American Language (47 page)

In England
corporation
commonly designates a municipal or university corporation, or some other such public body,
e.g.
, the British Broadcasting
Corporation
; what we commonly think of when we hear of the corporations is there called a
public company
or
limited liability company
. But the use of the word in its American sense seems to be gaining ground, and in 1920 Parliament passed an act (10 & 11 Geo. V, Ch. 18) levying a
corporation-profits
tax. An Englishman writes
Ltd
, after the name of a limited liability (what we would call
incorporated
) bank or trading company, as we write
Inc
. He calls its president its
chairman
if a part-timer, or its
managing director
if a full-timer.
⁵³
Its stockholders are its
shareholders
, and hold
shares
instead of
stock
in it. Its bonds are called
debentures
, and the word is not limited in meaning, as in the United States, to securities not protected by a mortgage. The place where such companies are floated and looted — the Wall Street of London — is called the
City
, with a capital
C.
Bankers, stockjobbers, promoters, directors and other such leaders of its business are called
City
men. The financial editor of a newspaper is its
City
editor. Government bonds are
consols
, or
stocks
,
⁵⁴
or the
funds. To have money in the stocks
is to own such bonds. An Englishman hasn’t a bank-account, but a
banking-account
. His deposit-slip is a
paying-in-slip
, and the stubs of his
cheque
-book (not
check
-book) are the
counterfoils
. He makes a rigid distinction between a
broker
and a
stockbroker
. A
broker
means, not only a dealer in securities, as in our
Wall Street broker
, but also “a person licensed to sell or appraise distrained goods.”
To have the brokers
(or
bailiffs) in
means to be bankrupt, with one’s
very household goods in the hands of one’s creditors.
⁵⁵
What we call a
grain-broker
is a
corn-factor
.

Tariff reform
, in England, does not mean a movement toward free trade, but one toward protection. The word
Government
, meaning what we call
the administration
, is always capitalized and usually plural,
e.g.
, “The Government
are
considering the advisability, etc.”
Vestry, committee, council, ministry
and even
company
are also plural, though sometimes not capitalized. A member of Parliament, if he be one who respects the integrity of his mother-tongue, does not
run
for office; he
stands
. But of late the American
to run
has been coming in, and not long ago an M.P. wrote to me: “If I think of my own
candidature
(candidacy), I say ‘I
ran,
’” etc. An English candidate is not
nominated
, but
adopted
. If he
stands
successfully, he
sits
at Westminster, and is a
sitting member
. When it is said of a man that he is
nursing a constituency
, it means that he is attending fairs, subscribing to charities, and otherwise flattering and bribing the voters, in the hope of inducing them to
return
him. Once returned, he does not represent a
district
, but a
division
or
constituency
. At a political meeting (they are often rough in England) the ushers and bouncers are called
stewards
; the pre-war suffragettes used to delight in stabbing them with hatpins. An M.P. is not afflicted by most of the bugaboos that poison the dreams of an American Congressman. He has never heard, save as a report of far-off heresies, of
direct primaries
, the
recall
, or the
initiative and referendum
. A roll-call in Parliament is a
division
, and an appropriation is a
vote
. A member speaking is said to be
up
or
on his legs
. When the House adjourns it is said to
rise
. The word
politician
has no opprobrious significance in England; it is applied to themselves by statesmen of the first eminence.
Cabinet
is used as with us, but it has a synonym in
ministry
, and a member of it may be called a
minister
. A
contested
election, in England, is simply one in which there is more than one candidate; the adjective has no relation to charges of fraud.

The English keep up most of the old distinctions between physicians and surgeons, barristers and solicitors. A
barrister
is greatly superior to a
solicitor
. He alone can address the higher courts and the parliamentary committees; a solicitor must keep to office work
and the inferior courts. A man with a grievance goes first to his solicitor, who then
instructs
or
briefs
a barrister for him. If that barrister, in the course of the trial, wants certain evidence removed from the record, he moves that it be
struck out
, not
stricken out
, as an American lawyer would usually say. Only barristers may become judges. An English barrister, like his American brother, takes a
retainer
when he is engaged, but the rest of his fee does not wait upon the termination of the case: he expects and receives a
refresher
from time to time. A barrister is never
admitted
to the bar, but is always
called
. If he becomes a
King’s Counsel
, or
K.C
. (a mainly honorary appointment though it carries some privileges, and usually brings higher fees), he is said to have
taken silk
. In the United States a lawyer
tries
a case and the judge either
tries
or
hears
it; in England it is the judge who
tries
it, and the barrister
pleads
it. The witness-stand is the
witness-box
. In the United States the court
hands down
a decision; in England the court hands it
out
. In the United States a lawyer
probates
a will; in England he
proves
it, or has it
admitted to probate
. The calendar of a court is a
cause-list
, and a lawyer’s brief-case is an
attaché-case
. The
brief
in it is not a document to be filed in court, as with us, but a solicitor’s instructions to a barrister. What we call a
brief
is called
pleadings
. A
corporation-lawyer
, of course, is a
company-lawyer. Ambulance-chasers
are unknown.

The common objects and phenomena of nature are often differently named in England and America. The Englishman knows the meaning of
sound (e.g.
, Long Island
Sound
), but he nearly always uses
channel
in place of it. Contrariwise, the American knows the meaning of the English
bog
, but rejects the English distinction between it and
swamp
, and almost always uses
swamp
or
marsh
(often elided to
ma’sh
). The Englishman, instead of saying that the temperature is 29 degrees (Fahrenheit) or that the thermometer or the mercury is at 29 degrees, sometimes says there are
three degrees of frost
. He never, of course, uses
down-East
or
up-State
, nor does he use
downtown
or
uptown
. Many of our names for common fauna and flora are unknown to him save as strange Americanisms heard in the talkies,
e.g., terrapin, ground-hog, poison-ivy, persimmon, gumbo, eggplant, catnip, sweet-potato
and
yam
. He calls the
rutabaga
a
mangelwurzel
. He is familiar with many fish that we seldom see,
e.g.
, the
turbot
, and eats some that we reject,
e.g.
, the
ray
, which he calls the
skate
. He also knows the
hare
, which is seldom heard of
in America. But he knows nothing of
devilled-crabs, crab-cocktails, club-sandwiches, clam-chowder
or
oyster-stews
, and he never goes to
oyster-suppers, sea-food
(or
shore
)
dinners, clam-bakes
or
barbecues
, or eats
boiled-dinners
.

An Englishman never lives
on
a street, but always
in
it, though he may live
on
an avenue or road. He never lives in a
block
of houses, but in a
row
of them or in a
block of flats
(not
apartments
); an
apartment
, to him, is a room. His home is never in a
section
of the city, but always in a
district
. The
business-blocks
that are so proudly exhibited in all small American towns are quite unknown to him. He often calls an office-building simply a
house, e.g., Lever House
. Going home from London by train he always takes the
down-train
, no matter whether he be proceeding southward to Wimbledon, westward to Shepherd’s Bush, northward to Tottenham, or eastward to Noak’s Hill. A train headed toward London is always an
up-train
, and the track it runs on (the left-hand track, not the right-hand one, as in the United States) is the
up-line
. Oxford men also speak of
up-
and
down-trains
to and from Oxford. In general, the Englishman seems to have a much less keen sense of the points of the compass than the American. He knows the
East End
and the
West End
, but the names of his streets are never preceded by
north, east, south
or
west
, and he never speaks of the
north-east corner
of two of them. But there are
eastbound
and
westbound
trains in the London tubes. English streets have no
sidewalks
; they are always called
pavements
or
foot-paths
or simply
paths. Sidewalk
, however, is used in Ireland. A
road
, in England, is always a road, and never a railway. A
car
means a tram-car or motor-car; never a railway-
carriage
. A telegraph-
blank
is a telegraph-
form
. The Englishman does not usually speak of having his shoes (or boots)
shined
; he has them
blacked
. He always calls russet, yellow or tan shoes
brown
shoes (or, if they cover the ankle,
boots
). He calls a pocketbook a
purse
or
wallet
, and gives the name of
pocketbook
or
pocket-diary
to what we call a
memorandum-book
. By
cord
he means something strong, almost what we call
twine
; a thin cord he always calls a
string
; his
twine
is the lightest sort of
string
. He uses
dessert
, not to indicate the whole last course at dinner, but to designate the fruit only; the rest is
the sweet
. If he inhabits bachelor quarters he commonly says that he lives in
chambers
. Flat-houses are often
mansions
. The janitor or superintendent thereof is a
care-taker
or
porter
.

The Englishman is naturally unfamiliar with baseball, and in consequence his language is bare of the countless phrases and metaphors that it has supplied to American. But he uses more racing terms and metaphors than we do, and he has got a good many phrases from other games, particularly cricket. The word
cricket
itself has a definite figurative meaning to him. It indicates, in general, good sportsmanship. To take unfair advantage of an opponent is not
cricket
. The sport of boating, once so popular on the Thames, has also given colloquial English some familiar terms, almost unknown in the United States,
e.g., punt
and
weir
. The game known as
ten-pins
in America is called
nine-pins
in England, and once had that name over here. The Puritans forbade it, and its devotees changed its name in order to evade the prohibition.
⁵⁶
Bowls
, in England, means only the lawn game; the alley game is called
skittles
, and is played in a
skittle-alley
. The English vocabulary of racing differs somewhat from ours. When the odds are 2 to 1 in favor of a horse we say that its price is
1 to 2
; the Englishman says that it is
2 to 1 on
. We speak of backing a horse to
win, place
or
show
; the Englishman uses
each way
instead, meaning
win
or
place
, for
place
, in England, means both
second
and
third
. Though the English talk of racing, football, cricket and golf a great deal, they have developed nothing comparable to the sporting argot used by American sporting reporters. When, during the World War (which Englishmen always call the
Great War
), American soldier nines played baseball in England, some of the English newspapers employed visiting American reporters to report the games, and the resultant emission of technicalities interested English readers much more than the games themselves. One of the things that puzzled them was the word
inning
, as in
second inning
; in England it is always plural.