American Language (33 page)

New words, of course, are no more produced by the folk than are new ballads: they are the inventions of concrete individuals, some of whom can be identified. The elder Roosevelt was responsible, either as coiner or as propagator, for many compounds that promise to survive,
e.g., strenuous-life, nature-faker, pussy-footer, weasle-word, 100% American, hyphenated-American, Ananias-Club, big-stick
and
embalmed-beef. Scofflaw
was coined simultaneously in 1924 by Henry Irving Shaw, of Shawsheen Village, Mass., and Miss Kate L. Butler, of Dorchester in the same State.
²⁶
Debunking
, and its verb,
to debunk
, were launched by William E. Woodward in his book, “Bunk,” in 1923. Both have been taken over by the English, though protests against them, often bitter in tone, still appear occasionally in the English newspapers.
²⁷
Moron
was proposed by Dr. Henry H. Goddard in 1910 to designate a feeble-minded person of a mental age
of from eight to twelve years; it was formally adopted by the American Association for the Study of the Feeble-minded in May of that year, and immediately came into wide use. In Chicago, at the time of the Leopold-Loeb trial in 1924, the local newspapers began to misuse it in the sense of sexual pervert, and it has retained that meaning locally ever since.
²⁸
Many new words, launched with impressive ceremony, have only short lives as nonce-words, or fail altogether. In his “Fifty Suggestions” (
c
. 1845) Edgar Allan Poe proposed that
suspectful
be used to differentiate between the two meanings of
suspicious
, one who suspects and one to be suspected, but though the word is in “Webster’s New International” (1934) it is marked “now rare,” and no one uses it. Most of Walt Whitman’s inventions went the same way. On March 6, 1926, the Pennsylvania Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals awarded a prize to Mrs. M. Mcllvaine Bready, of Mickleton, N. J., for
pitilacker
, and tried to establish it in the sense of one cruel to animals, but it failed to make the success of
scofflaw
. In “The Mighty Medicine” (1929) the late Dr. Franklin H. Giddings proposed
taboobery
and
tomtomery
’, but neither seized the public fancy. During the heyday of the I.W.W. (1912–1920) one of its chief propagandists was a writer calling himself T-Bone Slim; he wrote for most of the fugitive organs of the movement, but especially for the
Industrial Worker
. He invented many neologisms, and some of them were popular for a time, but only
brisbanality
, signifying a platitudinous utterance by Arthur Brisbane of the Hearst papers (or, at all events, one thought to be platitudinous by radicals), has survived. In February, 1927, the
Forum
issued a general call for new words, and during the months following many were proposed by its readers, but not one of them seems to have got into the American vocabulary.
²⁹

The formation of artificial words of the
scalawag, lallapaloosa
and
rambunctious
class goes on constantly. Some of them are blends:
grandificent
(from
grand
and
magnificent
) and
sodalicious
(from
soda
and
delicious
); others are made up of common roots and grotesque affixes:
whangdoodle, splendiferous
and
peacharino
; others are arbitrary reversals, as
sockdolager
from
doxologer
, and yet others are stretch-forms or mere extravagant inventions:
scallywampus, dingus, doodad, supergobsloptious
and
floozy.
³⁰
Many of these are devised by advertisement writers or college students and belong properly to slang, but there is a steady movement of selected specimens into the common vocabulary. The words in
-doodle, e.g., whangdoodle
and
monkey-doodle
, hint at German influences, and those in
-ino
may owe something to Italian or maybe to Spanish. Such suffixes are sometimes worked heavily. The first to come into fashion in the United States was apparently
-ery
, which appeared in
printery
in 1638. When
beanery
followed it I do not know, but it must have been before the end of the next century.
Grocery
(for grocery-store) has been traced back to 1806, and
groggery
to 1822.
Bakery
and
bindery
also seem to be American. In late years many congeners have appeared,
e.g., boozery, bootery
and
breadery. Condensery
is used in the West to indicate a place where milk is condensed.
Creamery
, though it has now got into English, is listed in the Oxford Dictionary as “first used in U. S.” Dr. Louise Pound reports
hashery, drinkery
and
drillery
, the last signifying a cramming-school for the Civil Service, and E. S. Hills adds
cakery, car-washery, dough-nutery, lunchery, mendery
(a place where clothes are mended), and
eatery
.
³¹
In Three Rivers, Mich., so I am told by a correspondent, there is a
shoe-fixery
. In Pasadena, Calif., there is a
hattery
, in South Pasadena a
cyclery
, in Los Angeles a
nuttery
and a
chowmeinery
, and near San Francisco a
squabery.
³²

Cafeteria
, as everyone knows, has produced an enormous progeny, and some of its analogues are very curious. From the discussions of the word that have appeared in
American Speech
since 1926 I cull the following:
restauranteria, garmenteria, shaveteria
(a place where shaving utensils are supplied to wayfarers),
shoeteria, resteteria
(a
rest-room),
chocolateria, sodateria, fruiteria, radioteria, bobateria
(where hair is bobbed),
valeteria, marketeria, caketeria, candyteria, casketeria
(an undertaker’s shop),
drugteria, basketeria, cleaneteria, groceteria
(with the variants
grocerteria
and
groceryteria), healtheteria, farmateria, mototeria
(a
grocereteria
on wheels),
cashateria, wrecketeria
(a bone-yard for old motor-cars),
luncheteria, haberteria, hatateria, kalfeteria
or
kafateria,
³³
honeyteria, smoketeria
, and even
drygoodsteria
. A watchful correspondent, Dr. Harley K. Croessmann, reports a
millinteria
on Sheridan road in Chicago and a
scarfeteria
in Randolph street, and I myself, in 1928, encountered a
spaghetteria
in West 46th street, New York.
Cafeteria
is probably of Spanish origin, but when and where it got into American is still in dispute. Phillips Barry has found it in a dictionary of Cuban-Spanish published in 1862
³⁴
and other investigators point to analogues in Standard Spanish, in common use along the Mexican border,
e.g., barberia
(barber-shop),
carniceria
(butcher-shop) and
panaderia
(baker-shop). In Cuban-Spanish the word means “a shop where coffee is sold.” It did not get into any American dictionary until 1918, but it had been in general use in Southern California for at least ten years before. I have, however, received a caveat to the California claim to priory from a Chicago correspondent whose name I have unfortunately mislaid. “A Chicago man,” he says, “was planning to open a new lunchroom in that city, with the new feature of the guests serving themselves. He wanted a new and appropriate name for it and applied to my cousin, who had lived in Buenos Aires. This cousin suggested
cafeteria
, which was adopted. It should be accented on the penultimate, but the patrons immediately moved the accent one place forward. This was about the year 1900.” Another correspondent, Mr. Herbert Spencer Jackson, of Los Angeles, informs me that he remembers seeing a
cafeteria
in South LaSalle street, Chicago, “about 1895.” There has been an extensive discussion of the word in
American Speech
and elsewhere, but some gaps in its history remain.
³⁵

Other suffixes that have produced interesting forms are
-ette, -dom, -ster, -ite, -ist, -itis, -ician, -orium, -ogist
and
-or.
³⁶
Cellarette
has been in English for more than a century, but
kitchenette
is American, and so are
farmerette, conductorette, officerette
and a number of other analogous words. Logan Pearsall Smith says in “The English Language” (1912) that
-dom
is being replaced in English by
-ness
, and that the effort made by Thomas Carlyle and others to revive it during the Nineteenth Century was so far a failure that only
boredom (c
. 1850) made any headway. But in the United States the affix retains a great deal of its old life, and has produced a long list of words,
e.g., sportdom, moviedom, flapperdom, dogdom, turfdom, newspaperdom, Elkdom, filmdom
and
crookdom
.
³⁷
Now, as in the past,
-ster
has an opprobrious significance, and so its chief products are such words as
gangster, mobster, dopester, ringster, funster, shyster
and
speedster
. From
-ist
we have
monologuist, receptionist, columnist, trapezist, manicurist, electragist, behaviorist
and a number of others.
³⁸
From
-ician
we have the lovely
mortician
and its
brothers,
³⁹
beautician, cosmetician
and
bootician
, to say nothing of
whooptician
, a college cheer-leader. In Hollywood they also speak of
dialogicians
. From
-itis
come
motoritis, golf itis, radioitis, Americanitis
and others after their kind.
⁴⁰
From
-orium
we have
beauto-rium, healthatorium, preventorium, barberatorium, bo bat orium
(apparently a more refined form of
bobateria), lubritorium
(a place where motor-cars are greased),
infantorium, hatatorium, motortorium, odditorium
(a side-show),
pantorium
or
pantatorium
(a pants-pressing parlor),
printorium, restatorium
or
restorium, shavatorium, suitatorium
and
pastorium.
⁴¹
And from
-ogist
and
-or
come
boyologist
(a specialist in the training or entertainment of boys),
truckologist, mixologist
(a bartender),
clockologist
and
hygiologist
,
⁴²
and
realtor, furnitor, chiropractor, avigator
⁴³
and
merchantor
(a member of the Merchants’ Bureau of a Chamber of Commerce). In the case of
motorcade, autocade, camelcade
and
aerocade
, all suggested
by
cavalcade
, a new suffix,
-cade
, seems to have come in.
⁴⁴
Others have also begun to show themselves,
e.g., -naper
(from
kidnaper
), as in
dognaper; -mobile
(from
automobile
), as in
health-mobile
(a motor-car driven about the country by health officers to instruct the yokelry in the elements of hygiene);
-iat
, as in
professoriat; -ee
, as in
donee, draftee
and
honoree
;
⁴⁵
and
-thon
(from
marathon
), as in
walkathon, dancethon, reducathon
and
speedathon
.
⁴⁶
The suffix
-ine
came in during the middle 80’s, and seems to have been first hitched to
dude
, itself an American invention of 1883. But both
dude
and
dudine
are now obsolete save in the Far West, where they survive to designate the Easterners who come out to cavort on
dude-ranches
under the guidance of
dude-wranglers
. During the World War
patrioteer
, which had been in use in England at least as early as 1913, brought in various words in
-eer
, but only
fictioneer
shows any sign of surviving. About the same time
-ine
had a brief revival, producing
doctorine, actorine, chorine
, etc., but only the two last named are ever heard today.
⁴⁷
Certain prefixes have come in for heavy service of late,
e.g., anti-, super-, semi-
and
near-
. Words in
anti-
are numerous in English, but they seem to be even more numerous in American, especially in the field of politics. “If it were possible to collect the
material completely,” says Allen Walker Read, “a ‘History of Opposition Movements in America’ could be written.”
⁴⁸
Read offers dozens of examples, beginning with
anti-Episcopalian
(1769) and
anti-Federalist
(1788) and running down to the present day. The list includes, of course,
anti-suffragist
(1886), which suffered the curious accident, in 1913 or thereabout, of losing its root and becoming simply
anti
. The numerous words in
near-
began to appear about 1900. George Horace Lorimer was writing of
near-seal
in “Letters of a Self-Made Merchant to His Son” in 1902, and soon thereafter the advertisements in the newspapers bristled with analogues,
e.g., near-silk, near-antique, near-leather, near-mahogany, near-silver
and
near-porcelain
. A logical extension quickly produced
near-accident, near-champion, near-finish
and others after their kind, and in 1920 came
near-beer
, to flourish obscenely for thirteen long years and then sink into happy obsolescence.
Super-
has been very popular since 1920 or thereabout. It got
a great lift when the movie press-agents began writing about
super-productions
and
super-films
, and various analogues have followed,
e.g., super-highway, super-cabinet, super-criminal, super-gang
and
super-love
. The last signifies a kind of amour perfected by the virtuosi of Hollywood: it partakes of the characters of riot, delirium tremens and mayhem. Sometimes
super-
is employed to strengthen adjectives, as in
super-perfect
and
super-American
. H. W. Horwill, in his “Dictionary of Modern American Usage,” says that
semi-
“is in much more frequent use in America than in England.” He cites
semi-annual
(Eng.
half-yearly), semi-centennial
(Eng.
jubilee), semi-panic, semi-wild, semi-open-air, semi-national
and
semi-occasional
. There has been, of late, a heavy use of
air-
, as in the adjectives
air-cooled, air-conditioned, air-conscious
and
air-minded
, and the nouns
air-liner, air-rodeo
and
air-hostess
.
⁴⁹
During the thirteen years of Prohibition
pre-Volstead
and
pre-war
threatened to bring in a flock of novelties in
pre-
, but the prefix seems to have died out of popularity.