American Language (53 page)

When it came into use in England, in the Seventeenth Century,
¹³⁶
Rev
. was commonly written without the article, and immediately preceding the surname. Thus, Bishop Joseph Hall (1574–1656) did not hesitate to write
Reverend Calvin
. But at the beginning of the Eighteenth Century
the
and the given-name began to be added, and by the end of the century that form was almost universal in England.
Here, as in many other cases, American usage is archaic.
¹³⁷
It should be added that English practice, in late years, has been somewhat corrupted, maybe by American example. In the list of members printed in the first tract of the Society for Pure English (1919)
Rev., Very Rev., Hon
. and
Rt. Hon
. appeared without the
the
, and it is commonly omitted by the English Methodists and Baptists. In the United States there has arisen recently a habit of omitting it before the names of corporations. It is, in many cases, not a legal part thereof, and is thus properly omitted in bonds, stock certificates and other such documents, but its omission in other situations makes for a barbaric clumsiness. Among news-agents and advertising agents the article is likewise omitted before the names of magazines, and on Broadway it is omitted before the words
show business
.
¹³⁸

The use of the plural,
Revs.
, denounced by H. W. Fowler in his Dictionary of Modern English Usage (1926) is quite common in this country. A somewhat curious English custom, unknown here, is that of using
Messrs
. before single names designating firms. Thus, the
Literary Supplement
of the London
Times
often announces that
Messrs. Jonathan Cape
are about to publish this or that book.

In general, ecclesiastical titles are dealt with somewhat loosely in the United States. In England an archbishop of the Established Church is
the Most Rev
. and
His Grace
, and a bishop is
the Right Rev
. and
His Lordship
, but there are no archbishops in the American Protestant Episcopal Church and the bishops are seldom called
His Lordship
. The Methodists, in writing of their ordinaries, often omit
the Right
, contenting themselves with the simple
Rev
. Among the Catholics, by a decree of the Sacred Congregation of Rites, dated December 31, 1930,
¹³⁹
an archbishop who is not a cardinal is now
the Most Rev
. and
His Excellency
(Excellentia Reverendissima), and so is a bishop. Formerly an archbishop was
the Most Rev
. and
His Grace
, and a bishop was
the Right Rev
. and
His Lordship
. A cardinal, of course, remains
His Eminence
. Before the decree it was the custom to address all monsignori as
the Right Rev.
, but now they are divided into two sections, those who are protonotaries apostolic
or domestic prelates remaining
the Right Rev
.
¹⁴⁰
and those of inferior rank,
e.g.
, papal chamberlains, becoming
the Very Rev
. The American bishops and archbishops display a dubious Latinity by their assumption of
the Most Rev. Reverendissimus
, to be sure, is a superlative, but in the situation in which it is used Latin superlatives are understood only in the sense of
very, e.g., altissimus mons
means a very high mountain, not the highest mountain. Moreover, if the bishops and archbishops are entitled to be called
the Most Rev.
, then so are the monsignori, for Rome applies
reverendissimus
to all of them alike. But the puissant brethren of the American hierarchy arrogate
the Most Rev
. to themselves, and the monsignori must be content with the lesser designations.
¹⁴¹

In the Salvation Army honorifics follow a somewhat strange pattern. The ordinary member of the Army is called a
soldier
, and his status in his
post
is identical with that of a communicant in a church. He is forbidden to belong to any other church. He supports himself at whatever trade he knows, and pays a tenth of his income into the post funds. If he aspires to become an officer he is called a
candidate
and is sent to a training college, where he becomes a
cadet
. On his graduation he is made, if unmarried, a
probationary lieutenant
, or, if married, a
probationary captain
. He must serve a year in the field before he may hope for promotion to full rank. Above the captaincy the ranks are those of
adjutant, major, brigadier
(not
brigadier-general), lieutenant-colonel, colonel, lieutenant-commissioner, commissioner
and
general
. All ranks are open to women. A married woman always takes her husband’s rank, and is known as
Mrs. Major, Mrs. Colonel
, and so on. If he dies, her own future promotions begin where his left off. No unmarried officer, whether male or female, may marry anyone save another officer without resigning from the corps of officers. Virtually every officer, after ten years’ service, is promoted to
adjutant
. But this promotion, and others following it, may come sooner, and an exceptionally useful officer may be put in command of colleagues of higher rank.
¹⁴²

The use of
Madame
as a special title of honor for old women of
good position survived in the United States until the 70’s. It distinguished the dowager Mrs. Smith from the wife of her eldest son. After the Civil War
madame
became the designation of brothel-keepers, and so fell into bad repute. But it survives more or less among the colored folk, who often apply it to women singers of their race, and sometimes to the more pretentious sort of hairdressers, dressmakers and milliners. Mrs. Washington was commonly called
Lady
Washington during her life-time, but the title seems to have died with her. When women began to go into politics, after the proclamation of the Twenty-first Amendment in 1920, the widows of male politicians frequently became candidates for their dead husband’s jobs. One of the first of these ambitious relicts, the Hon. Nellie Taylor Ross of Wyoming, made her campaign under the style of
Ma
, and the title was soon extended to others of her kind.
¹⁴³
Mabel Walker Willebrandt, Assistant Attorney-General in charge of prosecutions under the Volstead Act, was generally know as
Ma
during her days in office, 1921–29. But the title now seems to be in decay.

The American, probably more than any other man, is prone to be apologetic about the trade he follows. He seldom believes that it is quite worthy of his virtues and talents; almost always he thinks that he would have adorned something far gaudier. Unfortunately, it is not always possible for him to escape, or even for him to dream plausibly of escaping, so he soothes himself by assuring himself that he belongs to a superior section of his craft, and very often he invents a sonorous name to set himself off from the herd. Here we glimpse the origin of a multitude of characteristic American euphemisms,
e.g., mortician
for
undertaker, realtor
for
real-estate agent, electragist
for
electrical contractor, aisle manager
for
floor-walker, beautician
for
hairdresser, exterminating engineer
for
rat-catcher
, and so on.
Realtor
was devised by a high-toned
real-estate agent of Minneapolis, Charles N. Chadbourn by name. He thus describes its genesis:

As to the etymology of the term, Mr. Chadbourn says:

The Minneapolis brethren were so pleased with their new name that Mr. Chadbourn was moved to dedicate it to the whole profession. In March, 1916, he went to the convention of the National Association of Real Estate Boards at New Orleans, and made a formal offer of it. It was accepted gratefully, and is now defined by the association as follows:

In 1920 the Minneapolis Real Estate Board and the National Association of Real Estate Boards applied to Judge Joseph W. Moly-neaux of Minneapolis for an injunction restraining the Northwestern Telephone Exchange Company from using
realtor
to designate some of its hirelings, and on September 10 the learned judge duly granted this relief. Since then the National Association has obtained similar injunctions in Virginia, Utah and other States. Its general counsel is heard from every time
realtor
is taken in vain, and when, in 1922, Sinclair Lewis applied it to George F. Babbitt, there was an uproar. But when Mr. Chadbourn was appealed to he decided that Babbitt
was “fairly well described,” for he was “a prominent member of the local board and of the State association,” and one could scarcely look for anything better in “a book written in the ironic vein of the author of ’ Main Street.’ ”
¹⁴⁶
Mr. Chadbourn believes that
realtor
should be capitalized, “like
Methodist
or
American,”
¹⁴⁷
but so far it has not been generally done. In June, 1925, at a meeting of the National Association of Real Estate Boards in Detroit, the past presidents of the body presented him with a gold watch as a token of their gratitude for his contribution to the uplift of their profession. On May 30, 1934, the following letter from Nathan William MacChesney, general counsel of the National Association, appeared in the
New Republic:

In 1924 the
Realtors’ Bulletin
of Baltimore reported that certain enemies of realtric science were trying to show that
realtor
was derived from the English word
real
and the Spanish word
tor
, a bull, and to argue that it thus meant
real bull
. But this obscenity apparently did not go far; probably a hint from the alert general counsel was enough to stop it. During the same year I was informed by Herbert U. Nelson, executive secretary of the National Association, that “the real-estate men of London, through the Institute of Estate Agents and Auctioneers, after studying our experience in this respect, are planning to coin the word
estator
and to protect it by legal steps.” This plan, I believe, came to fruition, but
estator
never caught on, and I can’t find it in the Supplement to the Oxford Dictionary.
Realtor
, however, is there — and the first illustrative quotation is from “Babbitt”! In March, 1927, J. Foster Hagan, of
Ballston, Va., reported to
American Speech
that he had encountered
realtress
on the window of a real-estate office there, but this charming derivative seems to have died a-bornin’. In 1925 or thereabout certain ambitious insurance solicitors, inflamed by
realtor
, began to call themselves
insurors
, but it, too, failed to make any progress.

Electragist
, like
realtor
, seems to be the monopoly of the lofty technicians who affect it: “it is copyrighted by the Association of Electragists International, whose members alone may use it.”
¹⁴⁸
But
mortician
is in the public domain. It was proposed by a writer in the
Embalmers’ Monthly
for February, 1895, but the undertakers, who were then
funeral-directors
, did not rise to it until twelve years later. On September 16, 1916, some of the more eminent of them met at Columbus, O., to form a national association, on the lines of the American College of Surgeons, the American Association of University Professors, and the Society of the Cincinnati, and a year later they decided upon National Selected
Morticians
as its designation.
¹⁴⁹
To this day the association remains so exclusive that, of the 24,000 undertakers in the United States, only 200 belong to it. But any one of the remaining 23,800 is free to call himself a
mortician
, and to use all the other lovely words that the advance of human taxidermy has brought in.
Mortician
, of course, was suggested by
physician
, for undertakers naturally admire and like to pal with the resurrection men, and there was a time when some of them called themselves
embalming surgeons
. A
mortician
never handles a
corpse
; he
prepares a body
or
patient
. This business is carried on in a
preparation-room
or
operating-room
, and when it is achieved the patient is put into a
casket
¹⁵⁰
and stored in the
reposing-room
or
slumber-room
of a
funeral-home
. On the day of the funeral he is moved to the
chapel
therein for the last exorcism, and then hauled to the cemetery in a
funeral-car
or
casket-coach
.
¹⁵¹
The old-time shroud is now a
négligé
or
slumber-shirt
or
slumber-robe
, the mortician’s work-truck is an
ambulance
, and the cemetery is fast becoming a
memorial-park
. In the West cemeteries are being supplanted by public mausoleums, which sometimes go under the names of
cloisters, burial-abbeys
, etc.
¹⁵²
To be laid away in one runs into money. The vehicle that morticians use for their expectant hauling of the ill is no longer an
ambulance
, but an
invalid-coach. Mortician
has been a favorite butt of the national wits, but they seem to have made no impression on it. In January, 1932, it was barred from the columns of the Chicago
Tribune
. “This decree goes forth,” announced the
Tribune
, “not for lack of sympathy with the ambition of undertakers to be well regarded, but because of it. If they haven’t the sense to save themselves from their own lexicographers, we shall not be guilty of abetting them in their folly.”
¹⁵³
But
mortician
not only continues to flourish; it also begets progeny,
e.g., beautician, cosmetician, radiotrician
and
bootician
.
¹⁵⁴
The barbers, so far, have not devised a name for themselves in
-ician
, but they may be trusted to do so anon. In my youth they were
tonsorial artists
, but in recent years some of them have been calling themselves
chirotonsors
.
¹⁵⁵
Practically all American press-agents are now
public relations counsel, contact-managers
or
publicists
, all tree-trimmers are
tree-surgeons
, all milk-wagon and bakery-wagon drivers have become
salesmen
, nearly all janitors are
superintendents
, many gardeners have become
landscape-architects
(in England even the whales of the profession are simple
landscape-gardeners
), cobblers are beginning to call themselves
shoe-rebuilders
¹⁵⁶
and the corn-doctors, after a generation as
chiropodists
, have burst forth as
podiatrists
. The American fondness for such sonorous appellations arrested the interest of W. L. George, the English novelist, when he visited the United States in 1920. He said: