AMERICANISMS.*

TERME who take any interest in the processes of growth an transformation which are continually at work in a living language will find abundance of good entertainment in this volume ; and those who can appreciate the now extravagant, now subtle workings of American humour cannot turn over many pages of it without meeting with something to reward them. The book is neither an essay nor a glossary, but what is more satisfactory for its purpose than either, a digested exposition of the peculiar forms of English as written and spoken in the United States. Mr. de Vere's object has been to give as complete a view as possible of the differences be- tween the actual usage of English and American speech ; and he has therefore included in his plan the not inconsiderable tale of good old English words, more or leas obsolete here, the use of which has been continued or revived in America. In some instances we note mistakes as to what the English usage really is, and the fact that- such are possible to a writer well acquainted with English literature is perhaps more conclusive than any list of peculiar words to show that a real divergence of idiom is taking place. Thus we read that "at once" is used instead of the English "immediately fi the fact being that "at once" is quite as good English as "im- mediately," and we should think is at least as often heard in the conversation of educated English people. Then the verb to- trot out is claimed as a pure Americanism. It may be so in origin, but at any rate, it is now tolerably familiar in England, though an English newspaper would not speak seriously of "trotting out a candidate of our party." And under the head of "Cant and Slang" there are some words which we think deserve to be rescued. Thus, at p. 603 :— "For short, a cant phrase, meaning for brevity's sake,' often very curi- ously misapplied, as in the lines, 'My little gal's name is Helen, but we-

call her Heelen for abort.'"

We doubt if the phrase is cant ; certaidly it is common enough in England. The instance given recalls to us a school tradition of one Benn, who was called Benhadad for short. And again, to take

it to suppose) cannot be reckoned amongst "slang and collo- quial expressions." (p. 640.) We take it that the phrase is very good parliamentary and judicial English. Stone dead, too (p. 554), is good English enough, and by no means obsolete : so is white frost, which seems in the United States to be peculiar to the South and West. (p. 618.) Telegram is claimed as an American- ism, but it seems to be less popular in the United States thrus here. Mr. de Vera does not point out the vice of the supposed. analogy on which the word was formed. However, it must now be accepted. Emile Augier's line :— "Je viens de recevoir de Nice an telegramme,"

has even established it, though not without objection, on the- classical boards of the Theatre Frane,ais. The verb to approbate is set down as a Western invention. (p. 175). We do not much like the word, but there is old authority for it, and it is still to be met with in forensic discourse.

With regard to the letter 1, a compliment which we fear is little deserved is paid to English pronunciation ; "the true rolling

• Americanisms; the English of the New World. By Si &bele de Vera, LL.D. New York: Scribner and Co. 1875.

sound of the r, as affected by Englishmen, is rarely heard in the United States." We only wish more Englishmen did affect it.

Our habitual slurring of all consonants, and especially of the r, is perhaps the most striking mark of English as distinguished from

Continental pronunciation. Our last criticism is on the word nasty (p. 509) :— " Nasty, in England frequently meaning ill-tempered or cross-grained, and in this sense admitted into good society, denotes in America some- thing disgusting in point of smell, taste, or even moral character, and is not considered a proper word to be used in the presence of ladies."

If it is meant to be implied that it is not proper to use the word nasty in England except in the metaphorical sense of ill-tempered, this is a really odd misapprehension of English usage. We can only guess that the author may have been misled by the futilities of some manual of polite conversation.

We may now proceed to give some miscellaneous samples of the great quantity of curious and amusing matter which fills the volume. The foreign words come first ; however, we need not dwell on these, as they have not the interest that attaches to the genuine American developments of English. Some of the proper names in the territory originally occupied by French settlers have been strangely corrupted. (p.109.) Thus :—Bob Ruly for Bois Bride, Smack Cover for Chemin Covert, Picketarie River for Riviere die Purgatoire, and the Bodok-tree (bois d'arc).

The " Great West" has contributed a rich store of peculiar and picturesque idioms. The selling or appropriating of land in lots has given rise to one or two. We must observe that there is no ground for saying that the word "in its application to land is unknown to England." The cemetery-lot mentioned as having been recently a subject of legal proceedings in New York would require no explanation in an English court. However, we have not in the old country the institution of "water-lots, tempting enough on the map, but found, upon reaching the place, to be swamp or morass ;" nor have we the phrase across lots, "which denotes a short cut in sparsely-built up towns, where men can save distances by crossing over vacant lots. Brigham Young, the apostle and chief of the Mormons, is reported to have said that he . would send his enemies to hell across lots'; and J. C. Neal makes one of his heroes sneeringly say to a grumbler : 'You would cut across the lot like a streak of lightning, if you had a chance."

Another daring and happy expression is given in a squatter's own explanation (p. 190) :— " 'You see, sir, when you wants to get anything done right away in a hurry, all at oncet like, whether it's flax-beatin' or apple-parin', or corn- huskin', and the neighbours all around come and help work, that's a bee,—and a buildin' bee or a raisin' bee is when they want to set up the frame or the logs of a house or barn."

So a chopping-bee, a stone-bee (to clear a field of stones), a husking- bee. Tea without milk or sugar is barfoot. (207.) One-horse becomes a general epithet of disparagement (221) : a whole team is by contrast a high term of approbation, and the .New York Herald has carried it still farther in the figure of speech—" Grant is a whole team, a horse extra, and a dog under the wagon."

In the political department there are some curious and ingenious terms ; for instance, a verb to crawfish, equivalent to ratting in England : "General Wise crawfished awfully," and constructive mileage, i.e., allowance paid to Members of Congress for travelling expenses not actually incurred (p. 263). Here, too, should come in the "men of miscellaneous imbecility "(p. 617), a compendious for- mula of abuse intended by the speaker to cover the generalship and politics of his adversaries. A noble specimen is given of high- faluting (the word itself is of uncertain origin), attributed to the great Daniel Webster (p. 271) :— " Men of Rochester, I am glad to see you, and I am glad to see your noble city. Gentlemen, I saw your falls, which, I am told, are a hundred and fifty feet high. Gentlemen, Rome had her Cassar, her Scipio her Brutus, but Rome in her proudest day had never a waterfall a hundred and fifty feet high! Gentlemen, Greece had her Demosthenes, her Pericles, her Socrates, but Greece in her palmiest days had never a waterfall a hundred and fifty feet high ! Men of Rochester, go on! No people ever lost their liberties who had a waterfall a hundred and fifty feet high."

Amongst the sea words and phrases—partly technical, partly grotesque, e.g., "as happy as a clam "—we come on this touch of poetry (340) :— " Two very beautiful words, used and perhaps invented by our coast- people, are rnoonglade and grayslick. The former denotes the soft, silvery track which moonlight traces on the waters, and has come down to sea- faring folk from the days of the Pilgrim Fathers, among whom both sunglade and moonglade were used The other word, belonging more properly to the fishermen of Maine, means a state of the sea when the wind has died away, and the water, unbroken by waves, assumes the familiar 'glassy' appearance. The men will hence say : 'We may just 88 well take to oar, for we have gotten into a grayslick.' While the first part of the word refers to the dim but beautiful colour, slick (sleek) fully expresses the quiet oleaginous condition of the sea in

such places."

Natural history furnishes some notable oddities. There is a Canadian lawyer-fish, so called "because he ain't of much use, and the slipperiest fish that swims." Also an edible plant called Jamestown-weed, of which the effect ou some soldiers who ate plentifully of it, according to an old history of Virginia, "was a very pleasant comedy, for they turned natural fools upon it for several days,"—so that Mr. Kingsley's flapdoodle-tree has a living original. But considering how ready mankind has ever been to assert amongst other Rights of Man "the right to be a cussed fool," without any aid of West Indian herbs, one must think this Jamestown-weed a tolerably superfluous bounty of nature.

A very interesting chapter is that of "Old Friends with New Faces," that is, old English words preserved from oblivion, or transformed to special senses by American usage. We can men- tion only a few of these. The verb to can (preserve fruit in cans) has recently been turned to a metaphorical use by an ingenious critic and parodist in the Atlantic Monthly, who says that Mr. Morris' poetry is very nice canned fruit, but still it is canned. The verb "to eat" is used in a droll elliptical way (p. 466) :- "A Western steamboat is thus said to be able to eat four hundred passengers, and to sleep at least two hundred. ' Hoosier : Squire, what pay do you give ? Contractor: Ten bits a day. [A bit is, in the South, a piece of six cents and a quarter.] Hoosier : Why, Squire, I was told you'd give us two dollars a day and eat us.'

Dirt means earth generally : an unpaved road is a dirt-road. Matches are not unfrequently called fireworks in New England (query—can this have been induced by the German Feuerzeug ?). Various ancient strong preterites and plurals are preserved,—as fotch, hot from hit, holp, holden, housen, hove, which last is illus- trated by an old woman's complaint of her house,—" Lor, %wasn't never built, 'twas only hove together."

This paragraph discloses a strange custom (p. 507) :—

" Monkey-spoon is the name of a spoon, bearing the figure of an ape or monkey, carved in solid silver at the extremity of the handle, and given at the funerals of great people in the State of New York to the pall-bearers."

Smudge is a smoke made to drive away flies and mosquitoes (we know nothing of its being "used in England for an over- whelming smoke "), and also the stuff set on fire to make the smoke; thus one may sit "under the lee of a cedar-bark smudge."

Some of the terms set down as "cant and slang" are striking. Jamboree for a row has a certain inner fitness ; so has "more than you can shake a stick at" for an indefinite number. One of the best is the New England "hungry as a graven image," already made known to us by Lowell in the Biglow Papers. One word on the material aspect of this volume. It contains nearly seven hundred pages, but is kept within the bounds of convenient thick- ness by being printed on a fine flexible paper, which also has a creamy tint far more pleasant to the eye than the usual dazzling white.