to use it) for putting it into permanent form for preservation? As a means for the expression of thought, our com- mon speech, in the hands of a master, excels the comparatively regular languages of anti- quity and of many savage peoples, as the mechanic's unattractive tools excel for practical purposes the handsome but untrustworthy con- tents of the " gentlemen's tool-chests." Less sonorous than German, less sparkling than French, less musical than Spanish, less logical and systematic by far in its structure than Latin, less flexible than Greek, how it surpasses them all for meeting the varied necessities of mankind ! Locutius in Fabrica. Now, does not this parallelism suggest a use- ful lesson to certain hypercritical critics whose wont it is to act the part of grand inquisitors as to the legitimacy of the new terms which are constantly appearing in our language, often to supply real and important wants? A great hubbub was made by this class of people on the introduction of the now well-established noun starvation, which even Mr. Skeat, not- withstanding his usual liberality of judgment, condemns as a " ridiculous hybrid." Hybrid of course it is, — an Anglo-Saxon root with a Latin suffix; as if one should fit a rough hickory handle into a highly polished lignum-vitae mal- let. But, ridiculous ? Consider the circum- stances. The implement was badly needed ; the materials of which it was constructed were the best at hand at the moment, or the best that were thought of; and it answers its pur- pose well. Can we afford to discard it because it is not handsome in appearance? Reliable has fallen under the ban of the same class of thinkers. It is badly formed, no doubt; but so, for that matter, is its parent, the universally accepted verb rely, and still more so the unchal- Our Common Speech. lenged noun reliance, consisting as this does of an English root with a French prefix and suffix, like an old, well-worn spoke-shave with a pair of bran-new handles. (As to the other objection to reliable, — that we do not rely a tiling, but rely upon it, and therefore the adjective ought to be rely-upon-able, — any comment may safely be deferred until people begin saying lavgh-at-able, indispense-with-able, and itnaccount for -able ; the principle is the same.) Fault is perpetually found with talented, on the ground that parti- ciples ought not to be formed from nouns ; and perhaps they ought not, in a strictly logical and regular language; but a tongue that al- ready includes diseased, gifted, lettered, bigoted, tnrreted, landed, skilled, ivied, crannied, towered, blooded, cultured, acred, steepled, mitred, coped, tippet ed, booted, spurred, horned, unprincipled and widowed (not to mention innumerable com- pounds like fair-haired and pug-nosed), will hardly suffer much by admitting other forma- tions of the same kind. The process is con- tinuing, and is bound to continue. A recent instance may be found in the cable despatch to the American press conveying the news of the Locutius in Fabrica. death of the last Duke of Marlborough. " The dukedom," said the despatch, " will be the hzdiv'wzst-dowagered title in the peerage." The mere fact that these noun-participles are so freely formed and so generally accepted is al- most enough to establish their standing as good English, without argument; in the formation of a language, whatever generally is, is right. But I think it may be successfully maintained that the objectors are wrong in their argument, too, for these participles, in fact, are regularly formed from a noun used as a verb, in accord- ance with what seems to be a fundamental law of the language, that any notm, without excep- tion, may be used as a verb whenever such use is necessary or convenient. Of course thousands of our nouns never have been, probably never will be, so used, — either because they have well es- tablished related verbs that answer the purpose;* or because considerations of euphony make it natural to turn them into the verb form by add- ing ize or making some other modification, when it is desired to make verbs of them ; or because their meanings are such that they are never wanted except as nouns. But I believe the law Our Common Speech. of liberty above stated will more and more com- mend itself as sound, the more it is tested by experiment. 1 Not to protract the list of words that have been condemned because of their real or sup- posed irregularity of formation, we will only notice the class of which stand-point, wash-tub, shoe-horn, cook-stove, go-cart and boot-jack are examples, — a class of words which are set down as abominations, "slovenly and uncouth," by a popular writer on correctness in speech, because they do not conform in their structure to a somewhat complicated canon which he lays down as the law for making " compounds of this kind." His argument is a complete non- sequitur. The laws relating to the develop- ment of a language are to be deduced from the history of that development, just as the so-called laws of nature are merely generalised statements of observed facts. And in regard 1 Of course it does not follow that any English verb may be used as a noun. No such practice has ever prevailed ; no such practice is necessary or desirable for useful ends ; and any attempt to introduce it — as in creating monsters like " a com- bine " — deserves to be excommunicated with bell, book and candle. Locutius in Fabrica. to these expressions, which our acceptance of his canon would require us to condemn, it must be noticed that they are not only briefer (always an advantage), but actually clearer than those which the critic would substitute for them. The meaning of a cooking-stove •, to be sure, is not greatly liable to misapprehension, nor per- haps is that of a washing-tub ; but booting-jack is open to the manifest objection that it is not for booting, but for un-booting, so to speak, that the implement is designed, while shoeing- horn suggests an entirely wrong idea: we do not speak of the process of dressing our feet as "shoeing" them; and what sort of a de- scription of the well-known nursery machine would it be to call it a "going-cart"? The fact of the matter seems to be that though of course it is desirable that the devel- opment of the language should proceed on regular lines and in conformity with logical principles, it is by no means essential to the usefulness of a word that it should be thus formed ; and if only the word is useful, we can well afford to admit it to our already heter- ogeneous vocabulary, the vocabulary being all io Our Common Speech. the more serviceable in many ways on account of the variety and lack of unity among its con- stituent parts. The important question in all such cases, looking at them from the mechani- cal point of view, is, have we need of this tool, and is it the best we can readily procure? If so, we shall be just so much the poorer for re- jecting it on account of its uncouth appearance. It ought to be remembered, indeed, that our list of words, numerous as it is, is yet not com- prehensive enough to fulfill the highest ideal of a perfect tongue. We need more tools, — a good many of them; and it sometimes seems a pity rather that we cannot manufacture and introduce them when the need is perceived, than that some of those we have, offend in their composition the strict requirements of congruity. We badly need, for instance, epi- cene pronouns in the singular, answering to they, them and their in the plural. True it is, one can often use he, him, and his, expecting hearers or readers to remember that "the brethren embrace the sistern." True it also is, one can often get around the difficulty by rearranging a sentence; but there is a difn- Locutius in Fabrica. n culty, for all that. A man wishes to say that each of his two children, a boy and a girl, has the exclusive use of a desk. He naturally begins : " Each of my children has a desk to " — how shall he finish? It is not quite right to say that each has a desk to himself, or to her- self, and it is certainly far from grammatical or pleasing to say themselves. What shall he do? The problem is of daily occurrence, as any one will find who will take pains to watch for it. We need, too, a preterite for the verb must, and still more for the verb ought?- We are compelled to say, " You ought to have done such and such things," — which is by no means what we really mean. One cannot possibly be under obligation to have done anything, — the phrase is absurd; all obligation is to do, and it would be an important gain in the direction of clearness and conciseness if we might say, when speaking of past time, " you oughted." We need, again, a word almost synonymous with many, but having a slightly different shade 1 Each of these words was itself anciently a preterite ; but they have been for centuries independent verbs, used only in a single tense, the present indicative. 12 Our Common Speech. of meaning, — a lack which is often supplied, awkwardly and incorrectly, by the use of numer- ous with a plural noun. People say, " There are numerous books on that subject," — which is hardly grammatical : there may be a numerous list of books, but that expression, correct in syntax, does not seem quite to express the idea; and to say there are many books may be rather too strong a statement. We need, once more, a verb for which replace is commonly substituted, there being nothing better at hand. One removes a painting from his wall and hangs up an engraving in its stead. For a brief statement of this action, we have at present nothing better than to say that the painting was replaced by the engraving. Yet this is really nonsense. To replace a thing is to put it back where it was before. Here, as in the case of numerous, we may be said to lack a gimlet, and find ourselves compelled to bore holes, blunderingly and unsatisfactorily, with the blade of a penknife. Then there are not a few adverbs which one meets in foreign tongues, and finds so useful that he wonders at himself for never having Locutius in Fabrica. 13 noticed the absence of corresponding words in English. Familiar examples are freundlich and hoffentlich in German. One cannot say- in English, " He received me friendlily," con- venient as it would sometimes be to do so, neither kindly nor cordially quite answering the purpose. Nor can one say, " The doctor has hopeably given the right medicine." If you presume he has done so, you may say pre- sumably; if you are sure of it, you have un- doubtedly; but if you only desire to express a pretty strong hope, you must cast your sentence in another mould. At the same time, we have certainly bad words enough, — bad, not because they are irregular in form or composed of incongruous elements, but because they are, for some other reason (adopting Noah Webster's sententious expression), "nonsensical." Helpmeet is one of these monsters. The result of a stupid blunder in running together a noun and an adjective that stand separate in the familiar verse in Genesis, it can hardly be called a word at all ; it means nothing in particular, and is worse than useless. Dissever, disannul, unravel, lesser. 14 Our Common Speech. and similar feeble attempts at unnecessary em- phasis, are other instances : sever, annul, ravel, less, answer the purpose completely, with the advantage of smaller bulk ; the addition of the extra syllable is like giving a gimlet two handles. Equally useless, for the most part, is the school- ma'amish insistence upon indicating, by the addition of ess, the feminine gender in a num- ber of nouns indicative of occupation or posi- tion. Sometimes, of course, the sex of the person referred to has a direct bearing upon her relations to her calling, as in the case of an actress, whom it is often doubtless well to discriminate, in speech as in thought, from an actor. But it can hardly be maintained that any such necessity exists in the case of a woman who may happen to be an editor, a postmaster, a manager, or a poet. Yet we read not unfrequently of editresses and postmis- tresses ; the dignified " Westminster Review " finds poet not sufficiently distinct when the poet is a woman, and gives its sanction to poetess ; and the " Illustrated London News," which often de- votes a considerable portion of one of its most entertaining departments to discussions of col- Locutius in Fabrica. 15 loquial English, its meaning and its proprieties, is actually guilty of manageress / Here, as be- fore, the extra syllable is merely an incum- brance; we could not only get along just as well without it, we should actually do better. Another class of bad words — bad because they do not mean what they are supposed to mean — is exemplified in gasometer. The fact that it consists of a term invented in Belgium not much more than two hundred years ago, and a word from classical Greek, welded to- gether, nobody knows why, by the letter 0, — is of no consequence; but what is of conse- quence is, that it means a measurer of gas, and is understood as indicating a reservoir of gas. In the name of common-sense, when one means a gas-holder, why not say so ? Hydropathy, too, is a disgrace to the language. Homoeopathy (similar sickness) is correct, indicating as it does a method of treatment based on the belief that " like cures like ; " and allopathy (different sickness), though of course rather a nickname than a scientific term, may pass muster as desig- nating the practice that commonly relies on agencies which are found to reverse the symp- 1 6 Our Common Speech. toms of the patient. Hydropathy (water sick- ness) can only be accounted for by supposing that the inventor of the word imagined that it might mean water-cure, which of course it cannot. But by far the most important suggestion offered by the analogies of the little shop, relates to the folly of misusing our verbal tools ; and just here is the one great point of dissimilarity between the English language and the equip- ment of my friend's workroom. A mallet may be highly polished as to its head, and rough- hewn as to its handle, and yet give entire satisfaction. But it would hardly work well on chisels, if the owner were in the habit of using it to drive nails. That is exactly what we not unfrequently do in speech ; and the natu- ral result follows: the nails are not driven straight, and we presently find that we have spoiled our mallet. A few examples will make the process clear. We speak of preposterous statements, mean- ing only that they are incorrect or absurd. Now, preposterous is not properly synonymous with either of these adjectives, but has a definite Locutius in Fabrica. 17 import of its own which can be expressed by no other word, signifying as it does the putting of something first which ought to be last, — the getting of the cart before the horse, as it were. We are badly compensated for losing the power of expressing this idea in a single word, by gaining a new and hardly distinguishable syno- nym for absurd. Then there is aggravating for exasperating. The distinction has been pointed out a thousand times. Everybody knows that to aggravate is to make worse. A man's crime may be aggra- vated by the circumstances; to say that the man himself is aggravated, means, not that he is annoyed, but that, being an evil at best, he is made a greater nuisance than he has been. Yet it is surprising how many influential writers, especially in England, insist on confounding the terms. Dickens does so over and over again in " Great Expectations " : " The Romans must have aggravated one another very much with their noses ; " " Mr. Wopsle's Roman nose aggravated me ; " " This was so very aggrava- ting, the more especially as I found myself making no way against his surly obtuseness ; " 1 8 Our Common Speech. " Words cannot state the amount of aggrava- tion and injury wreaked upon me by Trabb's boy." I read the other day in the " Mark Lane Express" of persons who "jerk the reins in that aggravating manner." A pamphlet lately published in London, relating to a certain class of books in the British Museum, is entitled " Aggravating Ladies." The careful " West- minster Review" says (October, 1881, page 284, Scott edition), " The selections from the 1 Giaour' are exceedingly aggravating." It must, however, be admitted that the blunder is not exclusively British, for whoever reads that ex- cellent book, " The Calling of a Christian Woman," issued a few years ago by the Rev. Morgan Dix, S. T. D., rector of Trinity Church, New York, will find on page 22 a reference to " the words of St. Paul peculiarly aggravating to the ears of modern revolutionists." A mallet which has been so persistently used as a hammer by the legal profession, without sense or necessity, as to be pretty effectually ruined, is enjoin. It can hardly be needful to remark that to enjoin a course of conduct is to command that it be followed ; the lawyers, Locutius in Fabrica. l 9 oddly enough, have so perverted the meaning as to reverse it completely; in their dialect, to enjoin an act is to forbid it ! Thus I read in the " Albany Law Journal" (vol. xxviii. page 43) that " in Leete v. Pilgrim Church, St. Louis Court of Appeals, the ringing of church chimes between 9 p. M. and 7 A. M. was enjoined. The court refused to enjoin the ringing for worship on Sunday or in the daylight hours, and continued : * But the striking of the clock at night must, we think, be relegated to the category of useless noises. . . . We therefore think that the strik- ing of the hours upon the largest bell between the hours of 9 P. M. and 7 A. M. ought to be enjoined ' " ! Of course this means that while the court declined to order the ringing of the church bell on Sunday or by daylight during the week, it did command that the chimes should be faithfully operated between nine at night and seven in the morning. Of course also the writer of the paragraph, and the learned judge who prepared the opinion, intended that their words should mean the precise opposite. The mallet in their hands is absolutely spoiled for its legitimate purpose ; and to what possible 20 Our Common Speech. profit ? Meaning forbidden, why could they not say forbidden ? Or if it is considered desir- able to have a special word to signify the formal forbidding of an action by a writ, far, far better would it be to raise to respectability a term which is now ranked with the vilest newspaper slang, and say that the action is " injuncted." It may be answered that this horrible word, if it means anything, must be synonymous with enjoin; but the fact is, it has never been used except to signify forbidden by injunction ; and as for its irregular formation, one who cares more for the substance of the language, its real serviceableness in expressing thought, than for the refinements of grammatical science, will easily disregard that objection. The nail must be driven ; the only hammer we have is " for- bid : " this, it seems, will not answer ; then for Heaven's sake let us pick up even a shape- less stone like " injunct " rather than spoil our excellent mallet " enjoin." a 1 A portion of this paragraph was printed in the "Albany Law Journal " (with editorial commendation) shortly after the publication of the legal opinion criticized, and elicited a number of indignant letters from lawyers, not one of which really Locutius in Fabrica. 21 Among the great number of other verbal mallets which are often foolishly misused as hammers, the following may be mentioned. attacked the position above assumed. Their chief burden was to maintain that a man may properly be enjoined from doing a certain action, — which nobody disputed; the question (if there can be any question) is, whether one may say that " the action is enjoined," meaning that the action is forbidden. One writer stated that " neither the verb 'to enjoin' nor its sub- stantive ' injunction ' is exclusively used, even in legal phrase- ology, in the sense of prohibition ; " nobody said it was : the point is, that it ought never to be so used. Another solemnly quoted — of all authorities in the world, on a question of verbal accuracy — Webster's Dictionary ! — as if everybody did not know that all kinds of error in speech which have obtained any sort of respectable currency can be defended (not " autho- rised''') by citations from that useful but bloated compilation. The editor of the " Law Journal," closing the discussion, summed up the whole matter thus : u What Mr. Tucker com- plains of is that the same word is used to mean two exactly op- posite things, — to do and not to do. This verbal blowing hot and cold in the same breath is certainly indefensible. It is ' over- working' the verb, to quote Rufus Choate. We have plenty of good words to express the desired meaning, — ' prohibit,' ■ restrain,' • forbid.' There is no need of corrupting and vul- garising the language by this double and ambiguous use. When we want to prohibit the ringing of bells, for example, let us not say it is ' enjoined,' i. e., commanded ; nor worse yet, * enjoined and forbidden,' i. e., both commanded and prohibited ; but let us say just what we mean in the correct use of the lan- guage, — forbidden and prohibited. We are no purist nor 22 Our Common Speech. The list might be indefinitely extended, but it is the present purpose merely to illustrate the principle. Restive for uneasy. — Here is a word which shares with enjoin the remarkable misfortune of having been completely reversed in meaning by bad usage. A restive horse is a lazy horse that wants to rest, and by no means, as some- times seems to be supposed, a nervous horse that wants to go. Executive for secret ', in the phrase " executive session." It is generally understood that when ' philological fancier,' but we think that this use of the word 1 enjoin ' is radically wrong." The practical result of the bad practice is strikingly illus- trated by an article which appeared in a Morgantown, W. Va., newspaper, the " New Dominion," of April 14, 1894, to which a friend calls attention as these pages are going to press. Relating a decision of the Supreme Court (presumably of the State) in the case of Lewis Wilson v. The Town of Philippi, the syllabus of the opinion is quoted as saying that under certain circumstances " a court of equity will not en- join the collection of a tax assessment on a town lot to pay for the construction of a sidewalk in front of the same, ordained by the council of an incorporated city or town." The reader perceives, of course, that it is impossible to know, except by inference from the context, whether enjoin here means command ox forbid! Locutius in Fabrica. 23 the Senate engages in what is properly enough called u executive business," as the considera- tion of appointments or treaties, spectators are excluded ; and from this has arisen a ridiculous custom on the part of various voluntary associa- tions and committees of resolving to " go into executive session " when it is only meant that private business is to be taken up with closed doors. The blunder is doubtless largely due to the usual preference of ill-trained minds for fine and high-sounding words. Condign for severe. — Condign means suitable ; and the most trifling offences, if serious enough to require attention at all, should incur condign punishment just as truly as the greatest crimes. Fabulous for very great. — One may properly speak of the fabulous wealth of an impostor, meaning the property that he falsely pretends to have. But what nonsense it is, when one thinks of it, to say that a lady's jewels are of " fabulous value," meaning that they cost a great deal of money! Impertinent for insolent. — An impertinent remark is one that has no connection with the matter under discussion. But the use of the 24 Our Common Speech. term ought not to be thought to imply any censure on the good manners of the speaker referred to, for the most courteous person in the world makes an impertinent remark whenever he introduces a new topic of conversation. To call the person " impertinent," in any case, is to " mix things " badly. A person can no more be " impertinent " than he can be irrelevant or disconnected. Temperance, Sumptuary, and Protective. — Without expressing any opinion as to the advisability of indulging in alcoholic beverages, one may properly denounce, from grammatical considerations only, the absurdity of speaking of a man who abjures them entirely, as " strictly temperate," and the absurdity of characterising as "sumptuary" the legislation which aims to regulate the sale of intoxicants. A man cannot be " temperate " with that which he does not use ; and " sumptuary " laws, which forbid men under certain circumstances to make certain purchases, — being intended for the financial benefit of the persons on whom they bear, — differ by the whole diameter of being from the laws about liquor-selling, which are not intended Locutius in Fabrica. 25 at all for the benefit of the class to whom they apply, but are designed to restrict the injury which these men inflict upon others. And similarly, without expressing any opinion as to the wisdom of a national policy of limiting importations from foreign countries, one may point out that the name " protective tariff," as applied to a tariff by which this result is brought about, is objectionable, for the reason that it begs the whole question at issue. Such a tariff restricts, limits. Whether it really protects anything, in any proper application of the term, is disputed. Dividend. — It may be worth while to call attention to the obvious fact that a dividend is that which is to be divided. A railroad's divi- dend, for instance, is a certain share of the profits, set aside by the directors for division among the stockholders. It is sometimes con- venient, of course, and perhaps not highly cen- surable, to speak of one of the proprietors as receiving " his dividend," meaning his share of the dividend ; but it should be remembered that this expression is only justifiable as a rough sort of contraction, much like saying " governments" 16 Our Common Speech. and " railroads " when one means government bonds and railroad securities; and it is to be regretted that the definition of dividend in each of the two dictionaries most in use in this country is so worded as apparently to confuse dividend with quotient. Webster's, as usual, is a little worse than Worcester's. Circumstance for event. — We continually hear people say that they will " relate a circumstance that occurred " under their own observation. A circumstance occur ! They might as well speak of the motionless scenery at a theatre as per- forming. The word properly used — to indicate (as the Latin grammars used to say of the abla- tive absolute) the " time, cause or concomitants of an action, or the condition on which it depends " — was extremely useful, and we are very poorly compensated for its loss by acquir- ing a new and hardly distinguishable synonym for " event " or " incident." Demean for debase. — " If you had once de- meaned yourself, what I have to say would come easy," says Gwen in " A Yellow Aster." The person addressed had demeaned himself (well or badly) every moment of his waking Locutius in Fabrica. 27 hours, all his life. The blunder seems to have arisen partly from an imagined relationship be- tween the verb demean and the adjective mean, and partly from the fact that the verb is used in a good many rather familiar passages in old and standard writers, in such connection that debase would have made equally good sense. Recol- lection of the noun demeanor, which is certainly not synonymous with debasement, ought to be sufficient to correct the error. Merchant for tradesman or shopkeeper. — In the older and better use of the first word, it was strictly confined to persons who carried on for- eign traffic. To call retail dealers " merchants " is to multiply synonyms uselessly, at the cost of losing a very convenient distinction. Sustain for receive. — Chiefly in daily-paper language; "the victim sustained a trifling bruise on his arm." Well, it would have been re- markable if he had not " sustained " a wound of that description. The writer was, of course, trying to say that the person received the wound. How hard it is, sometimes, to be simple ! Liable for likely. — A wrongdoer is liable to 28 Our Common Speech. punishment. To say that he is " liable to escape," meaning that he is likely to escape, is to commit an error that is really comical in its absurdity, when one compares the true mean- ing of the sentence with the idea intended to be conveyed. The error, nevertheless, creeps sometimes into very good company. Julian Hawthorne is guilty of it — see "Dust," chapter 7, page 62 of Fords, Howard & Hulbert edition of 1883 : " Perdita was brought up as befitted a young lady liable to hold a good position in society." The " Albany Law Journal " quotes, vol. 29, page 22, from an official English re- port, an account of a meeting " of all the judges liable to try prisoners." Monopoly. — The frequent and glaring misuse of this term is of no little importance, as it leads to confusion of thought and sometimes to very ill-advised political action. A monopoly is, of course, an industry that is protected from competition by legal enactment. Certain dema- gogues are doing their best to lead the unthink- ing multitude to apply the term to industries which are perfectly open to competition but in which, for one reason or another, nobody Locutius in Fabrica. cares to compete — a very widely different thing. The owner of a patent has a monopoly; but the notion that railroading, banking or gas- making can be a monopoly, as long as all the world is at liberty to engage therein if it pleases, is at once grotesque and dangerous. The list stretches out indefinitely ; one knows not where to stop. It seems that on this subject, as on some others, there is verily need of line upon line, precept upon precept, here a little and there a good deal. Yet one word of caution must be added. The doctrine that words should not be used to convey ideas foreign to their real meaning, ought never to be so perverted as to interfere with their employ- ment in a secondary, derivative or figurative sense, the legitimate out-growth of their primary significance. A single illustration will make this clear. The verb to endorse means to put on the back of; and the United States post-office department took a mallet for a hammer with a vengeance when it informed the senders of registered letters, by a placard formerly dis- played in many post-offices, that such letters " require the name of the sender to be endorsed 30 Our Common Speech. on the face of the envelope ! " 2 Endorsed on the face! The writer of this notice — who doubtless imagined that endorsed was merely a more elegant synonym for written — might as well speal^ of hoisting a load down. But no small quantity of what I venture to think rather wooden-headed criticism has been expended on the use of the same verb to signify approve or sanction, as in the common expression, to endorse a candidate or a movement. It seems to be for- gotten that in the usual application of the term — the endorsing of a note or a check — we have always in mind, not only the fact that something is actually written on the back of the paper in question, but also and chiefly the far more important fact that the writer of the endorse- ment, in putting down his name, agrees to warrant and defend the holder of the document against loss resulting from his confidence in it. In other words, he may be said to back up the original maker. And just as it is indisputably good English to speak of a man's friends as 1 It was in consequence of representations by the author of this paper that the post-office department corrected the absurdity referred to. Locutius in Fabrica. 31 backing him, so is it absolutely good English to speak of a lawyer endorsing a layman's opinion about a legal question, or a scholar endorsing the positions maintained in a book on classical subjects. To object to such use of language as this, is to push grammatical criti- cism to an extreme that is likely only to render it ridiculous, though if the critics could persuade the people to follow them, it would result in a senseless limitation of our choice of words — a real and by no means inconsiderable injury to the language. DEGRADED WORDS. Note, I beseech you, the many words which men have dragged downward with themselves, and made more or less partakers of their own fall. Having once an honorable significance, they have yet with the dete- rioration and degeneration of those that used them, or of those about whom they were used, deteriorated and degenerated too. How many, harmless once, have assumed a harmful as their secondary meaning ! How many worthy have acquired an unworthy ! — Archbishop Trench. TT is a fundamental principle in philology, ■"■ perhaps the fundamental principle, that the words of a living language are constantly changing in their significance, or at least in the precise sense in which by common consent their originally recognized significance is gen- erally taken. Particularly is this true of our comprehensive, flexible, elastic mother tongue, of which the manifold and widely diverse sources of derivation are hardly more varied than the directions in which it is apparently Degraded Words. 33 susceptible of ready modification and almost self-impelled development. The process of alteration in the materials of our every-day speech, however, like the action of the geolo- gic forces by which the crust of the earth on which we tread is in our own time undergoing not less real though perhaps less rapid trans- formation than during the earlier ages, is at once so gradual, and seemingly so natural and inevitable, that we hardly take note of its occurrence; and in the one case as in the other, it might not be difficult, in the absence of information to the contrary, to imagine that all the important changes were made long, long ago, and that the condition of affairs with which we happen to be familiar had been for a considerable period definitely established, and is likely to descend, about as we find it and leave it, to remote posterity. Yet one cannot devote the slightest attention to the subject without perceiving that the truth is quite otherwise — that as the torrents are constantly furrowing and gradually reducing the mountains, and as the great rivers are ever pushing out their deltas into the sea, so 3 34 Our Common Speech. are the necessities, and the practices, neces- sary or not, of our civilized life, every day extending, diminishing, or in some way modi- fying, the scope and import of the words we use. Some familiar terms are parting com- pany by degrees with their literal meaning, retaining only their derivative sense, like the verb transpire, now very rarely used of mate- rial things, but defined by Johnson a century ago as meaning, first, " to be emitted by insensible vapor," and only secondarily " to escape from secrecy to notice," with the remark that the latter sense is " lately inno- vated from France, without necessity." 1 Other words, formerly very general in their sig- nificance, have become limited by custom to a particular subdivision of the large class of objects they once denoted, like the noun cattle, which not long ago included all beasts 1 Judging of the future by the past, it would not be sur- prising — though much to be regretted — if the still more recent use of transpire as synonymous with occur, which has already effected its entrance into the dictionaries (not into the language of careful speakers), should come in time, not only to full equality with the present meaning, but even to supersede it. Degraded Words. 35 of pasture but is at present, in this country at least, commonly restricted within the limits of a single genus. Another group, moving in precisely the opposite direction, have within recent times superadded a new quality to the meaning they formerly embraced, such for instance as the word admiration, which now means wonder combined with strong approval, but is used by the translators of the Bible, in Revelation xvii. 6, for wonder decidedly without approval, St. John being made to tell us that he looked " with great admiration " upon the woman drunken with the blood of saints and martyrs. Others again, and no small number, have gradually made their way upward in the scale of re- spectability, ridding themselves by degrees of the shade of evil association that once rendered them objectionable — such for in- stance as fun, which the old lexicographers brand as a " low, cant word," indicative of something quite different from the innocent merriment for which we now regard it as a synonym. Others finally, like the verb to let, having formerly represented two different 36 Our Common Speech. roots of entirely different meanings, have gone utterly out of use as regards one of them, retaining perhaps the signification that was originally the less familiar of the two. But in this tossing ocean of a language, where the constituent waves are ever rising and falling, advancing and receding, altering their relative positions, and changing in their forms and aspects, there is plainly to be dis- cerned, nevertheless, the existence of certain well marked currents; and it is one of these currents that it is the purpose of this chapter inadequately and for brief distance to endea- vor to trace — namely, the group of changes which keep a record of the follies, weaknesses and common faults of humankind, and the daily trials and disappointments that flow from them; the alterations in the meanings of words which are plainly due to the unwise or culpable practices of those who use "them. Many of the facts referred to for illustration are of course familiar — so familiar indeed that it is rarely possible to give credit to the authors who originally noted them. Degraded Words. 37 To take as the first instance a case where the change is still in progress, there is the adjective pitiful, which at present we almost invariably employ in an evil sense. "A piti- ful subterfuge," we say; that is, a transpar- ent and contemptible attempt at fraud. Yet the dictionaries with one accord give the good meanings precedence, — either " melan- choly, moving compassion, deserving to be pitied" (exemplified in the watchman's ejacu- lation, "pitiful sight!" on discovering the dead body of Juliet), or else " full of pity, tender," as in the three instances in which only the word occurs in King James' Bible. It needs no conjecture to discover the reason and method of this gradual drifting in mean- ing from good to bad. Whoever has heard a " pitiful " story of his woes from a wandering solicitor of charity, and, moved with compas- sion, has looked into the case only to find an impudent attempt at deceit, has the ex- planation before him in characters which he 38 Our Common Speech. may run that readeth. The "pitiful" story becomes provocative of scorn and indigna- tion; and the ignominy of the transaction attaches itself to the word that described its first appearance, dragging down with it the innocent adjective, and fitting it for compan- ionship with actions and conditions diametri- cally opposite to those with which it originally found place. If misery loves company, there is no lack of consolation for pitiful, in this unfortunate rele- gation to infamous uses. At least four other adjectives have travelled far in the same direc- tion and by much the same route — apparent, ostensible, plausible and specious. The first of these commonly (not always, the transforma- tion as yet being incomplete, but commonly) carries with it in these days at least an insinu- ation that the thing to which it is applied is not really quite what it seems — that we must not be surprised in fact if the truth of the matter turns out to be very different from its apparent condition. This insinuation is, so to speak, a fungus of comparatively recent growth upon the real meaning of the word, gradually Degraded Words. 39 fostered beyond doubt by a series of painful discoveries. Bailey's whole definition of ap- parent, in 1764, was " that plainly appears, certain, evident, manifest, plain, visible." Thus we still say an " heir apparent," meaning an heir beyond question or dispute, but as far as common usage is concerned, we should hardly employ a word like certain as a synonym of apparent, the present practice being rather to consider the two adjectives as almost contra- dictory of each other. Closely similar is the history of ostensible, which was formerly under- stood in its etymological meaning, " capable of being shown," but now conveys, as the Encyclo- paedic dictionary says, " the idea of sham or pretence." As regards plausible and specious, they are manifestly only the English forms of the Latin plansibilis and speciosus} of which the first indicated primarily the possession of qualities deserving of applause, as "plansibilis nomen " in Cicero ; while speciosus is commonly 1 These words, like many others of classical derivation, came into English, not directly, but through living European lan- guages, chiefly the French ; but that fact is of no consequence for the present purpose, so long as they have preserved enough of their original form to be recognized as the same. 40 Our Common Speech. best rendered by such expressions as " having a good shape, beautiful, handsome, fine or splendid." What a commentary it is upon the proverbial deceitfulness of appearances in this uncertain world, that these terms, which really indicate that a thing seems to be all right, have come to convey so sharply the implication that it is all wrong! There is a noun too that started earliest of all in the same descensus Avemi, and has long since reached a point so low that its hereditary claim to respectability has been almost for- gotten. This is hypocrite, the Greek 'Tttoat/mttj? in a modern dress — and t T7roKpiTr)<; ) as every- body knows, meant originally nothing but a player or actor. Roscius, the elegant speaker and beloved instructor of the greatest Roman orator, was by virtue of his art a hypocrite. Plainly the first step downward was taken when the word began to be used figuratively — when men were called hypocrites (in English or Greek) because their life was found to resemble the histrionic art in striving to appear to be different from what it was. It cannot have taken the common-sense of mankind long time Degraded Words. 41 to perceive that such dissimulation is almost always for evil purposes — the sheep's raiment covering the ravening wolf. And so it has come to pass that when we wish to indicate the assumption of virtue for the intents of vice, the word that springs most readily to the lips is the once well-thought-of " hypocrite." To counterfeit, likewise, was formerly only to imitate, conveying no insinuation as at present that the imitation was designed to be fraudulently substituted for the original — this added insinuation having been developed by the same process as the present evil signifi- cance of the word hypocrite. To equivocate was merely to call two things by the same name, not necessarily to mean one while lead- ing the hearer to understand the other. Tinsel was really woven of the precious metals, or supposed to be, until the detection of oft- repeated frauds caused it to be taken for granted that the appearance of exceptional richness and value in ornamental trappings of this material is nothing but the appearance, without reality. Finally under this head should be mentioned 42 Our Common Speech. the group of words most characteristic in their present meaning of the special vice of deliber- ate attempt at deception — the verb pretend and its derivatives. To say nothing of the innocent meaning indicated by their Latin origin, it is not so very long since they were used in English without any evil implication. Ash, 1775, mentions among his definitions of the verb, " to claim, to demand as right," and gives " a claim " as the first equivalent of the noun pretension. Johnson informs us that a pre- tender is " one who lays claim to anything" — that, and nothing more. A claimant, whether justly or unjustly, was in his view a pretender, and the butcher Orton, had he lived in England a century earlier, might have been spoken of as " pretending to be Sir Roger Tichborne " without the slightest intimation on the part of the speaker that the story was not believed. In the third part of King Henry Sixth, pub- lished 1623, Shakspeare makes Sir John Mont- gomery demand of King Edward at the gates of York, " why shall we fight, if you pretend no title?" and in the same breath, " if you'll not here proclaim yourself our king, I '11 leave you Degraded Words. 43 to your fortune " — using pretend almost inter- changeably with proclaim. Milton indeed, forty years later, wrote, "this let him know, lest, wilfully transgressing, he pretend surprisal " (Paradise Lo3t, v, 244), and elsewhere uses the word in the same manner; but the innocent meaning has lingered in literature for nearly two centuries longer. As historically applied for instance to the son and grandson of James II. of England, it can hardly have been orig- inally intended to signify much more than claimant ; for the unfortunate princes made no attempt at representing themselves to be any- thing but what they were, though they un- questionably laid claim to a kingly dignity that the nation was not anxious to concede to them. In the denoument of Lord Lytton's masterpiece, " My Novel," to take an instance within our own times, it may be remembered that Peschiera, in his scathing exposure of the villainy of Randal Leslie, speaks of him as " pretending " to the hand of Violante ; and though there was certainly no love lost between the two worthies at that juncture, yet the context makes it clearly evident that this particular word is intended in 44 Our Common Speech. no reproachful sense — the dashing count meant only to represent the minor scoundrel as his rival, seeking what he himself sought, and by much the same means, and pretend in his mouth is the exact equivalent of aspire. Yet who does not feel, now-a-days, the more than suggestion of a charge of fraud that is conveyed when we speak of any one as " pretending," or as being a " pretender " ? — and indeed Webster, reversing the earlier order of definitions, renders the noun as meaning, first, " one who simulates or feigns," and only secondarily, " one who lays claim," in which he doubtless interprets cor- rectly our modern usage. What deduction can we draw from such a progression in meaning toward the bad but this — that it has been the common experience that people are apt to claim more than their due? There is yet one more word that may per- haps be considered as allied to the foregoing, if the history of its changing sense, as given by Barclay — an author of no great fame, who nevertheless managed to gather a good deal of curious and interesting matter — is true. This is legend, of which he says, writing about ninety Degraded Words. 45 years ago, that it was originally " a book in the church containing the lessons that were to be read in divine service; from hence the word was applied to the histories of the lives of the saints, because chapters were read out of them at matins, but as the ' golden legend,' compiled by James de Varase about the year 1290, con- tained several ridiculous and romantic stories, the word is now used to signify any incredible or unauthentic narrative." That is to say, legends, books highly esteemed, have been so often found to contain glaring falsehoods — for it can hardly be that the change is wholly attributable to the single instance mentioned by our author — that the very word which used to denote only that the composition to which it was applied ought to be read, now serves rather to warn the reader that it ought not to be believed ! 11. Another common fault with our not-too- truthful humanity, nearly allied to the practice of exaggerating one's own deserts and conceal- ing blemishes, is that of unduly depreciating the 46 Our Common Speech. merits of other people, and particularly of de- spising beyond reason such classes of the com- munity as we think below us ; and this habit, as might be anticipated, has made its mark upon our language. There are a number of words that formerly indicated little more than inferior social or political position, but which have come to embody the charge of something much worse. Thus a villain was at first, as Trench puts it, only a serf or bondsman " (villamts), because attached to the villa or farm ; " and secondly " the peasant who, it is taken for granted," [and this is the root of the matter] "will be churlish, selfish, dishonest, and of evil moral conditions, these having come to be assumed as always be- longing to him, and to be permanently associ- ated with his name, by those higher classes of society who in the main commanded the springs of language. At the third step, nothing of the meaning which the etymology suggests, noth- ing of villa, survives any longer ; the peasant is quite dismissed, and the evil moral conditions of him who is called by this name alone remain." Thus Barrow rather superciliously remarks that foul language " is termed villainy, as being Degraded Words. 47 proper for rustic boors, who, having their minds debased by being conversant in meanest affairs, do vent their sorry passions in such strains." The term boor, just quoted, was likewise origi- nally descriptive of nothing worse than " a hus- bandman," " a plowman," " a country fellow," and the word or its Hollandish representative is still applied, without offence, to the wealthy and presumably well mannered Dutch planters of South Africa. A churl was a free tenant at will, or, as some trace the derivation, only a per- son of remarkable physical prowess. A kern was a footman or foot-soldier of rural extraction. A pagan (to quote Trench again) was " first a villager, then a heathen villager, lastly a heathen." Heathen itself meant originally only a dweller on the heath or open country. Inci- vility was merely the customary behavior, in the eyes of city residents, of their somewhat unpol- ished acquaintances from the interior; and the epithet savage indicated for a long time nothing more than relationship to the forest, or at worst a wild or uncultivated state, without the impli- cation of anything like ferocity. This must have been Milton's conception when he wrote of 48 Our Common Speech. a " savage hill," and a " savage wilderness;" and Dryden's too, who speaks of " savage ber- ries of the wood." Not only, however, are dwellers in towns ad- dicted to under-estimating their brethren of the fields, but the smaller minds of every country are apt to consider their land the flowery king- dom, and to despise unreasonably the outside nations. The prevalence of this folly is well illustrated by the present degradation of the adjective outlandish, which ought of course to mean only foreign, as it plainly did in the seven- teenth century, when Translator-General Hol- land, rendering Pliny into English, made him refer to " outlandish wheat." The uncouth, also, was once merely the unknown or unfamil- iar ; a vagabond or a harlot was a wanderer or stranger, not necessarily of disreputable char- acter ; and a barbarian, in Greek, was a man of different nationality from the speaker. Idiot meant originally in English, as in its native tongue, only a private person, or at worst an unlearned man, these two constituting the whole definition given by Bailey, except when used as a technical term in law. Jeremy Tay- Degraded Words. 49 lor, in the middle of the seventeenth century, remarked that " humility is a duty in great ones as well as in idiots; " and Blount, a contempo- rary of the good bishop, says : " Christ was received of idiots, while he was rejected and persecuted by the priests, doctors and rabbis." From this meaning, however, the word speedily descended to the level of the lowest classes in society; then came to indicate dense and stupid ignorance, and finally attached itself to persons absolutely void of understanding, natural fools, innocents or simpletons, as Webster has it. One can imagine the effect, in these days, of a min- ister's addressing his congregation as composed in part of idiots ! The appellation caitiff, which implies at pres- ent, and has done so for a long time, the pos- session of certain highly uncommendable traits of character, is traced by Johnson to the Italian cattivo, a slave, " whence," says the doctor, " it came to signify a bad man, with some implica- tion of meanness," and he adds : " A slave and a scoundrel are signified by the same words in many languages." The adjective vulgar, again, was once almost 4 5 and the expression was formerly employed, as by the translators of the Bible in First Corin- thians (xii. 31), "covet earnestly the best Degraded Words. 61 things " — without that implication of evil which man's bad habit, his proneness to covet more particularly what he knows he ought not to have, has fastened upon it. The expression " to inflame!' which we sel- dom hear now-a-days except in connection with some evil feeling, was used of old in reference to the good passions quite as freely as the bad, ex- amples of which practice can be found in many hymns still sung. "To denounced also, "to instigate" " to conspire" " to abet" and " to pro- voke" are verbs that we hardly ever employ at the present day except in reference to wrong doing, though just as correctly applicable to endeavors in the most praiseworthy directions, and once so used. An accomplice was not for merly by implication the assistant in an evil undertaking, as at present — see I. Henry VI, V. 2 : " Success unto our valiant general, and happiness to his accomplices ! " Animosity, in Sir Thomas Browne's "Urn Burial," 1658, meant courage, as where he tells us that Cato confirmed " his wavering hand to animosity " by reading the Greek philosophers. To wrangle was formerly simply to argue, however politely 61 Our Common Speech. — an ancient usage of which we still hear an echo in the honorary appointment of " wran- glers" at Cambridge University — though, as need hardly be said, a wrangle is now a noisy altercation, generally rather assertive than argu- mentative. So "to have words" with a man is now in most cases to quarrel with him, so great is the tendency of animated discussions, those in which we notice chiefly the great flow of words on both sides, to degenerate into heated disputes. But perhaps the most striking instance of the spoiling of words of this class is that which is furnished by the verbs retaliate ', resent, and their derivatives. The writer was once present at the parting of that scholarly but somewhat eccentric divine, the Rev. Dr. Samuel Hanson Cox, from a gentleman to whom he was indebted for hos- pitality, and to whom he said : " You may be certain, sir, that I shall be glad of any opportu- nity to display my resentment of your atten- tions." The host looked rather blank, as well he might, and the doctor explained : " That word resentment, sir, is a good word that has been brought into disgrace by man's wickedness. It Degraded Words. 63 only indicates a feeling-back, a desire to recip- rocate, and was once employed as well in rela- tion to benefits as to injuries. But we have so short a memory for kindness, and so vague an intention of returning it, while our perceptions of wrong done us are so acute, and our inclina- tions toward revengeful purposes so strong, that one is actually not understood in these days if he speaks of resenting anything but an affront or an attack ! " This position is unquestionably sound ; and almost the same remarks apply also to the companion words retaliation and retaliate, which certainly no one would think of employ- ing now except in connection with some kind of injury. Yet to retaliate is only to pay back, whether good or evil, as to resent is to feel back, whether with gratitude or with anger ; and ex- amples of the use of both words in the good sense abound in our earlier literature, particu- larly in the sermons of the seventeenth century, with whose authors they seem to have been favorite terms. Thus Isaac Barrow strongly enjoins the duty of cultivating " resentment of our obligations to God," and in another passage remarks that " honor renders a man a faithful 64 Our Common Speech. resenter of courtesies; " and Edmund Calamy says : " God takes what is done to others as done to himself, and by promise obliges himself to full retaliation." Dryden, too, writing at about the same period, has the statement : " The king expects a return from them, that the kind- ness which he has shown them may be retaliated on those of his own persuasion." Such expres- sions grate harshly on modern ears, but that is because the words have become soiled and polluted by the unworthy purposes to which they have now so long been generally restricted. And the language, let it be noticed, is just so much the poorer in consequence, for we have no exact synonyms with which, for their former and better use, we may replace them. V. Another unfortunate trait of character whose prevalence is curiously illustrated in a similar way, is that suggested by the adjectives meddle- some and officious. To meddle with anything was once merely to concern one's self with it, no implication of any impertinence or other impro- Degraded Words. 6$ priety being conveyed. Officious, in Bailey's time, had preserved exactly the meaning of its Latin ancestor, " ready to do one a good office, serviceable, very obliging," and it is in this sense that Titus Andronicus uses it when he says [ v. 2 ] : " Come, come, be every one officious to make this banquet." Pragmatical and busybody also, though perhaps always involving some degree of censure in their English use, ought certainly by every principle of etymology to be susceptible of an innocent if not a laudatory application. Hpay/jLarifcos means " active, able, business-like or prudent." A busybody is plainly a person who is busy ; and why, in either case, should it always be taken for granted that the individual of whom these terms are predi- cated is active about business that he might better let alone, unless the common experience of those who have employed the words has taught them that people are for the most part rather more likely to exert themselves in the pursuit of uncommendable enterprises than in the practice of their appropriate occupations? 66 Our Common Speech. VI. OUR evil tendency to grumble and complain of our surroundings, and to find fault with our fellow-men, has likewise been instrumental in the degradation of a number of common ex- pressions. Can it be believed, for instance, that homely would ever have come to mean ugly among people cultivating a due spirit of con- tentment with their daily lot? The adjectives chronic and inveterate, also, and the nouns plight and predicament, ought to be as freely applicable to desirable states and conditions as to the re- verse. Dr. Cuyler once wrote, in the Evangelist : " We pastors set great store by chronic Chris- tians ; " but in present common usage it cannot be denied that these terms are seldom heard except in relation to things evil. A catastrophe, too, is really only the final act of a drama, whether tragic or comic, and has perhaps become so nearly the synonym of disaster chiefly because we are so apt to take it for granted, in our talk, if not in our real convictions, that things gener- Degraded Words. 67 ally turn out badly. The same feeling is shown in our constant restriction of the use of the adjective ominous and the verbs to bode and to presage, which words we never use except in connection with misfortunes. Etymologically, appearances might be ominous of joy, ox presage great success ; we might have forebodings of the most roseate hue as well as of the gloomiest. To censure was once merely to express an opinion, as in Richard III. : "Will you go and give your censures in this business?" To tra- duce was simply to blame, not to slander ; so Enobarbus speaks of Antony ( Antony and Cleopatra, iii. 7) as being " traduced for levity." But our judgment of each other is so often uncharitably and undeservedly severe that the meanings of these words have become limited to unfavorable judgment and unfounded condemna- tion ; and it appears to me that animadvert and criticise are going the same way as censure ; we apply them much more frequently, I think, to the expression of blame than of commendation. 3 The epithet egregious might formerly have 1 See Atlantic Monthly, vol. 53, p. 578, April, 1884. 68 Our Common Speech. been coupled with the name of the most dis- tinguished philosopher, poet or statesman; but we are so much readier at abusing our neighbors than praising them, that the term epithet has dropped almost entirely its good use; and we are so likely, in characterizing any person as at all peculiar, which is all that egregious really signifies, to mean that he is peculiarly disagreeable, that one rather expects now-a-days some highly damaging appellation to follow, when a man is mentioned as " an egregious — " and there the speaker pauses. So with arrant, formerly the same as erra7it, and meaning merely wandering, but later used as synonymous with notorious, and since 1575 (according to Dr. J. A. H. Murray) " as an opprobrious intensive." VII. Man's propensity to over-reach his fellows when he can, and to take unfair advantage of their necessities, has branded several words with new opprobrium. To prevent is really only to get ahead of, or to precede, as in the Degraded Words. 69 English Common Prayer : " Let thy grace always prevent and follow us;" and Hamlet (ii. 2), " So shall my anticipation prevent your discovery." But alas ! those who reach first a desirable goal are so wont to take advantage of their position, not to help others get there too, but to block the way if possible, that the verb which ought only to describe the arrival of the first-comers in advance of the rest, is now understood as implying also their doing the best they can to monopolize the good fortune, and prevent others from sharing it. Another illustration of the same principle, still stronger perhaps, is furnished by the word rival. Rivals were at first only the occupiers of the banks of the same stream, and a little later, partners or co-laborers in the same en- terprise. It is in this sense that Bernardo speaks of Horatio and Marcellus as the rivals of his watch. But it came to be perceived that joint owners and partners are very apt to quarrel, each doing his best to possess him- self of all the advantages of the combination, until at last the word, in our present usage, has come to involve the entirely modern addi- 70 Our Common Speech. tion of a conflict of interest, and more or less hard-feeling between the parties. Artful, so late as the time of Johnson, meant only skillful, not tricky. Usury was once merely interest money, however moderate the amount and however legal and equitable the charge. A cheat, or escheatour, was a royal officer in England who attended to the sequestration of estates that were forfeited to the crown, and the corrupt practices of these men led it to be commonly believed that to "cheat" a man was to deprive him of his property unfairly — which meaning is now the only one recognized. To embezzle was to spend rashly and foolishly, but it was applied for a long time to the man's own property — " Mr. Hackluit died, leaving a fair estate to an unthrift son, who embezzled it " * — that is, wasted it — until it was dis- covered that spendthrifts are apt to become thieves as well. A defalcation was formerly only a diminution or abatement, as in Burke: "The natural method in reformation would be to take the estimates and show what may be safely defalcated from them." Its present use, 1 Thomas Fuller, " Worthies of England;' 1662. Degraded Words. 71 as implying knavery in the diminution, is possi- bly due in part to some supposed connection with " default " and " defaulter," to which words it is by etymology only very distantly if at all related. VIII. Of the great multitude of other degraded words that do not so readily fall into classes, but illustrate nevertheless each one the prev- alence of some blameworthy course of action or thought, may be instanced gossip, which de- noted first a fellow sponsor in baptism, next an intimate friend, and finally a too-talkative and therefore often dangerous companion; voluble ■, which was only fluent (and not unduly fluent as at present) when Bishop Hacket, a little more than two hundred years ago, wrote of Arch- bishop Abbott that " he was of a grave and voluble eloquence;" conceit, properly the equi- valent of idea or opinion, but rarely used now except for such opinions as the speaker deems ill-founded or absurd ; profane, which originally meant only secular or non-sacred, as we still say " profane history," and its opposite, fanatic, which really signifies about the same as inspired; 72 Our Common Speech. libertine and miscreant, formerly synonymous with free-thinker and infidel, and having refer- ence solely to the man's opinions instead of his actions; obsequious, which originally im- plied merely the exercise of affectionate and becoming obedience ; fussy, which was once the same as busy ; an apology, which was of old only a defence, by no means implying that the thing apologized for was in the slightest degree admitted to be improper, but merely that it had been attacked ; ringleader and notorious, which have only in modern times become restricted to their present evil sense ; bush-whacking, which was originally " a harmless word, denoting sim- ply the process of propelling a boat by pulling the bushes, or of beating them down in order to open a way through a thicket;" 1 a proser, which term really indicates only a person who writes prose, whether tiresome or the reverse ; casuistry, the science of determining what is duty, but more generally applied to specious attempts at making the worse appear the better reason; emissary, a messenger, but almost always now a messenger of evil purposes ; 1 Scheie de Vere, " Americanisms," p. 89. Degraded Words. 73 demagogue y a leader of the people — Dean Swift calls Demosthenes and Cicero demagogues, intending to do them honor; silly, which was originally synonymous with harmless or inno- cent ; willful, which should mean not much more than determined, though in practice we never hear of the willful performance of anything but evil ; audacious, now understood to mean impu- dent, but formerly the same as brave ; beldame, originally a grandmother; abominable, which once meant only excessive or monstrous ; bare- faced, which for a long time signified undis- guised, and only more recently, shameless ; rife, which I think we seldom employ now except in connection with something unpleasant; virago, which Johnson defines, first, as " a female war- rior," quoting from Peacham — "Melpomene is represented like a virago or manly lady, with a majestic and grave countenance;" the adjective Jesuitical, and the verb to jew, which are invariably used in a highly offensive sense not at all implied by their etymology. 74 Our Common Speech. IX. NOT to prolong, however, this catalogue of human frailties, there is one bad habit that gives constant annoyance in our daily life, and seems sometimes to prepare the way for all the others — the habit of procrastination, un- necessary and vexatious delay when action is demanded. A vice so common could hardly fail to make its impression on the language. Accordingly we find that certain adverbs of time which are and have been very frequently employed in promising immediate attention to duty, have lost by degrees a large share of their former intensity (promises of this kind being so often broken), and have become so weakened and enervated as quite to obscure the sense in many passages of the older writers. Thus Bailey's definition of the word presently — which is " at present, at this time, now," as exemplified by Cardinal Beaufort in King Henry Sixth [part two, I, i], "this weighty business will not brook delay ; I '11 to the Duke of Suffolk presently" — this definition is marked Degraded Words. 75 " obsolete " by Webster, though that meaning still seems to survive in Great Britain, for such expressions as " Gen. Ramsay is presently visiting at the castle " are not uncommon in British papers. Yet the American lexicog- rapher is indisputably correct when he pro- ceeds to mention, as the synonyms of this adverb in its more common applications, the words " soon, before long, after a little time " — which embody quite a different conception. As regards the similar term by-and-by, the case is if possible still stronger, the ancient meaning still more debilitated in modern usage. Of course this word in our present understand- ing of it, invariably implies considerable delay, but we need only turn to the Greek Testament to discover that King James' translators con- sidered it the equivalent for the most em- phatic adverbs that the original tongue can furnish to indicate instant and hurried action — eu#u?, evOecos and igavTrjs. These words mean suddenly, hastily, rashly, at the very point of time ; and are rendered " straightway," " im- mediately " and " forthwith " in the Bible itself, when by-and-by is not used. In the account j6 Our Common Speech. given by Ulysses in the Ajax of his breathless and frantic pursuit of the mad warrior who had butchered the flocks and their guardians, Sopho- cles makes him say : " And to me a watch- man that espied him bounding over the plains alone, with freshly reeking sword, tells it ; and evOecos [that is, instantly] I hurry close on his steps." Fancy rendering this, as is done with the same word in the Bible, " By-and-by I hurry on his steps ! " How completely such a trans- lation destroys the coherence of the narrative ! What a flood of light is thrown too upon the real intent of the sacred writers, when we sub- stitute (as is done in the Revised Version) the stronger and now more accurate expressions for the indefinite by-and-by, as in Matthew xiii. 21 : "Yet hath he not root in himself, for when tribulation or persecution ariseth because of the word," not " by-and-by" but STRAIGHTWAY " he is offended," does not hold out at all — makes no effort for a single moment to breast the cur- rent! Again, Mark vi. 25: "And she came in straightway with haste unto the king, and asked, saying, I will that thou give me," not " by-and-by" but FORTHWITH, " in a charger, Degraded Words. 77 the head of John the Baptist." Finally, Luke xxi. 9 : " But when ye shall hear of wars and commotions, be not terrified, for these things must first come to pass, but the end is not " — IMMEDIATELY. And if the gradual fading out of the original intense emphasis of these words is largely due, as every consideration seems to render probable, to the fact that people have so often said they would do things " presently" or " by-and-by," and then have neglected them, so that in process of time the idea of more or less delay has become thoroughly involved in the common understanding of the words them- selves — what a commentary does it furnish upon the prevalence of this habit of procrasti- nation, that these terms, once the strongest that could be found to picture hurried and impatient action, have come at last, as indisputably in ordinary usage they have, to denote so vaguely an indefinite period, at an indefinite distance, in the indefinite and uncertain future ! THE ENGLISH OF THE REVISED NEW TESTAMENT. The truth is, — as all who have given real thought to the subject must be aware, — the phenomena of language are among the most subtle and delicate imaginable : the problem of translation, one of the most many-sided and difficult that can be named. And if this holds universally, in how much greater a degree when the book to be trans- lated is the Bible ! . . . Not the least service which the revisionists have rendered has been the proof their work affords, how very seldom our authorized version is materially wrong. ... It is but fair to add that their work bears marks of an amount of conscientious labor which those only can fully appreciate who have made the same province of study to some extent their own. — London Quarterly Review. TT is to be feared that the revisers of the New ■*- Testament, looking back now after the lapse of a dozen years and more since the version of 1 88 1 was issued, can hardly feel that the public appreciation of their efforts has been quite what was expected. No important church has for- mally approved the revised version; no great Bible society has undertaken to circulate it; English of Revised New Testament. 79 and while the most competent authorities appear to be pretty nearly unanimous in commending alike the Greek readings adopted by the revis- ers in disputed passages, and the fidelity with which the original is, on the whole, represented by their rendering, it nevertheless cannot be denied that so far as the English of the book is concerned, a large part of the criticism which has appeared — bursting forth in (somewhat discordant) chorus immediately after the publi- cation of the work, and continuing at intervals ever since — has been of an unfavorable tone, and that this judgment operates powerfully in perpetuating the supremacy of the King James translation. It cannot be denied, either, that the impartial reader who takes pains to examine the matter without prejudice either in favor of or against alterations qua alterations, will find what really seem to be an unreasonably large number of verbal blemishes marring the great work. The following may be mentioned as instances of rather gross infelicities which should certainly have been avoided : I. " Repented himself," whatever it may for- merly have been, is surely not good English now. 80 Our Common Speech. Yet not only is the archaic phrase retained in Matt, xxvii. 3 ; but in Matt. xxi. 29, 32, and Heb. vii. 21, the modern English of the author- ized version is replaced by the utterly obsolete construction, making repent a reflexive verb. 2. In John xix. 29 we now read that " they put a sponge full of vinegar upon hyssop, and brought it to his mouth." The authorized ver- sion has " put." The verb " bring " indicates almost invariably, except in the mouths of the careless or ignorant, a motion toward the speaker ; and it is not easy to conjecture by what possible argument its employment in the sentence quoted can be regarded as defensible. 3. In 1st Cor. i. 18, we have : " Unto us which are being saved "; in 2d Cor. ii. 15, " In them that are being saved " ; in Col. iii. 10, " The new man, which is being renewed unto knowledge " ; and in 2d Tim. iv. 6, " For / am already being offered." Much may of course be said — much has been said — in justification of this construc- tion; but it will be admitted on all sides that the best practice very seldom employs it. 4. In Matt. v. 35, Heb. i. 13 and x. 13 occur the cumbrous and cacophonous phrases, " The English of Revised New Testament. 81 footstool of thy feet," " The footstool of his feet," and in 1st Peter hi. 17, "If the will of God should so will." What possible purpose, in an English book, is served by these awkward repetitions? And is not the last an absurdity at best, as we use the words in English ? God can will; and his will can be this or that; but can his will will? The fact that these phrases exactly represent the Greek, is no sufficient rea- son, surely, for inflicting them on the English reader, the genius and structure of the two lan- guages being so different. Almost as well might the Greek double negative be rendered by two " nots " in one English negative sentence. 5. Not exactly bad English, perhaps, but cer- tainly not good English at the present day, is the old rendering of " single " for airXovs in Matt. vi. 22 and Luke xi. 34, which is retained by the revisers. This translation (though of course in a certain sense undeniably accurate) is particularly objectionable, as tending to mis- lead the reader. We often hear of an "eye single to the public good," meaning an eye turned exclusively in that one direction; and the sense of the passages as we have them in 6 82 Our Common Speech. English appears to be that if the mind is steadily- devoted to one purpose all will be well, which is very different from their real significance. 6. Why is bits, in James iii. 3, changed to bridles f Does any one ever think of saying, in ordinary speech, that he puts a " bridle " into a horse's mouth? The poor animal would find his mouth very uncomfortably distended, were such an operation undertaken ; and might well apprehend dislocation of the jaws if it were successfully carried out. 7. It is to be regretted that we still read "Simon Bar-Jonah" in Matt. xvi. 17, while in John xxi. 15, 16, 17, it is " Simon, son of John." Of course the " fiap" is found in the Greek text in the first case, and not in the others ; but the meaning is identical, the J \(ova is identical. Why should " he that occupieth the room of the unlearned " be caused to stumble by finding " Bar-Jonah " in one place, and " son of John " elsewhere, while the evangelists intended to write precisely the same thing? It is not only in single phrases, however, that the revisers made bad work. There are whole classes of words that they handle unskillfully, — English of Revised New Testament. 83 such as the pronouns thy and thine, who and which and that, which they seem to exchange quite at random; the subjunctive moods of verbs; the adverbs ahvay and always ; the con- junction and, which they use much too freely for the best English practice ; and the particles if, though, whether, unless and except, which they employ rather carelessly and inaccurately. On these points it is hardly needful now to en- large, for they have been discussed at length in a book called " The Revisers' English," by Mr. G. Washington Moon, a gentleman who had previously done good service in pointing out a number of Dean Alford's errors. This book is worth reading. Mr. Moon always writes enter- tainingly, on grammatical subjects at least, and generally teaches sound doctrine, though read- ers are likely to be somewhat prejudiced against his conclusions by his unfortunate manner of stating them, for he is afflicted with so irascible a temper that he can seldom content himself with attacking what he regards as bad practice with- out at the same time reviling every critic that disagrees with him. He is moreover a little too much tied down to certain hard-and-fast inter- 84 Our Common Speech. pretations of general laws to which the best usage recognizes, and always will recognize, and always ought to recognize, a number of seeming — perhaps not real — exceptions. Of one exemplification of the last-named defect in Mr. Moon's grammatical teaching, illustrations may be found abundantly in his criticisms of the revisers' English, and the matter is worth considering — not, of course, that it is highly important whether Mr. Moon is right or wrong about it, but because he opens a question on which it is indispensably necessary that clear and sound views should be held by all who would use our language correctly and forcibly. I refer to his abnormal development, so to speak, of the rule that a verb must agree in number with its subject. This rule he thinks is repeatedly violated by the revisers, and he abuses and ridicules them without stint for so doing. He specifies the following instances : 1 . " Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon the earth, where moth and rust doth consume." — Matt, vi. 19. 2. "Out of the same mouth cometh forth blessing and cursing." — James iii. 10. English of Revised New Testament. 85 As to these utterly and inexcusably ungram- matical sentences, of course there can be no difference of opinion. A ten-year-old boy ought to be ashamed of them ; and their appearance in a work prepared by scholars of such standing as those who constituted the company of revis- ers, furnishes a striking illustration of the degree to which the study of our own language is neglected in both British and American insti- tutions of learning. It is most lamentable that such sentences could go through the press with- out correction. If all Mr. Moon's illustrations of the error referred to were of this character, one could readily forgive him for almost any display of irritation on discovering them. But let us see. He offers further specifications as below : 3. " His face was as the sun, and his feet as pillars of fire." — Rev. x. 1. 4. " His feet were as the feet of a bear, and his mouth as the mouth of a lion." — Rev. xiii. 2. 5. "Who is my mother and my brethren?" — Mark iti. 33. 6. " Is not his mother called Mary? and his breth- ren, James, and Joseph, and Simon, and Judas ? " — Matt. xiii. 55. 86 Our Common Speech. These sentences are incomplete, certainly; but it may be questioned whether they are necessarily equivalent, as Mr. Moon believes, to writing, in No. 3, "His feet was as pillars of fire," in No. 4, " His mouth were as the mouth of a lion," in No. 5, " Who is my brethren ? " and in No. 6, " Is not his brethren ? " It seems to me that the ellipsis is more naturally filled in, by the mind of the reader, with the verb in each case in its proper number. And here is a still more doubtful case : 7. "To whom God was pleased to make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory." — Col. /. 27. Mr. Moon is of opinion that the " is " in the last clause refers to " riches" and should there- fore be "are." It does not seem to me that the supposed reference is certainly what was intended ; and even if it is, I think that the clause may be regarded as transposed, the sub- ject of the verb being Christy exactly as in the sentences " The wages of sin is death " (Rom. vi. 23) and " The seal of mine apostleship are ye " English of Revised New Testament. 87 (1 Cor. ix. 2) — the verb in each case pre- ceding its subject. Possibly it would have been better to render the original 7tX,o{/to? by some English word which resembles it in being used in the singular number, " opulence" perhaps, or " wealth" The matter, at all events, may safely be passed as of rather minor consequence, the error, if error there is, being far from flagrant. The sentences really important for discus- sion, in view of Mr. Moon's criticism, are the following : 8. "Among whom also was Dionysius the Areo- pagite, and a woman named Damaris, and others with them." — Acts xvii. 34. 9. " Among whom was Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James and Joses, and the mother of the sons of Zebedee." — Matt, xxvii. 56. 10. "Of whom is Hymenseus and Alexander." — 1st Tim. i. 20. 11." Wherein was a golden pot holding the manna, and Aaron's rod that budded, and the tables of the covenant." — Heb. ix. 4. 12. "And now abideth faith, hope, love, these three." — 1 Cor. xiii. 13. 13. "Where jealousy and faction are, there is con- fusion and every vile deed." — James Hi. 16. 88 Our Common Speech. 14. u Here is the patience and the faith of the saints." — Rev. xiii. 10. 15. "On these two commandments hangeth the whole law, and the prophets." — Matt. xxii. 40. 16. " Whose is the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law, and the service of God, and the promises." — Rom. ix. 4. 17. "That ye may be strong to apprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ." — Eph. Hi. 18. All the above are condemned by Mr. Moon as grossly incorrect; the verb, he thinks, should be plural in every case. It appears to me that the criticism is ill founded. A plural verb would have been correct, assuredly; but it does not necessarily follow that a verb in the singular must be wrong ; and I think that insistence on the plural in such cases would often have the effect of altering — slightly, to be sure, but per- ceptibly — the shade of meaning intended when (as in at least some of the cases before us) the several subjects of the verb are thought of, not as united in a single conception, but as separate and distinct items. Substantially this explana- English of Revised New Testament. 89 tion of the revisers' language was suggested to Mr. Moon by one of his reviewers, who said that " the second substantive is added as a kind of afterthought " — a suggestion which nearly threw the critic into a fit. " An afterthought of the Holy Spirit ? " he cries, in shrill hysterics ; " this is dreadful ! What does Dr. Sanday mean? " Well, in view of the statements in I Cor. i. 14, 15, 16, 1 the supposition of an afterthought in Scripture seems neither absurd nor blasphemous ; but waiving that point, it must still be clear to persons not quite so excitable as Mr. Moon that, whatever view one takes of the inspiration of the Bible, an inspired writer is just as much bound by the limitations of language as is any other, and just as much at liberty, moreover, to employ figures of rhetoric. A complete idea cannot always be presented in a single word, sometimes not in a single symmetrical phrase ; and a very effective way of making certain classes of statements is to appear to overlook some items at first, mentioning them subsequently 1 " I thank God that I baptized none of you, save Crispus and Gaius ; lest any man should say that ye were baptized into my name. And I baptized also the household of Ste- phanas : besides, I know not whether I baptized any other." 90 Our Common Speech. one by one as if they had just occurred to the writer as desirable additions or corrections. I think it is in this way, simply and naturally enough, that the ordinary reader will under- stand the sentences quoted. That is, the effect made on his mind by No. 8 is as if it read : " Among whom was Dionysius the Areopagite, and [also] a woman named Damaris, and others [were] with them." So in No. 12: "And now abideth faith ; [and] hope [abideth] ; [and] love [abideth] ; these three [abide]." Again, in No. 15 : " On these two commandments hangeth the whole law — [yes] and [so do] the prophets [as well]." In the doxology of the Lord's Prayer — sup- pressed in the revised version, but mentioned by Mr. Moon as a parallel case of incorrect syn- tax — I think not only that the translators were justified in following the Greek original by using the verb in the singular, but that the plural would have been positively wrong, as suggesting a connection of thought that was not intended and will not bear analysis. We ask for the blessings solicited " for " (or because) God's is the kingdom, and the power — the sovereignty English of Revised New Testament, 91 over even the evil in the universe, and he is able therefore to grant us whatever is good and pro- tect us from whatever is bad. But there is no logic in asking God for help and deliverance because his is the glory ; and this is just what we should do if we said: "Deliver us from evil, for thine are the kingdom and the power and the glory." This construction would im- ply that all the subjects of the verb are in the speaker's mind when he begins the clause, and make him say, in effect : " Grant us these blessings, because thine is the glory." As it is, the conclusion seems, to me at least, per- fectly clear and reasonable : " Deliver us from evil, for thine is the kingdom [even over the evil], and the power [to save us is thine] ; and the glory [is and shall be thine] forever." .The object of using language, after all, is to express thought ; and while no clear violation of a rule of syntax is to be condoned on the ground that it does not obscure the meaning, yet if the mean- ing is clear, and the supposed violation is so readily explained away in the reader's mind, there is hardly occasion — to say the least — for extremely severe criticism. 92 Our Common Speech. One rather curious blunder into which it is surprising that the revisers fell is repeated by Mr. Moon. They say in their preface (Art. iii. § 2, If 8) : " Sometimes the change has been made to avoid tautology " — oblivious (or ignorant) of the manifest fact that there cannot be tautology in an accurate translation if it does not exist in the original. Tautology is the needless repeti- tion of an identical idea in different words ; it proceeds from confused thinking, and can neither be aggravated nor ameliorated by chang- ing the phraseology, having indeed nothing to do with any question of the use of language, strictly speaking. The revisers' error on this point is adopted by their critic, who speaks of " verbal repetitions " as equivalent to tautology, and instances these sentences : " From him that hath not, even that which he hath shall be taken away from him " (Lukexix. 26), and : " Cast out first the beam out of thine own eye ; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye " (Matt. vii. 5). These phrases are unpleasant, certainly ; but they are not tauto- logical; they have nothing to do with tautology ; and it is tolerably certain, notwithstanding the English of Revised New Testament. 93 revisers' fear and Mr. Moon's supposed discovery that these fears were justified by the issue, that no case of real tautology exists in any reason- ably accurate translation of the New Testament. Were the contrary the case, the responsibility would assuredly lie further back than with the translators. It ought to be said, in general conclusion, that the revised version is entitled to a good deal of charity, when judged simply as an English book. The peculiar difficulties under which the revisers labored must have been perplexing and formidable. Their task was not to make a new translation, but merely to improve the old. To take an English classic — any English classic — of the beginning of the seven- teenth century, and alter its language now, without thoroughly recasting the whole thing into the speech of our own day, and without producing the effect of a patch of new cloth here and there on the old garment, is a task from which the most skillful user of our lan- guage might well shrink. That the revisers of 1 88 1 secured even a measurable degree of success in an undertaking at once so arduous 94 Our Common Speech. and so delicate, is in a high degree creditable to their abilities and their judgment; and the English-speaking public has good reason to felicitate itself that the final result came any- where near meeting with general approval. It is not entirely satisfactory ; but one might well have expected something so much worse! OLD ENGLISH DICTIONARIES. A dictionary is not bad reading on the whole. It is much more endurable than a good many of what are called lighter books, and not much more unconnected. ... In the hands of a patient reader it would form almost a course of study in itself, and very far from a dry one; he would make acquaintance in its pages with a good many English authors to whom no one else is very likely to introduce him; and though this acquaintance would certainly, in one sense, be very superficial, it would not in that respect differ from popular knowledge in gen- eral, and would at least have the advantage of being accurate and critical, so far as it went, in point of style. — BlackwoocCs Magazine. HPHE history of English lexicography is long -*- and brilliant; it could hardly have been otherwise. The complex and constantly va- rying structure of our language, perpetually inviting, and perpetually defying, systematic arrangement ; and the circumstances of the people who have used it, scattered as they have been over the whole face of the globe and yet maintaining continued intercourse and corre- 96 Our Common Speech. spondence with each other to an extent en- tirely unparalleled in history, have created a demand for vocabularies of English very much more imperative than has existed for those of any other tongue. Demand creates supply, and for nearly three centuries a new English dictionary has appeared about as often as the leap-year has come round ; that is, during the last 290 years some seventy such works have been published, not counting revised editions except when radically remodeled or greatly enlarged. Many of these books, of course, are of small importance, but many others are not only practically very useful, but remark- able, besides, either as monuments of the dili- gence and the learning of their individual authors or as showing what marvels can be ac- complished by the co-operation of a number of literary workmen. The period of 290 years is mentioned as covering the history of English lexicography, because the first book which can properly be called an English dictionary was published in 1604. Lexicographical work had, however, been done in England, and partly in the Ian- Old English Dictionaries. 97 guage of England, nearly a thousand years before ; and even a succinct sketch of the de- velopment of the science should notice, at least as a preliminary stage, the great number of vocabularies, partly in English and partly in other tongues, that were welcomed by the lite- rary public from the writing, in the seventh cen- tury, of the work on which the Epinal Glossary was founded, down to Cotgrave's Dictionarie of the French and English Tongues, dated 161 1. Twenty-five or thirty such works are known to have been printed, while a much larger number remained as manuscripts only, a great majority having been prepared before the invention of movable types. The earliest of these compila- tions were mere " glosses " — lists of unfamiliar terms in particular books, or certain selections of unfamiliar terms — with interpretations. One of them, the famous Epinal Glossary, of which mention has just been made, is especially inter- esting, as being the very oldest document known to be now in existence in which the English lan- guage is employed. It is a vocabulary of unu- sual or peculiar Latin (and a few Greek) words, the equivalents of which are given sometimes in 7 Our Common Speech. easier Latin, and sometimes in the English of those days — not always the English of ours. It consists of 28 pages of parchment, some of them badly soiled, but nowhere quite illegible. On each page are six columns, of which the first, third and fifth contain, in an approxi- mation to alphabetical order, the Latin words to be explained, the interpretations being placed at the right and forming columns two, four and six. Phrases occasionally occur, but com- monly the author contented himself with ren- dering in each case a single word by a single word. The 84 explanatory columns contain about 3200 entries, of which perhaps a thousand can be called English, though barely a score of these would be understood by persons familiar only with the language as now spoken. It may be worth while to enumerate these twenty, they being, as has been mentioned, instances of the occurrence of terms now in familiar use, in the oldest document we have in which any English is to be found, a document written nearly twelve hundred years ago. It will be noticed that only two of the twenty have as many as two syllables, and one of these is a compound. The vener- Old English Dictionaries. 99 able words referred to are: Garlec, dil, dross, goos, beer (bier, a litter, not the drink), malt, ham, bedd, broom (the plant), frost, men, hand- ful, storm, spilth, disc, fleah, flint, stream, tin, elm. I. WHAT may be called the first era of purely- English lexicography covered practically the seventeenth century. All the dictionaries of our language produced during this period were on the gloss plan, confining themselves to words supposed to be not generally understood. Their authors are nine in number — Cawdrey, Bul- lokar, Cockeram, Blount, Phillips, Coles, Cocker, one anonymous, and Kersey. Robert Cawdrey, the first of all, began the great work by issuing a small book with a large title : " A Table Alphabeticall, conteyning and teaching the true writing, and understanding of hard usual English wordes, borrowed from the Hebrew, Greeke, Latine, or French, &c, with the interpretation thereof by plaine English words, gathered for the benefit & helpe of ladies, gentlewomen, or any other unskilfull persons, ioo Our Common Speech. whereby they may the more easilie and better understand many hard English wordes, which they shall heare or read in scriptures, sermons, or elsewhere, and also be made able to use the same aptly themselves. Legere y et non intclli- gere, neglegere est — as good not read, as not to understand. At London, printed by I. R. for Edmund Weaver, & are to be sold at his shop at the great north doore of Paules Church : 1604." It will be seen that the author's name does not appear on the title-page, but it is signed to a letter of dedication that follows. The persons that he had chiefly in mind must have been " unskilfull" indeed, for he judges it needful to add this caution : " If thou be desirous (gentle reader) rightly and readily to understand, and profit by this table, and such like, then thou must learn the alphabet, to wit, the order of the letters as they stand, perfectly without book, and where every letter standeth : as (U) neere the beginning, («) about the middest, and (/) toward the end." Twelve years after the appearance of Caw- drey's "Table," namely in 1616, Dr. John Bullokar issued his " English Expositour, or Old English Dictionaries. 101 Compleat Dictionary, teaching the interpreta- tion of the hardest words, and most useful terms of art used in our language," and said to contain 5080 entries. A copy of the sixth edition of this work, dated 1680, may be seen at the New York State Library in the capi- tol at Albany — a 241110 of about 290 pages. One definition, not badly expressed for the time, caught my eye in looking it over. This is that of the term heretick, which Dr. Bullokar explains thus : " He that maketh his own choice, what points of religion he will believe, and what he will not believe." The author was no friend to vain repetitions, and when he has dealt with, for instance, an adjective, he generally leaves it to the common-sense of the reader to divine for himself the meanings of the allied noun and verb. " If," he remarks, " the adjective crude signifies raw, the substantive crudity must signify raw- ness, and so contrarily." Perhaps he carried his rule too far, but the main principle seems to have reason, and if it had been adopted at least in part by modern dictionary makers — to the exclusion of such utterly superfluous entries as " bottle-ale " in Webster, " madwoman " in 102 Our Common Speech. Worcester and " codliver oil" in the Century, the dictionary-using public would have had cause for gratitude. But the most characteristic fea- ture of Bullokar's book, and one hardly to be commended, is an index " wherein the vulgar [or common] words are prefixed in an alpha- betical order before the others [that is, the grander words of foreign derivation] as a ready direction for the finding them out," assisting writers to turn their plain, succinct English into high-flown and almost always longer terms, to the manifest injury of their style. The work has also a sort of brief cyclopaedia, " containing a summary of the most memorable things and famous persons." The last paragraph of the doctor's preface is worth copying: "Those virtuous and well addicted persons, who, rather for want of opportunity than generous inclin- ation, not having had the fortune to attain to the knowledge of any other than the mother language, are yet studiously desirous to read those learned and eloquent treatises which from their native original have been rendered English (of which sort, thanks to the company of painful translators, we have not a few), have here a volume fit for their purpose, as Old English Dictionaries. 103 carefully designed for their assistance ; and to such, and only such, we recommend it, and that with this benediction, live long, industrious reader, advance in knowledge and be happy." Seven years after Bullokar, 1623, appeared " The English Dictionary, or an Interpreter of Hard English Words," by H[enry] C[ockeram], Gent. This writer is best remembered for his exhortation to the " gentle reader " to " have a care to search every word according to the true orthography thereof; as for Physiognomic in the letter P, not in F, for cynicall in Cy, not Ci* His horror of what he calls " vulgar " words is also a distinguishing feature. Thus he con- demns the adjective rude and tells us to say " agresticall ; " also the verb to weede, for which he would substitute the pleasing terms to " sar- culate" to " diruncinate" or to " averuncate" The work ran to at least nine editions. At about the middle of the century under review, namely, in 1656, appeared Thomas Blount's " Glossographia, or a dictionary inter- preting the hard words of whatsoever language now used in our refined English tongue; with etymologies, definitions and historical observa- 104 Our Common Speech. tions on the same." It is largely composed of foreign and technical words, but includes histor- ical and geographical names also, as well as many words now at least (possibly not then) of daily use. One is stepmother, so-called, Blount thought, " because she steps in instead of a mother by marrying the son or daughter's father; a mother-in-law." The work "is chiefly intended," says a note to the reader in the edi- tion of 1670, " for the more-knowing women, and less-knowing men ; or indeed for all such of the unlearned, who can but find in an alphabet the word they understand not; yet I think I may modestly say the best of scholars may in some part or other be obliged by it." A fifth edition, considerably enlarged, appeared in 1681, making a duodecimo of 710 pages, which are duly numbered on the present plan. In 1658, Edward Phillips (nephew of John Milton) issued the first edition of his " New World of Words, or a Universal English Dic- tionary, containing the proper significations and derivations of all words from other languages * * * as now made use of in our English tongue, together with the definitions of all those terms Old English Dictionaries. 105 that conduce to the understanding of any of the arts or sciences, * * * to which is added the in- terpretations of proper names * * * as also the sum of all the most remarkable mythology and history, deduced from the names of persons eminent in either; and likewise the geographi- cal descriptions of the chief countries and cities in the world — a work very necessary for stran- gers, as well as our own countrymen, for the right understanding of what they discourse, write or read." One definition seems worth copying. " Acid in chymistry," it says, " sig- nifies that sharp salt, or that potential and dis- solving fire which is in all mixed bodies, and gives 'em being. Of acids, vitriol is the chiefest, sea salt next to that." Phillips copied very largely from Blount, blunders and all, and added a considerable number of errors of his own. Among other things, he defines gallon as a measure containing two quarts ; quaver as " a measure of time in music, being the half of a crotchet, as a crotchet is the half of a quaver ; " contemptuous as synonymous with contemptible and meaning " worthy of scorn ; " ember-week as " the week before Lent;" and he men- 106 Our Common Speech. tions Nazareth as " the place where Christ was born." Next came, in 1677, Elisha Coles, " school- master and teacher of the tongue to foreigners," with " an English dictionary explaining the difficult terms that are used in divinity, hus- bandry, physic, philosophy, law, navigation, mathematics and other arts and sciences " — claimed to contain almost thirty thousand en- tries. A new feature in this work is a list of what we should now call homonyms, pairs (or triplets) of words having the same sound, but different spellings and meanings. The preface criticises severely the productions of previous lexicographers. Early in the eighteenth century, 1704, was issued, posthumously, the English Dictionary of Edward Cocker, an unimportant work, though several times republished, with alterations and additions by John Hawkins, who felicitated himself on his success by printing as a separate line on the title-page the words : " The Like never yet Extant" In 1707 appeared the anonymous " Glosso- graphia Anglicana Nova, a dictionary inter- Old English Dictionaries. 107 preting such hard words as are at present used in the English tongue." It has a number of wood-cuts illustrating definitions of heraldic terms, this being the earliest appearance of any sort of pictorial illustrations in an English lexi- con. The author, like Phillips, had his own idea on the subject of acids, his statement being as follows : " Acids are those bodies which pro- duce the taste of sharpness or sourness, caused from the particles of those bodies being sharp- pointed and piercing." The first period of our English lexicography- may be said to have closed in 1708, with the appearance of J[ohn] K[ersey]'s "New Eng- lish Dictionary, or a compleat collection of the most proper and significant words, and terms of art commonly used in the language, * * * for the benefit of young scholars, tradesmen, arti- ficers, foreigners and the female sex." It is doubtful, however, whether this work is not almost entitled to be counted as the first of the second period, for in design, though per- haps not in execution, it goes rather beyond the gloss plan. It professes to omit obsolete, barbarous and foreign words, and originally 108 Our Common Speech. included a number of such familiar terms as bird-cage, apple-tree and pigeon-hotise. These particular compounds, however, and probably many others of the same class, were wisely omitted from the second edition, a duodecimo of about 300 pages issued in 171 3, and of which the author modestly remarks that " the entire work (as it is now brought to perfection) must needs give ample content to the public." It has seemed worth while to describe these works at some length, considering that they make up what may be termed the incunabula of English lexicography. Cawdrey, first on the list of their authors, turned up absolutely virgin soil, and each of the eight who came after him is distinguished by a good deal of originality. Their books are not only, in most cases, incom- parably smaller than our modern dictionaries, but they have a very different style — they are conversational, almost chatty, and yet there are wide differences in tone, so to speak, among them. They constitute a class of literature which is distinctly of its own kind and well deserves separate preservation and study. Old English Dictionaries. 109 II. A SECOND period, transitional between that of the glosses which preceded it and that of the modern dictionary, supposed to contain the whole language, was introduced in 1721 by the publication of the great work of Nathan Bailey, in which it was for the first time attempted to include " the generality of words in the English tongue." This book had a long life, which it well deserved, running through at least twenty- seven editions, many of them involving exten- sive alterations. Like the dictionaries of the present day, it was offered at different times in various forms and sizes, sometimes in one volume and sometimes in two. The most noted edition is the folio of 1730, a volume of nearly 900 pages, 9 inches by 13 J, a copy of which, with blank leaves inserted, was used by Johnson as the foundation of his labors. Bailey's work is remarkable also as marking the accented syl- lables of the words — which no previous author had done, and as containing a " collection of proverbs, with their explanation and illustra- no Our Common Speech. tion." Thus under the entry swallow we find noted the adage " one swallow does not make a summer," with the following explanation, which certainly ought to make the matter toler- ably clear: "All the false as well as the foolish conclusions from a particular to an universal truth fall under the censure of this proverb. It teaches that as he that guesses at the course of the year by the flight of one single bird is very liable to be mistaken in his conjecture ; so that a man cannot be denominated rich from one single piece of money in his pocket, nor accounted universally good from the practice of one single virtue, nor temperate because he is stout, nor liberal because he is exactly just ; that one day cannot render a man completely happy in point of time, nor one action consummate his glory in point of valor. In short, the moral of it is, that the right way of judging of things, beyond imposition and fallacy, is not from particulars, but universals." Bailey was followed, in 1724, by Hawkins' enlargement of Cocker; in 1735 by Defoe's " Compleat English Dictionary" — an unim- portant work with a consequential title — and by Dyche & Pardon, whose book was " intended Old English Dictionaries. in for the information of the unlearned, * * * not only in orthography * * * but in writing coher- ently and correctly, the want whereof is univer- sally complained of among the fair sex;" — not very gallant, these old lexicographers. In 1737 came Sparrow, with the " New English Diction- ary," published anonymously; in 1741, Daniel Fenning, the " Royal English Dictionary;" in 1749, Benjamin Martin, " A New Universal English Dictionary;" and in 1753, John Wesley, the clergyman, who naturally enough defines Methodist as " one that lives according to the method laid down in the Bible," and who put on his title-page this " N. B. — The author assures you, he thinks this is the best English diction- ary in the world." None of these works has historical importance ; Bailey will ever stand as the only name worth remembering between Kersey and Johnson. MODERN DICTIONARIES: WHICH IS THE BEST? The difference between the dictionaries which are now in use, and are daily coming into greater use — for the end is not yet — and those which were received as standards when Johnson and his hacks began to classify and explain the language in accordance with the rules of the classical languages, is the difference between history as written by Rollin, and Hume, and Smollett and Goldsmith in England, and as it has been written in our time by Froude, and Macaulay, and Freeman, and Gardiner, and other conscientious students of State papers and ancient correspondence. Our philologists, like our historians, have grown critical, and if there ever was a period when the study of words can be said to have ranked among, or even to have approximated to, the exact sciences, it is now. — New York Mail §• Express, Editorial. 'T^HE third or modern period of the develop- ■*■ ment of English lexicography dates from the appearance of the Johnson of 1755 — a massive folio in two volumes, on which its Modern Dictionaries. "3 great author worked hard for seven years (it is a wonder it did not take him longer), and which, though it brought him very little money, he had the great satisfaction of seeing received with the warm enthusiasm which its unique merits amply deserved. It is a good deal the fashion to make merry over Johnson and his definitions, and certain entries are undoubtedly provocative of mirth, though not always exactly at the expense of the author, for in many cases he knew perfectly well what he was about, and deliberately intended using his lexicography as a means for expressing his personal opin- ions — prejudices and notions, if you like to call them so — no matter what anybody might think about it. Instances of this kind are almost too familiar to quote. A patron, he says, is " commonly a wretch who supports with insolence and is paid with flattery;" a pension " in England is generally understood to mean pay given to a state hireling for treason to his country," and a pensioner is "a slave of state hired to obey his master," while patriot is a term " sometimes used for a factious disturber of the government." A Tory is " one who 8 ii4 Our Common Speech. adheres to the ancient constitution of the state;" a Whig is " the name of a faction," and a Puritan is " a sectary pretending to eminent purity of religion." Excise is " a hateful tax levied upon commodities, and adjudged by wretches." In other cases, the only explanation that can be given of the extraordinary statements made is sheer carelessness and inattention. If we knew not the author, what kind of a sloven must we think him to have been who could define pink as " a color used by painters," and brown as " a color compounded of black and any other color"? In some cases again, as in ferret y "a kind of rat," and pastern, "the leg of a horse," the " ignorance, madam, sheer igno- rance " that he was himself so ready to admit, is indisputable. In others, his Johnsonese got decidedly the better of his English, as when he tells us that network is " anything reticulated or decussated, at equal distances, with inter- stices between the intersections." In other cases we find the personal element verging on the side of pathos, as where Grub Street is defined as " a street much inhabited by writers Modern Dictionaries. US of small histories, dictionaries and temporary poems ; whence any mean production is called 1 Grub Street,' " — and lexicographer as " a writer of dictionaries, a harmless drudge." The pa- thos rises into real eloquence in the elaborate preface to the great work, a composition which Home Tooke, Johnson's bitterest enemy and detractor in the literary world, said he could never read without tears. The final paragraph runs thus: " In this work, when it shall be found that much is omitted, let it not be forgotten that much likewise is performed ; and though no book was ever spared out of tenderness to the author, and the world is little solici- tous to know whence proceeded the faults of that which it condemns ; yet it may gratify curiosity to inform it, that the English Dictionary was written with little assistance of the learned, and without any patronage of the great ; not in the soft obscurities of retirement, or under the shelter of academic bowers, but amidst inconvenience and distraction, in sickness and in sorrow. It may repress the triumph of malig- nant criticism to observe, that if our language is not here fully displayed, I have only failed in an attempt which no human powers have hitherto completed. If n6 Our Common Speech. the lexicons of ancient tongues, now immutably fixed and comprised in a few volumes, be yet, after the toil of successive ages, inadequate and delusive ; if the aggregated knowledge, and co-operating diligence of the Italian academicians, did not secure them from the censure of Beni, if the embodied critics of France, when fifty years had been spent upon their work, were obliged to change its oeconomy, and give their second edition another form, I may surely be contented without the praise of perfection, which, if I could obtain, in this gloom of solitude, what would it avail me ? I have protracted my work till most of those whom I wished to please have sunk into the grave, and success and miscarriage are empty sounds : I therefore dismiss it with frigid tranquillity, having little to fear or hope from censure or from praise." Wit;h all its faults, Johnson's dictionary was a work of entirely unprecedented excellence. Beside coming far nearer than Bailey to includ- ing every word recognized at his time as good English, he first introduced citations from stand- ard authors to support his definitions, and both his citations and his definitions have been found extremely useful to subsequent lexicographers, insomuch that most of them have copied both, Modern Dictionaries. 117 with great freedom; and notwithstanding the large number of the dictionaries that have since appeared, Johnson's, after nearly a century and a half, is only just now becoming obsolete. At the great spelling matches that excited this country less than twenty years ago, it may be remembered that the rules explicitly provided that any spelling recognized by Johnson should be regarded as correct. The limits of this paper will hardly permit any real attempt to trace satisfactorily the devel- opment of our popular English dictionary from Johnson down. In the twenty years following the appearance of his first edition, more than a dozen authors tried their hands, without greatly advancing the work — Jas. Buchanan, "A New Spelling English Dictionary," 1757; J.Peyton, "A New Vocabulary," 1759; D. Bellamy, " En- glish Dictionary," 1760; J. N. Scott, "Bailey's Dictionary Revised," 1764; Daniel Farro, " The Royal British Grammar and Vocabulary," 1764; William Johnston, " A Pronouncing and Spelling Dictionary," 1764; John Entick, "A Spelling Dictionary of the English Language," 1764; J. Baskerville, " A Vocabulary or Pocket Diction- 1 1 8 Our Common Speech. ary," 1765; Wm. Rider, "Universal English Dictionary," 1766; J. Seally, "The London Spelling Dictionary," 1771 ; Fred'k Barlow, "A Complete English Dictionary," 1772; Wm. Kenrick, " A New Dictionary," 1773, — in which work I believe one step forward was taken, by the use, for the first time, of figures over the vowels to indicate their sounds; Jas. Barclay, "A Complete and Universal English Dictionary," 1774; and one or two anonymous writers. At 1775 we must pause a moment, for in that year appeared the memorable work of John Ash, memorable as containing (in addition to the interesting statements that esoteric is "an incor- rect spelling " of exoteric, and that Gawain was sister to King Arthur) perhaps the most extraor- dinary blunder in all lexicography — his noted etymology of the word curmudgeon. Johnson suggested that the derivation might be from the French cosur me'chant (meaning evil heart), and credits an unknown correspondent with the idea — that is, he inserts the note : " It is a vicious manner of pronouncing coeur me'cha?it, French — an unknown correspondent." In Ash's book we find the amazing statement that curmudgeon is Modern Dictionaries. 119 11 from the French cceur, unknown, and me'chant, a correspondent " ! Think of the qualification for work at English lexicography that a man must have possessed whose knowledge of the most elementary French was so absolutely non- existent, and whose lack of common sense was so stupendous, as to render this sort of performance possible ! And the best of it is that in the " advertisement " prefixed to the work, we are assured that in the derivations from other languages " special attention has been given to the mere English scholar by a proper analysis and full explanation of the originals " ! — Ash was followed, in the same year, by Perry, and then by an anonymous " pocket dictionary" (1779), and in 1780 by Sheridan, who first, as I believe, re-spelled words in order to indicate the pronunciation. Then came Harwood's revi- sion of Bailey (1782), Lemon (1783), Fry's " Vocabulary of Difficult Words" (1784), Pi- card (1790), and the next year (1791) John Walker with his " Critical Pronouncing Dic- tionary," which ran through thirty or forty editions and still retains its place as an import- 120 Our Common Speech. ant authority, at least on questions of orthoepy, within the memory of persons now living. Walker paid little attention to etymology, and "with respect to the explanation of words, except in very few instances, * * * scrupulously followed Johnson," whose dictionary, he adds, " has been deemed lawful plunder by every subsequent lexicographer." The great feature of his work is the attention paid in it to pronun- ciation, an elaborate treatise on that subject being prefixed, together with certain rather amusing " rules to be observed by the natives of Scotland, Ireland and London, for avoiding their respective peculiarities." Walker was followed by William Scott (1797), Stephen Jones 1 ( 1 798), Fulton & Knight J ( 1 802), William Perry 1 (1805), Thos. Browne, (1806), Wm. Enfield (1807), W. F. Mylius (18—), Christopher Earnshaw (circ. 181 5), R. S. Jame- son 1 (1827), Saml. Maunder (1830), David Booth (1835), James Knowles (1835), B. H. 1 These authors, as well as Walker and Sheridan, are the orthoepists cited in the " synopsis of words differently pronounced by different authorities," in the early editions of Webster. Modern ^Dictionaries. 121 Smart (1836), sundry anonymous writers, and various revisions and enlargements of older works, of which much the most important is the Todd's Johnson of 1818; but the next contri- bution of real and original value to the science, in England, was not made until 1836, when Charles Richardson, " firmly persuaded that * * * a new dictionary ought to be written, and of a very different kind indeed from anything yet attempted anywhere," endeavored to supply the want. The great desideratum in such a work, he thought, was " a collection of usages quoted from, in general, our best English authors, and those usages explained to suit the quotations; and those explanations including within them a portion of the sense pertaining to other words in the sentence." The citations, accordingly, constitute the distinctive feature of the work. They were collected with great diligence and in much abundance and variety, a period of about five centuries having been reviewed, beginning with Robert of Gloucester, contemporaneous with Edward the First, and ending about the year 1800. Richardson's work has always been of high interest to schol- 122 Our Common Speech. ars, and is the first not founded on Johnson ; but the vocabulary, the definitions, and the marks indicating the orthoepy, are alike insuffi- cient to meet the popular demand, and it has never, perhaps, been fully appreciated. It makes two quarto volumes, 2224 pages in all, three columns to the page, resembling quite closely in dimensions the recent editions of Webster's Unabridged. Following Richardson came Reid (1844), Sullivan (1847), Boag (1848), Craig (1849), and then (in 1850) Ogilvie, with the first edition of the great Imperial, which was afterwards revised and materially improved by Annandale, was generally regarded for a long time as the standard authority in Great Britain, and had the honor of serving as a sort of foundation for the much greater Century. It may gratify American pride to know that the Imperial was avowedly based on our own Webster, which is spoken of in the preface as not only superior to Richardson and Todd's Johnson, M but su- perior to every other dictionary hitherto pub- lished." In its latest form (1882), the Imperial makes four large octavo volumes of seven or Modern Dictionaries. 123 eight hundred pages each, and contains about 130,000 entries, illustrated by more than three thousand engravings. In the length of its vocabulary, the extent of its definitions, and the number and excellence of its illustrations, it far outshone any similar work previously issued in Great Britain, being indeed the first to combine largely the features of a cyclopaedia — which explains things — with those of a dictionary — which defines words; the sub-title " A Complete Encyclopaedic Lexicon, Literary, Scientific and Technological," is fully justified by the contents. The works of Wright and Clarke (both pub- lished in 1855) and of Cooley and Nuttall (both in 1 861) detracted little from the fame of the Imperial. Latham's Todd's Johnson (1866) was a more important work and long enjoyed great popularity in England. A much more formidable rival to the Imperial, however, — meeting it exactly on its own ground — is the Encyclopaedic, the first volume of which appeared in 1879 an d the seventh and last in '88, labor having begun on it as far back as '72. This is a very extensive work, containing 124 Our Common Speech. nearly 6,000 pages and about 180,000 words or headings. It carries the encyclopaedic features even beyond the point reached by the Imperial, and is fully illustrated and handsomely printed. Some omissions are a little remarkable, espe- cially perhaps that of the word fair as signifying an exhibition — a use of the word now quite common in Great Britain as well as the United States; and sweeny \ a disease of the horse. (The latter term, however, seems to be missing in all dictionaries except the International, the Century and the Standard.) A still more curious feature in the Encyclopaedic is the remarkable blunder of using the word molasses as a plural — "a tank having a perforated bot- tom, through which the molasses escape," — art. " Tiger" II., 2. This dictionary was republished in Philadelphia in 1894, "Americanized" in re- spect to a number of its definitions, and bound in the more convenient form of four volumes, each containing some 1340 pages of about the size of the International. Another most excellent British work, though of very different character, is Stormonth's, first issued in October, 1871, and nine times repub- Modern Dictionaries. 125 lished, the latest form being the large-type edition of 1884. It is an extremely sound and scholarly work, though well adapted to the needs of the general public, a great wealth of trustworthy information being condensed into small compass, and very clearly as well as briefly stated. It has no quotations and no engravings, but it is questionable whether either of these features has really proper place in a dictionary of language, strictly so called; and it is not too much to say that for the ordinary purposes of hasty reference, when encyclopae- dic information is not sought for. a person having Stormonth's dictionary at hand will in only exceptional cases and at long intervals regret the absence of any other. It represents, in fact, the very highest development of the English word-book, pure and simple. The first English dictionary published in this country was the work, strangely enough, of a man really named Samuel Johnson, Jr. — a small book, intended for schools, and issued just before the opening of the present century. Next, in 1800, came Elliott's, Mr. Johnson's name appearing as co-editor, while among those 126 Our Common Speech. who signed commendations of the value of the work was Noah Webster. Of other American dictionaries, only four require notice, and Worcester's may be most briefly disposed of. The author of this noble work came first before the public in 1827, with a revised edition of Todd's Johnson combined with Walker, but only three years later issued his own " Comprehensive Dictionary," and in 1835 his " Elementary Dictionary for Common Schools." These were both small works, his more ambitious " Universal and Critical Dic- tionary" not coming out until 1846, and his main work, as we have it now, not until i860, though his earlier books had been in the mean time more than once reissued with considerable enlargement. In its final form, Worcester's dictionary is in a high degree creditable to the scholarship, the judgment and the industry of its distinguished author. It was long the favorite of the more cultured users of such books, who appreciated the great care which Dr. Worcester always employed to ascertain and record the best practice in both spelling and pronuncia- tion. But, even with the inconvenient addition Modern Dictionaries. 127 of the Supplement of 188 1, Worcester is now too far behind the times to render the greatest practical service. I have myself happened to notice, from time to time, the absence of a considerable number of words and uses of words now quite common. Examples are: Furore, coral of lobster, mat of a picture frame, macrami, ensilage ; casket in the sense of coffin, rep, boycott ', toboggan, apiculture, skewbald, sweeny, muley, dynamo-electric, pigeon English, solid-colored, jobmaster, ninepence, hectograph, self-contained, maverick — and the list could doubtless be run up into the hundreds, by comparison with later works. It still contains, moreover, what Dr. Webster would call the " nonsensical " word phantomnation, denned as " illusion " — a word which is not a word, being taken by misappre- hension from a passage of Pope, as quoted by one Richard Paul Jodrell in a work called " Philology of the English Language," issued in 1820 as a sort of supplement to Johnson's dictionary. The passage is : These solemn vows and holy offerings paid To all the phantom nations of the dead. Odyssey, X. 627. 128 Our Common Speech. Jodrell had a great fancy for printing com- pound words solid, without a hyphen to indicate their component parts. So he wrote " phan- tomnations " as one word, and Dr. Worcester took it up. From him it passed to Webster's Unabridged (though it does not appear in the International), to the Imperial (though it does not appear in the Century), and to the Encyclo- paedic — showing the remarkable vitality that a simple blunder, which might originally have been avoided by a little care, will sometimes possess. Unless Worcester's dictionary be en- tirely revised and greatly extended, it seems certain very shortly to follow Johnson into " in- nocuous desuetude " so far as practical service is concerned, though, like Johnson also, it will forever remain an interesting — yes, and an imposing — monument of the achievements of the past. And now we come to Webster, first pub- lished, a small book, in 1806, and again — in another form, specially intended for school use — in 1807. These works were, however, only preliminary to the greater undertaking, the well- known "Unabridged," which appeared in two Modern Dictionaries. 129 volumes, quarto, in 1828, and was reissued, en- larged, in two volumes, large octavo, in 1840 — this being the last edition with which Webster himself had anything to do. In 1847 appeared, under the editorship of Prof. Goodrich, a new edition, in the single square-volume style now so familiar; in 1859 another; in 1864 another, edited by Dr. Noah Porter, to which was added, in 1879, an extended supplement; and in 1890, the great Webster International, a work on which many of the ablest minds of the world were long employed, and on which no less than $300,000 is said to have been expended by the publishers before a single copy was printed. To avoid danger of misapprehension, one must choose words very carefully in pronoun- cing any sort of critical opinion of Webster's dictionary. In its earlier editions it was unrea- sonably denounced ; in its later forms it has been in certain respects greatly over-valued. A pop- ular writer has said that in its original form it was something for Americans to laugh at and be ashamed of — which is just about as true as the pronunciamento of a great British philolo- 9 130 Our Common Speech. gist to the effect that Johnson's dictionary was a disgrace to the language. Abuse like this only pillories the abusers, in after time, as either ex- tremely rash and inconsiderate in their state- ments, culpably ignorant or careless of essential facts, or controlled by some sort of bias or unreasonable prejudice. On the other hand, it savors of absurdity to quote Webster as " au- thority" on any doubtful point, either in the minor matters of orthoepy and spelling, or in the far more important matter of definition. The plan on which the author at first proceeded, and the plans on which every revision of his work has been conducted, were such as abso- lutely to take the book out of the class of au- thorities, properly speaking, if by authority is understood, as I think it clearly should be, the representation of what is recognized as the best actual practice. Dr. Webster's original idea was to exhibit the language, not as it then ex- isted, but as he thought it should be ; the plan pursued since his death has been to admit every sort of vagary that has attained any degree of general circulation, insomuch that it has been said that there is no slovenly or improper use Modern Dictionaries. 131 of an English word ever heard in decent society for which the authority of Webster cannot be cited. The statement does the dictionary in- justice; it is not meant to be an authority, in the sense in which the word is used ; and yet I think there can be no doubt that on account of the general misconception that has prevailed on this point, and the consequent idea that any- thing admitted to Webster must be correct, the dictionary, with its enormous popularity, has been a potent agent in injuring our language. By injuring, is meant, rendering the English tongue less clearly intelligible and definite, so that it is now in some degree an inferior instru- ment for conveying thought from man to man to what it would presumably have been, without this influence. Variations in spelling and in pro- nunciation are of little moment, from the stand- point of practical daily life ; the admission of new words, no matter how " slangy " or ill- formed, is very often a positive gain; and the use of old words in figurative and rhetorical senses naturally connected with the original significance is of course a privilege which any one may freely take, with a clear conscience. 132 Our Common Speech. But the blundering use of words to signify what they do not mean tends just so far to confuse communication between persons using the lan- guage thus treated, and to hasten the ultimate destruction of the language itself. The recog- nition, in a book like Webster's dictionary, of pretty nearly every sort of erroneous use of common words that the editors have observed, without warning the reader of the impropriety of such use, naturally induces the supposition that the lexicographer not only explains the error, but lends it his authority as correct, thus aiding and abetting in the process of depraving the tongue. And all this may be said, and said emphatically, without the slightest disrespect to the ability, the learning, the energy, the achieve- ments, of the great scholars who have collabor- ated in producing the inestimably useful work under review. Many blessings for which we cannot be too grateful have connected with them features that may render them susceptible of inflicting very serious injury, if unskillfully used. Such a blessing is Webster's dictionary. Of works designed for popular circulation, only two others call for remark. The first and Modern Dictionaries. 133 greatest is the magnificent Century, a dictionary which not only has 215,000 words, but which comes near to being a cyclopaedia as well, and which is almost beyond criticism in its execution, literary, artistic and mechanical. This work is too recent, and at the same time too well known, to need extended description or eulogy. But it may be proper to note, as one of its minor merits most likely to escape observation, that the editors have been more careful than those of Webster to warn the reader not to quote their work as authority for the improper uses of terms which they explain. Excellent examples of the difference may be found in the two words centenary and demean. Each dictionary recog- nizes the fact that the former, centenary, which means merely hundredth, is often employed as if it had something to do with the Latin annum, and were therefore descriptive of a period of a hun- dred years; and Webster, dropping no hint that such use is a mistake, might naturally be quoted as " authorizing " it, whereas the Century dis- tinctly informs the reader that the practice referred to has arisen from confusing centenary with the quite different word centennial. Simi- 134 Our Common Speech. larly, we find in Webster, among other defini- tions of the verb demean, these : " To debase, to lower, to degrade." A note, to be sure, is added that this use of the word M is probably due to a false etymology; " but no hint is given that such use is not now universally approved, and (as is the case of centenary for centennial) Webster might therefore naturally enough be quoted as " authorizing " it. The Century says that the verb to demean, when used in the sense referred to, is " illegitimate in origin, inconven- ient in use," and " avoided by scrupulous writ- ers." If people will persist in the mistake, they certainly cannot quote the Century as support- ing them, and they may so quote Webster. The latter therefore is to some extent responsible for the injury to the language which follows every such error ; the former is not. It must be regretfully added, however, that in the case of one wretched vulgarism — chiefly confined, I believe, to the northern United States — the Century is worse than Webster. This is the use of the verb claim as meaning merely to assert, where there is really no claiming in the matter. Webster marks it as " colloquial," thus giving it Modern Dictionaries. 135 at least a qualified disapproval; the Century says only that this is " a common use, regarded by many as inelegant," thus implying that many other persons are of a contrary opinion, and that the expression may well enough pass muster. The explanation lies probably in the curious fact that Prof. Whitney, the editor of the Century, has been caught in this blunder himself — it occurs at least twice in his " Elements of English Pro- nunciation " — and he was therefore naturally loth to characterize it as he must of course know that it deserves, in his dictionary. One other oddity of this great work, not an error, how- ever, has amused some readers, — the insertion, in the article " question" of the suggestive entry, "popping the question — see pop!" And finally, we have the Standard dictionary, published in 1894 — a very handsome book, containing about 1 100 pages somewhat larger than those of the International and somewhat smaller, but more closely printed, than those of the Century. Like the last-named work, it is constructed on the cyclopaedia plan, and it in- deed far surpasses, in certain cyclopaedic fea- tures — as in the articles apple y constellation^ dog. 136 Our Common Speech. fowl, and particularly the extended treatises under coin and geology — the Century itself. To my own thinking, this great elaboration of special topics in a dictionary of English words is rather undesirable. The Century, it seems to me, goes quite far enough in that direction, including as it does about all the general infor- mation in regard to things (as distinguished from words) that one would be likely to go to a dictionary to find; and much of the added matter of the Standard — such as the two and a half columns devoted to the description of hundreds of varieties of the apple, with their relative advantages for different divisions of the country — seems almost ludicrously out of place in a work that belongs, after all, to the depart- ment of philology. It is moreover extremely difficult to preserve due proportion between different parts of the work, if minute elaboration of the kind referred to is indulged in; and the editors of the Standard have not invariably suc- ceeded beyond criticism. To the article geology, for instance, they devote considerably more than two pages, inserting a complicated and doubt- less very valuable chart of the crust of the earth Modern Dictionaries. 137 and its fossils, while the (as one would suppose) at least equally interesting science of astronomy is dismissed with a mere definition. Why not give us at least a map of the solar system? Not only, however, is the Standard rather ill-proportioned in its information about things ; it is also — a graver fault — somewhat incon- sistent with itself in the important matter of its treatment of a large class of words — the words that are often misused. In some cases, as in the application of the term buck to the male of the sheep (distinctly " authorized " by the Inter- national), it goes to the extreme of ignoring the error altogether ; in others, as in demean in the sense of debase y it follows the Century by noting the usage but marking it as wrong ; in still others, as centenary for centennial, aggravate for irritate, and circ?imstance for event, it is as bad as Webster, giving the reader no warning that these uses of the words will mark him as at least careless of the finer proprieties of speech ; and it gives place with seeming approval to the absurd vocable helpmeet. A dictionary of Eng- lish should do one thing or the other. It may record without comment all common words and 138 Our Common Speech. all common uses of words, proceeding on the conception that a lexicographer is a compiler and an explainer, not a critic ; but if the attempt is made to distinguish right usage from that which must tend to the deterioration of the language as a vehicle of thought, care should be taken not to pass gross blunders without characterizing them as what they are. It is now a pleasure to hasten to admit that these defects in the Standard are not of a nature to disturb one user of English dictionaries out of a hundred ; and to say emphatically that the solid merits of the work are remarkable and distinguished. Greater care seems to have been taken in its preparation than was ever taken before, to secure on every even minute point the best matured opinions of the best equipped experts ; and as the definitions are generally models of conciseness and precision, one can hardly ever fail to obtain from its pages the fact that he seeks, quickly, fully, accurately, and with every reason to depend on the correct- ness of the information furnished. A single illustration may be given. The word abacus, as used in the 35th chapter of Ivanhoe to designate Modern Dictionaries. l 39 the staff of office of the grand master of the Knights Templars, appears in no previous dic- tionary ; it is found in the Standard, and not only that, but the reader is informed that Scott erred in using it, the proper term being baculus. A dictionary that goes so far as to indicate a trifling slip like this, which may probably have occurred once only in our literature, may safely be presumed not to omit much that the most inquisitive reader is likely to wish to find. The Standard will certainly prove of immense value, and exceedingly convenient for ready reference. Moreover, its wood engravings compare favor- ably with those in the Century, and its colored plates are more beautiful than anything of the kind that was ever attempted before. Alto- gether, it is a work of which the country that gave it birth has good reason to be proud. With the Standard, closes for the present the list of English dictionaries designed for popular use ; but the greatest dictionary that was ever compiled of any language is still to be men- tioned — a dictionary, however, intended only for students and scholars. This is the badly named " New English Dictionary on Historical 140 Our Common Speech. Principles, founded mainly on the materials col- lected by the [British] Philological Society, and edited by Dr. James A. H. Murray," — or, to adopt the short title generally used, the " Mur- ray Philological." It will probably make some nine volumes, each of them three quarters as thick as the Webster International and hav- ing considerably larger pages, quite as closely printed and no space taken up by illustrations, — accommodating an immense quantity of matter. But the bulk of this dictionary, enormous as it is, must be regarded as merely an incidental feature, so to speak, of its unique and unap- proached value. The main point is that we have in it a complete history of every English word from its appearance to our own time, with full explanation of its etymology, its original meaning in English, and the changes in form, use or significance which it may have undergone, accompanied with citations, historically arranged, and so stated as to render reference extremely easy. An illustration will show the working of the plan. The word by-product^ common as it now is, had appeared in no previous dictionary. Yet Dr. Murray found it in a work published in Modern Dictionaries. 141 1857 — Eliza Acton's " English Bread Book": " German yeast in many distilleries forms an important by-product." Quotations are added from a scientific work issued in 1879 and a Lon- don newspaper of August 24, 1882, the last being perhaps considered sufficient to indicate that the term had then become a part of our every-day speech. Or take the noun American. This is defined, first, as " an aborigine of the American continent, now called an ■ American Indian.' " Four apt quotations follow, the first dated 1578 and indicating the very earliest use of the word that has been discovered, and the last 1777, being the latest instance known of its use in the signification referred to. Then follows the second definition — "a native of America of European descent, esp. a citizen of the United States " — with other four quota- tions, dated respectively 1765, 1775, 1809 and 1882. The paragraph presents, as will be seen, a complete history of the word, showing that it began to be used toward the end of the six- teenth century; that it continued to bear its original significance, as indicating one of the savages encountered by the European discover- 142 Our Common Speech. ers and explorers of this continent, for about two hundred years, after which time it came to indicate a white settler, and was ultimately re- stricted, in common speech, to a resident of one particular part of America, the United States. The gratification, to any person who cares to pursue even desultory and superficial study of our language, of having such information as this, so accurate, so full, so sententiously ex- pressed — is unspeakable ; but think of the labor of compiling it ! No one man, no ordinary as- sociation of men, could have made any consider- able headway in an undertaking so colossal. Only by the aid of hundreds of voluntary assis- tants, all over the English-speaking world, work- ing together energetically and persistently, could the design have been executed. It is therefore not surprising that more than a quarter of a century elapsed between the time when the proposal to compile such a dictionary was first considered by the Philological Society (in 1857), and the appearance of the first installment (in 1884). The work was not prosecuted syste- matically and steadily during all this period, however, the interest in accomplishing it, intense Modern Dictionaries. 143 at first, having wavered for a time and then revived. When the present editor took charge, in 1879, he found that " upwards of two million quotations had been amassed," the paper slips on which they were noted weighing, together with correspondence and other necessary ma- terial, about two tons ! There was not nearly enough, however ; and Dr. Murray applied him- self no less energetically to the task of getting more readers at work than to that of putting in order the accumulations already in hand. The assistance of some 1300 persons, examining the works of more than 5000 authors, was ultimately secured; and about 3,500,000 quotations had been gathered (and arranged in preliminary shape by thirty sub-editors) before the final writing of the work was actually begun. During the last fifteen or twenty years, steady progress has been made, and it would seem that the com- pletion of the colossal undertaking might reason- ably be expected early in the coming century. The letters A, B and C, filling the first two vol- umes, are complete; so also is E, which will constitute the last part of Vol. 3 ; portions of D and of F have been issued ; and G and H 144 Our Common Speech. are in active preparation. If the relative pro- portions of this dictionary prove to be not un- like those of others, the completion of H will leave not greatly more than half yet to be published. II. It will by this time have been perceived, if not previously understood, that the question which forms the second part of the title of this chapter — a question very often asked of per- sons supposed to have paid special attention to such matters — cannot be answered by naming a single work. You might almost as well un- dertake to pick out the " best " magazine, the " best " college, the " best " medicine. If by " best " is understood the highest real excel- lence, there can be no question that for full explanation of the history of our words in Eng- lish, Murray is incomparably superior to any other; but the inquirer may have, probably has, some quite different kind of superiority in mind. If it is the etymology of our words that he is after, and their relationship with each other — due weight being given to the important con- Modern Dictionaries. 145 siderations of clearness and brevity — Skeat * is decidedly the best; for matters of spelling and pronunciation, where of course there is room for difference of opinion, many good judges prefer respectively Worcester and perhaps on the whole Stormonth; for explanations of the things that words indicate, as well as the words themselves, one should select the Century, the Encyclopaedic or the Standard; for general and hasty reference in everything, remembering that good and bad English is recognized in that work on about equal terms, Webster. Here are eight " bests " to choose from. But as the question is commonly asked, it probably means something more like this: " What English dictionary is at the present day the best purchase for an American who does not intend seriously to study the language, but desires one such work, and one only, for the purpose of settling off-hand the questions on which one naturally goes to a dictionary as the 1 A most admirable work, but not a general dictionary, being devoted entirely to etymology. It is published in two forms, the original quarto and the entirely re-written and re-arranged octavo — the latter being in some respects actually preferable to the former. 146 Our Common Speech. readiest source of information?" This modi- fication puts Skeat and Murray out of court at once. Indispensable to the philologist, they would be very bad purchases to the general reader; the first he would find utterly useless, and while the second contains about all that he might want, it contains also so much else that he would be buying — from his point of view — a bushel of chaff for a pint or so of grain. Another admirable work, Worcester, it is also unadvisable for anybody but a regular collector of dictionaries now to buy, for reasons already given ; it is practically antiquated. If one wants a cyclopaedia and dictionary combined, and does not object to paying $60, the Cen- tury would be the natural choice. The Stan- dard, at $12, is however relatively very much cheaper ; and the Americanized Encyclopaedic, costing only half that sum, though a larger work, is much cheaper still — decidedly and greatly the cheapest dictionary ever published, though by no means a handsome work, and to critical book-buyers rather unsatisfactory from the very fact of its having been worked over for the American market. If one wants Modern Dictionaries. 147 only a dictionary of words, without explana- tions of things, the latest and largest Stor- month, costing $6, should suit him perfectly. For a small dictionary for school use and simi- lar purposes, one of the earlier editions of the same work is, on the whole, I think, preferable to any other. Here, as elsewhere, different men have different opinions, and for steady use the small type might be objectionable to some per- sons. But the book contains so much more mat- ter than any other of the same size, and such excellent matter at that, as to present unique attractions ; precious things are often done up in small parcels. Midway between the pure word-books and the cyclopaedic compilations, stands the $10 International — a sort of happy compromise, and there is no denying that a cer- tain interest will long attach, in this country, to knowing exactly what " Webster" says. It should be noted, finally, — as another point to perplex the chooser and the adviser — that the colored plates of the International and the Stan- dard furnish full and accurate information on a number of subjects which are perhaps not often in question, but on which, when one does wish 148 Our Common Speech. to investigate them, it is extremely difficult to find the facts clearly stated, outside of these works. III. THREE curiosities of English lexicography may be mentioned in closing. One is the repro- duction, by several publishers, forty years after its original appearance (the copyright having meanwhile expired), of the Webster Unabridged of 1847. ^ was photographed page by page, and what are practically stereotype plates exe- cuted from the photographs, at a small fraction of what would have been the cost of re-setting in type. From these plates various editions, exhibiting various degrees of bad printing, were worked off, generally on miserable paper, and with very flimsy binding, rendering it possible to sell the work at a trifling sum, a dollar or less. Thousands of copies must have been marketed, the name " Webster Unabridged " being enough, it seems, to float them. The transaction exhib- its in strong light the immense popularity of Webster's work. What other dictionary forty years old would have a ghost of a chance of finding itself thus resurrected? Modern Dictionaries. 149 The second curiosity to be mentioned is " The Progressive Dictionary," published by the Rev. Dr. Samuel Fallows in 1883, and described on the title-page as " a supplementary word-book to all the leading dictionaries of the United States and Great Britain, containing over forty thousand new words, definitions, and phrases.' It has between 500 and 600 pages, of about the size of those of the last Webster's Unabridged, and was sold for $5. The third, perhaps most curious of all, is the " Dictionary of English Phrases," prepared by a full-blooded native of China, Mr. Kwong Ki Chiu, and published in 1881. This is really a dictionary of English words, though confined to such as are used in idiomatic expressions which have meanings that could not readily be ascertained from the ordinary definitions of their component words; and it is intended chiefly for the benefit of foreigners learning our language. As the introduction says : " ' To give ear,' in the literal sense, would mean some- thing which requires no expression, since no such thing ever takes place; but the ear has been made to stand for the office or use which 150 Our Common Speech. the ear was organized to serve, and the phrase, 1 to give ear/ has been coined to express the idea of listening or giving one's attention." The book is an octavo of over nine hundred pages — containing, however, some appended matter about the history of China, with a sketch of the life of Christ, all which will be found in- teresting, and quite out of the ordinary run — to use a phrase that might well have claimed Mr. Kwong's attention, though he seems to have overlooked it. He did not overlook much, however ; and while of course the book can have little or no practical value for persons to whom the knowledge of English came as a birthright, no collection of lexicons of our language is com- plete without it. The task of compiling such a work would be, one might think, just about the very last and most hopeless literary enterprise that it would ever enter the mind of a Chinaman to undertake. AMERICAN ENGLISH. And you may have a pretty considerable good sort of a feeble notion that it don't fit nohow ; and that it ain't calculated to make you smart overmuch ; and that you don't feel 'special bright, and by no means first-rate, and not at all tonguey; and that, however rowdy you may be by natur', it does use you up com-plete, and that's a fact; and makes you quake considerable, and disposed toe damn the engine ! — All of which phrases, I beg to add, are pure Americanisms of the first water. — Charles Dickens, Letter to John Forster. r T A HE time-honored jokes about the "Ameri- -*• can language," if not entirely antiquated, have at least for the most part changed their longitude from the meridian of Greenwich. A recent attempt dates from the land of the Pharaohs. Riaz Pacha, late President of the Egyptian Council, is said to have retorted, on being rallied by an American for supporting so patiently the British yoke, that in one respect at least the English were making greater pro- gress in the United States than in the East, inasmuch as he was credibly informed that 152 Our Common Speech. their language was now almost universally spoken among the Americans ! This is per- haps endurable; but it would subject one's politeness to a pretty severe strain, now-a-days, to be expected to appear greatly amused at a story about compliments paid in Great Britain to the good English spoken by some excep- tional traveler from New York or Boston. Serious references, moreover, like that of Dean Alford, in his ridiculous book with a ridiculous title, 1 to "the process of deterioration " which the language "has undergone at the hands of the Americans," are not often found in British publications of recent date, except when accom- panied (as was the dean's) 2 by some display of insular prejudice or crass ignorance in regard to the history, geography or politics of the 1 " The Queen's English " — as if phrases like " the King's English," " the King's highway," the " King's evil," needed correction in gender when the sovereign happens to be a woman ! 2 " Look," he says, speaking of " the Americans," and writing in 1864, " at those phrases which so amuse us in their speech and books ; . . . and then compare the char- acter and history of the nation ; ... its reckless and fruitless maintenance of the most cruel and unprincipled war in the history of the world I " American English. 153 United States, such as would naturally dis- qualify the writer, in the mind of an impartial judge, as a critic of anything pertaining to this country. The testimony of well-informed British writers of the present day is, in fact, more generally in accord with that of Sir George Campbell: "Of the body of the [American] people it may be said that their language is a little better than that used in any county of England." x Yet one does occasionally see, even in these days, remarks in Dean Alford's tone in high- class British periodicals. So late as Aug. 28, 1892, the fashionable Court Journal of London informed its readers that " the inhabitants " of the United States " have so far progressed with their self-inflicted task of creating an American language that much of their conversation is incomprehensible to English people." A few years earlier, the Westminster Review said, editorially, that " the modifications which differentiate ' American* from English are for the most part vulgarisms, which, while they heighten the effect of comic writing, are blots 1 " White and Black," p. 23. 154 O ur Common Speech. on more serious productions." Some months earlier still, but long after Alford's time, so important a periodical as the Nineteenth Cen- tury gave place to an article, by Dr. Fitzed- ward Hall, in which it was gravely, as well as elegantly, stated that William Cullen Bryant lived " among a people among whom our lan- guage is daily becoming more and more depraved," and that whoever compares the diction of " Edgar Huntly," an almost forgotten novel published in 1799, with Mr. Bryant's letters, " the English of which is not much worse than that of ninety-nine out of every hundred of his college-bred compatriots, will very soon become aware to what degree the art of writing our language has declined among educated " people in the United States ! The last quoted deliverance is perhaps the only one of the three that merits serious consid- eration, for the reason that Dr. Hall is a recog- nized authority in philology, whereas we know nothing as to the qualifications to discuss such matters that may or may not be possessed by the anonymous writers referred to. Dr. Hall's statement, if correct, is certainly alarming, and American English. 155 we had better hearken to the words of reproof and mend our ways before the mother tongue, depraved beyond hope by our evil communi- cations, declines in this country into utter worthlessness. Two considerations, neverthe- less, may afford a ray of hope that the case is not altogether desperate. One is, that our censor is — not a Briton, as might be supposed, but one of those extraordinary Americans of the " Carroll Gansevoort" 1 stripe who seem to regard it rather as matter of regret than other- wise that they were not born in Europe, and who commonly out-British the British them- selves in reviling the customs of the United States; it is just possible, therefore, that his judgment may not be absolutely impartial and 1 In Edgar Fawcett's bright story, " A Gentleman of Lei- sure," Mr. Gansevoort, a New Yorker by birth, who " would have considered himself disgraced if he wore a pair of trousers or carried an umbrella that was not of English make," rebukes a friend for committing the frightful Americanism of saying that he fished with a pole (instead of a rod), and on the culprit's perpetrating the further enormity of speak- ing of catching four dozen fine trout, remarks : " Upon my word, I beg your pardon, old fellow, but it always amuses them so on the other side when we speak about catching fish. There they don't catch them, you know ; they kill them ! " 156 Our Common Speech. unprejudiced. The other hopeful considera- tion is that the historian Prescott, tolerably good authority on the use of English, regarded the style of the author of i( Edgar Huntly " as characterized by " unnatural condensation, unusual and pedantic epithets and elliptical forms of expression, in perpetual violation of idiom;" it is just possible, therefore, that Dr. Hall, with all his acquirements in scientific linguistics, may not know quite as much as he supposes he does about the correct use of our (more or less) Anglo-Saxon vernacular. At the same time, the occasional appear- ance in England of an article like those from which are taken the elegant extracts in the last paragraph but one, is a phenomenon which suggests two interesting reflections. The first, of comparatively minor importance, is merely that some of our English cousins have a good deal yet to learn about our common language as used in the two countries. The second is, that where there is so much smoke there must be some flame. That is, making all allow- ances, there must really exist certain noticeable variations between the styles of writing and American English. 157 speaking that are current on the opposite sides of the Atlantic; for if no differences at all could be found, it is hardly probable that any intelligent man, however strongly British his prepossessions, would care to publish a disser- tation in which our practice is deliberately set down as distinctly inferior to that of his own nation. In what these differences consist, and in what particulars the mother tongue may be thought to have become especially " depraved " in this country, are questions deserving atten- tion. I. In the first place, it will hardly be denied in any quarter that the speech of the United States is quite unlike that of Great Britain in the important particular that we have no dia- lects. " I never found any difficulty in under- standing an American speaker," writes the his- torian Freeman ; * " but I have often found it 1 Article, " Some Impressions of the United States," pub- lished in the Fortnightly Review, and copied into the Eclectic for October, 1882, p. 435, and Littell for September 9, 1882, No. 1994, p. 602. 158 Our Common Speech. difficult to understand a Northern-English speaker." " From Portland, Me., to Portland, Oregon," says a writer in the Westminster Review (July, 1888, p. 35), " no trace of a dis- tinct dialect is to be found. The man from Maine, even though he may be of inferior education and limited capacity, can completely understand the man of Oregon. There is no peasant with a patois ; there is no rough North- umbrian burr; in point of fact, there is no brogue." Trifling variations in pronunciation, and in the use of a few particular words, cer- tainly exist. The Yankee " expects " or " cal- culates," while the Virginian " reckons;" the illiterate Northerner " claims," 2 and the South- erner of similar class, by a very curious reversal of the blunder, " allows," what better educated people merely assert. The pails and pans of the world at large become " buckets " when taken to Kentucky. It is " evening " in 1 And sometimes, alas ! the Northerner who is not illiter- ate. Prof. Whitney, editor of the great Century Dictionary, is more than once guilty of this solecism in his " Elements of English Pronunciation ; " and so is Prof. L. T. Townsend of the Boston University, in his work on the " Art of Speech," published by the Appletons in 1881. American English. 159 Richmond while afternoon still lingers a hun- dred miles due north at Washington. Vessels go into "docks" on their arrival at Philadel- phia, but into " slips " at Mobile ; they are tied up to " wharves" at Boston, but to " piers " at Milwaukee. Distances from place to place are measured by " squares " in Baltimore, by "blocks" in Chicago. The " shilling" of New York is the "levy" of Pennsylvania, the "bit" of San Francisco, the " ninepence " of old New England, and the " escalan " of New Orleans. But put all these variations together, with such others as more microscopic examina- tion might reveal, and how far short they fall of representing anything like the real dialectic differences of speech that obtain, and always have obtained, not only as between the three kingdoms, but even between contiguous sec- tions of England itself! What great city of this country, for example, has developed, or is likely to develop, any peculiar class of errors at all comparable in importance to those of the cockney speech of London? What two regions can be found within our borders, how- ever sequestered and unenlightened, and however 160 Our Common Speech. widely separated by geographical position, of which the speech of the one presents any difficulty worth mentioning, or even any very startling unfamiliarity in sound or construction, to the inhabitant of the other? Our omnipre- sent railroads, telegraph lines, mail routes and printing presses, and the well-marked disposi- tion of every class of our people to make lavish use of these means of intercommunica- tion, both for the rapid diffusion of intelligence and the interchange of opinion, and also, so far as lines of travel are concerned, for the frequent transportation of the people them- selves hither and thither, with a degree of ease and celerity to which no other country has ever attained — these causes have always fa- vored, and seem likely permanently to preserve, a certain community of expression as well as of thought, that is not only practically prohibi- tive of the formation of new dialects, but also rapidly effaces the prominent lineaments of such variations as have at different times been imported from the old world. If then, in this particular respect, we are depraving our mother tongue, the only logical inference that can be American English. 161 drawn is that a language reaches its best estate in proportion as it is diversified by local peculiarities. It ought to be remembered also, in this immediate connection, that the ordinary speech of the United States presents not greatly more of what may be called caste variations than of those that are attributable to differences of locality. A discriminating English traveler, the Rev. F. Barham Zincke, Vicar of Wherstead and Chaplain-in-Ordinary to the Queen, has mentioned as u a remarkable fact that the Eng- lish spoken in America is not only very pure, but also is spoken with equal purity by all classes. * * The language in every man's mouth," he adds, " is that of literature and society. * * It is even the language of the negroes of the towns." 1 In other words, the speech of the lower orders of our people, even down to the very substrata, whether examined in regard to its vocabulary, its construction or its pronunciation, differs from what all admit to be standard correctness in a much smaller 1 " Last Winter in the United States ; " John Murray, Lon- don, 1863. 11 161 Our Common Speech. degree than we have every reason to believe to be the case in England, our enemies them- selves being judges. A careful comparison of slang dictionaries, I think, will reveal a far longer list of unauthorized words as current among British thieves and " cadgers " than among their congeners in the United States. Grammatical rules are violated badly enough by the ignorant of our own cities every day, no doubt; but how often, after all, will you hear from intelligent and respectable working people of American descent quite such a sole- cism as the " I were " and " he were " that are so frequently noticed in the mouths of lower- middle-class Britons, accustomed all their lives to conversation with speakers of the purest English? And as for pronunciation, we have our faults, of course, in abundance, the best of us as well as the most careless, and should amend them with all diligence; but where, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, will you dis- cover any such utter disability of hearing or discernment as can permit men to drop or multiply their lis or transpose their ws and vs? American English. 163 II. Speaking of pronunciation, and with regard to the sound of the language as used by the educated people of the two countries (a point which most writers on Americanisms pass over with the briefest notice, though one of the ablest of them all, Prof. George P. Marsh, has devoted to it his chief attention), it must be admitted, I think, that if the typical English intonation is better than ours, it is because the office of language is what Talleyrand said it was — to conceal one's thought. That is to say, the average American college graduate, for instance, will speak more intelligibly and more agreeably wherever there is any difficulty in speaking, as before a large assembly or in the open air, than will the English university man. The Yankee may talk through his nose, to be sure; may unduly emphasize minor words, cut off terminal letters rather abruptly, or select too high a key ; but he will not say readiri \ writin\ speakiri ; he will not gulp or sputter ; he will seldom insert superfluous aw s 164 Our Common Speech. or ngJis, and the reporter who may have to follow his utterance will be far less liable to lose parts of a sentence, or to mistake one phrase for another, than in discharging the same duty on the other side. And when it comes to orthoepy proper, the deliberate sounding of single words, it will be found that in almost every case the difference is due to the American's following more closely than does the Briton the spelling of the word — a practice which can hardly result in depraving the language, but seems rather to suggest that the American is the greater reader of the two, and therefore likely to be the safer guide in questions of verbal correctness. Thus the now thoroughly anglicized French word trait, in which none of us ever thinks of dropping the final t, is still commonly called tray in England, and that pronunciation is given the place of honor in the best British authority, Stormonth's excellent dictionary. The / of almond, com- monly sounded in this country, is silent abroad. Sliver, which Americans call sliver, following the obvious analogy of the more common word liver, and following, too, the example of the American English. 165 poet Chaucer, is largely called silver in Great Britain. Schedule, which we invariably pro- nounce skedule, constitutes in England almost the only exception to the rule that ch is hard after initial s, being there called shedule or sedule. The verb to perfect, invariably pro- nounced like the adjective in England, with accent on the first syllable, is very often heard as perfect* in this country, thus bringing it into harmony with perfume, cement, desert, present, produce, progress, project, rebel, record and other words which are accented on the final syllable when used as verbs, but not otherwise. Nephew and phial, which constitute in England the only exceptions to the almost universal law that the digraph ph, when sounded at all, is sounded like f are both reduced to rule in this country, by pronouncing the first nefew and spelling the second vial. Hostler, always pronounced in this country as it is spelled, is marked 'ostler in Stormonth. And in respect to geographical names, the closer adherence of our countrymen to the guidance of the orthography is, of course, notorious and manifest. Except the dropping, 1 66 Our Common Speech. in imitation of the French, of the final s of Illinois; the two words Connecticut and Ar- kansas (the latter a very doubtful exception) ; and a few terms like Sioux, derived from cor- ruptions of Indian names — it is not easy to recall any geographical appellation indigenous to our soil which is not pronounced very nearly as it is spelled. And when names are imported with a well-authorized divergence between the sound and the spelling, a strong tendency toward the obliteration of this diver- gence is sure to become manifest. Warwick is about as often Warwick as Warwick when spoken of in America ; Norwich is more com- monly Norwich, I think, than Noridge ; St. Louis and Louisville are often called St. Lewis and Lewisville ; a resident of Delaware County in New York would not know what place was meant if you spoke of the county seat as "Daily," so perfectly settled is "Delhi" as the pronunciation as well as the spelling of the name. A multitude of other instances might be mentioned, among the most remarkable of which, perhaps, is the change that has taken place in the popular sounding of the name American English. 167 Chautauqua. As long as it was spelled with a final e, people persisted in saying Chautawk, notwithstanding that the local practice was always otherwise; but an immediate reforma- tion was effected, some thirty years ago, by the simple expedient of substituting an a. It is probably quite safe to say that no mispro- nunciation of a geographical name, growing out of an attempt to follow too closely the sound of its letters, has ever become so prev- alent in Great Britain as even to suggest the idea of making the spelling conform to the orthoepy, and, furthermore, that if such a difficulty ocurred, the attempted remedy in question would be found in that country quite unproductive of any change in the popular III. Passing from orthoepy to orthography, it hardly need be said that in every instance without exception where a change in spelling has originated in the United States, the change has been in the direction of simplicity, and in the interest therefore of the " reform " which 168 Our Common Speech. the Philological Society of Great Britain (not to mention such individual names as Max Miiller, Dr. J. A. H. Murray, Prof. Newman, the Duke of Richmond, and Mr. Gladstone) so warmly favors. The dropping of the second g in waggon, the u in parlour and similar words, the me in programme (who would think of writting diagramme or telegramme f), the e in storey (of a house), and the final e in pease 1 (plural of pea), are all changes in this direc- tion ; and so is the substitution of w for ugh in plough, and /for ugh in dratight, and the aban- donment of the spellings cheque, shew, cyder, 2 and especially gaol, the universal adoption of jail bringing this word into harmony with the rest of the language, as there is no other in- stance in English of a soft g before a — not- withstanding that some absurd people, who do not call Margaret Marjaret or Garfield yarjield, will persist in saying oleomarjarine. It should be noted, moreover, that our American practice of dropping the u from 1 Of course pease was not originally a plural word, but no- body thinks of it otherwise now. 2 See Halliweirs Dictionary, art. " Griggles." American English. 169 many words formerly ending in our is more than a movement in the direction of spelling reform, for it cancels the etymological misinfor- mation suggested by the old-fashioned orthog- raphy not yet extinct in England. Some people imagine that the u in these words has value, or at least a certain sort of interest, as indicating that they came to us through the French and not directly from Latin or from other tongues, — rather an unimportant matter at best; but the trouble is that, with the exception perhaps of one single word, savour, the indica- tion either points the wrong way or would almost certainly be overlooked except by per- sons familiar with entirely obsolete spellings in French. The u is omitted, even in England, from governor, emperor, senator, error, ancestor, am- bassador, progenitor, successor, metaphor, bachelor, exterior, inferior and superior, every one of which is of French origin, while it is used in neighbor, flavor, harbor and arbor, which are not French. Even in honor, favor, labor, armor, odor, vapor, savior and parlor, where the u has some color of right to be found, it is doubtful whether its insertion has value as suggesting 170 Our Common Speech. French derivation, for in the case of the first six of these words the ordinary reader would be quite certain to have in mind only the modern spellings — honneur, faveur, labeur, armare, odeur and vapjur — which have the u indeed, but no ; while savior and parlor come from old French words that are themselves without the u — saveor and parleor. The u in all these words is therefore either useless or positively misleading. And finally, in the case of color, humor and valor, it is to be remarked that the exact American orthography actually occurs in old French. IV. In respect to at least one Yankee spelling, that oi plow, and probably others, it should not be forgotten that the prevalent practice in this country agrees with the universal custom of an earlier time, from which divergence without good reason has gradually grown up in England. And this brings us to another strongly marked characteristic of our American speech — its greater permanence and steadiness, so to speak, as compared with that of the mother country. American English. 171 This peculiarity will appear very clearly, where it might least be expected, on close examina- tion of any list of words supposed to have been greatly distorted in their meaning, or even manufactured out of whole cloth, by erring Yankees, a very large proportion of which will almost always be found to be good old English, grown obsolescent or obsolete at home, but preserved in the New World in their pristine vitality and force ; and conversely, on examin- ing such a book as Halliwell's Dictionary of Archaisms and Provincialisms, which contains, presumably, no word now in good use in Great Britain in the meaning given, the American reader will discover a great number of terms — nearly three hundred, I should say — with which he is perfectly familiar. I give a few examples, not including any that are marked as provincial, the implication being that all these words were once good English, but are no longer in com- mon use in the mother country: Adze (a carpenter's tool); affectation ("a curious desire for a thing which nature hath not given ") ; afterclap ; agape ; age as a verb ; air in the sense of appearance ; amerce ; andi- 172 Our Common Speech. rons ; angry, said of a wound ; appellant (one who appeals) ; apple-pie order ; baker's dozen ; bamboozle ; bay in a barn ; bay window ; bearers at a funeral; berate ; between whiles ; bicker; blanch (to whiten) ; brain as a verb ; burly ; cast (to tie and throw down, as a horse); catcall; cesspool ; chafe (to grow angry) ; clodhopper ; clutch (to seize) ; clutter; cockerel; coddle; copi- ous ; cosey ; counterfeit money; crazy in the sense of dilapidated, as applied to a building ; crock (an earthen vessel) ; crone (an old woman) ; crook (a bend) ; croon ; cross-grained in the sense of ob- stinate or peevish; cross-patch; cross purposes ; cuddle; &tff (to beat); deft; din; dormer win- dow ; earnest, money given to bind a bargain ; egg on ; greenhorn ; hasp ; jack of all trades ; jamb of a door; lintel ; list (selvage of cloth); loop hole; nettled (out of temper); newel ; or- nate ; perforce ; piping hot ; pit (mark left by small-pox) ; qtiail (to shrink) ; ragamuffin ; riffraff; rigmarole; scant; seedy ("miserable looking ") ; shingles ; sorrel (the color) ; out of sorts; stale ("wanting freshness"); sutler; thill; toady ; trash; underpinning. All these words, with many others equally familiar in the American English. 173 United States, are apparently regarded by Hal- liwell as having become obsolete in England. It would not be difficult, on the other hand, to compile quite a list of Briticisms, including words recently invented in Great Britain (where the " boldness of innovation on this subject," amounting to " absolute licentiousness," which Noah Webster notes and deplores in his pre- face of 1847, still runs rampant) — such as totalling, or (still worse) totting, for adding up; navvy, for laborer; fad, for hobby; randomly, for at random ; outing, for pleasure excursion ; tund, for beat * ; bumper, for enormous 2 ; picked for aborted 3 ; and a larger class of old words now used in that country in a comparatively new and in some respects objectionable signification not generally recognized in the United States. I remember hearing with astonishment, some twenty years ago, from an English gentleman of 1 Even Spencer condescends to the use of this extraordi- nary vocable, though he offers a sort of semi-apology by put- ting it in quotation marks. — Study of Sociology, chap. 8. 2 " The bumper wheat crop now expected by American agri- culturists." — Editorial in Mark Lane Express, June I, 1891. 3 " Mr. Buchanan's mare Maggie has picked twin foals." — North British Agriculturist, April 30, 1890. 174 Our Common Speech. culture and high social standing, that it was necessary to remove the gates of Quebec, " to give more room for traffic." I asked no ques- tions, but wondered inwardly whether the people of the American Gibraltar were in the habit, like the ancient Orientals, of resorting to the gates of the town to exchange commodities with each other. On our arrival next morning, the mys- tery was solved ; it was travel, not barter, that my friend meant by traffic. The word is con- tinually thus misused in England, and it must be sorrowfully admitted that the bad habit is now invading this country as well, not so much among the people, however, as in a kind of technical way. The New- York Central Rail- road, for instance, has a " general traffic man- ager," who certainly manages no traffic, the corporation being carriers and not traders. Other examples — as yet, happily, not natu- ralized in American usage — are : Knockcd-up, for fatigued ; Famous for excellent — " we have had a famous walk," meaning an enjoyable one ; bargain, for haggle 1 — " Mr. Boffin, I never 1 The anonymous author of Chatto and Windus' Slang Dictionary (new edition, London, 1874) falls into this error, American English. 175 bargain," says Silas Wegg in Our Mutual Friend (book I, chap. 5) — he was bargaining at that very moment ; tiresome, for disagreeable ; the particularly refined and elegant expression rot, for nonsense ; jug, for pitcher ; good form, for in good taste ; trap, for carriage ; tub, for bathe ; to wire, for to telegraph ; starved, for frozen ; stop, for stay — " no paint will stop on them," says the heroine of Wilkie Collins* " No Name; " as- sist, for be present, as the silent auditors at a concert are absurdly said to " assist " at it ; plant for fixtures, as the "plant" of a railway or a factory ; intimate, for announce — advertisers in British newspapers continually " intimate " to their customers that they have changed their their quarters or received new goods ; caucus — " grotesquely misapplied " in England, says the highest British authority, Murray's Philological Dictionary, " to an organization or system" ; and tidy, for almost anything complimentary — a London paper made mention the other day of " a very tidy bull," the writer meaning a valu- able animal, and by no means intending to which surely ought not to be expected of a lexicographer. See page 353 of the work referred to. 176 Our Common Speech. refer to any particular cleanliness in the beast's personal habits. English hostlers also — to get pretty well down in the social scale, though by no means going as low as do the compilers of what are termed Americanisms, in their search for blunders — English hostlers sometimes speak of chilli7ig cold water, meaning warming it, an extraordinary perversion of a very common and elementary word. It is not only, however, in their recent coin- ages and anomalous assigning of new meanings to old terms, that the English have made reck- less changes in the body of our speech where the American practice adheres to the former standard. They have swung off in the opposite direction also, curtailing to no good purpose the significance of several words. A " young per- son," is always a girl in England, the term being never applied to a boy. An invalid is " ill," not sick, unless he happens to be nauseated, while at the same time, strangely enough, it is re- garded as perfectly proper to describe him as confined to a sick-room or stretched upon a sick-bed, and the English prayer-book not only contains services for the " visitation of the sick " American English. 177 and the " communion of the sick," but requires those who use it to make intercession for " all sick persons " as often as the Litany is read. A latter-day Briton — notwithstanding an exam- ple so recent as Macaulay, " the richest in- habitants exhibited their wealth, not by riding in carriages " — is horrified at the idea of riding in anything built on the coach plan, though he makes no scruple of riding in an omnibus or a street-car; when you enter the vehicle at the side, you drive ; when at the end, you ride. A beast, moreover, is now in Great Britain a mem- ber of the genus bos, and almost always an animal that is to be fed for beef, at that ; English official market reports give prices for " beasts," " sheep," " calves," " pigs," and " milch cows " ; and I read not long ago in a Dublin newspaper, speaking of rabies, that " two dogs, five beasts, one pig and one horse were killed during the week." If the author of " Macleod of Dare " is a trustworthy guide, the word tip, used in reference to a journey in Great Britain, indicates, not that the traveller is seeking a more elevated region or moving northwardly, but solely that he is going toward the capital ; " up to London " and " down 178 Our Common Speech. to the Highlands" are, it appears, the correct formulae. No wonder the young Scotchman thought it sounded " stupid." Fancy a man in Chicago saying that he was going " up to Washington," or a man in Washington speaking of events occurring " down in St. Paul ! " A third kind of variation that seems to have grown up in Great Britain to a greater degree than in this country, is the habit of turning active and especially reflexive verbs into neu- ters by dropping the object, as, " Don't trouble " for " Don't trouble yourself." 1 It is true that a tendency in this direction can be traced a long way back in the history of the language. To repent, to endeavor, and some other now neuter verbs, were formerly reflexives ; one endeavored himself in the same sense that we now apply ourselves, and repented himself as we now bethink ourselves. It is also true that a few alterations of this kind not yet sanctioned by good usage, but occasionally heard, may be said properly enough to be common to the two countries ; " I avail of this opportunity," for " I avail myself of 1 " We do not trouble to inquire." — London Law Times, quoted in Albany Law Journal, vol. 26, p. 121. American English. 179 this opportunity," is one. But I think any care- ful reader of the now current literature of England and the United States will approve the opinion that our British brethren are going much faster in this direction than are we. As long ago as 1854 Miss Yonge wrote (in Hearts- ease, part II, chapter 10) : " Theodora flung away and was rushing off." Charles Reade, whom the astute Fitzedward Hall ranks among " the choicest of living English writers," 1 is guilty of such phrases as " Wardlaw whipped before him " (Foul Play, chap. 15), " Ransome whipped before it " (Put Yourself in his Place, chapter 31), [Little] " flung out of the room " (same, chapter 32), and various others. These and similar incomplete sentences, not at all uncommon in British books and periodicals, certainly strike the American ear as decided innovations, and constitute a peculiarity of dic- tion very rarely to be observed on this side of the water. The English have also a practice, more pro- nounced by far than our own, of abbreviating a good many words in their common talk. They 1 Scribner's Monthly, vol. 3, p. 701. 180 Our Common Speech. never call their consolidated government bonds anything but " consols," or the process of hypo- thecation anything but " hypothec." The Zoo- logical Gardens in London are commonly known as the " Zoo," and a series of delightful popular concerts given every season in the same city are euphoniously denominated the " Monday pops." Hampshire, not in writing only, but in speech as well, is " Hants," Buckinghamshire is " Bucks," and Hertfordshire " Herts." A public house is a " public." A similar liberty is taken with the names of firms ; " Smith & Co. " is often made to do duty, even in formal business letters, for the established title, " Smith, Brown & Robinson." One well known American publishing house, Messrs. Ticknor & Fields of Boston, did at one time imitate this form of contraction, by gilding " Ticknor & Co." on the backs of their books ; but the practice has been abandoned by their successors, and I do not know that any other American house ever followed the example. Certain it is that about the longest and most awkward name in the book trade " Cassell, Petter, Galpin & Co.," was always written in full in this country, though often contracted (be- American English. 181 fore it was changed) into Cassell & Co., in England. In the construction of many sentences, how- ever, an opposite plan is frequently followed — the insertion of utterly superfluous words. So important a writer as Henry J. Nicoll says — ■ " Landmarks of English Literature," introduc- tion, p. 1 8 — "Every critic occasionally meets in with works of great fame of which he cannot appreciate the merit." Beaconsfield writes — " Endymion," chap, ioo: "He was by way of intimating that he was engaged in a great work." So a writer in Cassell's Magazine, Feb- ruary, 1893, p. 123 : " She was by way of paint- ing the shrimp girl." In Herbert Spencer's Treatise on Education, .chap. 10, we read that " in Russia the infant mortality is something enor- mous," and in one of Charles Dickens' letters to Mr. Forster: " The daily difference in [a ship's] rolling, as she burns the coals out, is something absolutely fearful." 1 It hardly need be re- marked that the italicized words in all these sentences have to be removed before they be- 1 "A Short Life of Charles Dickens," Appletons' Handy Volume Series, p. 116. 1 82 Our Common Speech. come intelligible, or at least agreeable to per- sons appreciating really correct speech. The peculiar misuse of the affix ever, as in saying "whatever are you doing?" that one so often notices in the conversation particularly of English ladies, is another instance of the same failing; and who has not been annoyed and disgusted by the innumerable gofs with which so many English pages fairly bristle? Three good illus- trations occur in a single article, " A Few Words about the Nineteenth Century," by Frederic Harrison, in the Fortnightly Review: " He ex- tolled him for possessing all the good qualities which he had not got ;" " for twenty thousand years man has got no better light than what was given by pitch, tallow or oil ; " " I don't say but what this work has got to be done." Or glance over Endymion : " He has got a cham- pion " (chap. 35) ; " I have got some House of Commons men dining with me" (chap. 50); " I have got a horse which I should like you to ride" (chap. 52); "Lady Montford maintained they had got nothing " (id.) ; " All you have got to do is to make up your mind " (chap. 65) ; " You have got a great deal of private business American English. 183 to attend to " (chap. 99). So the Marquis of Blandford, in the North American Review: " The Irish members are a feature which we have not at present got to deal with ; " Spencer in the book above referred to (Education, chap. 3) : " Must not the child judge by such evidence as he has got f " George Augustus Sala, Illus- trated London News : " To my shame, I have not got a Cowden-Clarke's concordance ; " Wil- kie Collins, Man and Wife, chap. 9: "I have got a letter for you ; " and in Marion Fay, chap. 3 : " ■ He has got money ; ' ' but he is not there- fore to be a tyrant ; ' ■ Yes, he is, over a daugh- ter who has got none ; ' " Charles Reade, Foul Play, chap. 19: "I have got something for you " — in none of which cases is the idea of getting intended in the slightest degree to be implied, but only that of present possession. The general American dislike of this ugly word, and our practice, where the past participle of the verb get must be used, of adopting the old and softer form gotten (which is now scarcely ever used in England) 1 are not exactly what would 1 See " English and American English," by R. A. Proctor, in the Gentleman's Magazine, copied into Appletons' Journal 184 Our Common Speech. be expected of a people who are ruining the language. V. I think moreover, though the opinion is of course only an opinion, and hardly susceptible of positive proof or absolute negation, that good English authors in general are less particular about many points of grammar than are Ameri- cans of the same class. Dean Alford is author- ity for the statement that " our best writers [meaning the best British writers] have the pop- ular expression these kind t those sort" 1 where this kind or that sort is intended ; and I have noticed intances of this solecism in Bagehot (Physics and Politics, No. II, section 3 — "Na- tions with these sort of maxims ") and in Miss Muloch (Agatha's Husband, chap. 1 — " The Iansons were those sort of religious people who think any Biblical allusions irreverent") In a story called " The Ladies Lindores," published serially in Blackwood (part II, chap. 4, No. for October, 1881, and the New York Tribune of Aug. 14, 1881. 1 The Queen's English, nth thousand, f 98. American English. 185 799 of the magazine,) we find the following: " There are some happy writers whose mission it is to expound the manners and customs of the great. * * And yet, alas ! to these writers when they have done all, yet must we add that they fail to satisfy their models. * * ' As if these sort of people knew anything about society ! ' Lady Adeliza says." Lady Adeliza, or her reporter, would do well to study a certain very elementary rule of grammar. A writer in the Gentleman's Magazine, Mr. Dudley Errington (see Littell's Living Age, No. 2038, p. 95), makes the following statement, re- ferring to Great Britain only: " The fact is that bade and durst, and even dares, have become all but obsolete in our day, without any possible reason either in grammar or in euphony. Why, for instance, should not bade or bidden be used in the following instances from the Times and the Quarterly Review? ' Mr. Charles Dickens finally bid farewell to Philadelphia.' — Times. * Uncertain even at that epoch ( 1 864) of Aus- tria's fidelity, Prussia bid high for German leadership.' — Times. * He called his servants and bid them procure firearms.' — Times. ' The 1 86 Our Common Speech. competition is so sharp and general that the leader of to-day can never be sure that he will not be outbid to-morrow.' — Quarterly Review. And why not durst in the following extract from the Rev. Charles Kingsley? ' Neither her maidens nor the priest dare speak to her for half an hour.' — ■ Hereward the Wake! " In the third series of Freeman's historical essays we find gems like the following: "One whom, the mockers of the age said was no fitting guest;" "It may be argued that if he either could not nor would not hold Athens ; " " The valiant peasantry of old Hellas was of another mould from the nobles; " and "Their relation to the empire was wholly different to that of the Illyrian slaves." Worse than most of these slips is Charles Reade's not infrequent blundering with the nominative and objective cases, as where he makes the highborn and elegant Edward Foun- tain, Esq., of Font Abbey, inform his niece that " there will be only us two at dinner ! " (Love me Little, Love me Long, chap, i.) Worse still is the confusing of the verbs lie and lay, an error very rarely to be observed in respectable American English. 187 American society, but one to which Alford says Eton graduates are especially prone, and one into which Anthony Trollope fell when he made Mr. Harding (in " The Warden," chap. 7) say: "I have done more than sleep upon it; I have laid awake upon it." A striking in- stance of the occurrence of this confusion may be found in an extraordinary place for a gram- matical error, Stormonth's English Word-Book, where laid is actually given as the participle of lie! After noting this, one need hardly be sur- prised to find the same writer defining Alborak (in the supplement to his dictionary) as " the white mule on which Mohammed is said to have rode from Jerusalem to heaven ! " If an Ameri- can lexicographer were caught using laid for lain, or rode for ridden, what a text it would furnish for a dissertation on the process of de- praving our mother tongue which is advancing with such alarming rapidity in the United States ! About as bad as this, perhaps, is the remark- able phrase " a good feiv " that one sometimes sees in very respectable British publications — not exactly ungrammatical, of course, but funny, 1 88 Our Common Speech. so to speak. A British practice that manifestly is ungrammatical, and so extremely ungramma- tical as to evince ignorance or disregard of one of the simplest principles of the structure of our language, is exemplified in such phrases as " an inventions exhibition," " the rivers pollu- tion commission " and the like. Nobody speaks of a hats rack, or a books case or a cloaks room, and everybody ought to know that a noun used to qualify another noun is for the time an adjec- tive and therefore absolutely indeclinable ; but while this is perfectly recognized in England in the case of every old combination, it is repeat- edly overlooked in making new ones — and overlooked in the most formal official docu- ments even more than in the careless language of the newspapers, where it would be perhaps more pardonable. Then there are certain highly incorrect con- structions, like " different to," and " frightened of," which are notoriously British, and of which it is almost safe to say that no American is ever guilty. Spencer's " immediately this is recog- nized " (Study of Sociology, chap. 2), meaning as soon as this is recognized, and Buckle's American English. 189 " directly they came " (letter to Mrs. Grey, quoted in Huth's Life, chap. 2) meaning directly after they had come, are other instances. Buckle, it should be remembered, was anything but a careless writer, having devoted great labor for a long time to the acquisition of a correct and polished style of composition. One would think he need not have spent many hours in this sort of study before discovering that such a sentence as " I put them away directly they came " is not English. (Since writing the last sentence, I have noticed, with sorrow, an in- stance of exactly the same error in one of G. W. Smalley's letters from London to the New York Tribune : " Directly he heard of the in- tended demonstration, Mr. Parnell left the train." But Mr. Smalley, like the lady in " The Mighty Dollar," has " lived so much abroad, you know," that some absorption of British blunders might well be expected of him; and I think one might spend a good deal of time in searching American literature, periodical or book, before he would find another case.) Dr. Fitzedward Hall, as already quoted, is of opinion that educated people in this country 190 Our Common Speech. have lost the ability to write our language as did the author of " Edgar Huntly " at the close of the last century. But what must he think of the improvement that has been made on the other side of the sea when he turns the pages of Endymion and notices the following, among other phrases of similar correctness and beauty? "Everybody says what they like" (chap. 20) ; " I would never leave him for a moment, only I know he would get wearied of me " (chap. 39) ; " I have never been back to the old place " (chap. 63) ; " Everybody can do exactly what they like " (chap. 98). Speaking in all seriousness, were it not on the whole preferable that the art of writing English should decline everywhere even faster than it has de- clined in this country, rather than that it should develop into such perfection as is illustrated by the last literary production of an ex-prime- minister of Great Britain? VI. Of course nobody thinks of denying, never- theless, that a number of new, and in many American English IQI cases uncalled-for, words and expressions have been invented and now pass current in the United States, or that the meaning of some others has been gradually warped, to the injury of the language, just as has occurred in England. This part of the subject has been laboriously investigated by several diligent students — so laboriously that there is little left to say about it except in the way of correction. Not to speak of articles in periodicals, brief essays, and single chapters, no fewer than seven books devoted entirely to so-called Americanisms in speech have from time to time appeared — Pickering's Vocabulary, in 1816; Noah Web- ster's "Letter," in 1817; Elwyn's Glossary, in 1859; Scheie de Vere's Americanisms, in 1872; Bartlett's Dictionary, — the first edition in 1848, the second in 1859, the third in i860, the fourth, considerably enlarged, in 1877; Farmer's Amer- icanisms, in 1889; an d Norton's Political Ameri- canisms, in 1890. The student of language will find much to interest, and not a little to amuse him, in each of these collections of monstrosities. 192 Our Common Speech. VII. John Pickering's " Vocabulary, or Col- lection of Words and Phrases which have been supposed to be peculiar to the United States," originated in the author's practice, while living in London during the first two years of this century, of noting down, for the purpose of avoiding them, such of his own verbal expressions as were condemned for American errors by his British friends. After returning to this country, he communicated a paper on the subject, consisting of an essay and a list of words, to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and shortly after, having largely amplified the vocabulary, submitted the whole to the candor of his countrymen for their instruction and admonition. The poor man was deeply concerned for the future of the language in America, and very much in earnest in his work. It might indeed be a long time, he thought, before it should " be the lot of many Americans to publish works which will be read out of their own country ; yet all who have the American English. ! 93 least tincture of learning will continue to feel an ardent desire to acquaint themselves with English authors. Let us then," he proceeds, " imagine the time to have arrived when Ameri- cans shall no longer be able to understand the works of Milton, Pope, Swift, Addison and other English authors justly styled classic without the aid of a translation into a language that is to be called at some future day the American tongue ! * * * Nor is this the only view in which a radical change of language would be an evil. To say nothing of the facilities afforded by a common language in the ordinary intercourse of business, it should not be forgotten that our religion and our laws are studied in the language of the nation from which we are descended; and, with the loss of the language, we should finally suffer the loss of those peculiar advan- tages which we now derive from the investiga- tions of the jurists and divines of that country." To do what lay in his power to avert a calam- ity so appalling, was the object that Mr. Pick- ering had in view; and lest his own impressions should be faulty, or his imperfect knowledge of pure English should prove inadequate to the 13 194 Our Common Speech. task of properly branding all the principal American corruptions, he took the pains of submitting his list to several well-informed friends, and particularly to two English gentle- men whose authority he considered beyond question, although he admits that as they had lived some twenty years in America, " their ear had lost much of that sensibility to deviations from the pure English idiom which would once have enabled them to pronounce with decision in cases where they now felt doubts." As finally published, the Vocabulary contains over five hundred words, of which not more than about seventy, less than a seventh of the whole num- ber, are really of American origin and now in respectable use. As examples may be cited — backwoodsman, barbecue, belittle \ bookstore, bot- tomlands, breadstuff, caucus, clapboard, creek in the sense of brook or small stream, declension of an office, deed as a verb, desk for pulpit, dutiable, to girdle a tree, gubernatorial, hominy, ifitervale, salt-lick, lot — a division of land, lumber, offset, pine barrens, po)'tage, rapids, renezvedly, samp, section of the country, sleigh, span of horses, and staging for scaffolding. The other six- American English. 195 sevenths of the book consists of, first, mere vulgarisms and blunders ; second, unauthorized expressions invented by eccentric writers and never generally adopted; and, third, words really British in their origin though not current in good London society — to which last class, by the way, it is highly probable that several of the terms above mentioned as genuine Americanisms might be transferred, were their full history known. VIII. Noah Webster's " Letter to the Honor- able John Pickering on the subject of his Vocabulary" is a duodecimo of sixty pages, dated "Dec. 1 8 16." The lexicographer re- garded himself, or the principles that he taught, as at least indirectly attacked by the Vocabu- lary without necessity or reason. As for Mr. Pickering's apprehension that American speech might become in time so depraved that English authors could not be read in this country with- out translation, he says he " might oppose to this supposition another, which is nearly as 196 Our Common Speech. probable, that the rivers in America will turn their courses, and flow from the sea to the tops of the hills." Whatever change may be taking place, moreover, he thinks it quite vain to at- tempt to stop, especially as changes are occur- ring in England as well : " You take some pains," he says, " to ascertain the point, whether the people of this country now speak and write the English language with purity. The result is, that we have, in several instances, departed from the standard of the language, as spoken and written in England at the present day. Be it so — it is equally true, that the English have departed from the standard, as it appears in the works of Addison. And this is acknowledged by yourself. It is equally true that Addison, Pope and Johnson deviated from the standard of the age of Elizabeth. Now, sir, where is the remedy ? " Wherever else it may lie — if remedy is desirable or possible — it certainly does not lie, Dr. Webster thought, in a slavish imitation of British practices. " With regard to the gen- eral principle that we must use only such words as the English use," he proceeds, " let me repeat, that the restriction is, in the nature of the thing, American English. 197 impracticable, and the demand that we should observe it, is as improper as it is arrogant. Equally impertinent is it to ridicule us for retaining the use of genuine English words, because they happen to be obsolete in London, or in the higher circles of life. There are many instances in which we retain the genuine use of words, and the genuine English pronunciation, which they have corrupted; in pronunciation they have introduced more corruptions, within half a century, than were ever before introduced in five centuries, not even excepting the periods of conquest. Many of these changes in England are attributable to false principles, introduced into popular elementary books written by mere sciolists in language, and diffused by the instru- mentality of the stage. Let the English re- move the beam from their own eye, before they attempt to pull the mote from ours ; and before they laugh at our vulgar keow, geown, neow, let them discard their polite keind, and geuide; a fault precisely similar in origin, and equally a perver- sion of genuine English pronunciation." Brave and sensible words are these; their teaching may well be laid to heart to-day! 198 Our Common Speech. IX. Dr. Elwyn's Glossary of Supposed Ameri- canisms was undertaken, as the preface informs us, " to show how much there yet remains, in this country, of language and customs directly brought from our remotest ancestry " — a pur- pose quite different from that of Mr. Pickering; but the chief value of the book is in the contri- bution it makes to our knowledge of Pennsyl- vania provincialisms, of which the author is evidently a careful observer. About four hun- dred and sixty words are included, of which a clear majority would be quite as little under- stood in decent American as in decent British society ; but it seems that we have been accused of manufacturing the whole list, while the fact is that they are one and all of foreign origin. The book is carelessly written, and not accurately alphabetized. X. SCHELE DE VERE'S " AMERICANISMS," a small octavo of something less than seven hundred American English. 199 pages, differs from the other works mentioned in not adopting the dictionary form, but presenting our verbal peculiarities as arranged in various classes — those invented by the Indian, the Dutchman, the Frenchman, the Spaniard, the German, the Negro, and the Chinaman; ex- pressions peculiar to the West, to the church, to politics and to trade; marine and railroad terms; cant and slang; new words and nick- names, etc. The author has been accused of plagiarizing from Bartlett, and doubtless did avail himself freely of the labors of that diligent lexicographer; but he added a good deal of original matter, and his book possesses an interest of its own, being indeed the only one of the seven (except perhaps Webster's) that is likely to be read entirely through. About four thousand items appear in the index. XI. Bartlett's Dictionary (or, to give the full title, " Dictionary of Americanisms, a Glos- sary of Words and Phrases usually regarded as peculiar to the United States, by John Russell Bartlett,") is, in its latest edition, a bulky octavo 200 Our Common Speech. of over eight hundred pages, exceedingly well printed, and containing something above five thousand six hundred entries, but hardly repre- senting, I think, more than about four hundred and fifty genuine and distinct Americanisms now in respectable use — less than one-twelfth of the whole number of articles. Of the remainder, nearly four hundred words and phrases are set down by the author himself as of British origin, some being used in this country in exactly the same manner as on their native soil, while others have been slightly altered in meaning, applica- tion or sound. At least three hundred and thirty more — and probably a much larger num- ber — are also certainly British, though Mr. Bartlett seems not to be aware of it The rest of the dictionary — say four-fifths — is made up, partly of expressions never in general use, or long since antiquated ; partly of mere mispro- nunciations, grammatical errors and unautho- rized contractions ; partly of vulgar and disgust- ing slang ; and partly of wearisome repetitions. Yet I by no means desire to be understood as setting down the work for a mass of rubbish. On the contrary, it contains a vast fund of inter- American English. 201 esting and curious information, which any man devoted to the study of English dialects might well be proud to have brought together. Only it is a great pity that the diligent compiler, in his anxiety to make a big book, allowed him- self such extreme latitude in his conception of what constitutes an Americanism in speech, and consequently buried his grains of wheat under so appalling a mountain of chaff. It may be worth while to present some sam- ples of the words that are improperly included in Bartlett's Dictionary, as showing the way in which a tremendous number of pseudo-Amer- icanisms have been, first and last, accumulated by people who find satisfaction in counting them up. Of the three hundred and eighty-five words and phrases that the author himself sets down as of British origin, the following examples may be mentioned: To beat one all-to-pieces, or all-to-smash ; allow, for assert; argufy; awfully, for very; bail, the handle of a bucket ; barm, for yeast ; bowid, for determined or resolved ; a bull, on the stock exchange ; bump- tious, for self-conceited; can't come it; cap sheaf; 202 Our Common Speech. cheek, for impudence; chowder; clip, a blow, as, " he hit him a clip ; " to collide ; to cotton to a man ; cracker, for a small biscuit; cute; to cut stick; a deck of cards; deputize; doxologize ; dreadful, for very, as "dreadful" fine; every once in a while; fall of the year; first-rate; fix, to put in order; flapjack; flummux ; freshet; gallivant; galoshes; given name ; goodies ; to gulp; hand-running ; hard up ; heft, for weight ; help, for servants ; homely, not handsome ; hook, to steal ; im?nigration ; jeopardize ; julep; to keep company; to loan; mad, for angry; mighty, for very; old fogy; over the left; pair of stairs ; pled, for pleaded ; pry, a lever ; to pull up stakes ; to reckon, meaning to think, believe or sup- pose; reliable; rooster; no great shakes ; sopho- more ; spell of weather ; spry ; spunk ; starvation ; stricken, for struck; sundown; swap; to take on; talented; teetotaller; ugly, for ill-tempered ; to wal- lop, and to whale ; whapper ; to whittle, and to wilt. In many cases no reason whatever is assigned for including these words in a list of Americanisms; very seldom is any better cause mentioned than that they are provincial or antiquated in Great Britain ; and sometimes the pretext is of the most trivial character, as in the case of the word whittle, which is put in, forsooth, because both the verb and the practice are thought to be more common in America American English. 203 than in England ! But the most surprising instance among this class of words has yet to be mentioned — the use of the adverb " imtnediately," in place of the phrase " as soon as " — " the deer fell dead immedi- ately they shot him." This wretched expression, Mr. Bartlett writes, is creeping into use from England. What possible sense there can be in counting as an Americanism a villanously ungrammatical construc- tion which is "creeping into use in this country from England," it would puzzle Fitzedward Hall him- self to explain. Among words and phrases erroneously sup- posed by Mr. Bartlett to be peculiar to this country, the following have been pointed out by various reviewers of the dictionary: Baggage ; bender, a spree ; blackberry ; blow, to brag ; bluff, a high bank ; to do a thing brown ; bug, as a general term ; bureau, a chest of drawers ; cata- mount; choker, a cravat; chore; crevasse; cunning, in the sense of small and pretty; educational ; eel- grass; to egg on; engineer of a locomotive; every which way ; expect, for suppose ; fast, for dissi- pated ; fellowship, as a verb ; female, for woman ; first-class ; to go to the bad; to go gunning; in a horn, meaning " over the left ; " kink, an accidental 204 Our Common Speech. knot or twist ; the whole kit of them ; muss, a state of confusion ; notio?is, small wares or trifles ; rail- road, as the equivalent of railway ; sappy, meaning silly j slosh, soft mud ; smack, a blow ; splurge ; spree ; swingletree ; a good time ; and tiptop. To these may be added (among many others) the following, which I believe no previous reviewer has noted: Account — In phrase "of no account "= no im- portance. The exact phrase will be found in Dickens' Uncommercial Traveler, chap. 6. Airy — Conceited. This may be found in "Al- bion's England," by one Warner, published in the mother country in 1606. All-fired. — Set down as a British provincialism by a writer in Macmillan's Magazine, vol. 5, p. 244. Alley — A child's marble. So used by Defoe in 1720. Allspice. — Dates back at least to Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, 1621. Ampersand — The short character for the word and. This is found in Halliwell. Appointable. — Used by Foxe, 1563. Back out. — A natural combination of words hardly deserving place among any sort of isms. It may be found in Scott's Rob Roy, published 18 18. American English. 205 Backward — Bashful. So used in Swift's Tale of a Tub, 1 704. Baggage — A traveller's impedimenta. Repeatedly so used by Shakspeare. Baiting — Luncheon. Is in the Promptorium Par- vulorum, fifteenth century. Balk — Said of a horse. Traced back in England to the fifteenth century. Bang up — Superior. American origin very doubt- ful. Occurs in " Rejected Addresses," 181 2. Bark — To girdle a tree. Used by Shakspeare in Henry VIII. Beef, an ox, and Blaze, a mark on a tree, are both in Halliwell. Be liked. — Traced back in England to 1557. Belongings. — Possibly of American origin, but was certainly used in England in 181 7. Bilberry — A plant. Merry Wives of Windsor, V. 5 . Bilk — A cheat. Used by Marvell, 1672. Bindweed. — Mentioned in Turner's " Names of Herbes," 1548. Blue-blooded — May be of American origin, but seems to be pretty well naturalized abroad, as Maria Edgeworth uses it in "Helen," 1834. Bluefish. — Phil. Trans. XXXVIII. 3 1 8 (a. d. i 734) . Boo-hoo. — Used by Skelton, 1525. Bowling Alley. — Occurs, according to Murray, in British laws of the sixteenth century. 206 Our Common Speech. Bright — Intelligent. Occurs in Macbeth. Brummagen — Spurious. A contemptuous phrase "Brummagen Protestants" was in use in England in 1681. Bully — Fine. Chetham's "Angler's Vade-Mecum," 1681. By and Large. Found in Sturmy's Mariner's Magazine, 1669. Caboose (of a freight train) . Practically the same use as that defined in Falconer's Marine Dictionary of 1769 — "a sort of house which somewhat resem- bles a sentry box." Carry on — To frolic. Certainly well naturalized abroad. Is found in " Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde." Chance — To risk. Now used in Great Britain. A vulgarism ; but not an Americanism. Chess — A weed. Used by very old writers on agriculture in England. Chipper — Lively. Provincial in the Isle of Wight. Clever, in the sense of good-natured. This is in Halliwell — said to be provincial in the south of England. Connection, in the phrase "in this connection. 11 Used in Great Britain certainly as long ago as 1 780. Cookey — A little cake. In Prof. J. F. W. Johns- ton's " Notes on North America," chap. 23, vol. 2, p. American English. 207 296, we read that this word is familiar to a Scotch- man's ears. Cradle Scythe is in Halliwell. Firedogs — Andirons. This is found in Brockett's Glossary of North-Country Words. Hulking (unwieldly), Jack-at-a-pinch, and Pitch- in, are all in Halliwell. Hunk — A large piece. Provincial in the Isle of Wight. Right for very. Fancy setting this down as an Americanism ! Did Mr. Bartlett ever hear of a Right Honorable minister of Great Britain, or ever read the 139th Psalm — " Marvellous are thy works, and that my soul knoweth right well " ? To set to rights. This is said by Elwyn to be an Essex provincialism. Safe — A place of security. This also is in Elwyn, and said to be from Suffolk. Sauce — Impudence. This is in Halliwell. Shinny — A boy's game. This is in Brockett. Span, for perfectly. The expression " span new " is as old as Chaucer. Stand, a platform, and Stock, equivalent to cattle, are both in Halliwell. Stop for stay, as " I am stopping at a hotel." The insertion of this detestable Briticism in a dictionary of Americanisms, of all places in the world, is one of the 208 Our Common Speech. absurdities of the book. Everybody who knows any- thing about the variations of the language as spoken in the two countries knows that it is heard a thousand times in England for once that it is noticed here. Square — Honest. Shakspeare — Timon of Athens, V. 5 ; Antony and Cleopatra, II. 2. Too thin. Here is another Americanism of a very remarkable kind. Smollett was guilty of it, for he wrote, in " Peregrine Pickle " (published 1751), chap. 26 : " This pretext was too thin to impose upon her lover." And Shakspeare, a century and more earlier, in Henry VIIL, Act 5, Scene 2, makes the king say : "You were ever good at sudden commendations, Bishop of Winchester. But know I come not to hear such flattery now, and in my presence ; they are too thin and base to hide offences." Other instances could no doubt be found in plenty, if it were worth while to look for them. But when one considers that the phrase is invariably applied — as Smollett applies it — to pretexts, coverings, what can be more obvious than that it must necessarily always have been, not only perfectly good English, but the sim- plest and most natural expression imaginable ? The insertion of a phrase like that in a list of American- isms or any other sort of isms, only shows what follies men may be led into, upon whom the craze for mak- ing long compilations has once seized. American English. 209 Tophet — The place of torment. This familiar Biblical term is of course just as much an American- ism as is Eden, or Babylon, or Jerusalem. Touch-and-go. Who does not remember the " touch-and-go young Barnacle " of the Circumlocu- tion Office in Charles Dickens' "Little Dorrit"? Tramp, a strolling vagabond, is in Halliwell. "Well," a meaningless prefix to a sentence. The word is twice used in this way by highly-aristocratic speakers in the first chapter of Beaconsfield's " Endy- mion." The author would have been slightly amused if Mr. Bartlett had informed him that he represented Sidney Wilton and William Ferrars as conversing in the American dialect. It would be unprofitable to detail examples of the mere errors, vulgar expressions and slang terms which Mr. Bartlett enumerates as pecu- liarly American. A few instances of his sense- less repetitions, enlarging the book to no possible good, may be mentioned with less disgust : "Bankit (French Banquette) " is defined as a sidewalk in Louisiana. Immediately below we have " banquette, the name for the sidewalk in some of our southern cities." " Bowie," and " bowie-knife " are separately entered. " Breakbone "is " a species 14 210 Our Common Speech. of fever," and then follows " breakbone fever," with full definition. " Bulldoze " is " to intimidate," and on the next page we have "to bulldoze," " to intimi- date by violent means." A "filibuster" is a free- booter ; " filibustering " is " freebooting ; " and " to filibuster" is "to acquire by freebooting; " three sep- arate entries. " A loafer " is an idle lounger, and " to loaf" is "to lounge." "To lynch," "lyncher" and " lynch law " are separately explained. " Muss," a corruption of "mess," is first elaborately defined as a noun, with examples, and then as a verb. A " pony " is a translation, and " to pony " is to use a translation. " To post " a person is to inform him, and then we are told that "posted" means informed. "To red up," meaning to set in order, is twice defined — once on page 517 and again on page 520. "To run" is "to cause to run," with the phrase "to run a church" as an example ; and just below we find another entry — "to run a church," "to have the charge of a church." " To spin street yarn " (page 636) is " to go gadding about the streets ; " and on page 798, under the heading " street yarn," we learn that " to spin street yarn " is " to frequent the streets without any definite object." A " stove pipe " is a tall hat ; and then follows a second entry, " stove pipe hat, a tall hat." A "suck in" is "a cheat," and "to suck in" is " to take in, to cheat." Many more T o those interested in the BONNIE BRIER BUSH Ian Maclaren's First Novel KATE CARNEGIE Will Appear in the January ...BOOKMAN and continue throughout the year. Important With the January number the Price of THE BOOKMAN wil1 be raised to ®* - oo per year and 20 cents per number. All subscribing before January 25 will receive THE BOOKMAN at the old rate, $1.50. — ~ — ^^** Send 10 cents for Sample Copy. DODD, MEAD & CO., 149 Fifth Ave., New York, will please send the BOOKMAN for .years to American English. 211 instances might be mentioned ; but it is hardly neces- sary to go further than this, in order to show how the book is rilled up and expanded, without rhyme or reason. Mr. Bartlett would have done better to take pattern from Halliwell's admirable dictionary, a work that contains nearly ten times as many entries as the Dictionary of Americanisms, but fills less than fifty more pages. Coming now to genuine Americanisms, words and phrases really peculiar to this country, or used here in a sense never recognized in Eng- land, the following are among those which are either omitted by Bartlett or about which he makes statements that seem to invite remark: Blizzard. — This word Mr. Bartlett defines as "a poser," having noticed, apparently, only a single instance of its use, and jumped at the conclusion that this is the meaning intended. He adds the comment, " not known in the Eastern States," which was generally true, no doubt, until the sharp winter of i88o-'8i familiarized the term — as well as the thing itself, in a greatly modified form — to the resi- dents of the East. I suppose I need not say that a real blizzard, as the word is now understood, is a terrific storm, with low barometer, light clouds or 212 Our Common Speech. none at all, " and the air full of particles of snow, in the form of dry, sharp crystals, which, driven before the wind, bite and sting like fire." The term is said to have made its first appearance in print about the year i860, in a newspaper called the Northern Vindicator, published at Estherville, Minn. Its ety- mology can only be guessed at, but there has been no lack of guesses. The English word blister ; the French bouillard (see Surenne's Dictionary) ; the German blitz ; the Spanish brisa ; the surname Bliz- zard (said to be common around Baltimore) ; an unpronounceable Sioux term ; and the Scotch verb blizzen, of which Jamieson's Dictionary remarks that " drought is said to be blizzening when the wind parches and withers the fruits of the earth" — all these, and I know not how many other words in different languages, have been suggested, with various degrees of improbability, as the origin of the term. My own conjecture is, that it is simply an onomato- poeia; an attempt, not wholly unsuccessful, to rep- resent the whistling and " driving " noise of a terrible storm. It should be added, before leaving this word, that it seems to have been occasionally used in vari- ous places in the Eastern States, for a long time past, in significations quite different from its present mean- ing. Thus a newspaper correspondent writes from Solon, Me., to the effect that twenty or thirty years American English. 213 ago the phrase " let her blizzard " was common in that locality, meaning " let her go," as applied to the act of firing a gun or throwing a stone. Another, living in Perry County, Pa., has heard the word for many years as the equivalent of a drink — "let's take a blizzard." It is said also to have been in use in the same county in its present signification, as early as 1836, but to have become obsolete in this meaning, years ago. A well-informed friend at the West writes me as below : " This word is in common use in Texas, and has been for many years, to describe a very severe ' norther.' It has been stated to me on competent authority that the ther- mometer has been known to register from, say, 86° down to 2 6°, the change being effected within the space of six or seven hours ! This has always been popularly known as a blizzard. When the tempera- ture in the summer season would be lowered only say 20 , it was known only as a norther. I think the term has gradually crept northward, until its significance is generally understood west of the Mississippi." Bogus. — This word is older than the earliest date given by Bartlett, June 12, 1857; it was used in the Painesville (O.) Telegraph of July 6, 1827. Also the etymology which he gives (a corruption of Bor- ghese) is not certain. It is said (by the Augusta, Ga., Chronicle) to be from the name of one William 214 Our Common Speech. A. Bogus, "a Georgia land lottery commissioner, caught in rascality, an issuer of fraudulent land rights j " and it has been conjectured to be a variant of bagasse (sugar-cane refuse), or an abbreviation of tantrabogus, said to be old Vermont slang for any object of evil appearance. Boom — A semi-slang expression (which first appeared in the 1881 supplement to Worcester) descriptive of a sudden advance in popularity or in price. Said to be borrowed from the mining phrase- ology of the far West, where a process called " boom- ing" is sometimes adopted to clear off surface soil and reveal supposed mineral veins. An artificial reservoir is constructed near the summit of a moun- tain, which is first allowed to fill with water and is then suddenly opened, whereupon a terrific torrent rushes down the slope, carrying rocks, trees, earth and all, with resistless force. A newspaper writer says he has " seen gullies fifty, seventy-five, and in some places a hundred feet deep, and extending the whole length of the mountain," cut out by single booms. "The word booming," he adds, "has there- fore a very significant meaning, and is expressive as a word phrase, for it denotes an overwhelming, irresistible power and force." To buck agai?ist — To oppose violently. I sup- pose this verb to be of American invention. American English. 215 Canaille — Shorts, or low grades of flour ; so de- fined in the Worcester Supplement, where it is said to be common in Canada and New England. Casket — A kind of coffin. This first appeared in the Webster Supplement of 1879. Coal. Bartlett blunders fearfully in attempting to give the names of the different sizes of coal. His list is : 1 , Broken or furnace coal, being the largest lumps ; 2, Stove or range ; 3, Pea or nut ; 4, Egg ; 5, Coal dust. I believe the correct nomenclature is : 1, Furnace; 2, Egg; 3, Stove; 4, Chestnut; 5, Pea; 6, Buckwheat ; 7, Coal dust. Coral of lobster — Unimpregnated eggs ; first appeared (incorrectly defined) in the Webster Sup- plement. Dodger — A small hand-bill ; first defined in the Century Dictionary. Escalan — Twelve and a- half cents, a New Orleans term not in the dictionaries. Fair — An exhibition, not primarily for the pur- pose of sale. This very common American use of the word was not recognized by any dictionary in common use until the publication, in March, 1890, of the second volume of the Century. Long before that date, however, it had passed into very respect- able British use — see for instance the Westminster Review for October, 1881 — No. 230, p. 247. 2i 6 Our Common Speech. Fakir — First a magician, then a showman with a worthless exhibit, lastly a cheat. These applications of the term appear to be of American origin, as are the derivative fake (noun and verb) and the altered spelling faker. French — A term used in Maryland and Virginia for anything that is greatly disliked. " For instance," says a writer, " the tobacco gets the worm in it that destroys it ; they call in ' frenching.' And if the children have the measles very bad, it is 'French,' and the same with a bad case of small- pox — it is the 1 real French small-pox.' " Furore — An excitement ; first noticed in the Cen- tury. Bartlett overlooked it, though it appears in one of his citations, under the heading " Nick." Gripsack — A recently-invented and rather vulgar term for a satchel, chiefly heard, I believe, at the West. Handglass. Bartlett says handglasses are specta- cles. My impression is that the term generally denotes a small looking-glass. Highwines. I am not certain that this is an Ameri- can coinage, but I believe it appears in no dictionary except the Worcester Supplement. Institute — A convention. Farmers' institutes — meetings lasting two or three days, with lectures and discussions, are very common. American English. 217 Keet Bartlett says "Guinea keets " are Guinea fowls. I think the "keets" are Guinea eggs — so called at the West. See Milwaukee Republican- Sentinel, Dec. 7, 1882, (No. 12,551,) second page, second column. Listing — A method of planting corn ; see Cultivator & Country Gentleman, vol. 49, p. 187. Mugwump. Introduced into common use since Bartlett published. First defined in the Webster In- ternational of 1890. Mung news. Bartlett says this means false news. I have never heard the word ; but a writer in Black- wood's Edinburgh Magazine for October, 1877, says it is the preterite of the old English verb mingy to mix — whence mingle — and means, not false, but con- fused, mingled, mixed up. You must noty as the reverse of you may. I am in- clined to think this is an Americanism, as I judge that the English generally say " you may not " — in which, if so, they are certainly more logical than we. " You must " means that an obligation rests upon you ; therefore " you must not," ought to mean merely that there is no obligation. " You may," means that permission is granted, and therefore when permission is withheld and the action prohibited, the phrase ought to be " you may not," instead of the universal American practice of saying " you must not." 2i 8 Our Common Speech. Closely allied to this, is the incorrect use of can for may, where there is no question of ability — which seems to be rather more prevalent in this country than in England. A line on the face of our postal- cards formerly made the statement that "nothing but the address can be placed on this side." The possessor of the card can place there any number of words that there is room for, if he pleases. What is meant is, of course, that nothing but the address may be placed there ; that is, it is forbidden to place there anything else, under penalty of forfeiting the privilege of sending the card by mail. The English newspaper wrappers have a similar notice, correctly worded : " This wrapper may only be used for newspapers, or for such documents as are allowed to be sent at the book-rate." Ninepence — Twelve and a-half cents. Formerly used in New England and Virginia. Pit — The stone of a fruit. " Mostly confined to New York State," Bartlett says. I think the term is now common at the West, and used to some extent in the South, at least in Alabama. Railroad Nomenclature. Bartlett gives a list of eighteen objects pertaining to railroads, which have different names in the two countries ; but fails to note that the American " buffer " is the English " bumper," and the American " grade " the English " gradient." American English. 219 Round-up — An annual collection of cattle on the plains of the West, for branding and other purposes. Perhaps from Spanish rodear, to encompass. Sheeny. This means, Bartlett says, "a sharp fel- low." I think it is a cant term for a Jew, entirely ir- respective of his character. Smitch — A very small quantity of anything. This word is noted by a writer in Lippincott's Magazine for March, 1869, as peculiar to Carbon County, Pa. I have heard it in Albany. Solid-colored — All of the same color. This ex- pression, very common among breeders of Jersey cattle, and also used, I believe, in the dry-goods trade, may not be an Americanism perhaps, but no British dictionary defines it. Super. Bartlett says this is a contraction of " su- perintendent of factories, theatres," etc. What the " super " of a factory may be, if there is an official so called, I do not know ; but the " super," or, as he is commonly called, the " supe " at a theatre, is cer- tainly by no means a superintendent, but a super- numerary. Sweeny — A kind of muscular atrophy in horses. First defined in Webster International, though an old word. It may be found in the Cultivator of October, 1843, P- l66 > an d in Jennings' "Horse and his Diseases," copyrighted i860, p. 297. 220 Our Common Speech. Tenderfoot — A new arrival from civilization in the wild regions of the far West ; see Scribner's Monthly, vol. 1 8, p. 815. Noticed in Webster International. Trousers — Equivalent of pantalets ; see Harper's Magazine, May, 185 1, p. 864. Perhaps not an Americanism, but the dictionaries define trousers as a garment for males only. Whiskey. It is perhaps to Mr. Bartlett's credit that he does not seem to be very well " up " on the varieties of this popular beverage, as he remarks that "Bourbon whiskey is the best, being made of rye." As to the question of Bourbon's being the best, there may be differences of opinion ; our Scotch and Irish friends, to say nothing of others, would perhaps dis- sent from the lexicographer's judgment ; but as to Bourbon's being made of rye, we must all take excep- tion to that statement, the fact being, I believe, that Bourbon never contains more than one-third of rye, and seldom as much as that. To these genuine Americanisms may be added a few scientific or pseudo-scientific words, such as phonograph, photophone, audiphone and lysimeter. Telephone, as may not be generally known, is, like telegraph, much older than the apparatus that we now call by these terms ; the original telegraph was a semaphore, and the original American English. 221 telephone, I believe, a speaking trumpet. And if time permitted, and the game were worth the candle, a numerous list of curious names of places, of American invention, might be com- piled from the Post-Office Directory. Mr. Bartlett has done something at this, in his pref- ace ; but he failed to notice Why Not, Autumn Leaves, Bird-in-Hand and Youngwomanstown, Pa. ; Bogus, Fiddletown, Hay Fork, Port Wine and Yankee Jim's, Cal. ; Nola Chucky, Jim Ned, Mouse Tail, A. B. C. and U Bet, Term. ; Long Year and The Corner, N. Y. ; Hash Knife and Mud Creek, Texas; Star of the West, Sub Rosa and Gum Log, Ark. ; Non Intervention, Va. ; Quashquetown, Iowa ; Medybemps, Me. ; Rooster Rock, Oregon ; Look Out, Dak. ; Rab- bit Hash, Ky. ; Ty Ty, Geo. ; Zig, Mo. ; Skull Valley, Ariz. ; Greenhorn, Left Hand, Ni Wot and O. Z., Col. ; T. B., Md., and scores of other oddities that might be mentioned. It is a thousand pities that we have not preserved a greater number of the more euphonious geogra- phical names of the aborigines ; and it is to be sincerely hoped that as refinement and good taste become more general, we shall by degrees 222 Our Common Speech. weed out most of these rough-and-ready appellations. XII. Mr. John S. Farmer's work, " American- isms Old AND New," is a " foolscap quarto " of about 590 pages, "privately printed " in what is intended to be a very ornamental (but is not a very tasteful) style, elaborately bound, and sold at a high price to subscribers only, each copy being signed and numbered. It is unique in being the production, not only of an Englishman, but of an Englishman who seems never to have visited the United States, and whose ideas of our geography and history are of the vaguest description. He calls this country " the future mighty commonwealth of the southern seas" (p. ix.), counts Maine and Vermont among the original thirteen (p. 221), and names "Vir- ginia, North-Carolina, South-Carolina, Georgia " — these four only — as the Southern States (p. 506). Innumerable minor blunders are there- fore not surprising — such for example as the statement that " under the rigid Wall Street rules every transaction is an actual purchase American English. 223 and sale of actual stock; the broker who sells one hundred shares of Erie actually delivers to the purchaser the certificate of stock issued by the company " (p. 93). Elsewhere we read that the term bulldoze originally referred " to an association of negroes formed to insure, by vio- lent and unlawful means, the success of an election " (p. 100); that spelling bees originated in the Western States (p. 507) ; that bank bill is " the name by which Bank of England notes are generally known throughout the States ; " that bubby is " a pet name for a baby " (p. 91) ; that a freezer is a refrigerator (p. 254) ; that " previ- ous to 1878 greenbacks for amounts down to ten cents were current," and that " Green backers were those who, previous to the resumption of specie payment for the smaller amount just named, opposed the change " (p. 276) ; that hucklebeny is " a kind of blackberry " (p. 308) ; that jag is "a slang term for an umbrella" (p. 321); that " may-be is invariably used for perhaps " (p. 361) ; that " a cent piece" is "made of nickel" (p- 3^9) J that the Northwestern States are Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minne- sota, Iowa and Nebraska (p. 393) ; that poker is 224 Our Common Speech. " as universally played in America as is whist in England " (p. 429) ; that a sack coat is " a tweed cloth coat " (p. 468) ; that a sarcophagus is " a leaden coffin" (p. 471) ; and that a stateroom on a steamer is " the cabin" (p. 515). The book is in fact utterly useless as a source of informa- tion; no reliance can be placed on any state- ment made in its pages. Credit should never- theless be given to Mr. Farmer for his entire freedom from the insular superciliousness that one might naturally expect to find him combin- ing with his ignorance of the United States. He is studiously courteous as well as fair ; and he goes out of his way to remark (p. 48) that " American English, taking the people all round, is much purer than the vernacular of the mother country." On the whole, therefore, and considering the fund of amusement that his " portentous catch-guinea " (as the New York ,c^ , "J* »^* Post called the book on its appearance) is certain to afford them, Americans have every reason to be grateful to Mr. Farmer, and to wish him well Would that all our British critics possessed the same elementary qualification for discussing the peculiarities of the American language ! American English. 225 XIII. Col. Norton's "Political American- isms " contains some 350 entries — among which it is a little surprising to find boycott, " an adap- tation from the Irish Nationalists, with the same general meaning." An occasional slip — such as the statements that the term half-breed was " originally applied to certain Republicans of New- York who wavered in their party allegiance during a bitter contest over the U. S. senator- ship in 1881," and that " every Democratic newspaper has a cut of a * rooster ' in the act of crowing," which " is invariably printed at the head of a column announcing a party victory " — will be noted by the critical reader ; but the work is on the whole remarkably well done and likely to prove serviceable. It belongs of course to rather a different class from that of the pre- ceding treatises on Americanisms, and hardly calls for extended review. 15 226 Our Common Speech. BIBLIOGRAPHY. I. Books entirely Devoted to " Americanisms." i . A Vocabulary, or Collection of Words and Phrases which have been supposed to be peculiar to the United States, to which is prefixed an Essay on the Present State of the English Language in the United States. By John Pickering. Boston ; Cummings & Hilliard, 1816; 8vo. ; pp. 208. 2. Letter to the Hon. John Pickering, on the subject of his Vocabulary. By Noah Webster. Boston ; West & Richardson, 181 7 ; small 8vo. ; pp. 60. 3. Glossary of Supposed Americanisms, collected by Alfred L. Elwyn, M. D. Philadelphia; J. B. Lippincott & Co., 1859; i2mo. ; pp. 122. 4. Americanisms ; the English of the New World. By M. Schele de Vere, LL. D. New York ; Charles Scribner & Co., 1872; 8vo. ; pp. 686. 5. Dictionary of Americanisms ; a Glossary of Words and Phrases usually regarded as peculiar to the United States. By John Russell Bartlett. Fourth edition. Boston ; Little, Brown & Co., 1877 ; 8vo. ; pp. 814. American English. 227 Americanisms, Old and New, a Dictionary of Words, Phrases and Colloquialisms peculiar to the United States, British America, the West Indies, etc., etc., their Derivation, Meaning and Application, together with numerous Anecdotal, Historical, Explanatory and Folk-Lore Notes. Compiled and edited by John S. Farmer. London; Thos. Poulter & Sons, 1889; "foolscap 4to."; pp. 564. Political Americanisms ; a Glossary of Terms and Phrases current at different periods in American Politics. By Charles Ledyard Norton. New York; Longmans, Green & Co., 1890; i6mo. ; pp. 134. II. Chapters or Parts of Books. 1. John Witherspoon, D. D. Essays on American- isms, Perversions of Language in the United States, Cant Phrases, etc., in 4th vol. of his works, pub- lished in 8vo., Philadelphia, 1801. (The earliest work on American vulgarisms. Originally pub- lished as a series of essays, entitled " The Druid," which appeared in a periodical in 1761.) 2. Adiel Sherwood. Gazetteer of Georgia. Charles- ton, 1827; Philadelphia, 1829; Washington, 1837. Has glossary of slang and vulgar words used in the Southern States. 3. T. Romeyn Beck, M. D., LL. D. " Notes on Pick- ering's Vocabulary." Albany Institute Transac- tions, Vol. I., p. 25; Albany, N. Y., 1830. 228 Our Common Speech. 4. James Russell Lowell. Biglow Papers, 1848, 1864. Introductions to First and Second Series, and Glossary. 5. Charles Astor Bristed. " The English Language in America," in Cambridge Essays. London ; John W. Parker & Son, 1855. (Shows "rare" meat, and " corned " for drunk, to be expressions of English origin.) 6. W. C. Fowler, LL. D. English Grammar. New York; Harper & Bros., 1855, 8vo. ; pp. 119-129. Also i2mo., 1858; pp. 23-27. 7. George P. Marsh. Lectures on the English Lan- guage. Fourth edition; New York; Charles Scrib- ner's Sons, 1859. Lecture 30, "The English Language in America." 8. G. F. Graham. A Book about Words ; London ; Longmans, Green & Co., 1869 ; chap. 13, " Slang Words and Americanisms." 9. R. G White. Words and Their Uses ; New York ; Sheldon & Co., 1870; chap, 3, "British-English and American-English." Also, Every-day English ; Boston; Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1880; chap. 6, "American Speech." 10. Prof. W. D. Whitney. Language and the Study of Language, 5th edition ; New York ; Charles Scribner & Co., 1870 ; pp. 171-174. 11. G. C. Eggleston. A Man of Honor; New York; Orange Judd Co., 1873. (Illustrates various Vir- ginia provincialisms.) 12. A.J.Ellis. Early English Pronunciation ; London; Triibner& Co., 1874. Part 4, pp. i2i7-'3o. (In- American English. 229 eludes considerable notice of pronunciation used by American humorists.) 13. G. A. Barringer. "Etude sur r Anglais parte aux Etats Unis {La Langue Americaine)," in Actes de la Societd Philologique de Paris, March, 1874. (Largely transferred from De Vere.) 14. Gilbert M. Tucker. "American English." Al- bany Institute Transactions, Vol. X. p. 334; Al- bany, N. Y., 1883. 15. Rev. Dr. Samuel Fallows. Synonyms and Anto- nyms; New York; F. H. Revell, 1886 ; pp. 294- 342. " Dictionary of Americanisms, Briticisms, etc." 16. R. O. Williams. Our Dictionaries; New York; Henry Holt & Co., 1890; pp. 71-128. 17. Brander Matthews. Americanisms and Briti- cisms; New York; Harper & Bros., 1892; pp. 1-59. 18. Various Encyclopedias — the Americana, Appleton's, Chambers', Library of Universal Knowledge, etc. Article, "Americanisms." 19. Worcester's Dictionary, ed. 1881, p. /. III. Articles in British Periodicals. [The figures at the left of the decimal point indicate the volume ; those at the right, the page.] Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine: 89.421; 102.399 (** Inroads upon English.") Chambers' Journal : Dec. 20, 1873, P- 801 ; March 31, 230 Our Common Speech. 1875, p. 171 ("American Nicknames"); Sept. 25, 1875, P- 609; Jan. 30, 1886, p. 70. Cornhill Magazine : 58.363. Eclectic Review: (N. S.) 13.356 — April, 1820 (Re- view of Pickering). Illustrated London News : 82.87 (G. A. Sala, Review of Tucker in North-American Review); 84.339 (Sala, Review of Tucker in Albany Institute Transactions); 84.543 (Sala, Reply to Smalley in N. Y. Tribune). Knowledge: 6.319; 8. 171; 9.159, 178, 196, 249, 275, 332, 352 ; 10.14, 38, 41, 66, 113, 183, 230, 274 j 11.28, 82, 129, 183, 223. Leisure Hour: 26.110; 36.827. Longmans' Magazine: 1.80 ("Some Points in Ameri- can Speech and Customs," by E. A. Freeman). Nineteenth Century, September, 1880. (" English, Rational and Irrational," by Fitzedward Hall.) Penny Magazine: July 21, 1838, p. 278. (Severe on American Speech.) Quarterly Review : 10.528. Saturday Review : 60.709 (Review of " Political Amer- icanisms " in Mag. of Am. Hist); 62.142; 62.190. Spectator : 62.493 (Review of Farmer). Westminster Review: 130.35 (no dialects in United States); No. 234, Oct., 1882, p. 279, Scott edition (admits that the English call now " nao "). American English. 231 IV. Articles in American Periodicals. Analectic Magazine : 3.404. (Sarcastic [?] defense of American freedom of speech ; recommends inven- tion of a new language.) Apple-tons' Journal: (N. S.) 11.315. ("English and American-English," by Richard A. Proctor, from Gentleman's Magazine — copied also, in part, in N. Y. Tribune, Aug. 14, 1881.) Atlantic Monthly: 6.667; 4°- 2 33; 41-495 (R« G. White, Review of Bartlett); 41.656 (do.); 4297 (do.); 42.342 (do.); 42.619 (do.); 42.643 (Reply to White); 43.88 (White on Bartlett); 43.109 (freight train and spool) ; 43.379 (White on Bartlett) ; 43.656 (do.) ; 44-654 (White, " Assorted Americanisms ") ; 45.428 (Reply to White) ; 45.669 (White, " British Americanisms ") ; 47.697 (White, supplementary to Bartlett articles); 48.849; 52.792; 53.286; 53.290; 55-593 (R- A. Proctor, " The Misused H of Eng- land ") ; 55.856 (right away). Buffalo Commercial Advertiser: Sept. 10-11, 1888. (Article on pronunciation, from Critic.) Canadian Monthly : 1.87. (Review of De Vere ) Century: 47(25).848 ("Wild Flowers of English Speech in America," by Edward Eggleston) ; 48- (26)^67 (" Folk Speech in America," by Edward Eggleston). Chicago News: March 10, 1890. (London Letter from Eugene Field.) Critic: 13.97, 104, 115,263. 232 Our Common Speech. Forum : 2. 11 7. (" Americanisms in England," by A. C. Coxe.) Galaxy: 21.521 (White, Pronunciation); 24.376 (White on Bartlett); 24.681 (do.). Harper's Monthly : 66.66$ (Sussex expressions) ; 83.215 (Brander Matthews, Briticisms and Ameri- canisms) ; 85.277 (Matthews, American spelling) ; 90.252 (Shakspeare's Americanisms). Hours at Home: 5.361 (Review of " Queen's English," by F. W. Shelton). International Review : 8.472 (" English Language in America," by Lounsbury) ; 8.596 (do.). Lakeside Monthly : 3.154. Lippincott's Magazine: 3.310 (Provincialisms, by Henry Reeves) ; 4.345 ; 5.545 (by N. S. Dodge) ; 19.513; 31.378 (Review of Freeman in Longmans'), 44.121 (mugwump). Literary World: 14.364. Littell's Living Age : 20.79 (Review of Bartlett, from Boston Advertiser) ; 95.218 ("Inroads upon English," from Blackwood, as above) ; 100.636 (Review of Zincke's " Last Winter in the United States," from Spectator) ; 114.446; 120.240 ("United States English," from Chambers' Journal); 132.821 (from Leisure Hour) ; 155.483 (Freeman's Longmans' article) ; 179.298 (The Great American Language, from Cornhill Magazine). Magazine of American History: 12.564 (C. L. Norton, Political Americanisms); 13.98 (do.); 13.- 199 (do.) ; 13.295 (do.) ; 13.394^0.) ; 13.495 (do.) ; 13.599 (comments on foregoing). American English. 133 Nation: 5.42856.392; 11.56 (Pennsylvania provincial- isms) ; 11.72 (do.); 14.28 (Savage Review of De Vere); 14.45 (Review of Hoosier Schoolmaster); 16.148 (North Carolina provincialisms) ; 16.183 (do.); 17.113 (Words from Indian languages); 18.380 (Review of Barringer) ; 21.8 (Penn. pro.); 26.171 (Review of Bartlett) ; 26.243 (Review of Bartlett) ; 32.184 (blizzard) ; 32.208 (do.) ; 32.220 (do.) ; 32.260 (do.); 49.15 (Review of Farmer). National Quarterly Review : 2.230 (Review of Pickering and Bartlett). New England Magazine : 6.583 (shows New England provincialisms to be old English). New Englander : (N. S.) 3.429. (No. 157, July, 1880.) New York Tribune: Aug. 14, 188 1 (Proctor) ; May 17, 1884 (G. W. Smalley on Sala on Tucker) ; Sept. 29, 1894 (Smalley). North American Review: 3.355 (Review of Picker- ing) ; 69.94 (Review of Bartlett) ; 91.507 (Review of Marsh's Lectures) ; 136.55 (Tucker, American English); 141.431 ("Slang in America," by Walt Whitman) ; 146.709 (lagniappe and brottus) ; 147.102 (brottus); 147.348 (brottus, buckra, goober); 147.475 (lagniappe and brottus). Putnam's Monthly: 16.519 ("The American Lan- guage," by W. W. Crane). Rural New Yorker : 49.231 (North Carolina provin- cialisms). Scribner's Monthly : 3.379 (Review of De Vere). Southern Literary Messenger: 2.1 10; 14.623 (Re- view of Bartlett). 234 Our Common Speech. Southern Review : (N. S.) 9.290 and 9.529 (" Ameri- canisms, a Study of Words and Manners " ; an elaborate essay, in review of Bartlett's and Web- ster's dictionaries, and various other books ; unduly severe upon American English ; author evidently prejudiced). *#* For other references, see Dialect Notes (Am. Dialect Society, Edward S. Sheldon, secretary, Cambridge, Mass.,) Part I. p. 13, Part II. p. 80, Part V. p. 254. %* The author will be greatly obliged for additions or cor- rections to this list, or to any other part of the book. Instances of the customary use in Great Britain of " American " peculiar- ities of speech will be especially welcome. Please address at Albany, N. Y. INDEX. Abacus, 138. Abet, 61. Abominable, 73. Accomplice, 61. Account, 204. Addicted, 59. Admiration, 35. Aggravate, 17, 137. A good few, 187. Airy, 204. Alley, 204. All-fired, 204. Allow, 158. Allspice, 204. Almond, 164. Ambassador, 169. American, 140. Ampersand, 204. Ancestor, 169. Animadvert, 67. Animosity, 61. Apology, 72. Apparent, 38. Appointable, 204. Apt, 59. Arbor, 169. Armor, 169. Arrant, 68. Artful, 70. Assist, 175. Audacious, 73. Bachelor, 169. Back out, 204. Backward, 205. Bade, 185. Baggage, 205. Baiting, 205. Balk, 205. Bang up, 205. Barbarian, 48. Barefaced, 73. Bargain, 174. Bark, 205. Base, 50. Beast, 51, 177. Beef, 205. Being saved, renewed, offered, 80. Beldame, 7^. Beliked, 205. Belongings, 205. Bilberry, 205. Bilk, 205. Bindweed, 205. Bits and bridles, 82. Blackguard, 52. Blaze, 205. Blizzard, 211. Blocks, 159. Blue-blooded, 205. Bluefish, 205. Bode, 67. Bogus, 213. 2 3 6 Index. Boohoo, 205. Boom, 214. Boor, 47. Bootjack, 8, 9. Bowling alley, 205. Boycott, 225. Brat, 53. Bright, 206. Brought, for put, 80. Brown, 114. Brummagen, 206. Buck, 137. Buck against, 214. Bucket, 158. Bully, 206. Bumper, 173. Bushwhacking, 72. Busybody, 65. By-and-by, 75. By and large, 206. By-product, 140. By way of, 181. Caboose, 206. Caitiff, 49. Calculate, 158. Can, for may, 218 Canaille, 215. Careless, 60. Carouse, 58. Carry on, 206. Casket, 215. Casuistry, 72. Catastrophe, 66. Cattle, 34. Caucus, 175. Censure, 67. Centenary, 133, 1 Chance, 206. Chautauqua, 167. Cheat, 70. Check, 168. Chess, 206. 37- Chilling, 176. Chipper, 206. Chronic, 66. Churl, 47. Cider, 168. Circumstance, 26, 137. Claim, 134, 158. Clever, 206. Color, 170. Combine, 8. Conceit, 71. Condign, 23. Connection, 206. Conspire, 61. Cookey, 206. Cook stove, 8, 9. Coral of lobster, 215. Counterfeit, 41. Covet, 60. Cradle scythe, 207. Criticize, 67. Curmudgeon, 118. Defalcation, 70. Demagogue, "J2>- Demean, 26, 133, 137. Denounce, 61. Despot, 56. Directly, for directly after, 189. Disannul, 13. Dissever, 13. Dividend, 25. Docks, 159. Dodger, 215. Dogma, 56. Draft, 168. Dunce, 55. Durst, 185. Egregious, 67. Embezzle, 70. Emissary, 72. Emperor, 169. Index. m Endorse, 29. Enjoin, 18. Epithet, 67. Equivocate, 41. Error, 169. Escalan, 159, 215. Esoteric, exoteric, 118. Evening, 158. Excise, 114. Executive session, 22. Expect, 158. Exterior, 169. Fad, 173. Fair, 124, 215. Fakir, 216. Famous, 174. Fanatic, 71. Favor, 169. Ferret, 114. Firedogs, 207. Flavor, 169. French, 216. Fun, 35. Furore, 216. Fussy, 72. Gasometer, 15. Give ear, 149. Go-cart, 8. Good form, 175. Gossip, 71. Got, 182. Governor, 169. Gripsack, 216. Grub Street, 114. Half-breed, 225. Handglass, 216. Harbor, 169. Harlot, 48. Have words, 62. Heathen, 47. Helpmeet, 13, 137. Highwines, 216. Homely, 66. Honor, 169. Hostler, 165. Hulking, 207. Humor, 170. Hunk, 207. Hydropathy, 15. Hypocrite, 40. Idiot, 48. Immediately, as soon as, Imp, 53. Impertinent, 23. Incivility, 47. Indifference, 60. Indolence, 60. Inferior, 169. Inflame, 61. Injuncted, 20. Instigate, 61. Institute, 216. Intimate, 175. Inveterate, 66. Jack at a pinch, 207. Jail, gaol, 168. Jesuitical, 73. Jew, to, 73. Jug, 175- Keet, 217. Kern, 47. Knave, 51. Knocked up, 174. Labor, 169. Laid, for lain, Legend, 44. Lesser, 13. Levy, 159. Lewd, 50. :8 7 . 2 3 8 Index. Lexicographer, 115. Liable, 27. Libertine, 72. Listing, 217. Love, 58. Manageress, 15. Mean, 50. Meddlesome, 64. Meet in, 181. Menial, 53. Merchant, 27. Metaphor, 169. Minion, 53. Miscreant, 72. Mob, 50. Molasses, 124. Monopoly, 28. Mung news, 217. Must not, 217. Navvy, 173. Neighbor, 169. Nephew, 165. Network, 114. Ninepence, 159, 218. Notorious, 72. Numerous, 12. Obsequious, 72. Odor, 169. Officious, 64. Ominous, 67. Ostensible, 38. Ought, 11. Outing, 173. Outlandish, 48. Pagan, 47. Paramour, 58. Parlor, 168, 169. Pastern, 114. Patriot, 113. Patron, 113. Peas, 168. Pedagogue, 55. Pedant, 55. Pension, pensioner, 1 13. Perfect, 165. Phantomnation, 127. Picked, 173. Piers, 159. Pink, 114. Pitch in, 207. Pitiful, 27- Plant, 175. Plausible, 38. Plight, 66. Plow, 168, 170. Poetess, 14. Pragmatical, 65. Predicament, 60. Preposterous, 16. Presage, 67. Presently, 74. Pretend, pretender, 42. Prevent, 68. Profane, 71. Progenitor, 169. Program, 168. Prone, 59. Proser, 72. Protective tariff, 24. Provoke, 61. Puritan, 114. Queen's English, 152. Randomly, 173. Reckon, 158. Rely, reliance, reliable, 5, 6. Repented himself, 79. Resent, 62. Restive, 22. Retaliate, 62. Riding, 177. Index. 2 39 Rife, 73- Right, rights, 207. Ringleader, 72. Rival, 69. Rode, for ridden, 187. Rot, 175. Round up, 219. Safe, 207. Sauce, 207. Savage, 47. Savior, 169. Schedule, 165. Senator, 169. Sheeny, 219. Shilling, 159. Shinny, 207. Shoe-horn, 8, 9. Show, 168. Sick, ill, 176. Silly, 73. Single (aTrAows), 81. Slips, 159. Sliver, 164. Smitch, 219. Solid-colored, 219. Something, 181. Span, 207. Specious, 38. Square, 208. Squares, 159. Stand, 207. Standpoint, 8. Starvation, 5. Starved, 175. Stepmother, 104. Stock, 207. Stop, 175, 207. Story, 168. Successor, 169. Sumptuary, 24. Super, 219. Superior, 169. Sustain, 27. Sweeny, 124, 219. Talented, 6. Tautology, 92. Temperance, 24. Tenderfoot, 220. Theory, 56. These kind, 184. Tidy, 175. Tinsel, 41. Tiresome, 175. Too thin, 208. Tophet, 209. Tory, 113. Totalling, totting, 173. Touch and go, 209. Traduce, 67. Traffic, 174. Trait, 164. Tramp, 209. Transpire, 34. Trap, 175. Trousers, 220. Tub, 175. Tund, 173. Tyrant, 56. Uncouth, 48. Unravel, 13. Usury, 70. Vagabond, 48. Valor, 170. Vapor, 169. Varlet, 52. Vial, 165. Villain, 46. Virago, 73. Voluble, 71. Vulgar, 49. 240 Index. Wagon, 168. Washtub, 8, 9. Well, 209. Wharves, 159. Whig, 114. Willful, 73. Wire, 175. Wizard, 56. Wrangle, 61. Young person, 176. Wffi&M 14 DAY USE TO DESK FROM WHICH BORROWED LOAN DEPT. This book is due on the last date stamped below, ot on the date to which renewed. Renewed books are subject to immediate recall. liW 62 J F QeAsh"'* MAY29JM T^ECEiVi^D ft/WW^sM^ M 1 1-65-9 KM LD 2lA-50m-3,*62 (C7097sl0)476B General Library University of California Berkeley '(/7 ft A^ y C> y 9* ^^■j^.-