American Language (56 page)

When Captain Frederick Marryat, the author of “Mr. Midshipman Easy,” came to the United States in 1837, he got into trouble like Mrs. Trollope’s German. Gazing upon the wonders of Niagara Falls with a young woman acquaintance, he was distressed to see her slip and bark her shin. As she limped home he asked, “Did you hurt your
leg
much?” She turned from him “evidently much shocked or much offended,” but presently recovered her composure and told him gently that a
leg
was never mentioned before ladies: the proper word was
limb
.
¹⁸⁹
Even chickens ceased to have
legs
, and another British traveler, W. F. Goodmane, was “not a little confused on being requested by a lady, at a public dinner-table, to furnish her with the
first and second joint
”
¹⁹⁰
In the same way
pantaloons
became
nether-garments
or
inexpressibles, stockings
yielded to
hose, antmire
was substituted for
pismire, breast
became
bosom, lady
took the place of the too frankly sexual
wife, bull
became not only
cow-creature
(more commonly,
cow-critter
) but also
seed-ox
and
Jonathan, shirt
was forbidden,
to go to bed
became
to retire
, servant girls ceased to be
seduced
and began to be
betrayed
, and
stomach
, then under the ban in England, was transformed, by some unfathomable magic, into a euphemism for the whole region from the nipples to the pelvic arch. The 30’s and 40’s saw the Golden Age of euphemism.
Bitch, ram, boar, stallion, buck
and
sow
virtually disappeared from the written language, and even
mare
was looked upon as rather racy. The biblical
ass
, because the prevailing American pronunciation made it identical with
arse
, was displaced by
jackass, jack
or
donkey
, and
to castrate
became
to change, to arrange
or
to alter
, even on the farm.
Chair
was abandoned for
seat
, which presently began to be used for
backside
too, and so became obscene itself. To use the word
shirt
in the presence of a woman was “an open insult.”
¹⁹¹
The very
word
woman
became a term of reproach, comparable to the German
mensch
, and the uncouth
female
took its place.
¹⁹²
But even
female
, after a while, acquired a bad name, and when Vassar was established in 1861, under the name of Vassar
Female
College, the redoubtable Mrs. Sarah Josepha Hale, editor of
Godey’s Lady’s Book
, protested loudly, and
female
was expunged.
¹⁹³
Any hint of sex, in those delicate days, was forbidden. Even the word
decent
, if applied to a woman was indecent.
¹⁹⁴
The Americans, according to Mrs. Trollope, rejected Shakespeare as obscene, and one of them said to her: “If we must have the abomination of stage plays, let them at least be marked by the refinement of the age in which we live.”
¹⁹⁵
When she mentioned Pope’s” The Rape of the Lock “he muttered” The very title!” In 1833 Noah Webster actually undertook to bowdlerize the Bible. His version substituted
breast
for
teat, in embryo
for
in the belly, peculiar members
for
stones
(Leviticus xxi, 20),
smell
for
stink, to nurse
or
to nourish
for
to give suck, lewdness
for
fornication, lewd woman
or
prostitute
for
whore, to go astray
for
to go a-whoring
, and
impurities, idolatries
and
carnal connection
for
whoredom
. He got rid of
womb
by various circumlocutions, and expunged many verses altogether, as beyond the reach of effective bowdlerization.
¹⁹⁶
This mania for the chaste afflicted even the terminology of the arts and sciences. For example, the name of the device in which the percussion-cap of a muzzle-loading gun was fixed and exploded was changed from
nipple
to
cone
. It so appeared in “The Prairie Traveler,” by Randolph B. Macy (1859)— greatly to the indignation of Sir Richard Burton, who brought out an English edition of the book in 1863. “The American
cone
,” he explained in a footnote, “is the English
nipple
. Beg pardon for the indelicacy! Our cousins, as we term them, so far
from calling a spade a spade, explain a
cock
by
rooster
, a
cockchafer
by
chafer
, and a
cockroach
by
roach
.”
¹⁹⁷

After the Civil War there was a recurrence of delicacy, and many euphemisms that still adorn the American newspapers came into use,
e.g., interesting
(or
delicate
)
condition, criminal operation, house of ill
(or
questionable) repute, disorderly house, sporting house, statutory offense, fallen woman, felonious attack, serious charge
and
criminal assault. Syphilis
became transformed into
blood-poison, specific blood-poison
and
secret disease
, and it and
gonorrhea
into
social diseases
. Various French terms,
enceinte
and
accouchement
among them, were imported to conceal the fact that careless wives occasionally became pregnant and had lyings-in. Richard Grant White, between 1867 and 1870, launched several attacks upon these ludicrous gossamers of speech, and particularly upon
enceinte, limb
and
female
, but only
female
succumbed. The passage of the Com-stock Postal Act, in 1873, greatly stimulated the search for euphemisms. Once that amazing law was upon the statute-book and Com-stock himself was given the inquisitorial powers of a post-office inspector, it became positively dangerous to print certain ancient and essentially decent English words. To this day the effects of that old reign of terror are still visible. We yet use
toilet, retiring-room, washroom
and
public comfort station
in place of franker terms,
¹⁹⁸
and such idiotic terms as
red-light district, statutory offense
and
criminal operation
are daily encountered. Now and then a really amusing curiosity turns up. I am informed by a correspondent that in 1933 the pious Los Angeles
Times
printed
sow-bosom
in lieu of
sow-belly
. In 1931 the Chattanooga police, on arresting a man for picking up a streetwalker on the street, announced that he was charged with “walking the streets accompanied by a woman,” and it was so reported in the local papers.
¹⁹⁹
In 1925 or thereabout the
Atlantic Monthly
gave a cruel blow to the moribund Puritan
Kultur
by printing the word
whore
(as I recall it, in an article by Stuart Pratt Sherman), but when, in 1934, a play called “Within the Gates” was presented in New York, with one of its characters appearing simply as “The Young
Whore
” three of the local papers changed the designation, and another avoided it by omitting the cast. The
Sun
changed it to “The Young Prostitute,” the
World-Telegram
to “The Young Harlot,” and the
American
to “A Young Girl Who Has Gone Astray.” It should be added that the
Times, Post
and
Telegraph
printed it boldly, and that the
Herald-Tribune
, which omitted the cast, gave the word in the third paragraph of its review.
²⁰⁰
Back in 1916 even
virgin
was a forbidden word, at least in Philadelphia. On February 26 of that year a one-act play of mine, “The Artist,” was presented at the Little Theatre there, and the same day the
Public Ledger
printed specimens of the dialogue. One of the characters was called “A Virgin,” but the
Ledger
preferred “A Young Girl.”
²⁰¹
In September, 1933, at the time of the Brain Trust’s unfortunate effort to reduce the hog population of the Middle West, the Iowa Farmers’ Union met at Des Moines and passed a resolution condemning “the scheme to raise livestock prices by slaughtering pigs and
enceinte
sows.”
²⁰²
Hollywood, always under heavy pressure from official and volunteer censors, has its own
Index Expurgatorius
, augmented from time to time. It includes, as permanent fixtures,
broad
(for woman),
chippy, cocotte, courtesan, eunuch, fairy
(in the sense of homosexual),
floozy, harlot, hot mamma, huzzy, madam
(in the sense of brothel-keeper),
nance, pansy, slut, trollop, tart
and
wench
, and, of course,
whore. Sex
is also forbidden, as is the adjective
sexual. Jew
may be used only in complimentary connotations, and
kike, yid, dago
and
nigger
are prohibited altogether.
God
must be used circumspectly, and
Gawd
is under the ban. So are
Lord
(“when used profanely”),
Christ, guts, hell, hellcat, Jesus, Geez, son-of-a-
—,
S.O.B.,
²⁰³
louse
and
punk. Traveling salesman
may
not be used “where reference is made to a farmer’s daughter,” and
liar
is reserved for scenes “in a light comedy vein.” Even the word
virtuous
is to be avoided, as is
bum
.
²⁰⁴
The radio is almost as prudish as Hollywood. Late in 1934 its syndics actually forbade the verb
to do
in songs, feeling that it was “a bit too suggestive.”
²⁰⁵

Ever since the beginning of the Sex Hygiene movement,
c
. 1910,
syphilis
and
gonorrhea
have been struggling for recognition, but they work their way into the newspapers only slowly. At intervals vigorous protests against this prudery come from medical men. In 1918 the Army Medical Corps complained that the newspapers emasculated its bulletins regarding venereal disease in the Army by using euphemisms. One of the newspaper trade journals thereupon sought the opinions of editors upon the subject, and all of them save one declared against the use of the two words. One editor put the blame upon the Postoffice. Another reported that “at a recent conference of the Scripps Northwest League editors” it was decided that “the use of such terms as
gonorrhea, syphilis
, and even
venereal diseases
would not add to the tone of the papers, and that the term
vice diseases
can be readily substituted.”
²⁰⁶
On April 29, 1919 the New York
Tribune
printed an article quoting with approbation a declaration by Major W. A. Wilson, of the Division of Venereal Control in the Merchant Marine, that “the only way to carry on the campaign [
i.e.
, against venereal disease] is to look the evil squarely in the face and fight it openly,” and yet the word
venereal
was carefully avoided throughout the article, save in the place where Major Wilson’s office was mentioned. Whereupon a medical journal made the following comment:

In 1933 the newspapers were full of articles about improvements in the use of malaria for treating tertiary syphilis, but few if any of them mentioned the name of the disease. According to the
Nation
,
²⁰⁸
the New York
Times
spoke of it “only as ’ a dread form of insanity ’ caused by ’ a blood disease.’ ” The radio shares this prudery, and in 1934 it was belabored for it by Dr. Thomas Parran, Jr., health commissioner of New York State, who resigned from the public health committee of the National Advisory Council on Radio in Education as an earnest of his dudgeon. In the manuscript of an address that he had planned to deliver from Station CBS on November 19 the word
syphilis
was stricken out by the station Comstocks.
²⁰⁹
When the rejuvenation quackery began to engage the newspapers, in 1924 or thereabout, they found it necessary to invent a new set of euphemisms. So far as I have been able to discover, not one of them ever printed the word
testicles
. A few ventured upon
gonads
, but the majority preferred
glands
or
interstitial glands
, with
sex glands
as an occasional variation.
²¹⁰
Even among medical men there is a faction which hesitates to violate the national canons of delicacy. Dr. Morris Fishbein, editor of the
Journal of the American Medical Association
, tells me that not a few of them, in communications to their colleagues, still state the fact that a patient has syphilis by saying that he has a
specific stomach
or a
specific ulcer
, and that the
Journal
once received a paper discussing the question, “Can a positive woman have a negative baby?” —
i.e.
, can a woman with a positive Wassermann, indicating syphilis, have a baby free from the disease? In all matters relating to the human body, of course, euphemisms are common and some of them are very old. The tendency to conceal the disagreeable under Latin names, which began with Chaucer’s use of
hernia
for
rupture
, shows itself in our own time in the invention of such terms as
halitosis
. Sometimes French is used instead, as in the following advertisement in the New York
Times: