American Language (36 page)

The list of American verbs made of simple nouns is almost endless. The process has been normal in English for a great many years, and at all periods it has produced forms that have survived,
e.g., to house
(Old English),
to shackle (c
. 1400) and
to waltz (c
. 1790). But it is carried on in the United States with a freedom which England has not seen since Elizabethan times, and though many of its products pass out almost as fast as they come in, others remain in the vocabulary, and rise slowly to respectable usage. A large number are succinct substitutes for verb phrases, and so give evidence of the American liking for short cuts in speech,
e.g., to service
for
to give service
,
⁸⁵
to intern
for
to serve as intern, to style
for
to cut in accord with the style, to biograph
for
to write the biography of
,
⁸⁶
to chamois
(or, perhaps more often,
to shammy
) for
to polish with chamois, to model
for
to act as a model, to taxpay
for
to pay taxes on
,
⁸⁷
to momentum
for
to give momentum to, to contact
for
to make
contact with
,
⁸⁸
to ready
for
to make ready, to protest
for
to protest against, to vacation, to holiday
or
to week-end
for
to take a vacation
or
holiday
or
to go on a week-end trip
, and
to yes
for
to say yes to
.
⁸⁹
There is another class of verbs that may be called “regular” substitutes for the forms that differ from the corresponding nouns or adjectives,
e.g., to loan
for
to lend
,
⁹⁰
to author
for
to write
,
⁹¹
to host
for
to entertain
, and
to signature
for
to sign
.
⁹²
Of verbs made freely and fancifully of simple nouns, whether simple or compound, there is a huge stock and it is enough to cite a few, some of them only nonce-words but others in more or less good usage:
to gesture, to racketeer, to gavel, to reunion, to park
,
⁹³
to waste-basket, to lobby-display
,
⁹⁴
to press-agent, to clearance
,
⁹⁵
to railroad, to grand
marshal
,
⁹⁶
to New Thought
,
⁹⁷
to accession
⁹⁸
to demagogue, to bellyache, to propaganda, to S.O.S., to steam-roller, to pan, to janitor
,
⁹⁹
to bible
,
¹⁰⁰
to census
,
¹⁰¹
and so on. Some of these, of course, belong to various argots, but practically all of them would be intelligible to any alert American, and it would scarcely shock him to see them in his newspaper.
¹⁰²
The use of
to room
in the sense of to supply with a room is common, and it has brought in
to meal
and
to sleep
.
¹⁰³
The movement toward simplicity is also responsible for the triumph of
to graduate
over
to be graduated
and of
to operate
over
to operate on
. The latter is denounced regularly by the
Journal of the American Medical Association
and other medical authorities, but it makes steady headway.
¹⁰⁴
To chiropract
is another sweet flower
of American speech
¹⁰⁵
and to it, perhaps,
to goose
¹⁰⁶
should be added. When
to broadcast
began to be used widely, in 1925, there was a debate among American grammarians over its preterite. Should it be
broadcast
or
broadcasted?
The majority of them appear to have preferred
broadcasted
, as more regular, and they were supported by the English grammarian, H. W. Fowler,
¹⁰⁷
but
broadcast
seems to have prevailed. It has bred the inevitable noun. Daily the newspapers announce that “His speech was
broadcast
last night” or that “A nation-wide
broadcast
has been arranged for tomorrow.”

The common American tendency to overwork a favorite verb has been often noted by English observers. How those of an early day were affected by
to fix
I have reported in
Chapter I
, Section 3. In our own time
to get
has done the heaviest service. Says Ernest Weekley in “Adjectives — and Other Words” (1930):

Dr. Weekley might have added
to get going, to get it over, to get wise, to get off
(to publish or utter),
to get religion, to get back at, to get behind, to get there, to get together, it gets me, to get by, to get the bulge
(or
drop) on, to get ahead of, to get solid, to get sore
,
to make a get-away, to get on to
, and scores of other verb-phrases, all of them in everyday American use. Most of them, it will be noted, are made by the simple device of adding a preposition or adverb to the verb. American, especially on the colloquial level, is very rich in such compounds,
¹⁰⁸
and the differences in meaning between them and the verbs they come from are often great. Compare, for example,
to give
and
to give out, to go back
and
to go back on, to light
and
to light out, to bawl
and
to bawl out, to butt
and
to butt in, to turn
and
to turn down, to go
¹⁰⁹
and
to go big, to show
and
to show up, to put
and
to put over, to pass
and
to pass out, to call
and
to call down, to run
and
to run in, to wind
and
to wind up. To check
has bred a whole series,
e.g., to check up, to check in, to check out, to check with, to check against
and
to check over
. Sometimes, to be sure, the addition seems to be only rhetorical, and many of the resultant forms strike an Englishman as redundant.
Hurry up
, in the imperative, is common in England, but
to hurry up
in the indicative is used less than the simple
to hurry. Brush your hat off
would seem American there, and so would
to stop over, to open up, to beat up, to try out, to start off, to finish up, to average up, to lose out, to start in
(or
out
), and
to stay put
. But such forms are almost innumerable in this country, and most of them, if they lack the sanction of the
Yale Review
, at least have that of the
Congressional Record.
¹¹⁰
Not a few of the characteristic American verb-phrases embody very bold and picturesque metaphors,
e.g., to go haywire, to muscle in, to turn up missing, to spill the beans, to shoot the chutes, to put the skids under, to do a tailspin, to eat crow, to chew the rag, to hit the ceiling, to play possum, to hand him a lemon, to kick in, to show a yellow streak, to saw wood, to throw a scare into
, and
to come out at the little end of the horn
. And some of the simple verbs show
equally bold and picturesque transfers of meaning,
e.g., to fire
(in the sense of to dismiss),
to can
(in the same sense),
to star, to neck
, and so on.
¹¹¹

Verbs of the last-named class are heavily patronized by the headline writers, partly because they are pungent but mainly because most of them are very short. The favorite verbs of the newspaper copy-desk are those of three letters,
e.g., to air
(which serves to indicate any form of disclosure),
to cut, to net, to set, to bar, to aid, to map, to nab, to hit, to rap, to vie
and
to ban
. It has revived an archaism,
to ire
, and has produced
to null
from
to nullify
by clipping.
Gassed
is always used in place of
asphyxiated. To admit
is used as a substitute for
to confess, to acknowledge, to concede, to acquiesce
and
to recognize. To cut
is a synonym for every verb signifying any sort of opposition to enhancement.
To back
is to give any sort of support or recognition,
to ban
indicates any sort of prohibition, and
to hit
connotes every variety of criticism. A few of the headline verbs are of five letters,
e.g., to claim, to photo, to blame, to quash, to speed
and
to score
, and some are even of six letters,
e.g., to attack, to debunk
and
to battle
, but that is only because the researches of the copy-desk Websters have not, as yet, discovered shorter synonyms. Their preference, after their three-letter favorites, runs to four letter verbs,
e.g., to best, to cite, to curb, to flay, to loom, to lure, to name, to oust, to push, to quit, to rule, to spur
and
to void
, and among them, as among the nouns, their first choice is for those of onomatopeic tang.
¹¹²

Writing in the late 60’s of the last century, Richard Grant White said that “in New England … even the boys and girls playing on the commons” used the auxiliary verbs
will
and
shall
“correctly,” which is to say, in accord with Southern English practice, and that “even in New York, New Jersey, and Ohio, in Virginia, Maryland, and South Carolina, fairly educated people of English stock” did the same.
¹¹³
But that was more than two generations ago, and the chances are that it wasn’t actually true even then. Today the distinction between
will
and
shall
has become so muddled in all save
the most painstaking and artificial varieties of American that it may almost be said to have ceased to exist.
¹¹⁴
Save for emphasis,
shall
and
should
are seldom used in the first person, and all of the confusions in other situations that are listed by H. W. Fowler in “Modern English Usage”
¹¹⁵
and by Fowler and his brother in “The King’s English”
¹¹⁶
are encountered in the United States every day. No ordinary American, save after the most laborious reflection, would detect anything wrong in this sentence from the London
Times
, denounced as corrupt by the Fowlers: “We must reconcile what we would like to do with what we can do.” Nor in this by W. B. Yeats: “The character who delights us may commit murder like Macbeth … and yet we will rejoice in every happiness that comes to him.” When Leonard and Moffett submitted “Will you be at the Browns’ this evening?” to a committee made up principally of American philologians, seven of them called it perfectly sound English, eighteen put it down as “cultivated informal English,” and only four dismissed it as “uncultivated.” Two thought it was American, not English, but the Fowlers’ evidence shows that they were in error.
¹¹⁷
In “The King’s English,” the Fowlers admit that the idiomatic use of the two auxiliaries, “while it comes by nature to Southern Englishmen,… is so complicated that those who are not to the manner born can hardly acquire it.” In Scotland and Ireland, as in the United States, the difference between them is largely disregarded, and no doubt Northern English example is at least partly responsible for American usage.
¹¹⁸
As Leonard once said,
¹¹⁹
“The whole mass of
pronouncements about the matter in text-books is of very little importance now, since the future in English is most commonly expressed by neither
shall
nor
will
, but by the much commoner contraction ’
ll
, and by the forms
is to go, about to go, is going to
, and the whole range of auxiliary verbs which mean both past and future.”
¹²⁰
More than two generations ago, impatient of the effort to fasten an arbitrary English distinction upon American, George P. Marsh attacked the differentiation of
shall
from
will
as of “no logical value or significance whatever,” and predicted that “at no very distant day this verbal quibble will disappear, and one of the auxiliaries will be employed, with all persons of the nominative, exclusively as the sign of the future, and the other only as an expression of purpose or authority.”
¹²¹
This prophecy has been substantially verified.
Will
is sound American “with all persons of the nominative,” and
shall
is almost invariably an “expression of purpose or authority.”

The schoolmarm, in fact, has virtually abandoned her old effort to differentiate between the two auxiliaries, but she continues the heroic task of trying to make her young charges grasp the difference between
who
and
whom
. Here, alas, the speechways of the American people seem to be again against her. The two forms of the pronoun are confused magnificently in the debates in Congress, and in most newspaper writing, and in ordinary discourse the great majority of Americans avoid
whom
diligently, as a word full of snares. When they employ it, it is often incorrectly, as in
“
Whom
is your father?” and “
Whom
spoke to me?” Noah Webster, always the pragmatic reformer, denounced it as usually useless so long ago as 1783. Common sense, he argued, was on the side of “
Who
did he marry?” Today such a form as “
Whom
are you talking to?” would seem very affected to most Americans; they might write it, but they would never speak it.
¹²²
The use of
me
instead of
I
in “It’s
me
” is also almost universal in the United States, but here it is the objective form that is prevailing, not the nominative, as in the case of
who
and
whom
, “It’s
me
” will be discussed at length in
Chapter IX
, Section 3.