Part 14

[20] In the Appendix to the Final Report of the Royal Commission on Venereal Diseases, London, 1916, p. iv., I find the following: "/Mr./ C. J. Symonds, F.R.C.S., M.D.; /Mr./ F. J. McCann, F.R.C.S., M.D.; /Mr./ A. F. Evans, F.R.C.S". /Mr./ Symonds is consulting surgeon to Guy's Hospital, /Mr./ McCann is an eminent London gynecologist, and /Mr./ Evans is a general surgeon in large practise. All would be called /Doctor/ in the United States.

[21] Among the curious recipients of this degree have been Gumshoe Bill Stone, Uncle Joe Cannon and Josephus Daniels. Billy Sunday, the evangelist, is a D.D.

[22] /Congressional Record/, May 16, 1918, p. 7147.

[23] /Vide/ his annual reports, printed at Sing Sing Prison.

[24] I encountered this gem in /Public Health Reports/, a government publication, for April 26, 1918, p. 619.

[25] For the /Record/ see the issue of Dec. 14, 1917, p. 309. For the New International Encyclopaedia see the article on Brotherhood of Andrew and Philip. For the /World/ Almanac see the article on Young People's Society of Christian Endeavor, ed. of 1914. The grammar-book is Longman's Briefer Grammar; New York, 1908, p. 160. The editor is George J. Smith, a member of the board of examiners of the New York City Department of Education.

[26] Edwin S. Gould: Good English; New York, 1867, pp. 56-57.

[27] Despite the example of Congress, however, the Department of State inserts the /the/. /Vide/ the /Congressional Record/, May 4, 1918, p. 6552. But the War Department, the Treasury and the Post Office omit it. /Vide/ the /Congressional Record/, May 11, 1918, p. 6895 and p. 6914 and May 14, p. 7004, respectively. So, it appears, does the White House. /Vide/ the /Congressional Record/, May 10, 1918, p. 6838, and June 12, 1918, p. 8293.

[28] In the 60's an undertaker was often called an /embalming surgeon/ in America.

[29] In a list of American "universites" I find the Christian of Canton, Mo., with 125 students; the Lincoln, of Pennsylvania, with 184; the Southwestern Presbyterian, of Clarksville, Tenn., with 86; and the Newton Theological, with 77. Most of these, of course, are merely country high-schools.

[30] The Rev. John C. Stephenson in the /New York Sun/, July 10, 1914: ... "that empty courtesy of addressing every clergyman as /Doctor/.... And let us abolish the abuse of ... /baccalaureate/ sermons for sermons before graduating classes of high schools and the like."

[31] /Cf./ Dardanelles Commission Report; London, 1916, p. 58, § 47.

[32] Edgar Allan Poe's "The Gold /Bug/" is called "The Golden /Beetle/" in England. Twenty-five years ago an Englishman named /Buggey/, laboring under the odium attached to the name, had it changed to /Norfolk-Howard/, a compound made up of the title and family name of the Duke of Norfolk. The wits of London at once doubled his misery by adopting /Norfolk-Howard/ as a euphemism for /bed-bug/.

[33] A recent example of the use of /male-cow/ was quoted in the /Journal/ of the American Medical Association, Nov. 17, 1917, advertising page 24.

[34] /New York Organ/ (a "/family journal/ devoted to temperance, morality, education and general literature"), May 29, 1847. One of the editors of this delicate journal was T. S. Arthur, author of Ten Nights in a Bar-room.

[35] John Graham Brooks: As Others See Us; New York, 1908, p. 11.

[36] Domestic Manners of the Americans, 2 vols.; London, 1832; vol. i, p. 132.

[37] /Female/, of course, was epidemic in England too, but White says that it was "not a Briticism," and so early as 1839 the Legislature of Maryland expunged it from the title of a bill "to protect the reputation of unmarried /females/," substituting /women/, on the ground that /female/ "was an Americanism in that application."

[38] The French /pissoir/, for instance, is still regarded as indecent in America, and is seldom used in England, but it has gone into most of the Continental languages. It is curious to note, however, that these languages also have their pruderies. Most of them, for example, use /W. C./, an abbreviation of the English /water-closet/, as a euphemism. The whole subject of national pruderies, in both act and speech, remains to be investigated.

[39] Even the /Springfield Republican/, the last stronghold of Puritan /Kultur/, printed the word on Oct. 11, 1917, in a review of New Adventures, by Michael Monahan.

[40] /Pep/, July, 1918, p. 8.

[41] Perhaps the Quaker influence is to blame. At all events, Philadelphia is the most pecksniffian of American cities, and thus probably leads the world. Early in 1918, when a patriotic moving-picture entitled "To Hell with the Kaiser" was sent on tour under government patronage, the word /hell/ was carefully toned down, on the Philadelphia billboards, to /h----/.

[42] /Cf./ R. M. Bache: Vulgarisms and Other Errors of Speech; Phila., 1869, p. 34 /et seq./

[43] April 14, 1914.

[Pg131]

V

Tendencies in American

§ 1

/International Exchanges/--More than once, during the preceding chapters, we encountered Americanisms that had gone over into English, and English locutions that had begun to get a foothold in the United States. Such exchanges are made very frequently and often very quickly, and though the guardians of English still attack every new Americanism vigorously, even when, as in the case of /scientist/, it is obviously sound and useful, they are often routed by public pressure, and have to submit in the end with the best grace possible. For example, consider /caucus/. It originated in Boston at some indeterminate time before 1750, and remained so peculiarly American for more than a century following that most of the English visitors before the Civil War remarked its use. But, according to J. Redding Ware,[1] it began to creep into English political slang about 1870, and in the 80's it was lifted to good usage by the late Joseph Chamberlain. Ware, writing in the first years of the present century, said that the word had become "very important" in England, but was "not admitted into dictionaries." But in the Concise Oxford Dictionary, dated 1914, it is given as a sound English word, though its American origin is noted. The English, however, use it in a sense that has become archaic in America, thus preserving an abandoned American meaning in the same way that many abandoned British meanings have been preserved on this side. In the United States the word means, and has meant for years, a meeting of some division, [Pg132] large or small, of a political or legislative body for the purpose of agreeing upon a united course of action in the main assembly. In England it means the managing committee of a party or fraction--something corresponding to our national committee, or state central committee, or steering committee, or to the half-forgotten congressional caucuses of the 20's. It has a disparaging significance over there, almost equal to that of our words /organization/ and /machine/. Moreover, it has given birth to two derivatives of like quality, both unknown in America--/caucusdom/, meaning machine control, and /caucuser/, meaning a machine politician.[2]

A good many other such Americanisms have got into good usage in England, and new ones are being exported constantly. Farmer describes the process of their introduction, and assimilation. American books, newspapers and magazines, especially the last, circulate in England in large number, and some of their characteristic locutions pass into colloquial speech. Then they get into print, and begin to take on respectability. "The phrase, 'as the Americans say,'" he continues, "might in some cases be ordered from the type foundry as a logotype, so frequently does it do introduction duty."[3] Ware shows another means of ingress: the argot of sailors. Many of the Americanisms he notes as having become naturalized in England, /e. g./, /boodle/, /boost/ and /walk-out/, are credited to Liverpool as a sort of half-way station. Travel brings in still more: England swarms with Americans, and Englishmen themselves, visiting America, bring home new and racy phrases. Bishop Coxe says[4] that [Pg133] Dickens, in his "American Notes," gave English currency to /reliable/, /influential/, /talented/ and /lengthy/. Bristed, writing in 1855, said that /talented/ was already firmly fixed in the English vocabulary by that time. All four words are in the Concise Oxford Dictionary, and only /lengthy/ is noted as "originally an Americanism." Finally, there is the influence of the moving pictures. Hundreds of American films are shown in England every week, and the American words and phrases appearing in their titles, sub-titles and other explanatory legends thus become familiar to the English. "The patron of the picture palace," says W. G. Faulkner, in an article in the /London Daily Mail/, "learns to think of his railway station as a /depot/; he has alternatives to one of our newest words, /hooligan/, in /hoodlum/ and /tough/; he watches a /dive/, which is a thieves' kitchen or a room in which bad characters meet, and whether the villain talks of /dough/ or /sugar/ he knows it is money to which he is referring. The musical ring of the word /tramp/ gives way to the stodgy /hobo/ or /dead-beat/. It may be that the plot reveals an attempt to deceive some simple-minded person. If it does, the innocent one is spoken of as a /sucker/, a /come-on/, a /boob/, or a /lobster/ if he is stupid into the bargain."

Mr. Faulkner goes on to say that a great many other Americanisms are constantly employed by Englishmen "who have not been affected by the avalanche ... which has come upon us through the picture palace." "Thus today," he says, "we hear people speak of the /fall/ of the year, a /stunt/ they have in hand, their desire to /boost/ a particular business, a /peach/ when they mean a pretty girl, a /scab/--a common term among strikers,--the /glad-eye/, /junk/ when they mean worthless material, their efforts /to make good/, the /elevator/ in the hotel or office, the /boss/ or manager, the /crook/ or swindler; and they will tell you that they have the /goods/--that is, they possess the requisite qualities for a given position." The venerable Frederic Harrison, writing in the /Fortnightly Review/ in the Spring of 1918, denounced this tendency with a vigor recalling the classical anathemas of Dean Alford and Sydney Smith.[5] "Stale American phrases, ..." [Pg134] he said, "are infecting even our higher journalism and our parliamentary and platform oratory.... A statesman is now /out/ for victory; he is /up against/ pacificism.... He has a /card up his sleeve/, by which the enemy are at last to be /euchred/. Then a fierce fight in which hundreds of noble fellows are mangled or drowned is a /scrap/.... To criticise a politician is to call for his /scalp/.... The other fellow is beaten to a /frazzle/." And so on. "Bolshevism," concluded Harrison sadly, "is ruining language as well as society."

But though there are still many such alarms by constables of the national speech, the majority of Englishmen continue to make borrowings from the tempting and ever-widening American vocabulary. What is more, some of these loan-words take root, and are presently accepted as sound English, even by the most watchful. The two Fowlers, in "The King's English," separate Americanisms from other current vulgarisms, but many of the latter on their list are actually American in origin, though they do not seem to know it--for example, /to demean/ and /to transpire/. More remarkable still, the Cambridge History of English Literature lists /backwoodsman/, /know-nothing/ and /yellow-back/ as English compounds, apparently in forgetfulness of their American origin, and adds /skunk/, /squaw/ and /toboggan/ as direct importations from the Indian tongues, without noting that they came through American, and remained definite Americanisms for a long while.[6] It even adds /musquash/, a popular name for the /Fiber zibethicus/, borrowed from the Algonquin /muskwessu/ but long since degenerated to /musk-rat/ in America. /Musquash/ has been in disuse in this country, indeed, since the middle of the last century, save as a stray localism, but the English have preserved it, and it appears in the Oxford Dictionary.[7]

A few weeks in London or a month's study of the London [Pg135] newspapers will show a great many other American pollutions of the well of English. The argot of politics is full of them. Many beside /caucus/ were introduced by Joseph Chamberlain, a politician skilled in American campaign methods and with an American wife to prompt him. He gave the English their first taste of /to belittle/, one of the inventions of Thomas Jefferson. /Graft/ and /to graft/ crossed the ocean in their nonage. /To bluff/ has been well understood in England for 30 years. It is in Cassell's and the Oxford Dictionaries, and has been used by no less a magnifico than Sir Almroth Wright.[8] /To stump/, in the form of /stump-oratory/, is in Carlyle's "Latter-Day Pamphlets," /circa/ 1850, and /caucus/ appears in his "Frederick the Great;"[9] though, as we have seen on the authority of Ware, it did not come into general use in England until ten years later. /Buncombe/ (usually spelled /bunkum/) is in all the later English dictionaries. In the London stock market and among English railroad men various characteristic Americanisms have got a foothold. The meaning of /bucket-shop/ and /to water/, for example, is familiar to every London broker's clerk. English trains are now /telescoped/ and carry /dead-heads/, and in 1913 a rival to the Amalgamated Order of Railway /Servants/ was organized under the name of the National Union of /Railway Men/. The beginnings of a movement against the use of /servant/ are visible in other directions, and the American /help/ threatens to be substituted; at all events, /Help Wanted/ advertisements are now occasionally encountered in English newspapers. But it is American verbs that seem to find the way into English least difficult, particularly those compounded with prepositions and adverbs, such as /to pan out/ and /to swear off/. Most of them, true enough, [Pg136] are still used as conscious Americanisms, but used they are, and with increasing frequency. The highly typical American verb /to loaf/ is now naturalized, and Ware says that /The Loaferies/ is one of the common nicknames of the Whitechapel workhouse.

It is curious, reading the fulminations of American purists of the last generation, to note how many of the Americanisms they denounced have not only got into perfectly good usage at home but even broken down all guards across the ocean. /To placate/ and /to antagonize/ are examples. The Oxford Dictionary distinguishes between the English and American meanings of the latter: in England a man may antagonize only another man, in America he may antagonize a mere idea or thing. But, as the brothers Fowler show, even the English meaning is of American origin, and no doubt a few more years will see the verb completely naturalized in Britain. /To placate/, attacked vigorously by all native grammarians down to (but excepting) White, now has the authority of the /Spectator/, and is accepted by Cassell. /To donate/ is still under the ban, but /to transpire/ has been used by the /London Times/. Other old bugaboos that have been embraced are /gubernatorial/, /presidential/ and /standpoint/. White labored long and valiantly to convince Americans that the adjective derived from /president/ should be without the /i/ in its last syllable, following the example of /incidental/, /regimental/, /monumental/, /governmental/, /oriental/, /experimental/ and so on; but in vain, for /presidential/ is now perfectly good English. /To demean/ is still questioned, but English authors of the first rank have used it, and it will probably lose its dubious character very soon.

The flow of loan-words in the opposite direction meets with little impediment, for social distinction in America is still largely dependent upon English recognition, and so there is an eager imitation of the latest English fashions in speech. This emulation is most noticeable in the large cities of the East, and particularly in what Schele de Vere called "Boston and the Boston dependencies." New York is but little behind. The small stores there, if they are of any pretentions, are now almost invariably called /shops/. Shoes for the well-to-do are no longer [Pg137] /shoes/, but /boots/, and they are sold in /bootshops/. One encounters, too, in the side-streets off Fifth avenue, a multitude of /gift-shops/, /tea-shops/ and /haberdashery-shops/. In Fifth avenue itself there are several /luggage-shops/. In August, 1917, signs appeared in the New York surface cars in which the conductors were referred to as /guards/. This effort to be English and correct was exhibited over the sign manual of Theodore P. Shonts, president of the Interborough, a gentleman of Teutonic name, but evidently a faithful protector of the king's English. On the same cars, however, painted notices, surviving from some earlier régime, mentioned the guards as /conductors/. /To Let/ signs are now as common in all our cities as /For Rent/ signs. We all know the /charwoman/, and have begun to forget our native modification of /char/, to wit, /chore/. Every apartment-house has a /tradesmen's-entrance/. In Charles street, in Baltimore, some time ago, the proprietor of a fashionable stationery store directed me, not to the elevator, but to the /lift/.

Occasionally, some uncompromising patriot raises his voice against these importations, but he seldom shows the vigorous indignation of the English purists, and he seldom prevails. White, in 1870, warned Americans against the figurative use of /nasty/ as a synonym for /disagreeable/.[10] This use of the word was then relatively new in England, though, according to White, the /Saturday Review/ and the /Spectator/ had already succumbed. His objections to it were unavailing; /nasty/ quickly got into American and has been there ever since. In 1883 Gilbert M. Tucker protested against /good-form/, /traffic/ (in the sense of travel), /to bargain/ and /to tub/ as Briticisms that we might well do without, but all of them took root and are perfectly sound American today. There is, indeed, no intelligible reason why such English inventions and improvements should not be taken in, even though the motive behind the welcome to them may occasionally cause a smile. English, after all, is the mother of American, and the child, until lately, was still at nurse. The English, confronted by some of our fantastic innovations, may well regard them as impudences to be put down, but what they [Pg138] offer in return often fits into our vocabulary without offering it any outrage. American, indeed, is full of lingering Briticisms, all maintaining a successful competition with native forms. If we take back /shop/ it is merely taking back something that /store/ has never been able to rid us of: we use /shop-worn/, /shoplifter/, /shopping/, /shopper/, /shop-girl/ and /to shop/ every day. In the same way the word /penny/ has survived among us, despite the fact that there has been no American coin of that name for more than 125 years. We have /nickel-in-the-slot/ machines, but when they take a cent we call them /penny-in-the-slot/ machines. We have /penny-arcades/ and /penny-whistles/. We do not play /cent/-ante, but /penny/-ante. We still "turn an honest /penny/" and say "a /penny/ for your thoughts." The pound and the shilling became extinct a century ago, but the penny still binds us to the mother tongue.

§ 2

/Points of Difference/--These exchanges and coalescences, however, though they invigorate each language with the blood of the other and are often very striking in detail, are neither numerous enough nor general enough to counteract the centrifugal force which pulls them apart. The simple fact is that the spirit of English and the spirit of American have been at odds for nearly a century, and that the way of one is not the way of the other. The loan-words that fly to and fro, when examined closely, are found to be few in number both relatively and absolutely: they do not greatly affect the larger movements of the two languages. Many of them, indeed, are little more than temporary borrowings; they are not genuinely adopted, but merely momentarily fashionable. The class of Englishmen which affects American phrases is perhaps but little larger, taking one year with another, than the class of Americans which affects English phrases. This last class, it must be plain, is very small. Leave the large cities and you will have difficulty finding any members of it. It is circumscribed, not because there is any very formidable prejudice against English locutions as such, [Pg139] but simply because recognizably English locutions, in a good many cases, do not fit into the American language. The American thinks in American and the Englishman in English, and it requires a definite effort, usually but defectively successful, for either to put his thoughts into the actual idiom of the other.

The difficulties of this enterprise are well exhibited, though quite unconsciously, by W. L. George in a chapter entitled "Litany of the Novelist" in his book of criticism, "Literary Chapters."[11] This chapter, it is plain by internal evidence, was written, not for Englishmen, but for Americans. A good part of it, in fact, is in the second person--we are addressed and argued with directly. And throughout there is an obvious endeavor to help out comprehension by a studied use of purely American phrases and examples. One hears, not of the /East End/, but of the /East Side/; not of the /City/, but of /Wall Street/; not of /Belgravia/ or the /West End/, but of /Fifth avenue/; not of /bowler/ hats, but of /Derbys/; not of idlers in /pubs/, but of /saloon loafers/; not of /pounds/, /shillings/ and /pence/, but of /dollars/ and /cents/. In brief, a gallant attempt upon a strange tongue, and by a writer of the utmost skill--but a hopeless failure none the less. In the midst of his best American, George drops into Briticism after Briticism, some of them quite as unintelligible to the average American reader as so many Gallicisms. On page after page they display the practical impossibility of the enterprise: /back-garden/ for /back-yard/, /perambulator/ for /baby-carriage/, /corn/-market for /grain/-market, coal-/owner/ for coal-/operator/, /post/ for /mail/, and so on. And to top them there are English terms that have no American equivalents at all, for example, /kitchen-fender/.

The same failure, perhaps usually worse, is displayed every time an English novelist or dramatist essays to put an American into a novel or a play, and to make him speak American. However painstakingly it is done, the Englishman invariably falls into capital blunders, and the result is derided by Americans as Mark Twain derided the miners' lingo of Bret Harte, and for the same reason. The thing lies deeper than vocabulary and [Pg140] even than pronunciation and intonation; the divergences show themselves in habits of speech that are fundamental and almost indefinable. And when the transoceanic gesture is from the other direction they become even plainer. An Englishman, in an American play, seldom shows the actual speech habit of the Sassenach; what he shows is the speech habit of an American actor trying to imitate George Alexander. "There are not five playwrights in America," said Channing Pollock one day, "who can write English"--that is, the English of familiar discourse. "Why should there be?" replied Louis Sherwin. "There are not five thousand people in America who can /speak/ English."[12]