American Language (27 page)

Some of these inventions, after flourishing for a generation or more, were retired with blushes during the period of plush elegance following the Civil War, but a large number have survived to our own day. Not even the most meticulous purist would think of objecting to
to affiliate, to endorse, to collide, to jeopardize, to predicate, to itemize, to resurrect
or
to Americanize
today, and yet all of them gave grief to the judicious when they first appeared in the debates of Congress, brought there by statesmen from the backwoods. Nor to such simpler verbs of the period as
to corner
(
i.e.
, the market) and
to lynch
.
¹³
Nor perhaps to
to boom, to boost, to kick
(in the sense of to protest),
to coast
(on a sled),
to engineer, to chink
(
i.e.
, logs),
to feaze, to splurge, to bulldoze, to aggravate
(in
the sense of to anger), and
to crawfish
. These verbs have entered into the very fiber of the American language, and so have many nouns derived from them,
e.g., boomer, boom-town, bouncer, kicker, kick, lynching-bee, splurge, roller-coaster
. A few of them,
e.g., to collide
and
to feaze
, were archaic English terms brought to new birth; a few others,
e.g., to holler
¹⁴
and
to muss
, were obviously mere corruptions. But a good many others,
e.g., to bulldoze, to canoodle, to honeyfogle, to hornswoggle
and
to scoot
, were genuine inventions, and redolent of the soil.

Along with these new verbs came a great swarm of verb-phrases, some of them short and pithy and others extraordinarily elaborate, but all showing the national talent for condensing a complex thought, and often a whole series of thoughts, into a vivid and arresting image. To the first class belong
to fill the bill, to fizzle out, to make tracks, to peter out, to plank down, to go back on, to keep tab, to light out
and
to back water
. Side by side with them we have inherited such common coins of speech as
to make the fur fly, to cut a swath, to know him like a book, to keep a stiff upper lip, to cap the climax, to handle without gloves, to freeze on to, to go it blind, to pull wool over his eyes, to have the floor, to know the ropes, to get solid with, to spread oneself, to run into the ground, to dodge the issue, to paint the town red, to take a back seat
and
to get ahead of
. These are so familiar that we use them and hear them without thought; they seem as authentically parts of the English idiom as
to be left at the post
. And yet, as the labors of Thornton have demonstrated, all of them appear to be of American nativity, and the circumstances surrounding the origin of some of them have been accurately determined. Many others are as certainly products of the great movement toward the West, for example,
to pan out, to strike it rich, to jump
or
enter a claim, to pull up stakes, to rope in, to die with one’s boots on, to get the deadwood on, to get the drop, to back and fill, to do a land-office business
and
to get the bulge on
. And in many others the authentic American flavor is no less plain, for example, in
to kick the bucket, to put a bug in his ear, to see the elephant, to
crack up, to do up brown, to bark up the wrong tree, to jump on with both feet, to go the whole hog, to make a kick, to buck the tiger, to let it slide
and
to come out at the little end of the horn. To play possum
belongs to this list. To it Thornton adds
to knock into a cocked hat
, despite its English sound, and
to have an ax to grind. To go for
, both in the sense of belligerency and in that of partisanship, is also American, and so is
to go through
(
i.e.
, to plunder).

Of adjectives the list is scarcely less long. Among the coinages of the first half of the century that are still in use today are
non-committal, highfalutin, well-posted, down-town, two-fer, played-out, down-and-out, semi-occasional, under-the-weather, on-the-fence, flat-footed, whole-souled
and
true-blue
. The first appears in a Senate debate of 1841;
¹⁵
highfalutin
in a political speech of 1848. Both are useful words; it is impossible, not employing them, to convey the ideas behind them without circumlocution. The use of
slim
in the sense of meager, as in
slim chance, slim attendance
and
slim support
, goes back still further. The English commonly use
small
in place of it. Other, and less respectable contributions of the time are
brash, brainy, peart, scary, beatingest, well-heeled, hardshell
(e.g., Baptist),
low-flung, codfish
(to indicate opprobrium) and
go-to-meeting
. The use of
plumb
as an adverb, as in
plumb crazy
, is an English archaism that was revived in the United States in the early years of the century. In the more orthodox adverbial form of
plump
it still survives, for example, in “she fell
plump
into his arms.” But this last is also good English. The characteristic American substitution of
mad
for
angry
appeared in the Eighteenth Century, and perhaps shows the survival of an English provincialism. Witherspoon noticed it and denounced it in 1781, and in 1816 Pickering called it “low” and said that it was not used “except in very familiar conversation.” But it got into much better odor soon afterward, and by 1840 it was passing unchallenged. Its use is one of the peculiarities that Englishmen most quickly notice in American colloquial speech today. In formal written discourse it is less often encountered, probably because the English marking of it has so conspicuously singled it out. But it is constantly met with in the newspapers and in the
Congressional
Record
. In the familiar simile,
as mad as a hornet
, it is used in the American sense, but
as mad as a March hare
is English, and connotes insanity, not mere anger. The English meaning of the word is preserved in
mad-house
and
mad-dog
, but I have often noticed that American rustics, employing the latter term, derive from it a vague notion, not that the dog is demented, but that it is in a simple fury.

It was not, however, among the verbs and adjectives that the American word-coiners of the first half of the century achieved their gaudiest innovations, but among the substantives. Here they had temptation and excuse in plenty, for innumerable new objects and relations demanded names, and they exercised their fancy without restraint. As in the colonial and revolutionary periods, three main varieties of new nouns were thus produced. The first consisted of English words rescued from obsolescence or changed in meaning, the second of compounds manufactured of the common materials of the mother tongue, and the third of entirely new inventions. Of the first class, good specimens are
deck
(of cards),
gulch, gully
and
billion
, the first three old English words restored to usage in America and the last a sound English word changed in meaning. Of the second class, examples are offered by
ginn-shoe, mortgage-shark, carpet-bagger, cut-off, mass-meeting, dead-beat, dug-out, shot-gun, stag-party, wheat-pit, horse-sense, chipped beef, oyster-supper, buzz-saw, chain-gang
and
hell-box
. And of the third there are instances in
buncombe, conniption, bloomer, campus, galoot, maverick, roustabout, bugaboo
and
blizzard
. 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 by bold combinations. 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 any English equivalent, and it is unmistakably American.
¹⁶
The same instinct for the terse, the vivid and the picturesque appears in
boiled-shirt, blow-out, big-gun, claim-jumper, home-stretch, spread-eagle, come-down, back-number, bed-spread, claw-hammer
(coat),
bottom-dollar, poppycock,
¹⁷
cold-snap, back-talk, back-taxes, corn-belt
,
calamity-howler, fire-bug, grab-bag, grip-sack, grub-stake, pay-dirt, tender-foot, stocking-feet, moss-back, crazy-quilt, ticket-scalper, store-clothes, small-potatoes, cake-walk, prairie-schooner, round-up, worm-fence, snake-fence, flat-boat
and
jumping-ojf place
. Such compounds (there are thousands of them) have been largely responsible for giving the American vulgate its characteristic tang and color.
Bell-hop, square-meal
and
chair-warmer
, to name three charming specimens, are as distinctively American as jazz or the quick-lunch.

The spirit of the language also appears 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),
backbone
(for moral courage),
tickler
(for memorandum or reminder),
¹⁸
carnival
(in such phrases as
carnival of crime), scrape
(for fight or difficulty),
¹⁹
flurry
(of snow, or in the market),
suspenders, diggings
(for habitation) and
range
. Again, there are the new workings 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, spon-dulix, slumgullion, rambunctious, scrumptious, to skedaddle, to absquatulate
and
to exfluncticate
.
²⁰
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, rambunctious, to hornswoggle
and
to skedaddle
,
²¹
and
did not occasionally use them. A whole series of artificial American words groups itself around the prefix
ker-
, for example,
ker-flop, ker-bim, ker-splash, ker-thump, ker-bang, ker-plunk, ker-swash, ker-swosh, ker-slap, ker-whut, ker-chunk, ker-souse, ker-slam
and
ker-flummux
. This prefix and its daughters have been borrowed by the English, but Thornton and Ware agree that it is American, and all of the Oxford Dictionary’s examples down to 1875 are of American provenance. Several of my correspondents suggest that it may have been derived from the German prefix
ge-
— that it may represent a humorous attempt to make German verbs by analogy,
e.g., geflop
and
gesplash
. Color is given to this theory by the fact that some of the Oxford Dictionary’s earliest examples (Supplement, 1933) make the prefix
che-, ca-
or
co-
, which are all rather closer to
ge-
than
ker-
is. I offer these speculations for whatever they are worth. Certainly many
ge-
words must have been made by the early “Dutch” comedians in the United States, just as they are still made by college students.
²²

In
Chapter II
, Section 1, 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 day the two languages were so differentiated that they produced wholly distinct railroad nomenclatures. Such commonplace American terms as
box-car, caboose
and
air-line
are still strangers in England. So are
freight-car, flagman, towerman, switch, switch-engine, switch-yard, switchman, track-walker, baggage-room, baggage-check, baggage-smasher, baggage-master, accommodation-train, conductor, express-car, flat-car, hand-car, gondola, 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, fish-plate, run, train-boy, chair-car, club-car, bumpers, mail-clerk, passenger-coach, day-coach, railroad-man, ticket-office, truck
and
right-of-way
, and the verbs
to flag, 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
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.
²³
But the majority of them would puzzle an Englishman, just as the English
luggage-van, permanent-way, goods-waggon, guard, carrier, booking-office, railway-rug, tripper, line, points, shunt, metals
and
bogie
would puzzle the average untraveled American.
²⁴

In two other familiar fields very considerable differences between English and American are visible; in both fields they go back to the gaudy 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;
²⁵
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 compounds:
omnibus-bill, banner-state, favorite-son, anxious-bench, gag-rule, executive-session, spoils-system, mass-meeting, steering-committee, office-seeker
and
straight-ticket
; the humorous metaphors:
pork-barrel, pie-counter, land-slide, dark-horse, carpet-bagger, lame-duck
and
on-the-fence
; the old words put to new uses:
plank, pull, platform, ring, machine, wheel-horse, precinct, primary, floater, repeater, bolter, filibuster, regular
and
fences
; the new coinages:
gerrymander, buncombe, roorback, mugwump
and
bulldozing
; the new derivatives:
abolitionist, candidacy, boss-rule, per-diem
and
boodler
; and the almost innumerable verbs and verb-phrases:
to knife, to straddle, to crawfish, to split a ticket, to go up Salt River, to bolt, to lobby, to eat crow, to boodle, to divvy, to grab
and
to run
. An English candidate doesn’t
run
; 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.
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
filibuster
to 1836,
roorback
to 1844,
split-ticket
to 1842, and
bolter
to 1812.
Regularity
was an issue in Tammany Hall in 1822. 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
.
²⁶