The American Language
self-consciousness toward the end of the reign of Anne, but continued
almost unobstructed in the colonies. For example, there is what
philologists call the habit of back-formation--a sort of instinctive
search, etymologically unsound, for short roots in long words. This
habit, in Restoration days, precipitated a quasi-English word,
/mobile/, from the Latin [Pg160] /mobile vulgus/, and in the days of
William and Mary it went a step further by precipitating /mob/ from
/mobile/. /Mob/ is now sound English, but in the eighteenth century it
was violently attacked by the new sect of purists,[58] and though it
survived their onslaught they undoubtedly greatly impeded the
formation and adoption of other words of the same category. But in the
colonies the process went on unimpeded, save for the feeble protests
of such stray pedants as Witherspoon and Boucher. /Rattler/ for
/rattlesnake/, /pike/ for /turnpike/, /draw/ for /drawbridge/, /coon/
for /raccoon/, /possum/ for /opossum/, /cuss/ for /customer/, /cute/
for /acute/, /squash/ for /askutasquash/--these American
back-formations are already antique; /Sabbaday/ for /Sabbath-day/ has
actually reached the dignity of an archaism. To this day they are
formed in great numbers; scarcely a new substantive of more than two
syllables comes in without bringing one in its wake. We have thus
witnessed, within the past two years, the genesis of scores now in
wide use and fast taking on respectability; /phone/ for /telephone/,
/gas/ for /gasoline/, /co-ed/ for /co-educational/, /pop/ for
/populist/, /frat/ for /fraternity/, /gym/ for /gymnasium/, /movie/
for /moving-picture/, /prep-school/ for /preparatory-school/, /auto/
for /automobile/, /aero/ for /aeroplane/. Some linger on the edge of
vulgarity: /pep/ for /pepper/, /flu/ for /influenza/, /plute/ for
/plutocrat/, /pen/ for /penitentiary/, /con/ for /confidence/ (as in
/con-man/, /con-game/ and /to con/), /convict/ and /consumption/,
/defi/ for /defiance/, /beaut/ for /beauty/, /rep/ for /reputation/,
/stenog/ for /stenographer/, /ambish/ for /ambition/, /vag/ for
/vagrant/, /champ/ for /champion/, /pard/ for /partner/, /coke/ for
/cocaine/, /simp/ for /simpleton/, /diff/ for /difference/. Others are
already in perfectly good usage: /smoker/ for /smoking-car/, /diner/
for /dining-car/, /sleeper/ for /sleeping-car/, /oleo/ for
/oleomargarine/, /hypo/ for /hyposulphite of soda/, /Yank/ for
/Yankee/, /confab/ for /confabulation/, /memo/ for /memorandum/,
/pop-concert/ for /popular-concert/. /Ad/ for /advertisement/ is
struggling hard for recognition; some of its compounds, /e. g./,
/ad-writer/, /want-ad/, /display-ad/, /ad-card/, /ad-rate/,
/column-ad/ and /ad-man/, are already accepted in technical
terminology. /Boob/ for /booby/ promises to become sound American in a
few years; its synonyms are no more respectable than it is. At
[Pg161] its heels is /bo/ for /hobo/, an altogether fit successor to
/bum/ for /bummer/.[59]
A parallel movement shows itself in the great multiplication of common
abbreviations. "Americans, as a rule," says Farmer, "employ
abbreviations to an extent unknown in Europe.... This trait of the
American character is discernible in every department of the national
life and thought."[60] /O. K./, /C. O. D./, /N. G./, /G. O. P./ (get
out and push) and /P. D. Q./, are almost national hall-marks; the
immigrant learns them immediately after /damn/ and /go to hell/.
Thornton traces /N. G./ to 1840; /C. O. D./ and /P. D. Q./ are
probably as old. As for /O. K./, it was in use so early as 1790, but
it apparently did not acquire its present significance until the 20's;
originally it seems to have meant "ordered recorded."[11] During the
presidential campaign of 1828 Jackson's enemies, seeking to prove his
illiteracy, alleged that he used it for "oll korrect." Of late the
theory has been put forward that it is derived from an Indian word,
/okeh/, signifying "so be it," and Dr. Woodrow Wilson is said to
support this theory and to use /okeh/ in endorsing government papers,
but I am unaware of the authority upon which the etymology is based.
Bartlett says that the figurative use of /A No. 1/, as in /an A No. 1
man/, also originated in America, but this may not be true. There can
be little doubt, however, about /T. B./ (for /tuberculosis/), /G. B./
(for /grand bounce/), /23/, /on the Q. T./, and /D. & D./ (/drunk and
disorderly/). The language breeds such short forms of speech
prodigiously; every trade and profession has a host of them; they are
innumerable in the slang of sport.[61]
What one sees under all this, account for it as one will, is a double
habit, the which is, at bottom, sufficient explanation of the gap
which begins to yawn between English and American, particularly on the
spoken plane. On the one hand it is a habit of verbal economy--a
jealous disinclination to waste two words on what can be put into one,
a natural taste for the brilliant and [Pg162] succinct, a disdain of
all grammatical and lexicographical daintiness, born partly, perhaps,
of ignorance, but also in part of a sound sense of their imbecility.
And on the other hand there is a high relish and talent for
metaphor--in Brander Matthews' phrase, "a figurative vigor that the
Elizabethans would have realized and understood." Just as the American
rebels instinctively against such parliamentary circumlocutions as "I
am not prepared to say" and "so much by way of being,"[62] just as he
would fret under the forms of English journalism, with its reporting
empty of drama, its third-person smothering of speeches and its
complex and unintelligible jargon,[63] just so, in his daily speech
and writing he chooses terseness and vividness whenever there is any
choice, and seeks to make one when it doesn't exist. There is more
than mere humorous contrast between the famous placard in the
wash-room of the British Museum: "These Basins Are For Casual
Ablutions Only," and the familiar sign at American railroad-crossings:
"Stop! Look! Listen!" Between the two lies an abyss separating two
cultures, two habits of mind, two diverging tongues. It is almost
unimaginable that Englishmen, journeying up and down in elevators,
would ever have stricken the teens out of their speech, turning
/sixteenth/ into simple /six/ and /twenty-fourth/ into /four/; the
clipping is almost as far from their way of doing things as the
climbing so high in the air. Nor have they the brilliant facility of
Americans for making new words of grotesque but penetrating tropes, as
in /corn-fed/, /tight-wad/, /bone-head/, /bleachers/ and /juice/ (for
/electricity/); when they attempt such things the result is often
lugubrious; two hundred years of schoolmastering has dried up their
inspiration. Nor have they the fine American hand for devising new
verbs; /to maffick/ and /to limehouse/ are their best specimens in
twenty years, and both have an almost pathetic flatness. Their
business with the language, indeed, is not in this department. They
are [Pg163] not charged with its raids and scoutings, but with the
organization of its conquests and the guarding of its accumulated
stores.
For the student interested in the biology of language, as opposed to its
paleontology, there is endless material in the racy neologisms of
American, and particularly in its new compounds and novel verbs. Nothing
could exceed the brilliancy of such inventions as /joy-ride/,
/high-brow/, /road-louse/, /sob-sister/, /nature-faker/, /stand-patter/,
/lounge-lizard/, /hash-foundry/, /buzz-wagon/, /has-been/,
/end-seat-hog/, /shoot-the-chutes/ and /grape-juice-diplomacy/. They are
bold; they are vivid; they have humor; they meet genuine needs.
/Joy-ride/, I note, is already going over into English, and no wonder.
There is absolutely no synonym for it; to convey its idea in orthodox
English would take a whole sentence. And so, too, with certain single
words of metaphorical origin: /barrel/ for large and illicit wealth,
/pork/ for unnecessary and dishonest appropriations of public money,
/joint/ for illegal liquor-house, /tenderloin/ for gay and dubious
neighborhood.[64] Most of these, and of the new compounds with them,
belong to the vocabulary of disparagement. Here an essential character
of the American shows itself: his tendency to combat the disagreeable
with irony, to heap ridicule upon what he is suspicious of or doesn't
understand.
The rapidity with which new verbs are made in the United States is
really quite amazing. Two days after the first regulations of the Food
Administration were announced, /to hooverize/ appeared spontaneously
in scores of newspapers, and a week later it was employed without any
visible sense of its novelty in the debates of Congress and had taken
on a respectability equal to that of /to bryanize/, /to fletcherize/
and /to oslerize/. /To electrocute/ appeared inevitably in the first
public discussion of capital [Pg164] punishment by electricity; /to
taxi/ came in with the first taxi-cabs; /to commute/ no doubt
accompanied the first commutation ticket; /to insurge/ attended the
birth of the Progressive balderdash. Of late the old affix /-ize/,
once fecund of such monsters as /to funeralize/, has come into favor
again, and I note, among its other products, /to belgiumize/, /to
vacationize/, /to picturize/ and /to scenarioize/. In a newspaper
headline I even find /to s o s/, in the form of its gerund.[65] Many
characteristic American verbs are compounds of common verbs and
prepositions or adverbs, with new meanings imposed. Compare, for
example, /to give/ and /to give out/, /to go back/ and /to go back
on/, /to beat/ and /to beat it/, /to light/ and /to light out/, /to
butt/ and /to butt in/, /to turn/ and /to turn down/, /to show/ and
/to show up/, /to put/ and /to put over/, /to wind/ and /to wind up/.
Sometimes, however, the addition seems to be merely rhetorical, as in
/to start off/, /to finish up/, /to open up/ and /to hurry up/. /To
hurry up/ is so commonplace in America that everyone uses it and no
one notices it, but it remains rare in England. /Up/ seems to be
essential to many of these latter-day verbs, /e. g./, /to pony up/,
/to doll up/, /to ball up/; without it they are without significance.
Nearly all of them are attended by derivative adjectives or nouns;
/cut-up/, /show-down/, /kick-in/, /come-down/, /hang-out/,
/start-off/, /run-in/, /balled-up/, /dolled-up/, /wind-up/, /bang-up/,
/turn-down/, /jump-off/.
In many directions the same prodigal fancy shows itself--for example,
in the free interchange of parts of speech, in the bold inflection of
words not inflected in sound English, and in the invention of wholly
artificial words. The first phenomenon has already concerned us. Would
an English literary critic of any pretensions employ such a locution
as "all by her /lonesome/"? I have a doubt of it--and yet I find that
phrase in a serious book by the critic of the /New Republic/.[66]
Would an English M. P. use "he has another /think/ coming" in debate?
Again I doubt it--but even more anarchistic dedications of verbs and
adjectives to substantival use are to be found in the /Congressional
Record/ every day. /Jitney/ is an old American substantive lately
[Pg165] revived; a month after its revival it was also an adjective,
and before long it may also be a verb and even an adverb. /To lift up/
was turned tail first and made a substantive, and is now also an
adjective and a verb. /Joy-ride/ became a verb the day after it was
born as a noun. And what of /livest/? An astounding inflection,
indeed--but with quite sound American usage behind it. The
/Metropolitan Magazine/, of which Col. Roosevelt is an editor,
announces on its letter paper that it is "the /livest/ magazine in
America," and /Poetry/, the organ of the new poetry movement, prints