Part 9

Of these coinages, perhaps those of the second class are most numerous and characteristic. In them American exhibits one of its most marked tendencies: a habit of achieving short cuts in speech by a process of agglutination. Why explain laboriously, as an Englishman might, that the notes of a new bank (in a day of innumerable new banks) are insufficiently secure? Call [Pg081] them /wild-cat/ notes and have done! Why describe a gigantic rain storm with the lame adjectives of everyday? Call it a /cloud-burst/ and immediately a vivid picture of it is conjured up. /Rough-neck/ is a capital word; it is more apposite and savory than the English /navvy/, and it is overwhelmingly more American.[18] /Square-meal/ is another. /Fire-eater/ is yet another. And the same instinct for the terse, the eloquent and the picturesque is in /boiled-shirt/, /blow-out/, /big-bug/, /claim-jumper/, /spread-eagle/, /come-down/, /back-number/, /claw-hammer/ (coat), /bottom-dollar/, /poppy-cock/, /cold-snap/, /back-talk/, /back-taxes/, /calamity-howler/, /cut-off/, /fire-bug/, /grab-bag/, /grip-sack/, /grub-stake/, /pay-dirt/, /tender-foot/, /stocking-feet/, /ticket-scalper/, /store-clothes/, /small-potatoes/, /cake-walk/, /prairie-schooner/, /round-up/, /snake-fence/, /flat-boat/, /under-the-weather/, /on-the-hoof/, and /jumping-off-place/. These compounds (there must be thousands of them) have been largely responsible for giving the language its characteristic tang and color. Such specimens as /bell-hop/, /semi-occasional/, /chair-warmer/ and /down-and-out/ are as distinctively American as baseball or the quick-lunch.

The spirit of the language appears scarcely less clearly in some of the coinages of the other classes. There are, for example, the English words that have been extended or restricted in meaning, /e. g./, /docket/ (for court calendar), /betterment/ (for improvement to property), /collateral/ (for security), /crank/ (for fanatic), /jumper/ (for tunic), /tickler/ (for memorandum or reminder),[19] /carnival/ (in such phrases as /carnival of crime/), /scrape/ (for fight or difficulty),[20] /flurry/ (of snow, or in the market), /suspenders/, /diggings/ (for habitation) and /range/. Again, there are the new assemblings of English materials, /e. g./, /doggery/, /rowdy/, /teetotaler/, /goatee/, /tony/ and /cussedness/. Yet again, there are the purely artificial words, /e. g./, /sockdolager/, /hunkydory/, /scalawag/, /guyascutis/, /spondulix/, /slumgullion/, /rambunctious/, /scrumptious/, [Pg082] /to skedaddle/, /to absquatulate/ and /to exfluncticate/.[21] In the use of the last-named coinages fashions change. In the 40's /to absquatulate/ was in good usage, but it has since disappeared. Most of the other inventions of the time, however, have to some extent survived, and it would be difficult to find an American of today who did not know the meaning of /scalawag/ and /rambunctious/ and who did not occasionally use them. A whole series of artificial American words groups itself around the prefix /ker/, for example, /ker-flop/, /ker-splash/, /ker-thump/, /ker-bang/, /ker-plunk/, /ker-slam/ and /ker-flummux/. This prefix and its onomatopoeic daughters have been borrowed by the English, but Thornton and Ware agree that it is American. Its origin has not been determined. As Sayce says, "the native instinct of language breaks out wherever it has the chance, and coins words which can be traced back to no ancestors."

In the first chapter I mentioned the superior imaginativeness revealed by Americans in meeting linguistic emergencies, whereby, for example, in seeking names for new objects introduced by the building of railroads, they surpassed the English /plough/ and /crossing-plate/ with /cow-catcher/ and /frog/. That was in the 30's. Already at that early day the two languages were so differentiated that they produced wholly distinct railroad nomenclatures. Such commonplace American terms as /box-car/, /caboose/, /air-line/ and /ticket-agent/ are still quite unknown in England. So are /freight-car/, /flagman/, /towerman/, /switch/, /switching-engine/, /switch-yard/, /switchman/, /track-walker/, /engineer/, /baggage-room/, /baggage-check/, /baggage-smasher/, /accommodation-train/, /baggage-master/, /conductor/, /express-car/, /flat-car/, /hand-car/, /way-bill/, /expressman/, /express-office/, /fast-freight/, /wrecking-crew/, /jerk-water/, /commutation-ticket/, /commuter/, /round-trip/, /mileage-book/, /ticket-scalper/, /depot/, /limited/, /hot-box/, iron-horse, /stop-over/, /tie/, /rail/, /fish-plate/, /run/, /train-boy/, /chair-car/, /club-car/, /diner/, /sleeper/, /bumpers/, /mail-clerk/, /passenger-coach/, /day-coach/, /excursionist/, [Pg083] /excursion-train/, /railroad-man/, /ticket-office/, /truck/ and /right-of-way/, not to mention the verbs, /to flag/, /to derail/, /to express/, /to dead-head/, /to side-swipe/, /to stop-over/, /to fire/ (/i. e./, a locomotive), /to switch/, /to side-track/, /to railroad/, /to commute/, /to telescope/ and /to clear the track/. These terms are in constant use in America; their meaning is familiar to all Americans; many of them have given the language everyday figures of speech.[22] But the majority of them would puzzle an Englishman, just as the English /luggage-van/, /permanent-way/, /goods-waggon/, /guard/, /carrier/, /booking-office/, /return-ticket/, /railway-rug/, /R. S. O./ (railway sub-office), /tripper/, /line/, /points/, /shunt/, /metals/ and /bogie/ would puzzle the average untravelled American.

In two other familiar fields very considerable differences between English and American are visible; in both fields they go back to the era before the Civil War. They are politics and that department of social intercourse which has to do with drinking. Many characteristic American political terms originated in revolutionary days, and have passed over into English. Of such sort are /caucus/ and /mileage/. But the majority of those in common use today were coined during the extraordinarily exciting campaigns following the defeat of Adams by Jefferson. Charles Ledyard Norton has devoted a whole book to their etymology and meaning;[23] the number is far too large for a list of them to be attempted here. But a few characteristic specimens may be recalled, for example, the simple agglutinates: /omnibus-bill/, /banner-state/, /favorite-son/, /anxious-bench/, /gag-rule/, /office-seeker/ and /straight-ticket/; the humorous metaphors: /pork-barrel/, /pie-counter/, /wire-puller/, /land-slide/, /carpet-bagger/, /lame-duck/ and /on the fence/; the old words put to new uses: /plank/, /platform/, /machine/, /precinct/, /slate/, /primary/, /floater/, /repeater/, /bolter/, /stalwart/, /filibuster/, /regular/ and /fences/; the new coinages: /gerrymander/, /heeler/, /buncombe/, /roorback/, /mugwump/ and /to bulldoze/; the new derivatives: /abolitionist/, /candidacy/, /boss-rule/, [Pg084] /per-diem/, /to lobby/ and /boodler/; and the almost innumerable verbs and verb-phrases: /to knife/, /to split a ticket/, /to go up Salt River/, /to bolt/, /to eat crow/, /to boodle/, /to divvy/, /to grab/ and /to run/. An English candidate never /runs/; he /stands/. To /run/, according to Thornton, was already used in America in 1789; it was universal by 1820. /Platform/ came in at the same time. /Machine/ was first applied to a political organization by Aaron Burr. The use of /mugwump/ is commonly thought to have originated in the Blaine campaign of 1884, but it really goes back to the 30's. /Anxious-bench/ (or /anxious-seat/) at first designated only the place occupied by the penitent at revivals, but was used in its present political sense in Congress so early as 1842. /Banner-state/ appears in /Niles' Register/ for December 5, 1840. /Favorite-son/ appears in an ode addressed to Washington on his visit to Portsmouth, N. H., in 1789, but it did not acquire its present ironical sense until it was applied to Martin Van Buren. Thornton has traced /bolter/ to 1812, /filibuster/ to 1863, /roorback/ to 1844, and /split-ticket/ to 1842. /Regularity/ was an issue in Tammany Hall in 1822.[24] There were /primaries/ in New York city in 1827, and hundreds of /repeaters/ voted. In 1829 there were /lobby-agents/ at Albany, and they soon became /lobbyists/; in 1832 /lobbying/ had already extended to Washington. All of these terms are now as firmly imbedded in the American vocabulary as /election/ or /congressman/.

In the department of conviviality the imaginativeness of Americans has been shown in both the invention and the naming of new and often highly complex beverages. So vast has been the production of novelties, in fact, that England has borrowed many of them, and their names with them. And not only England: one buys /cocktails/ and /gin-fizzes/ in "American bars" that stretch from Paris to Yokohama. /Cocktail/, /stone-fence/ and /sherry-cobbler/ were mentioned by Irving in 1809;[25] by Thackeray's day they were already well-known in England. Thornton traces the /sling/ to 1788, and the /stinkibus/ and /anti-fogmatic/, [Pg085] both now extinct, to the same year. The origin of the /rickey/, /fizz/, /sour/, /cooler/, /skin/, /shrub/ and /smash/, and of such curious American drinks as the /horse's neck/, /Mamie Taylor/, /Tom-and-Jerry/, /Tom-Collins/, /John-Collins/, /bishop/, /stone-wall/, /gin-fix/, /brandy-champarelle/, /golden-slipper/, /hari-kari/, /locomotive/, /whiskey-daisy/, /blue-blazer/, /black-stripe/, /white-plush/ and /brandy-crusta/ is quite unknown; the historians of alcoholism, like the philologists, have neglected them.[26] But the essentially American character of most of them is obvious, despite the fact that a number have gone over into English. The English, in naming their drinks, commonly display a far more limited imagination. Seeking a name, for example, for a mixture of whiskey and soda-water, the best they could achieve was /whiskey-and-soda/. The Americans, introduced to the same drink, at once gave it the far more original name of /high-ball/. So with /ginger-ale/ and /ginger-pop/. So with /minerals/ and /soft-drinks/. Other characteristic Americanisms (a few of them borrowed by the English) are /red-eye/, /corn-juice/, /eye-opener/, /forty-rod/, /squirrel-whiskey/, /phlegm-cutter/, /moon-shine/, /hard-cider/, /apple-jack/ and /corpse-reviver/, and the auxiliary drinking terms, /speak-easy/, /sample-room/, /blind-pig/, /barrel-house/, /bouncer/, /bung-starter/, /dive/, /doggery/, /schooner/, /shell/, /stick/, /duck/, /straight/, /saloon/, /finger/, /pony/ and /chaser/. Thornton shows that /jag/, /bust/, /bat/ and /to crook the elbow/ are also Americanisms. So are /bartender/ and /saloon-keeper/. To them might be added a long list of common American synonyms for /drunk/, for example, /piffled/, /pifflicated/, /awry-eyed/, /tanked/, /snooted/, /stewed/, /ossified/, /slopped/, /fiddled/, /edged/, /loaded/, /het-up/, /frazzled/, /jugged/, /soused/, /jiggered/, /corned/, /jagged/ and /bunned/. Farmer and Henley list /corned/ and /jagged/ among English synonyms, but the former is obviously an Americanism derived from /corn-whiskey/ or /corn-juice/, and Thornton says that the latter originated on this side of the Atlantic also. [Pg086]

§ 4

/Loan-Words/--The Indians of the new West, it would seem, had little to add to the contributions already made to the American vocabulary by the Algonquins of the Northeast. The American people, by the beginning of the second quarter of the nineteenth century, knew almost all they were destined to know of the aborigine, and they had names for all the new objects that he had brought to their notice and for most of his peculiar implements and ceremonies. A few translated Indian terms, /e. g./, /squaw-man/, /big-chief/, /great-white-father/ and /happy-hunting ground/, represent the meagre fresh stock that the western pioneers got from him. Of more importance was the suggestive and indirect effect of his polysynthetic dialects, and particularly of his vivid proper names, /e. g./, /Rain-in-the-Face/, /Young-Man-Afraid-of-His-Wife/ and /Voice-Like-Thunder/. These names, and other word-phrases like them, made an instant appeal to American humor, and were extensively imitated in popular slang. One of the surviving coinages of that era is /Old-Stick-in-the-Mud/, which Farmer and Henley note as having reached England by 1823.

Contact with the French in Louisiana and along the Canadian border, and with the Spanish in Texas and further West, brought many more new words. From the Canadian French, as we have already seen, /prairie/, /batteau/, /portage/ and /rapids/ had been borrowed during colonial days; to these French contributions /bayou/, /picayune/, /levee/, /chute/, /butte/, /crevasse/, and /lagniappe/ were now added, and probably also /shanty/ and /canuck/. The use of /brave/ to designate an Indian warrior, almost universal until the close of the Indian wars, was also of French origin.

From the Spanish, once the Mississippi was crossed, and particularly after the Mexican war, in 1846, there came a swarm of novelties, many of which have remained firmly imbedded in the language. Among them were numerous names of strange objects: /lariat/, /lasso/, /ranch/, /loco/ (weed), /mustang/, /sombrero/, /canyon/, /desperado/, /poncho/, /chapparel/, /corral/, /broncho/, /plaza/, [Pg087] /peon/, /cayuse/, /burro/, /mesa/, /tornado/, /sierra/ and /adobe/. To them, as soon as gold was discovered, were added /bonanza/, /eldorado/, /placer/ and /vigilante/. /Cinch/ was borrowed from the Spanish /cincha/ in the early Texas days, though its figurative use did not come in until much later. /Ante/, the poker term, though the etymologists point out its obvious origin in the Latin, probably came into American from the Spanish. Thornton's first example of its use in its current sense is dated 1857, but Bartlett reported it in the form of /anti/ in 1848. /Coyote/ came from the Mexican dialect of Spanish; its first parent was the Aztec /coyotl/. /Tamale/ had a similar origin, and so did /frijole/ and /tomato/. None of these is good Spanish.[27] As usual, derivatives quickly followed the new-comers, among them /peonage/, /broncho-buster/, /ranchman/ and /ranch-house/, and the verbs /to ranch/, /to lasso/, /to corral/, /to ante up/, and /to cinch/. /To vamose/ (from the Spanish /vamos/, let us go), came in at the same time. So did /sabe/. So did /gazabo/.

This was also the period of the first great immigrations, and the American people now came into contact, on a large scale, with peoples of divergent race, particularly Germans, Irish Catholics from the South of Ireland (the Irish of colonial days "were descendants of Cromwell's army, and came from the North of Ireland"),[28] and, on the Pacific Coast, Chinese. So early as the 20's the immigration to the United States reached 25,000 in a year; in 1824 the Legislature of New York, in alarm, passed a restrictive act.[29] The Know-Nothing movement of the 50's need not concern us here. Suffice it to recall that the immigration of 1845 passed the 100,000 mark, and that that of 1854 came within sight of 500,000. These new Americans, most of them Germans and Irish, did not all remain in the East; a great many spread through the West and Southwest with the other pioneers. Their effect upon the language was not large, [Pg088] perhaps, but it was still very palpable, and not only in the vocabulary. Of words of German origin, /saurkraut/ and /noodle/, as we have seen, had come in during the colonial period, apparently through the so-called Pennsylvania Dutch, /i. e./, a mixture, much debased, of the German dialects of Switzerland, Suabia and the Palatinate. The new immigrants now contributed /pretzel/, /pumpernickel/, /hausfrau/, /lager-beer/, /pinocle/, /wienerwurst/, /dumb/ (for stupid), /frankfurter/, /bock-beer/, /schnitzel/, /leberwurst/, /blutwurst/, /rathskeller/, /schweizer/ (cheese), /delicatessen/, /hamburger/ (/i. e./, steak), /kindergarten/ and /katzenjammer/.[30] From them, in all probability, there also came two very familiar Americanisms, /loafer/ and /bum/. The former, according to the Standard Dictionary, is derived from the German /laufen/; another authority says that it originated in a German mispronounciation of /lover/, /i. e./, as /lofer/.[31] Thornton shows that the word was already in common use in 1835. /Bum/ was originally /bummer/, and apparently derives from the German /bummler/.[32] Both words have produced derivatives: /loaf/ (noun), /to loaf/, /corner-loafer/, /common-loafer/, /to bum/, /bum/ (adj.) and /bummery/, not to mention /on the [Pg089] bum/. /Loafer/ has migrated in England, but /bum/ is still unknown there in the American sense. In English, indeed, /bum/ is used to designate an unmentionable part of the body and is thus not employed in polite discourse.

Another example of debased German is offered by the American /Kriss Kringle/. It is from /Christkindlein/, or /Christkind'l/, and properly designates, of course, not the patron saint of Christmas, but the child in the manger. A German friend tells me that the form /Kriss Kringle/, which is that given in the Standard Dictionary, and the form /Krisking'l/, which is that most commonly used in the United States, are both quite unknown in Germany. Here, obviously, we have an example of a loan-word in decay. Whole phrases have gone through the same process, for example, /nix come erous/ (from /nichts kommt heraus/) and /'rous mit 'im/ (from /heraus mit ihm/). These phrases, like /wie geht's/ and /ganz gut/, are familiar to practically all Americans, no matter how complete their ignorance of correct German. Most of them know, too, the meaning of /gesundheit/, /kümmel/, /seidel/, /wanderlust/, /stein/, /speck/, /maennerchor/, /schützenfest/, /sängerfest/, /turnverein/, /hoch/, /yodel/, /zwieback/, and /zwei/ (as in /zwei bier/). I have found /snitz/ (=/schnitz/) in /Town Topics/.[33] /Prosit/ is in all American dictionaries.[34] /Bower/, as used in cards, is an Americanism derived from the German /bauer/, meaning the jack. The exclamation, /ouch!/ is classed as an Americanism by Thornton, and he gives an example dated 1837. The New English Dictionary refers it to the German /autsch/, and Thornton says that "it may have come across with the Dunkers or the Mennonites." /Ouch/ is not heard in English, save in the sense of a clasp or buckle set with precious stones (=OF /nouche/), and even in that sense it is archaic. /Shyster/ is very probably German also; Thornton has traced it back to the 50's.[35] /Rum-dumb/ is grounded upon the [Pg090] meaning of /dumb/ borrowed from the German; it is not listed in the English slang dictionaries.[36] Bristed says that the American meaning of /wagon/, which indicates almost any four-wheeled, horse-drawn vehicle in this country but only the very heaviest in England, was probably influenced by the German /wagen/. He also says that the American use of /hold on/ for /stop/ was suggested by the German /halt an/, and White says that the substitution of /standpoint/ for /point of view/, long opposed by all purists, was first made by an American professor who sought "an Anglicized form" of the German /standpunkt/. The same German influence may be behind the general facility with which American forms compound nouns. In most other languages, for example, Latin and French, the process is rare, and even English lags far behind American. But in German it is almost unrestricted. "It is," says L. P. Smith, "a great step in advance toward that ideal language in which meaning is expressed, not by terminations, but by the simple method of word position."

The immigrants from the South of Ireland, during the period under review, exerted an influence upon the language that was vastly greater than that of the Germans, both directly and indirectly, but their contributions to the actual vocabulary were probably less. They gave American, indeed, relatively few new words; perhaps /shillelah/, /colleen/, /spalpeen/, /smithereens/ and /poteen/ exhaust the unmistakably Gaelic list. /Lallapalooza/ is also probably an Irish loan-word, though it is not Gaelic. It apparently comes from /allay-foozee/, a Mayo provincialism, signifying a sturdy fellow. /Allay-foozee/, in its turn, comes from the French /Allez-fusil/, meaning "Forward the muskets!"--a memory, [Pg091] according to P. W. Joyce,[37] of the French landing at Killala in 1798. Such phrases as /Erin go bragh/ and such expletives as /begob/ and /begorry/ may perhaps be added: they have got into American, though they are surely not distinctive Americanisms. But of far more importance than these few contributions to the vocabulary were certain speech habits that the Irish brought with them--habits of pronunciation, of syntax and even of grammar. These habits were, in part, the fruit of efforts to translate the idioms of Gaelic into English, and in part borrowings from the English of the age of James I. The latter, preserved by Irish conservatism in speech,[38] came into contact in America with habits surviving, with more or less change, from the same time, and so gave those American habits an unmistakable reinforcement. The Yankees, so to speak, had lived down such Jacobean pronunciations as /tay/ for /tea/ and /desave/ for /deceive/, and these forms, on Irish lips, struck them as uncouth and absurd, but they still clung, in their common speech, to such forms as /h'ist/ for /hoist/, /bile/ for /boil/, /chaw/ for /chew/, /jine/ for /join/,[39] /sass/ for /sauce/, /heighth/ for /height/ and /rench/ for /rinse/ and /lep/ for /leap/, and the employment of precisely the same forms by the thousands of Irish immigrants who spread through the country undoubtedly gave them a certain support, and so protected them, in a measure, from the assault of the purists. And the same support was given to /drownded/ for /drowned/, /oncet/ for /once/, /ketch/ for /catch/, /ag'in/ for /against/ and /onery/ for /ordinary/. [Pg092]