Part 12

An Englishman always calls russet, yellow or tan shoes /brown/ shoes (or, if they cover the ankle, /boots/). He calls a pocketbook a /purse/, and gives the name of /pocketbook/ to what we call a /memorandum-book/. His walking-stick is always a /stick/, never a /cane/. By /cord/ he means something strong, almost what we call /twine/; a thin cord he always calls a /string/; his /twine/ is the lightest sort of /string/. When he applies the adjective /homely/ to a woman he means that she is simple and home-loving, not necessarily that she is plain. He uses /dessert/, not to indicate the whole last course at dinner, but to designate the fruit only; the rest is /ices/ or /sweets/. He uses /vest/, not in place of /waistcoat/, but in place of /undershirt/. Similarly, he applies /pants/, not to his trousers, but to his drawers. An Englishman who inhabits bachelor quarters is said to live in /chambers/; if he has a flat he calls it a /flat/, and not an /apartment/;[11] /flat-houses/ are often /mansions/. The janitor or superintendent thereof is a /care-taker/. The scoundrels who snoop around in search of divorce evidence are not /private detectives/, but /private enquiry agents/. [Pg111]

The Englishman is naturally unfamiliar with baseball, and in consequence his language is bare of the countless phrases and metaphors that it has supplied to American. Many of these phrases and metaphors are in daily use among us, for example, /fan/, /rooter/, /bleachers/, /batting-average/, /double-header/, /pennant-winner/, /gate-money/, /busher/, /minor-leaguer/, /glass-arm/, /to strike out/, /to foul/, /to be shut out/, /to coach/, /to play ball/, /on the bench/, /on to his curves/ and /three strikes and out/. The national game of draw-poker has also greatly enriched American with terms that are either quite unknown to the Englishman, or known to him only as somewhat dubious Americanisms, among them /cold-deck/, /kitty/, /full-house/, /divvy/, /a card up his sleeve/, /three-of-a-kind/, /to ante up/, /to pony up/, /to hold out/, /to cash in/, /to go it one better/, /to chip in/ and /for keeps/. But the Englishman uses many more racing terms and metaphors than we do, and he has got a good many phrases from other games, particularly cricket. The word /cricket/ itself has a definite figurative meaning. It indicates, in general, good sportsmanship. To take unfair advantage of an opponent is not /cricket/. The sport of boating, so popular on the Thames, has also given colloquial English some familiar terms, almost unknown in the United States, /e. g./, /punt/ and /weir/. Contrariwise, /pungy/, /batteau/ and /scow/ are unheard of in England, and /canoe/ is not long emerged from the estate of an Americanism.[12] The game known as /ten-pins/ in America is called /nine-pins/ in England, and once had that name over here. The Puritans forbade it, and its devotees changed its name in order to evade the prohibition.[13] Finally, there is /soccer/, a form of football quite unknown in the United States. What we call simply football is /Rugby/ or /Rugger/ to the Englishman. The word /soccer/ is derived from /association/; the rules of the game were [Pg112] established by the London Football Association. /Soccer/ is one of the relatively few English experiments in ellipsis. Another is to be found in /Bakerloo/, the name of one of the London underground lines, from /Baker-street/ and /Waterloo/, its termini.

The English have an ecclesiastical vocabulary with which we are almost unacquainted, and it is in daily use, for the church bulks large in public affairs over there. Such terms as /vicar/, /canon/, /verger/, /prebendary/, /primate/, /curate/, /non-conformist/, /dissenter/, /convocation/, /minster/, /chapter/, /crypt/, /living/, /presentation/, /glebe/, /benefice/, /locum tenens/, /suffragan/, /almoner/, /dean/ and /pluralist/ are to be met with in the English newspapers constantly, but on this side of the water they are seldom encountered. Nor do we hear much of /matins/, /lauds/, /lay-readers/, /ritualism/ and the /liturgy/. The English use of /holy orders/ is also strange to us. They do not say that a young man is /studying for the ministry/, but that he is /reading for holy orders/. They do not say that he is /ordained/, but that he /takes orders/. Save he be in the United Free Church of Scotland, he is never a /minister/; save he be a nonconformist, he is never a /pastor/; a clergyman of the Establishment is always either a /rector/, a /vicar/ or a /curate/, and colloquially a /parson/.

In American /chapel/ simply means a small church, usually the branch of some larger one; in English it has the special sense of a place of worship unconnected with the establishment. Though three-fourths of the people of Ireland are Catholics (in Munster and Connaught, more than nine-tenths), and the Protestant Church of Ireland has been disestablished since 1871, a Catholic place of worship in the country is still a /chapel/ and not a /church/.[14] So is a Methodist wailing-place in England, however large it may be, though now and then /tabernacle/ is substituted. In the same way the English Catholics sometimes vary /chapel/ with /oratory/, as in /Brompton Oratory/. A Methodist, in Great [Pg113] Britain, is not a /Methodist/, but a /Wesleyan/. Contrariwise, what the English call simply a /churchman/ is an /Episcopalian/ in the United States, what they call the /Church/ (always capitalized!) is the /Protestant Episcopal/ Church,[15] what they call a /Roman Catholic/ is simply a /Catholic/, and what they call a /Jew/ is usually softened (if he happens to be an advertiser) to a /Hebrew/. The English Jews have no such idiotic fear of the plain name as that which afflicts the more pushing and obnoxious of the race in America.[16] "News of /Jewry/" is a common head-line in the /London Daily Telegraph/, which is owned by Lord Burnham, a Jew, and has had many Jews on its staff, including Judah P. Benjamin, the American. The American language, of course, knows nothing of /dissenters/. Nor of such gladiators of dissent as the /Plymouth Brethren/, nor of the /nonconformist conscience/, though the United States suffers from it even more damnably than England. The English, to make it even, get on without /circuit-riders/, /holy-rollers/, /Dunkards/, /Seventh Day Adventists/ and other such American /ferae naturae/, and are born, live, die and go to heaven without the aid of either the /uplift/ or the /chautauqua/.

In music the English cling to an archaic and unintelligible nomenclature, long since abandoned in America. Thus they call a double whole note a /breve/, a whole note a /semibreve/, a half note a /minim/, a quarter note a /crotchet/, an eighth note a /quaver/, a sixteenth note a /semi-quaver/, a thirty-second note a /demisemiquaver/, and a sixty-fourth note a /hemidemisemiquaver/, or /semidemisemiquaver/. If, by any chance, an English musician should write a one-hundred-and- twenty-eighth note he probably wouldn't know what to call it. This clumsy terminology goes back to the days of plain chant, with its /longa/, /brevis/, /semi-brevis/, /minima/ and /semiminima/. The French and Italians cling to a system almost as confusing, but the Germans use /ganze/, /halbe/, /viertel/, [Pg114] /achtel/, etc. I have been unable to discover the beginnings of the American system, but it would seem to be borrowed from the German. Since the earliest times the majority of music teachers in the United States have been Germans, and most of the rest have had German training.

In the same way the English hold fast to a clumsy and inaccurate method of designating the sizes of printers' types. In America the simple point system makes the business easy; a line of /14-point/ type occupies exactly the vertical space of two lines of /7-point/. But the English still indicate differences in size by such arbitrary and confusing names as /brilliant/, /diamond/, /small pearl/, /pearl/, /ruby/, /ruby-nonpareil/, /nonpareil/, /minion-nonpareil/, /emerald/, /minion/, /brevier/, /bourgeois/, /long primer/, /small pica/, /pica/, /English/, /great primer/ and /double pica/. They also cling to a fossil system of numerals in stating ages. Thus, an Englishman will say that he is /seven-and-forty/, not that he is /forty-seven/. This is probably a direct survival, preserved by more than a thousand years of English conservatism, of the Anglo-Saxon /seofan-and-feowertig/. He will also say that he weighs eleven /stone/ instead of 154 pounds. A /stone/ is 14 pounds, and it is always used in stating the heft of a man. Finally, he employs such designations of time as /fortnight/ and /twelvemonth/ a great deal more than we do, and has certain special terms of which we know nothing, for example, /quarter-day/, /bank holiday/, /long vacation/, /Lady Day/ and /Michaelmas/. /Per contra/, he knows nothing whatever of our /Thanksgiving/, /Arbor/, /Labor/ and /Decoration Days/, or of /legal holidays/, or of /Yom Kippur/.

In English usage, to proceed, the word /directly/ is always used to signify /immediately/; in American a contingency gets into it, and it may mean no more than /soon/. In England /quite/ means "completely, wholly, entirely, altogether, to the utmost extent, nothing short of, in the fullest sense, positively, absolutely"; in America it is conditional, and means only nearly, approximately, substantially, as in "he sings /quite/ well." An Englishman does not say "I will pay you /up/" for an injury, but "I will pay you /back/." He doesn't look /up/ a definition in a dictionary; he looks it /out/. He doesn't say, being ill, "I am /getting/ on well," but [Pg115] "I am /going/ on well." He doesn't use the American "different /from/" or "different /than/"; he uses "different /to/." He never adds the pronoun in such locutions as "it hurts /me/," but says simply "it hurts." He never "catches /up with you/" on the street; he "catches /you up/." He never says "are you through?" but "have you finished?" He never uses /to notify/ as a transitive verb; an official act may be /notified/, but not a person. He never uses /gotten/ as the perfect participle of /get/; he always uses plain /got/.[17] An English servant never washes the /dishes/; she always washes the /dinner/ or /tea things/. She doesn't /live out/, but /goes into service/. She smashes, not the /mirror/, but the /looking-glass/. Her beau is not her /fellow/, but her /young man/. She does not /keep company/ with him but /walks out/ with him.

That an Englishman always calls out "/I/ say!", and not simply "say!" when he desires to attract a friend's attention or register a protestation of incredulity--this perhaps is too familiar to need notice. His "/hear, hear!/" and "/oh, oh!/" are also well known. He is much less prodigal with /good-bye/ than the American; he uses /good-day/ and /good-afternoon/ far more often. A shop-assistant would never say /good-bye/ to a customer. To an Englishman it would have a subtly offensive smack; /good-afternoon/ would be more respectful. Another word that makes him flinch is /dirt/. He never uses it, as we do, to describe the soil in the garden; he always says /earth/. Various very common American phrases are quite unknown to him, for example, /over his signature/, /on time/ and /planted to corn/. The first-named he never uses, and he has no equivalent for it; an Englishman who issues a signed statement simply makes it /in writing/. He knows nothing of our common terms of disparagement, such as /kike/, /wop/, /yap/ and /rube/. His pet-name for a tiller of the soil is not /Rube/ or /Cy/, but /Hodge/. When he goes gunning he does not call it /hunting/, but /shooting/; /hunting/ is reserved for the chase of the fox.

An intelligent Englishwoman, coming to America to live, told me that the two things which most impeded her first communications with untravelled Americans, even above the gross differences [Pg116] between England and American pronunciation and intonation, were the complete absence of the general utility adjective /jolly/ from the American vocabulary, and the puzzling omnipresence and versatility of the American verb /to fix/. In English colloquial usage /jolly/ means almost anything; it intensifies all other adjectives, even including /miserable/ and /homesick/. An Englishman is /jolly/ tired, /jolly/ hungry or /jolly well/ tired; his wife is /jolly/ sensible; his dog is /jolly/ keen; the prices he pays for things are /jolly dear/ (never /steep/ or /stiff/ or /high/: all Americanisms). But he has no noun to match the American /proposition/, meaning proposal, business, affair, case, consideration, plan, theory, solution and what not: only the German /zug/ can be ranged beside it.[18] And he has no verb in such wide practise as /to fix/. In his speech it means only to make fast or to determine. In American it may mean to repair, as in "the plumber /fixed/ the pipe"; to dress, as in "Mary /fixed/ her hair"; to prepare, as in "the cook is /fixing/ the gravy"; to bribe, as in "the judge was /fixed/"; to settle, as in "the quarrel was /fixed/ up"; to heal, as in "the doctor /fixed/ his boil"; to finish, as in "Murphy /fixed/ Sweeney in the third round"; to be well-to-do, as in "John is well-/fixed/"; to arrange, as in "I /fixed/ up the quarrel"; to be drunk, as in "the whiskey /fixed/ him"; to punish, as in "I'll /fix/ him"; and to correct, as in "he /fixed/ my bad Latin." Moreover, it is used in all its English senses. An Englishman never goes to a dentist to have his teeth /fixed/. He does not /fix/ the fire; he /makes it up/, or /mends/ it. He is never /well-fixed/, either in money or by liquor.[19]

The English use /quite/ a great deal more than we do, and, as we have seen, in a different sense. /Quite rich/, in American, [Pg117] means tolerably rich, richer than most; /quite so/, in English, is identical in meaning with /exactly so/. In American /just/ is almost equivalent to the English /quite/, as in /just lovely/. Thornton shows that this use of /just/ goes back to 1794. The word is also used in place of /exactly/ in other ways, as in /just in time/, /just how many/ and /just what do you mean?/

§ 3

/Honorifics/--Among the honorifics and euphemisms in everyday use one finds many notable divergences between the two languages. On the one hand the English are almost as diligent as the Germans in bestowing titles of honor upon their men of mark, and on the other hand they are very careful to withhold such titles from men who do not legally bear them. In America every practitioner of any branch of the healing art, even a chiropodist or an osteopath, is a doctor /ipso facto/, but in England, as we have seen, a good many surgeons lack the title and it is not common in the lesser ranks. Even graduate physicians may not have it, but here there is a yielding of the usual meticulous exactness, and it is customary to address a physician in the second person as /Doctor/, though his card may show that he is only /Medicinae Baccalaureus/, a degree quite unknown in America. Thus an Englishman, when he is ill, always sends for the /doctor/, as we do. But a surgeon is usually plain /Mr./[20] An English veterinarian or dentist or druggist or masseur is never /Dr./

Nor /Professor/. In all save a few large cities of America every male pedagogue is a professor, and so is every band leader, dancing master and medical consultant. But in England the title is very rigidly restricted to men who hold chairs in the universities, a necessarily small body. Even here a superior title [Pg118] always takes precedence. Thus, it used to be /Professor/ Almroth Wright, but now it is always /Sir/ Almroth Wright. Huxley was always called /Professor/ Huxley until he was appointed to the Privy Council. This appointment gave him the right to have /Right Honourable/ put before his name, and thereafter it was customary to call him simply /Mr./ Huxley, with the /Right Honourable/, so to speak, floating in the air. The combination, to an Englishman, was more flattering than /Professor/, for the English always esteem political dignities far more than the dignities of learning. This explains, perhaps, why their universities distribute so few honorary degrees. In the United States every respectable Protestant clergyman is a D.D., and it is almost impossible for a man to get into the papers without becoming an LL.D.,[21] but in England such honors are granted only grudgingly. So with military titles. To promote a war veteran from sergeant to colonel by acclamation, as is often done in the United States, is unknown over there. The English have nothing equivalent to the gaudy tin soldiers of our governors' staffs, nor to the bespangled colonels and generals of the Knights Templar and Patriarchs Militant, nor to the nondescript captains and majors of our country towns. An English railroad conductor (/railway guard/) is never /Captain/, as he always is in the United States. Nor are military titles used by the police. Nor is it the custom to make every newspaper editor a colonel, as is done south of the Potomac. Nor is an attorney-general or postmaster-general called /General/. Nor are the glories of public office, after they have officially come to an end, embalmed in such clumsy quasi-titles as /ex-United States Senator/, /ex-Judge of the Circuit Court of Appeals/, /ex-Federal Trade Commissioner/ and /former Chief of the Fire Department/.

But perhaps the greatest difference between English and American usage is presented by /the Honorable/. In the United States the title is applied loosely to all public officials of apparent respectability, from senators and ambassadors to the mayors of [Pg119] fifth-rate cities and the members of state legislatures, and with some show of official sanction to many of them, especially congressmen. But it is questionable whether this application has any actual legal standing, save perhaps in the case of certain judges. Even the President of the United States, by law, is not /the Honorable/, but simply /the President/. In the First Congress the matter of his title was exhaustively debated; some members wanted to call him /the Honorable/ and others proposed /His Excellency/ and even /His Highness/. But the two Houses finally decided that it was "not proper to annex any style or title other than that expressed by the Constitution." Congressmen themselves are not /Honorables/. True enough, the /Congressional Record/, in printing a set speech, calls it "Speech of /Hon./ John Jones" (without the /the/ before the /Hon./--a characteristic Americanism), but in reporting the ordinary remarks of a member it always calls him plain /Mr./ Nevertheless, a country congressman would be offended if his partisans, in announcing his appearance on the stump, did not prefix /Hon./ to his name. So would a state senator. So would a mayor or governor. I have seen the sergeant-at-arms of the United States Senate referred to as /Hon./ in the records of that body.[22] More, the prefix is actually usurped by the Superintendent of State Prisons of New York.[23]

In England the thing is more carefully ordered, and bogus /Hons./ are unknown. The prefix is applied to both sexes and belongs by law, /inter alia/, to all present or past maids of honor, to all justices of the High Court during their terms of office, to the Scotch Lords of Session, to the sons and daughters of viscounts and barons, to the younger sons and all daughters of earls, and to the members of the legislative and executive councils of the colonies. But /not/ to members of Parliament, though each is, in debate, an /hon. gentleman/. Even a member of the cabinet is not an /Hon./, though he is a /Right Hon./ by virtue of membership in the Privy Council, of which the Cabinet is legally merely a committee. This last honorific belongs, not only to [Pg120] privy councillors, but also to all peers lower than marquesses (those above are /Most Hon./), to Lord Mayors during their terms of office, to the Lord Advocate and to the Lord Provosts of Edinburgh and Glasgow. Moreover, a peeress whose husband is a /Right Hon./ is a /Right Hon./ herself.

The British colonies follow the jealous usage of the mother-country. Even in Canada the lawless American example is not imitated. I have before me a "Table of Titles to be Used in Canada," laid down by royal warrant, which lists those who are /Hons./ and those who are not /Hons./ in the utmost detail. Only privy councillors of Canada (not to be confused with imperial privy councillors) are permitted to retain the prefix after going out of office, though ancients who were legislative councillors at the time of the union, July 1, 1867, may still use it by a sort of courtesy, and former speakers of the Dominion Senate and House of Commons and various retired judges may do so on application to the King, countersigned by the governor-general. The following are lawfully /the Hon./, but only during their tenure of office: the solicitor-general, the speaker of the House of Commons, the presidents and speakers of the provincial legislatures, members of the executive councils of the provinces, the chief justice, the judges of the Supreme and Exchequer Courts, the judges of the Supreme Courts of Ontario, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, British Columbia, Prince Edward Island, Saskatchewan and Alberta, the judges of the Courts of Appeal of Manitoba and British Columbia, the Chancery Court of Prince Edward Island, and the Circuit Court of Montreal--these, and no more. A lieutenant-governor of a province is not /the Hon./, but /His Honor/. The governor-general is /His Excellency/, and so is his wife, but in practise they usually have superior honorifics, and do not forget to demand their use.