Part 13

But though an Englishman, and, following him, a colonial, is thus very careful to restrict /the Hon./ to proper uses, he always insists, when he serves without pay as an officer of any organization, to indicate his volunteer character by writing /Hon./ before the name of his office. If he leaves it off it is a sign that he is a hireling. Thus, the agent of the New Zealand [Pg121] government in London, a paid officer, is simply the /agent/, but the agents at Brisbane and Adelaide, in Australia, who serve for the glory of it, are /hon. agents/. In writing to a Briton one must be careful to put /Esq./, behind his name, and not /Mr./, before it. The English make a clear distinction between the two forms. /Mr./, on an envelope, indicates that the sender holds the receiver to be his inferior; one writes to /Mr./ John Jackson, one's green-grocer, but to James Thompson, /Esq./, one's neighbor. Any man who is entitled to the /Esq./ is a /gentleman/, by which an Englishman means a man of sound connections and dignified occupation--in brief, of ponderable social position. Thus a dentist, a shop-keeper or a clerk can never be a gentleman in England, even by courtesy, and the qualifications of an author, a musical conductor, a physician, or even a member of Parliament have to be established. But though he is thus enormously watchful of masculine dignity, an Englishman is quite careless in the use of /lady/. He speaks glibly of /lady-clerks/, /lady-typists/, /lady-doctors/ and /lady-inspectors/. In America there is a strong disposition to use the word less and less, as is revealed by the substitution of /saleswoman/ and /salesgirl/ for the /saleslady/ of yesteryear. But in England /lady/ is still invariably used instead of woman in such compounds as /lady-golfer/, /lady-secretary/ and /lady-champion/. The /women's singles/, in England tennis, are always /ladies' singles/; /women's wear/, in English shops, is always /ladies' wear/. Perhaps the cause of this distinction between /lady/ and /gentleman/ has been explained by Price Collier in "England and the English." In England, according to Collier, the male is always first. His comfort goes before his wife's comfort, and maybe his dignity also. /Gentleman-clerk/ or /gentleman-author/ would make an Englishman howl, though he uses /gentleman-rider/. So would the growing American custom of designating the successive heirs of a private family by the numerals proper to royalty. John Smith /3rd/ and William Simpson /IV/ are gravely received at Harvard; at Oxford they would be ragged unmercifully.

An Englishman, in speaking or writing of public officials, avoids those long and clumsy combinations of title and name [Pg122] which figure so copiously in American newspapers. Such locutions as /Assistant Secretary of the Interior/ Jones, /Fourth Assistant Postmaster-General/ Brown, /Inspector of Boilers/ Smith, /Judge of the Appeal Tax Court/ Robinson, /Chief Clerk of the Treasury/ Williams and /Collaborating Epidermologist/ White[24] are quite unknown to him. When he mentions a high official, such as the Secretary for Foreign Affairs, he does not think it necessary to add the man's name; he simply says "the Secretary for Foreign Affairs" or "the Foreign Secretary." And so with the Lord Chancellor, the Chief Justice, the Prime Minister, the Bishop of Carlisle, the Chief Rabbi, the First Lord (of the Admiralty), the Master of Pembroke (College), the Italian Ambassador, and so on. Certain ecclesiastical titles are sometimes coupled to surnames in the American manner, as in /Dean Stanley/, and /Canon Wilberforce/, but /Prime Minister Lloyd-George/ would seem heavy and absurd. But in other directions the Englishman has certain clumsinesses of his own. Thus, in writing a letter to a relative stranger, he sometimes begins it, not /My dear Mr. Jones/ but /My dear John Joseph Jones/. He may even use such a form as /My dear Secretary for War/ in place of the American /My dear Mr. Secretary/. In English usage, incidentally, /My dear/ is more formal than simply /Dear/. In America, of course, this distinction is lost, and such forms as /My dear John Joseph Jones/ appear only as conscious imitations of English usage.

I have spoken of the American custom of dropping the definite article before /Hon./ It extends to /Rev./ and the like, and has the authority of very respectable usage behind it. The opening sentence of the /Congressional Record/ is always: "The Chaplain, /Rev./--------, D.D., offered the following prayer." When chaplains for the army or navy are confirmed by the Senate they always appear in the /Record as Revs./, never as /the Revs./ I also find the honorific without the article in the New International Encyclopaedia, in the /World/ Almanac, and in a widely-popular [Pg123] American grammar-book.[25] So long ago as 1867, Gould protested against this elision as barbarous and idiotic, and drew up the following /reductio ad absurdum/:

At last annual meeting of Black Book Society, honorable John Smith took the chair, assisted by reverend John Brown and venerable John White. The office of secretary would have been filled by late John Green, but for his decease, which rendered him ineligible. His place was supplied by inevitable John Black. In the course of the evening eulogiums were pronounced on distinguished John Gray and notorious Joseph Brown. Marked compliment was also paid to able historian Joseph White, discriminating philosopher Joseph Green, and learned professor Joseph Black. But conspicuous speech of the evening was witty Joseph Gray's apostrophe to eminent astronomer Jacob Brown, subtle logician Jacob White, etc., etc.[26]

Richard Grant White, a year or two later, joined the attack in the New York /Galaxy/, and William Cullen Bryant included the omission of the article in his /Index Expurgatorius/, but these anathemas were as ineffective as Gould's irony. The more careful American journals, of course, incline to the /the/, and I note that it is specifically ordained on the Style-sheet of the /Century Magazine/, but the overwhelming majority of American newspapers get along without it, and I have often noticed its omission on the sign-boards at church entrances.[27] In England it is never omitted. [Pg124]

§ 4

/Euphemisms and Forbidden Words/--But such euphemisms as /lady-clerk/ are, after all, much rarer in English than in American usage. The Englishman seldom tries to gloss menial occupations with sonorous names; on the contrary, he seems to delight in keeping their menial character plain. He says /servants/, not /help/. Even his railways and banks have /servants/; the chief trades-union of the English railroad men is the Amalgamated Society of Railway /Servants/. He uses /employé/ in place of /clerk/, /workman/ or /laborer/ much less often than we do. True enough he calls a boarder a /paying-guest/, but that is probably because even a boarder may be a gentleman. Just as he avoids calling a fast train the /limited/, the /flier/ or the /cannon-ball/, so he never calls an /undertaker/ a /funeral director/ or /mortician/,[28] or a /dentist/ a /dental surgeon/ or /ontologist/, or an /optician/ an /optometrist/, or a /barber shop/ (he always makes it /barber's shop/) a /tonsorial parlor/, or a common public-house a /café/, a /restaurant/, an /exchange/, a /buffet/ or a /hotel/, or a tradesman a /storekeeper/ or /merchant/, or a fresh-water college a /university/. A /university/, in England, always means a collection of colleges.[29] He avoids displacing terms of a disparaging or disagreeable significance with others less brutal, or thought to be less brutal, /e. g./, /ready-to-wear/ or /ready-tailored/ for /ready-made/, /used/ or /slightly-used/ for /second-hand/, /mahoganized/ for /imitation-mahogany/, /aisle manager/ for /floor-walker/ (he makes it /shop-walker/), /loan-office/ for /pawn-shop/. Also, he is careful not to use such words as /rector/, /deacon/ and /baccalaureate/ in merely rhetorical senses.[30] [Pg125]

When we come to words, that, either intrinsically or by usage, are improper, a great many curious differences between English and American reveal themselves. The Englishman, on the whole, is more plain-spoken than the American, and such terms as /bitch/, /mare/ and /in foal/ do not commonly daunt him, largely, perhaps, because of his greater familiarity with country life; but he has a formidable index of his own, and it includes such essentially harmless words as /sick/, /stomach/, /bum/ and /bug/. The English use of /ill/ for /sick/ I have already noticed, and the reasons for the English avoidance of /bum/. /Sick/, over there, means nauseated, and when an Englishman says that he was /sick/ he means that he vomited, or, as an American would say, was /sick at the stomach/. The older (and still American) usage, however, survives in various compounds. /Sick-list/, for example, is official in the Navy,[31] and /sick-leave/ is known in the Army, though it is more common to say of a soldier that he is /invalided home/. /Sick-room/ and /sick-bed/ are also in common use, and /sick-flag/ is used in place of the American /quarantine-flag/. But an Englishman hesitates to mention his stomach in the presence of ladies, though he discourses freely about his liver. To avoid the necessity he employs such euphemisms as /Little Mary/. As for /bug/, he restricts its use very rigidly to the /Cimex lectularius/, or common bed-bug, and hence the word has a highly impolite connotation. All other crawling things he calls /insects/. An American of my acquaintance once greatly offended an English friend by using /bug/ for /insect/. The two were playing billiards one summer evening in the Englishman's house, and various flying things came through the window and alighted on the cloth. The American, essaying a shot, remarked that he had killed a /bug/ with his cue. To the Englishman this seemed a slanderous reflection upon the cleanliness of his house.[32] [Pg126]

The Victorian era saw a great growth of absurd euphemisms in England, including /second wing/ for the leg of a fowl, but it was in America that the thing was carried farthest. Bartlett hints that /rooster/ came into use in place of /cock/ as a matter of delicacy, the latter word having acquired an indecent significance, and tells us that, at one time, even /bull/ was banned as too vulgar for refined ears. In place of it the early purists used /cow-creature/, /male-cow/ and even /gentleman-cow/.[33] /Bitch/, /ram/, /buck/ and /sow/ went the same way, and there was a day when even /mare/ was prohibited. Bache tells us that /pismire/ was also banned, /antmire/ being substituted for it. In 1847 the word /chair/ was actually barred out and /seat/ was adopted in its place.[34] These were the palmy days of euphemism. The delicate /female/ was guarded from all knowledge, and even from all suspicion, of evil. "To utter aloud in her presence the word /shirt/," says one historian, "was an open insult."[35] Mrs. Trollope, writing in 1832, tells of "a young German gentleman of perfectly good manners" who "offended one of the principal families ... by having pronounced the word /corset/ before the ladies of it."[36] The word /woman/, in those sensitive days, became a term of reproach, comparable to the German /mensch/; the uncouth /female/ took its place.[37] In the same way the legs of the fair became /limbs/ and their breasts /bosoms/, and /lady/ was substituted for /wife/. /Stomach/, under the ban in England, was transformed, by some unfathomable magic, into a euphemism denoting the whole region from the nipples to the pelvic arch. It was during [Pg127] this time that the newspapers invented such locutions as /interesting/ (or /delicate/) /condition/, /criminal operation/, /house of ill/ (or /questionable/) /repute/, /disorderly-house/, /sporting-house/, /statutory offense/, /fallen woman/ and /criminal assault/. Servant girls ceased to be seduced, and began to be /betrayed/. Various French terms, /enceinte/ and /accouchement/ among them, were imported to conceal the fact that lawful wives occasionally became pregnant and had lyings-in.

White, between 1867 and 1870, launched various attacks upon these ludicrous gossamers of speech, and particularly upon /enceinte/, /limb/ and /female/, but only /female/ succumbed. The passage of the notorious Comstock Postal Act, in 1873, greatly stimulated the search for euphemisms. Once that act was upon the statute-books and Comstock himself was given the amazingly inquisitorial powers of a post-office inspector, it became positively dangerous to print certain ancient and essentially decent English words. To this day the effects of that old reign of terror are still visible. We yet use /toilet/ and /public comfort station/ in place of better terms,[38] and such idiotic forms as /red-light district/, /disorderly-house/, /blood-poison/, /social-evil/, /social disease/ and /white slave/ ostensibly conceal what every flapper is talking about. The word /cadet/, having a foreign smack and an innocent native meaning, is preferred to the more accurate /procurer/; even prostitutes shrink from the forthright /pimp/, and employ a characteristic American abbreviation, /P. I./--a curious brother to /S. O. B./ and /2 o'clock/. Nevertheless, a movement toward honesty is getting on its legs. The vice crusaders, if they have accomplished nothing else, have at least forced the newspapers to use the honest terms, /syphilis/, /prostitute/, /brothel/ and /venereal disease/, albeit somewhat gingerly. It is, perhaps, significant of the change going on that the /New York Evening Post/ [Pg128] recently authorized its reporters to use /street-walker/.[39] But in certain quarters the change is viewed with alarm, and curious traces of the old prudery still survive. The Department of Health of New York City, in April, 1914, announced that its efforts to diminish venereal disease were much handicapped because "in most newspaper offices the words /syphilis/ and /gonorrhea/ are still tabooed, and without the use of these terms it is almost impossible to correctly state the problem." The Army Medical Corps, in the early part of 1918, encountered the same difficulty: most newspapers refused to print its bulletins regarding venereal disease in the army. One of the newspaper trade journals thereupon sought the opinions of editors upon the subject, and all of them save one declared against the use of the two words. One editor put the blame upon the Postoffice, which still cherishes the Comstock tradition. Another reported that "at a recent conference of the Scripps Northwest League editors" it was decided that "the use of such terms as /gonorrhea/, /syphilis/, and even /venereal diseases/ would not add to the tone of the papers, and that the term /vice diseases/ can be readily substituted."[40] The Scripps papers are otherwise anything but distinguished for their "tone," but in this department they yield to the Puritan habit. An even more curious instance of prudery came to my notice in Philadelphia several years ago. A one-act play of mine, "The Artist," was presented at the Little Theatre there, and during its run, on February 26, 1916, the /Public Ledger/ reprinted some of the dialogue. One of the characters in the piece is /A Virgin/. At every occurrence a change was made to /A Young Girl/. Apparently, even /virgin/ is still regarded as too frank in Philadelphia.[41] Fifty years [Pg129] ago the very word /decent/ was indecent in the South: no respectable woman was supposed to have any notion of the difference between /decent/ and /indecent/.

In their vocabularies of opprobrium and profanity English and Americans diverge sharply. The English /rotter/ and /blighter/ are practically unknown in America, and there are various American equivalents that are never heard in England. A /guy/, in the American vulgate, simply signifies a man; there is not necessarily any disparaging significance. But in English, high or low, it means one who is making a spectacle of himself. The derivative verb, /to guy/, is unknown in English; its nearest equivalent is /to spoof/, which is unknown in American. The average American, I believe, has a larger vocabulary of profanity than the average Englishman, and swears a good deal more, but he attempts an amelioration of many of his oaths by softening them to forms with no apparent meaning. /Darn/ (=/dern/=/durn/) for /damn/ is apparently of English origin, but it is heard ten thousand times in America to once in England. So is /dog-gone/. Such euphemistic written forms as /damphool/ and /damfino/ are also far more common in this country. /All-fired/ for /hell-fired/, /gee-whiz/ for /Jesus/, /tarnal/ for /eternal/, /tarnation/ for /damnation/, /cuss/ for /curse/, /goldarned/ for /God-damned/, /by gosh/ for /by God/ and /great Scott/ for /great God/ are all Americanisms; Thornton has traced /all-fired/ to 1835, /tarnation/ to 1801 and /tarnal/ to 1790. /By golly/ has been found in English literature so early as 1843, but it probably originated in America; down to the Civil War it was the characteristic oath of the negro slaves. Such terms as /bonehead/, /pinhead/ and /boob/ have been invented, perhaps, to take the place of the English /ass/, which has a flavor of impropriety in America on account of its identity in sound with the American pronunciation of /arse/.[42] At an earlier day /ass/ was always differentiated by making it /jackass/. Another word that is improper in America but not in England is /tart/. To an Englishman the word connotes sweetness, and so, if he be of the lower orders, he may apply [Pg130] it to his sweetheart. But to the American it signifies a prostitute, or, at all events, a woman of too ready an amiability.

But the most curious disparity between the profane vocabulary of the two tongues is presented by /bloody/. This word is entirely without improper significance in America, but in England it is regarded as the vilest of indecencies. The sensation produced in London when George Bernard Shaw put it into the mouth of a woman character in his play, "Pygmalion," will be remembered. "The interest in the first English performance," said the /New York Times/,[43] "centered in the heroine's utterance of this banned word. It was waited for with trembling, heard shudderingly, and presumably, when the shock subsided, interest dwindled." But in New York, of course, it failed to cause any stir. Just why it is regarded as profane and indecent by the English is one of the mysteries of the language. The theory that it has some blasphemous reference to the blood of Christ is disputed by many etymologists. It came in during the latter half of the seventeenth century, and at the start it apparently meant no more than "in the manner of a blood," /i. e./, a rich young roisterer of the time. Thus, /bloody drunk/ was synonymous with as /drunk as a lord/. The adjective remained innocuous for 200 years. Then it suddenly acquired its present abhorrent significance. It is regarded with such aversion by the English that even the lower orders often substitute /bleeding/ as a euphemism.

So far no work devoted wholly to the improper terms of English and American has been published, but this lack may be soon remedied by a compilation made by a Chicago journalist. It is entitled "The Slang of Venery and Its Analogues," and runs to two large volumes. A small edition, mimeographed for private circulation, was issued in 1916. I have examined this work and found it of great value. If the influence of comstockery is sufficient to prevent its publication in the United States, as seems likely, it will be printed in Switzerland.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] It should be noted that /mews/ is used only in the larger cities. In the small towns /livery-stable/ is commoner. /Mews/ is quite unknown in America save as an occasional archaism.

[2] Sometimes /whiffle-tree/.

[3] The latter has crept into American of late. I find it on p. 58 of The United States at War, a pamphlet issued by the Library of Congress, 1917. The compiler of this pamphlet is a savant bearing the fine old British name of Herman H. B. Meyer.

[4] /Living-room/, however, is gradually making its way in England. It was apparently suggested, in America, by the German /wohnzimmer/.

[5] This form survives in the American term /city-stock/, meaning the bonds of a municipality. But government securities are always called /bonds/.

[6] /Cf./ A Glossary of Colloquial Slang and Technical Terms in Use in the Stock Exchange and in the Money Market, by A. J. Wilson, London, 1895.

[7] Or /bailiffs/.

[8] But he is /run/ by his party organization. /Cf./ The Government of England, by A. Lawrence Lowell; New York, 1910, vol. ii, p. 29.

[9] Until very recently no self-respecting American newspaper reporter would call himself a /journalist/. He always used /newspaper man/, and referred to his vocation, not as a profession, but as the newspaper /business/. This old prejudice, however, now seems to be breaking down. /Cf./ Don't Shy at Journalist, /The Editor and Publisher and Journalist/, June 27, 1914.

[10] /Cf./ a speech of Senator La Follette, /Congressional Record/, Aug. 27, 1917, p. 6992.

[11] According to the New International Encyclopedia, 2nd ed. (/Art./ Apartment House), the term /flat/ "is usually in the United States restricted to apartments in houses having no elevator or hall service." In New York such apartments are commonly called /walk-up apartments/. Even with the qualification, /apartment/ is better than /flat/.

[12] Canoeing was introduced into England by John MacGregor in 1866, and there is now a Royal Canoe Club. In America the canoe has been familiar from the earliest times, and in Mme. Sarah Kemble Knight's diary (1704) there is much mention of /cannoos/. The word itself is from an Indian dialect, probably the Haitian, and came into American through the Spanish, in which it survives as /canoa/.

[13] "An act was passed to prohibit playing /nine-pins/; as soon as the law was put in force, it was notified everywhere, '/Ten-pins/ played here.'"--Capt. Marryat: Diary in America, vol. iii, p. 195.

[14] "The term /chapel/," says Joyce, in English as We Speak It in Ireland, "has so ingrained itself in my mind that to this hour the word instinctively springs to my lips when I am about to mention a Catholic place of worship; and I always feel some sort of hesitation or reluctance in substituting the word /church/. I positively could not bring myself to say, 'Come, it is time now to set out for /church/' It must be either /mass/ or chapel."

[15] Certain dissenters, of late, show a disposition to borrow the American usage. Thus the /Christian World/, organ of the English Congregationalists, uses /Episcopal/ to designate the Church of England.

[16] So long ago as the 70's certain Jews petitioned the publishers of Webster's and Worcester's dictionaries to omit their definitions of the verb /to jew/, and according to Richard Grant White, the publisher of Worcester's complied. Such a request, in England, would be greeted with derision.

[17] But nevertheless he uses /begotten/, not /begot/.

[18] This specimen is from the /Congressional Record/ of Dec. 11, 1917: "I do not like to be butting into this /proposition/, but I look upon this postoffice business as a purely business /proposition/." The speaker was "Hon" Homer P. Snyder, of New York. In the /Record/ of Jan. 12, 1918, p. 8294, /proposition/ is used as a synonym for state of affairs.

[19] Already in 1855 Bristed was protesting that /to fix/ was having "more than its legitimate share of work all over the Union." "In English conversation," he said, "the panegyrical adjective of all work is /nice/; in America it is /fine/." This was before the adoption of /jolly/ and its analogues, /ripping/, /stunning/, /rattling/, etc.