American Language (23 page)

Various nautical terms peculiar to America, or taken into English from American sources, came in during the Eighteenth Century, among them,
schooner, cat-boat, mud-scow
and
pungy
. According to an historian of the American merchant marine,
¹⁶
the first schooner even seen was launched at Gloucester, Mass., in 1713. The word, it appears, was originally spelled
scooner. To scoon
was a verb borrowed by the New Englanders from some Scotch dialect, and meant
to skim or skip across the water like a flat stone. As the first schooner left the ways and glided out into Gloucester harbor, an enraptured spectator shouted: “Oh, see how she
scoons!
” “A
scooner
let her be!” replied Captain Andrew Robinson, her builder — and all boats of her peculiar and novel fore-and-aft rig took the name thereafter. The Scotch verb came from the Norse
skunna
, to hasten, and there are analogues in Icelandic, Anglo-Saxon and Old High German. The origin of
cat-boat, bug-eye
and
pungy
I have been unable to determine. Perhaps the last-named is related in some way to
pung
, a one-horse sled or wagon.
Pung
was once widely used in the United States, but later sank to the estate of a New England provincialism. Longfellow used it, and in 1857 a writer in the
Knickerbocker Magazine
reported that
pungs
filled Broadway, in New York, after a snow-storm.

The early Americans showed that spacious disregard for linguistic nicety which has characterized their descendants ever since. They reduced verb-phrases to simple verbs, turned verbs into nouns, nouns into verbs, and adjectives into either or both. Pickering, in his Vocabulary (1816) made a belated protest against the reduction of the English law-phrase,
to convey by deed
, to
to deed
, and argued solemnly that no self-respecting attorney would employ it, but American attorneys had actually been employing it for years, and they continue to do so to this day. So with
to table
for
to lay on the table. To tomahawk
appeared before 1650, and
to scalp
must have followed soon after. Within the next century and a half they were reinforced by many other such verbs, and by such adjectives made of nouns as
no-account
and
one-horse
, and such nouns made of verbs as
carry-all
and
goner
, and such adverbs as
no-how
. In particular, the manufacture of new verbs went on at a rapid pace. In his letter to Webster in 1789 Franklin deprecated
to advocate, to progress
and
to oppose
— a vain
caveat
, for all of them are now in perfectly good usage.
To advocate
, indeed, was used by Thomas Nashe in 1589, and by John Milton half a century later, but it seems to have been reinvented in America. In 1822 and again in 1838 Robert Southey, then Poet Laureate, led two belated attacks upon it, as a barbarous Americanism,
¹⁷
but its obvious usefulness preserved it, and it remains
in good usage on both sides of the Atlantic today — one of the earliest of the English borrowings from America. In the end, indeed, even so ardent a purist as Richard Grant White adopted it, as he did
to placate
.

Webster, though he agreed with Franklin in opposing
to advocate
, gave his
imprimatur
to
to appreciate
(
i.e.
, to rise in value) and
to obligate
and is credited by Sir Charles Lyell
¹⁸
with having himself claimed the invention of
to demoralize
. In a letter to Thomas Dawes, dated August 5, 1809,
¹⁹
he said that he had also “enriched the vocabulary” with
absorbable, accompaniment, acidulous, achromatic, adhesiveness, adjutancy, admissibility, advisory, amendable, animalize, aneurismal, antithetical, appellor, appreciate, appreciation, arborescent, arborization, ascertainable, bailee, bailment, indorser, indorsee, prescriptive, imprescriptible, statement, insubordination, expenditure, subsidize
, “and other elegant and scientific terms, now used by the best writers in Great Britain and America.” But most of these, though he could not find them in Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary (1755), were already in English before he began to write dictionaries himself, and some were very old.
²⁰
To antagonize
seems to have been given currency by John Quincy Adams,
to immigrate
by John Marshall,
to eventuate
by Gouverneur Morris, and
to derange
by George Washington. Jefferson, as we saw in Chapter I, Section 2, used
to belittle
in his “Notes on Virginia,” and Thornton thinks that he coined it. Many new verbs were made by the simple process of prefixing the preposition to common nouns,
e.g., to clerk, to dicker, to dump, to negative, to blow
(
i.e.
, to bluster or boast),
to cord
(
i.e.
, wood),
to stump, to room
and
to shin
. Others arose as metaphors,
e.g., to whitewash
(figuratively) and
to squat
(on unoccupied land). Others were made by hitching suffixes to nouns, or by groping for roots,
e.g., to deputize, to locate, to legislate, to infract, to compromit
and
to happify
. Yet others seem to have been produced by onomatopœia,
e.g., to fizzle
, or to have arisen by some other such spontaneous process, so far unintelligible,
e.g., to tote
. With them came an endless series of verb-phrases,
e.g., to draw a bead, to face the music, to darken one’s doors, to take to the woods, to fly off the handle, to go on the war-path
and
to saw wood
— all obvious products of pioneer life. Many coinages of the pre-Revolutionary era later disappeared. Jefferson used
to ambition
, but it dropped out nevertheless. So did
conflagrative
, though a president of Yale gave it his
imprimatur
. So did
to compromit (i.e.
, to compromise),
to homologize
and
to happify
.
²¹
Fierce battles raged round some of these words, and they were all violently derided in England. Even so useful a verb as
to locate
, now in quite respectable usage, was denounced in the third volume of the
North American Review
, and other purists of the times tried to put down
to legislate
.

The young and tender adjectives had quite as hard a row to hoe, particularly
lengthy
. The
British Critic
attacked it in November, 1793, and it also had enemies at home, but John Adams had used it in his diary in 1759 and the authority of Jefferson and Hamilton was behind it, and so it survived. By 1816, indeed, Jeremy Bentham was using it in England. Years later James Russell Lowell spoke of it as “the excellent adjective,”
²²
and boasted that American had given it to English.
Dutiable
also met with opposition, and moreover it had a rival,
customable
; but Marshall wrote it into his historic decisions, and thus it took root. The same anonymous watchman of the
North American Review
who protested against
to locate
pronounced his anathema upon “such barbarous terms as
presidential
and
congressional
,” but the plain need for them kept them in the language.
Gubernatorial
had come in long before this, and is to be found in
the New Jersey Archives of 1734.
Influential
was denounced by the Rev. Jonathan Boucher and by George Canning, who argued that
influent
was better,
²³
but it was ardently defended by William Pinkney, of Maryland, and gradually made its way.
Handy, kinky, law-abiding, chunky, solid
(in the sense of well-to-do),
evincive, complected, judgmatical, underpinned, blooded
and
cute
were also already secure in revolutionary days. So with many nouns. Jefferson used
breadstuffs
in his Report of the Secretary of State on Commercial Restrictions, December 16, 1793.
Balance
in the sense of remainder, got into the debates of the First Congress.
Mileage
was used by Franklin in 1754, and is now sound English.
²⁴
Elevator
, in the sense of a storage house for grain, was used by Jefferson and by others before him.
Draw
, for
drawbridge
, comes down from revolutionary days. So does
slip
, in the sense of a berth for vessels. So does
addition
, in the sense of a suburb. So, finally, does
darky
.

The history of these Americanisms shows how vain is the effort of grammarians to combat the normal processes of language development. I have mentioned the opposition to
dutiable, influential, presidential, lengthy, to locate, to oppose, to advocate, to legislate
and
to progress. Bogus, reliable
and
standpoint
were attacked with the same academic ferocity. All of them are to be found in William Cullen Bryant’s celebrated
Index Expurgatorkis (c
. 1870),
²⁵
and
reliable
was denounced by Bishop Coxe as “that abominable barbarism” so late as 1886.
²⁶
Edward S. Gould, another uncompromising purist, said of
standpoint
that it was “the bright particular star … of solemn philological blundering” and “the very counterpart of Dogberry’s
non-com
.”
²⁷
Gould also protested against
to jeopardize, leniency
and
to demean
, though the last named was very old in English in the different sense of to conduct oneself, and Richard Grant White joined him in an onslaught upon
to donate
. But all these words are in good usage in the United States today, and some of them have gone over into English.

The early Americans also made a great many new words by changing the meaning of old ones. The cases of
pond
and
creek
I have already mentioned.
To squat
, in the sense of to crouch, had been sound English for centuries, but they gave it the meaning of to settle on land without the authority of the owner, and from it the noun
squatter
quickly emanated. Of another familiar Americanism Krapp says:

Other examples of the application of old words to new purposes are afforded by
freshet, barn
and
team
. A
freshet
, in Eighteenth Century English, meant any stream of fresh water; the colonists made it signify an inundation. A
barn
was a house or shed for storing crops; in the colonies the word came to mean a place for keeping cattle also. A
team
, in English, was a pair of draft horses; in the colonies it came to mean both horses and vehicle, though the former meaning, reinforced, survived in the tautological phrase,
double team
. The process is even more clearly shown in the history of such words as
corn
and
shoe. Corn
, in orthodox English, means grain for human consumption, and especially wheat,
e.g.
, the
Corn Laws
. The earliest settlers, following this usage, gave the name of
Indian corn
to what the Spaniards, following the Indians themselves, had called
maiz
. The term appears in Bradford’s “History of Plimouth Plantation” (1647) and in Mourt’s “Relation” (1622). But gradually the adjective fell off, and by the middle of the Eighteenth Century
maize
was called simply
corn
and grains in general were called
breadstuffs
. Thomas Hutchinson, discoursing to George III in 1774, used
corn
in this restricted sense, speaking of “rye and
corn
mixed.” “What corn?” asked George. “
Indian
corn,” explained Hutchinson,” or, as it is called in authors,
maize.
²⁹
So with
shoe
. In English it meant (and still means) a topless article of footwear, but the colonists extended its meaning to varieties covering the ankle, thus displacing the English
boot
, which they reserved for foot coverings reaching at least to the knee. To designate the English
shoe
they began to use the word
slipper
. This distinction between English and American usage still prevails, despite the fashion which has sought to revive
boot
in the United States, and with it its derivatives,
boot-shop
and
boot-maker
.

Store, shop, lumber, pie, dry-goods, cracker, rock
and
partridge
among nouns and
to haul, to jew, to notify
and
to heft
among verbs
offer further examples of changed meanings. Down to the middle of the Eighteenth Century
shop
continued to designate a small retail establishment in America, as it does in England to this day.
Store
was applied only to a large establishment — one showing, in some measure, the character of a warehouse. But in 1774 a Boston young man was advertising in the
Massachusetts Spy
for “a
place
as a
clerk
in a
store
” (three Americanisms in a row!). Soon afterward
shop
began to acquire its special American meaning of a factory,
e.g., machine-shop
. Meanwhile
store
completely displaced
shop
in the English sense, and it remained for a late flowering of Anglomania, as in the case of
boot
and
shoe
, to restore, in a measure, the
status quo ante. Lumber
, in Eighteenth Century English, meant disused goods, and this is its common meaning in England today, as is shown by
lumber-room
. But the colonists early employed it to designate cut timber, and that use of it is now universal in America. Its familiar derivatives,
e.g., lumber-yard, lumber-man, lumber-jack
, greatly reinforce this usage.
Dry-goods
, in England, means, “non-liquid goods, as corn” (
i.e.
, wheat); in the United States the term means “textile fabrics, cottons, woolens, linens, silks, laces, etc.”
³⁰
The difference had appeared before 1725.
Rock
, in English, always means a large mass; in America it may mean a small stone, as in
rock-pile
and
to throw a rock
. The Puritans were putting
rocks
into the foundations of their meeting houses so early as 1712.
³¹
cracker
began to be used for
biscuit
before the Revolution.
Tavern
displaced
inn
at the same time. In England
partridge
is applied only to the true
partridge
(Perdix perdix) and its nearly related varieties, but in the United States it is also often used to designate the ruffed grouse (
Bonasa umbellus
), the common quail (
Colinus virginianus
), and various other tetraonid birds. This confusion goes back to colonial times. So with
rabbit
. Zoölogically speaking, there are no native rabbits in the United States; they are all hares. But the early colonists, for some unknown reason, dropped the word
hare
out of their vocabulary, and it is rarely heard in American speech to this day. When it appears it is almost always applied to the so-called Belgian hare, which, curiously enough, is not a hare at all, but a
true rabbit.
Bay
and
bay berry
early acquired special American meanings. In England
bay
is used to designate the bay-tree (
Laurus no-bilis
); in America it designates a shrub, the wax myrtle (
Myrica cerifera
). Both the tree and the shrub have berries, and those of the latter are used to make the well-known
bay berry
candles. Other botanical and zöological terms to which the colonists gave new significances are
blackbird, beech, hemlock, lark, laurel, oriole, swallow
and
walnut
.