American Language (37 page)

A shadowy line often separates what is currently coming into sound usage from what is still regarded as barbarous. No American of any pretensions, I assume, would defend
ain’t
as a substitute for
isn’t
, say in “He
ain’t
the man,” and yet
ain’t
is already tolerably respectable in the first person, where English countenances the even more clumsy
aren’t. Aren’t
has never got a foothold in the American first person; when it is used at all, which is very rarely, it is always as a conscious Briticism. Facing the alternative of employing the unwieldy “
Am
I not in this?” the American turns boldly to “
Ain’t
I in this?” It still grates a bit, perhaps, but
aren’t
grates even more.
¹²³
Here, as always, the popular speech is pulling the exacter speech along, and no one familiar with its successes in the past can have much doubt that it will succeed again, soon or late. In the same way it is breaking down the inflectional distinction between adverb and adjective, so that
in bad
begins to take on the dignity of a national idiom, and
sure, to go big
and
run slow
¹²⁴
become almost respectable. When, on the entrance of the United States into the World War, the Tank Corps chose “Treat ’em
rough
” as its motto, no one thought to raise a grammatical objection, and the clipped adverb was printed upon hundreds of thousands of posters and displayed in every town in the country, always with the imprimatur
of the national government. So again, American, in its spoken form, tends to obliterate the distinction between nearly related adjectives,
e.g., healthful
and
healthy
. And to challenge the somewhat absurd textbook prohibition of terminal prepositions, so that “Where are we
at?
” loses its old raciness. And to substitute
as though
for
as if
. And to split infinitives in a wholesale and completely innocent manner.
¹²⁵
And to dally lavishly with a supererogatory
but
, as in “I have no doubt
but
that.” The last occurs very frequently in the
Congressional Record
, and though it was denounced by Edward S. Gould so long ago as 1867
¹²⁶
it seems to be very firmly lodged in colloquial American, and even to have respectable standing in the standard speech. It was used often by the highly correct Henry Cabot Lodge,
¹²⁷
and has been written into a decision of the Supreme Court of the United States by Charles Evans Hughes.
¹²⁸
The
one-he
combination, so offensive to purists (among whom, in this case, I venture to include myself), is now so common in the United States that putting it down becomes quite hopeless. In 1921, when the late Warren Gamaliel Harding, LL.D., used it in his Inaugural Address, I mocked it in the
Nation
, but in vain, for most of the correspondents who wrote to me afterward argued for it. Of the twenty-nine philologians who voted on it in the Leonard-Moffett inquiry,
¹²⁹
six called it good “literary or formal English” and sixteen thought it was “cultivated, informal English.” It is, of course, not English at all, as Fowler observes in “Modern English Usage,” though it is used by “a small minority of modern British writers.” But in this
country its use is almost universal, and I have even found it in a serious treatise on the national letters by a former editor of the
Atlantic Monthly
, edited by a posse of Yale professors and published by the University Press.
¹³⁰
The appearance of a redundant
s
at the end of such words as
downward, somewhere
and
forward
has been long marked in American. “In modern Standard English,” says Logan Pearsall Smith,
¹³¹
“though not in the English of the United States, a distinction which we feel, but many of us could not define, is made between
forward
and
forwards; forwards
being used in definite contrast to any other direction, as ‘If you move at all, you can only move
forwards
’ while
forward
is used where no such contrast is implied, as in the common phrase, ‘to bring a matter
forward.
’”
¹³²
This distinction,
pace
Smith, retains some force in the United States too, but in general our usage allows the
s
in cases where English usage would certainly be against it. Gould, in the 50’s, noting its appearance at the end of such words as
somewhere
and
anyway
, denounced it as vulgar and illogical, and White, in the late 60’s, was against it even in
towards
. But
towards
, according to Fowler, is now prevailing even in England. Thornton traced
anyways
back to 1842 and showed that it was an archaism, and to be found in the Book of Common Prayer (
c
. 1560); perhaps it has been preserved by analogy with
sideways
. Henry James attacked “such forms of impunity as
somewheres else
and
nowheres else, a good ways on
and
a good ways off
” as “vulgarisms with which a great deal of general credit for what we good-naturedly call ‘refinement’ appears so able to coexist,”
¹³³
but his shrill complaint seems to have fallen upon sound-proofed ears. Perhaps he would have been even more upset, on his so unhappy American tour, if he had encountered
no place
and
some place
, which show some sign of dislodging
nowheres
and
somewheres
.

The general American liking for short cuts in speech, so plainly visible in the incessant multiplication of compounds and back-formations, is also shown in the popularity of abbreviations. They are employed in the United States, says John S. Farmer, “to an
extent unknown in Europe. Life, they say, is short and the pace is quick; brevity, therefore, is not only the soul of wit, but the essence of business capacity as well. This trait of the American character is discernible in every department of the national life and thought — even slang being curtailed at times.”
¹³⁴
O.K., C.O.D., N.G.
and
P.D.Q
. are American masterpieces; the first has been borrowed by all the languages of Western Europe and some of those of Asia, and in the days of the great immigrations the immigrants learned all four immediately after
hell
and
damn
. Thornton has traced
N.G
. to 1840, and
C.O.D
. and
P.D.Q
. are probably quite as old. The earliest use of
O.K
. that has been recorded in the dictionaries is dated 1840 also, and the story generally credited is that it originated in Champaign county, Ohio, during the presidential campaign of that year. The Whig candidate was William Henry Harrison, an Ohioan, and on September 15 there was a rally in his interest in a grove belonging to John A. Ward, father of J. Q. A. Ward the sculptor, at Urbana. In the parade preceding the speech-making there were 42 farm-wagons, each freighted with a small log-cabin. One of these wagons was driven by John Rock, a nearby farmer. It was drawn by 24 horses, and had 36 young women as passengers, all dressed in white. On it was a streamer bearing the words “The People is Oll Korrect,” painted by Thomas Daniels, the local handy-man. The story is to the effect that Daniels’s error was seized upon by Harrison’s opponents, but that his friends, seeing the popular appeal in it, took it over themselves and made “The People is
O.K.
” their battle-cry. Unluckily, Mr. H. J. Carr, of the Urbana
Citizen
, has discovered that
O.K
. had appeared in Samuel Medary’s
Ohio Statesman
, published at Columbus, on September 11, four days before the Urbana meeting.
¹³⁵
More, it had been used in the Boston
Transcript
on April 15, five months before the meeting,
¹³⁶
and again in the Boston
Atlas
on June 20.
¹³⁷
There are many rival etymologies for the abbreviation. One derives it from the initials of one Obediah Kelly, an early railway freight-agent, who signed them to bills of lading. Another derives it from
Keokuk
, the name of an Indian chief from whom the town of Keokuk, Iowa, was named. His admirers called him Old Keokuk, and usually added “He’s all right!”, and so
Old Keokuk
, and finally the simple initials, came to mean the same thing.
¹³⁸
A third etymology derives
O.K
. from
omnis korrecta
, supposed to have been once used by schoolmasters in marking examination-papers.
¹³⁹
A fourth seeks its origin in
Aux Cayes
, the name of a port in what is now Haiti, whence the best rum came in the early days. A fifth holds that it was borrowed from the terminology of the early shipbuilders, who fashioned the timbers of their ships under cover, marked each one for identification, and then began the actual building by laying
O.K.
(
i.e.
, outer keel)
No. 1
.
¹⁴⁰
A sixth contends that
O.K
. was invented by the early telegraphers, along with many other abbreviations,
e.g., G.M
. (good morning),
G.A
. (go ahead) and
N.M
. (no more).
¹⁴¹
A seventh credits
O.K
. to the elder John Jacob Astor, “who marked it on bills presented to him for credit.”
¹⁴²
An eighth seeks its origin in the archaic English word
hoacky
or
horkey
, meaning the last load brought in from the fields at harvest.
¹⁴³
A ninth derives it from a Choctaw word,
okeh
, signifying “it is so.” “Webster’s New International Dictionary” (1934) accepts this last, though adding a saving “probably,” but the Supplement to the Oxford Dictionary
(1933) rejects it, saying that “it does not agree with the evidence.” There is yet a tenth etymology, whereby
O.K
. is made to originate in a libel of Andrew Jackson by Seba Smith (Major Jack Downing), who is said to have alleged,
c
. 1832, that he saw Jackson’s endorsement “
O.K.
, Amos,” on the elegant pronunciamentoes drawn up for him by his literary secretary, Amos Kendall. Says a floating newspaper paragraph:

This last theory, it seems to me, deserves more investigation than it has got. Certainly
O.K
. must have been in familiar use before 1840, and equally certainly it had some connection with Democrats. But Woodrow Wilson, himself the most eminent Democrat of his day, accepted the Choctaw etymology, and used
okeh
in approving official papers. His use of the form made it popular, and it became the name of a series of popular phonograph records, and of many shoe-shining parlors, lunch-rooms and hot-dog stands. An
Okey
Hosiery Company survives in New York along with an
Okay
Electric Company, an
Okay
Food Sales Company, an
Okay
Manufacturing Company, and an
Okay
Supply Company.
O.K
. has gone into English,
¹⁴⁵
and also into all the Continental languages. Some years ago the British Privy Council decided solemnly that it was good English. Ba Maw, manager of a rice mill in Burma, had written
O.K
. on certain bills to indicate that they had been checked and found correct. The Privy Council agreed that his understanding of the meaning of the term was sound, and in doing so set aside a decree of the High Court of Rangoon, which had ruled that
O.K
. was not English. English or not, it has become the symbol for “we agree” in the code of the International Telecommunication Convention, signed by the delegates
to the International Radio Conference at Madrid, December 9, 1932. “It is estimated,” says a recent newspaper writer, “that
O.K
. is used [in the United States] not less than a million times a day, even by the most high-hatted of auditors and certified public accountants. It is used in official business at Washington and in the Army and Navy, in the Ford plant, on the railroads, and in the American sections of London and Paris. Regardless of its possible illegitimacy, it has a convincing and captivating ring, and it is undoubtedly the most popular of all American slang or idiom.”
¹⁴⁶
The figure mentioned by this writer seems to be too modest. According to James A. Bohannon, president of the Peerless Motor Car Corporation, “a half million O.K.’
s
are included in every motor-car built.”
¹⁴⁷
A back-formation,
oke
, appeared about 1930.

Many other abbreviations are in common use in the United States. I have mentioned
C.O.D., N.G
. and
P.D.Q
. The first-named has been borrowed by the English, but they always understand it to mean
cash
on delivery, not
collect
on delivery.
G.O.P
. was formerly popular as a designation for the Republican party (
Grand Old Party
), and also, in the days of the horse-cars, as an abbreviation of
get out and push
, but it seems to be fading. It was probably suggested by the English
G.O.M
. for
Grand Old Man
(W. E. Gladstone, 1882).
A No. 1
, as in an
A No. 1
car, is also an Americanism of English parentage: it is borrowed from
A 1
, used in Lloyd’s Register to designate ships in first-class condition. Other familiar Americanisms are
G.B
. (grand bounce),
F.F.V
. (first families of Virginia),
F.O.B
. (free on board),
G.A.R
. (Grand Army of the Republic),
S.A
. (sex-appeal),
D. & D
. (drunk and disorderly),
on the Q.T
. (on the quiet),
T.B
. (tuberculosis),
L
(elevated-railway), and
B.V.D.
, the trade-name for a brand of men’s underwear, but now in such wide use that it is applied indiscriminately to the product of other manufacturers.
¹⁴⁸
Perhaps
Q-room
(cue-room, i.e., billiard-room),
While-U-wait
, and
Bar-B-Q
(barbecue), all of them familiar signs, should be added. There are many secret and semi-secret abbreviations, especially in college slang and other argots,
¹⁴⁹
and nonce-forms often appear,
e.g., w.k.
(well-known). The World War brought in a great many novelties, headed by
A.E.F.
(American Expeditionary Force) and
a,w,o,l,
(absent without leave). There was a similar abundance of new forms in England: of them
D.O.R.A.
(Defense of the Realm Act) and
wren
(a member of the
Women’s Royal Naval Service
) are examples. After the war the Russians contributed a large number,
e.g., cheka (Chrezvychainaya Komissiya, i.e., Extraordinary Commission), N.E.P.
(New Economic Plan), and
Gay-pay-oo
(Gosundarstvennoe Politicheskoe Upravlenie, i.e., Government Political Administration), which last somehow became
Ogpu
in the Western world. To these was presently added
Nazi
(National-sozialistische) from Germany. The effect was to encourage the invention of similar forms in America, and when the New Deal dawned, in 1933, scores began to appear,
e.g., N.R.A
. or
Nira (National Recovery Administration), T.V.A. (Tennessee Valley Authority), F.E.R.A. (Federal Emergency Relief Administration), C.C.C. (Civilian Conservation Corps), A.A.A.
(Agricultural Adjustment Administration), and so on — enough, in fact, to induce Alfred E. Smith to describe the government as submerged in a bowl of alphabetical soup.
¹⁵⁰
The advertising brethren are fertile inventors of abbreviations. They seem to have produced
I.X.L
. many years ago, and of late they have added
XLent
(a brand of salmon),
E.Z
. (for easy: part of the name of a brand of shoes),
Fits-U
(a brand of eye-glasses), and many other combinations of
U, e.g., Uneeda, Uneedme
(a chair-pad),
U-Put-It-On
(a weather-strip),
U-Rub-It-In
(an ointment),
While-U-Wait
, and
“R.U
. interested in” —
whatever happens to be for sale.
¹⁵¹
On the Pacific Coast the barbecues and hot-dog stands run to such signs as
Sit ’N
Eat, Park ’N
Dine
and so on.
¹⁵²
In college slang the common abbreviation
W.C
. (water-closet) is sometimes expanded, ironically, to
Wesley chapel
. In a similar way sporting writers expand
K.O
. (knockout) to
kayo
.