The American Language
stranger, he sometimes begins it, not /My dear Mr. Jones/ but /My dear
John Joseph Jones/. He may even use such a form as /My dear Secretary
for War/ in place of the American /My dear Mr. Secretary/. In English
usage, incidentally, /My dear/ is more formal than simply /Dear/. In
America, of course, this distinction is lost, and such forms as /My
dear John Joseph Jones/ appear only as conscious imitations of English
usage.
I have spoken of the American custom of dropping the definite article
before /Hon./ It extends to /Rev./ and the like, and has the authority
of very respectable usage behind it. The opening sentence of the
/Congressional Record/ is always: "The Chaplain, /Rev./--------, D.D.,
offered the following prayer." When chaplains for the army or navy are
confirmed by the Senate they always appear in the /Record as Revs./,
never as /the Revs./ I also find the honorific without the article in
the New International Encyclopaedia, in the /World/ Almanac, and in a
widely-popular [Pg123] American grammar-book.[25] So long ago as
1867, Gould protested against this elision as barbarous and idiotic,
and drew up the following /reductio ad absurdum/:
At last annual meeting of Black Book Society, honorable John Smith
took the chair, assisted by reverend John Brown and venerable John
White. The office of secretary would have been filled by late John
Green, but for his decease, which rendered him ineligible. His place
was supplied by inevitable John Black. In the course of the evening
eulogiums were pronounced on distinguished John Gray and notorious
Joseph Brown. Marked compliment was also paid to able historian
Joseph White, discriminating philosopher Joseph Green, and learned
professor Joseph Black. But conspicuous speech of the evening was
witty Joseph Gray's apostrophe to eminent astronomer Jacob Brown,
subtle logician Jacob White, etc., etc.[26]
Richard Grant White, a year or two later, joined the attack in the New
York /Galaxy/, and William Cullen Bryant included the omission of the
article in his /Index Expurgatorius/, but these anathemas were as
ineffective as Gould's irony. The more careful American journals, of
course, incline to the /the/, and I note that it is specifically
ordained on the Style-sheet of the /Century Magazine/, but the
overwhelming majority of American newspapers get along without it, and
I have often noticed its omission on the sign-boards at church
entrances.[27] In England it is never omitted. [Pg124]
§ 4
/Euphemisms and Forbidden Words/--But such euphemisms as /lady-clerk/
are, after all, much rarer in English than in American usage. The
Englishman seldom tries to gloss menial occupations with sonorous
names; on the contrary, he seems to delight in keeping their menial
character plain. He says /servants/, not /help/. Even his railways and
banks have /servants/; the chief trades-union of the English railroad
men is the Amalgamated Society of Railway /Servants/. He uses
/employé/ in place of /clerk/, /workman/ or /laborer/ much less often
than we do. True enough he calls a boarder a /paying-guest/, but that
is probably because even a boarder may be a gentleman. Just as he
avoids calling a fast train the /limited/, the /flier/ or the
/cannon-ball/, so he never calls an /undertaker/ a /funeral director/
or /mortician/,[28] or a /dentist/ a /dental surgeon/ or /ontologist/,
or an /optician/ an /optometrist/, or a /barber shop/ (he always makes
it /barber's shop/) a /tonsorial parlor/, or a common public-house a
/café/, a /restaurant/, an /exchange/, a /buffet/ or a /hotel/, or a
tradesman a /storekeeper/ or /merchant/, or a fresh-water college a
/university/. A /university/, in England, always means a collection of
colleges.[29] He avoids displacing terms of a disparaging or
disagreeable significance with others less brutal, or thought to be
less brutal, /e. g./, /ready-to-wear/ or /ready-tailored/ for
/ready-made/, /used/ or /slightly-used/ for /second-hand/,
/mahoganized/ for /imitation-mahogany/, /aisle manager/ for
/floor-walker/ (he makes it /shop-walker/), /loan-office/ for
/pawn-shop/. Also, he is careful not to use such words as /rector/,
/deacon/ and /baccalaureate/ in merely rhetorical senses.[30] [Pg125]
When we come to words, that, either intrinsically or by usage, are
improper, a great many curious differences between English and
American reveal themselves. The Englishman, on the whole, is more
plain-spoken than the American, and such terms as /bitch/, /mare/ and
/in foal/ do not commonly daunt him, largely, perhaps, because of his
greater familiarity with country life; but he has a formidable index
of his own, and it includes such essentially harmless words as /sick/,
/stomach/, /bum/ and /bug/. The English use of /ill/ for /sick/ I have
already noticed, and the reasons for the English avoidance of /bum/.
/Sick/, over there, means nauseated, and when an Englishman says that
he was /sick/ he means that he vomited, or, as an American would say,
was /sick at the stomach/. The older (and still American) usage,
however, survives in various compounds. /Sick-list/, for example, is
official in the Navy,[31] and /sick-leave/ is known in the Army,
though it is more common to say of a soldier that he is /invalided
home/. /Sick-room/ and /sick-bed/ are also in common use, and
/sick-flag/ is used in place of the American /quarantine-flag/. But an
Englishman hesitates to mention his stomach in the presence of ladies,
though he discourses freely about his liver. To avoid the necessity he
employs such euphemisms as /Little Mary/. As for /bug/, he restricts
its use very rigidly to the /Cimex lectularius/, or common bed-bug,
and hence the word has a highly impolite connotation. All other
crawling things he calls /insects/. An American of my acquaintance
once greatly offended an English friend by using /bug/ for /insect/.
The two were playing billiards one summer evening in the Englishman's
house, and various flying things came through the window and alighted
on the cloth. The American, essaying a shot, remarked that he had
killed a /bug/ with his cue. To the Englishman this seemed a
slanderous reflection upon the cleanliness of his house.[32] [Pg126]
The Victorian era saw a great growth of absurd euphemisms in England,
including /second wing/ for the leg of a fowl, but it was in America
that the thing was carried farthest. Bartlett hints that /rooster/
came into use in place of /cock/ as a matter of delicacy, the latter
word having acquired an indecent significance, and tells us that, at
one time, even /bull/ was banned as too vulgar for refined ears. In
place of it the early purists used /cow-creature/, /male-cow/ and even
/gentleman-cow/.[33] /Bitch/, /ram/, /buck/ and /sow/ went the same
way, and there was a day when even /mare/ was prohibited. Bache tells
us that /pismire/ was also banned, /antmire/ being substituted for it.
In 1847 the word /chair/ was actually barred out and /seat/ was
adopted in its place.[34] These were the palmy days of euphemism. The
delicate /female/ was guarded from all knowledge, and even from all
suspicion, of evil. "To utter aloud in her presence the word /shirt/,"
says one historian, "was an open insult."[35] Mrs. Trollope, writing
in 1832, tells of "a young German gentleman of perfectly good manners"
who "offended one of the principal families ... by having pronounced
the word /corset/ before the ladies of it."[36] The word /woman/, in
those sensitive days, became a term of reproach, comparable to the
German /mensch/; the uncouth /female/ took its place.[37] In the same
way the legs of the fair became /limbs/ and their breasts /bosoms/,
and /lady/ was substituted for /wife/. /Stomach/, under the ban in
England, was transformed, by some unfathomable magic, into a euphemism
denoting the whole region from the nipples to the pelvic arch. It was
during [Pg127] this time that the newspapers invented such locutions
as /interesting/ (or /delicate/) /condition/, /criminal operation/,
/house of ill/ (or /questionable/) /repute/, /disorderly-house/,
/sporting-house/, /statutory offense/, /fallen woman/ and /criminal
assault/. Servant girls ceased to be seduced, and began to be
/betrayed/. Various French terms, /enceinte/ and /accouchement/ among
them, were imported to conceal the fact that lawful wives occasionally
became pregnant and had lyings-in.
White, between 1867 and 1870, launched various attacks upon these
ludicrous gossamers of speech, and particularly upon /enceinte/, /limb/
and /female/, but only /female/ succumbed. The passage of the notorious
Comstock Postal Act, in 1873, greatly stimulated the search for
euphemisms. Once that act was upon the statute-books and Comstock
himself was given the amazingly 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/ and /public
comfort station/ in place of better terms,[38] and such idiotic forms
as /red-light district/, /disorderly-house/, /blood-poison/,
/social-evil/, /social disease/ and /white slave/ ostensibly conceal
what every flapper is talking about. The word /cadet/, having a foreign
smack and an innocent native meaning, is preferred to the more accurate
/procurer/; even prostitutes shrink from the forthright /pimp/, and
employ a characteristic American abbreviation, /P. I./--a curious
brother to /S. O. B./ and /2 o'clock/. Nevertheless, a movement toward
honesty is getting on its legs. The vice crusaders, if they have
accomplished nothing else, have at least forced the newspapers to use
the honest terms, /syphilis/, /prostitute/, /brothel/ and /venereal
disease/, albeit somewhat gingerly. It is, perhaps, significant of the
change going on that the /New York Evening Post/ [Pg128] recently
authorized its reporters to use /street-walker/.[39] But in certain
quarters the change is viewed with alarm, and curious traces of the old
prudery still survive. The Department of Health of New York City, in
April, 1914, announced that its efforts to diminish venereal disease
were much handicapped because "in most newspaper offices the words
/syphilis/ and /gonorrhea/ are still tabooed, and without the use of
these terms it is almost impossible to correctly state the problem."
The Army Medical Corps, in the early part of 1918, encountered the same
difficulty: most newspapers refused to print its bulletins regarding
venereal disease in the army. 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, which still cherishes the Comstock
tradition. 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."[40] The Scripps papers are otherwise anything but
distinguished for their "tone," but in this department they yield to
the Puritan habit. An even more curious instance of prudery came to my
notice in Philadelphia several years ago. A one-act play of mine, "The
Artist," was presented at the Little Theatre there, and during its run,
on February 26, 1916, the /Public Ledger/ reprinted some of the
dialogue. One of the characters in the piece is /A Virgin/. At every
occurrence a change was made to /A Young Girl/. Apparently, even
/virgin/ is still regarded as too frank in Philadelphia.[41] Fifty
years [Pg129] ago the very word /decent/ was indecent in the South: no
respectable woman was supposed to have any notion of the difference