The American Language
Algonquin /cau-cau-as-u/, one who advises. But most other authorities,
following Pickering, derive it from /caulkers/. The first caucuses, it
would appear, were held in a caulkers' shop in Boston, and were called
/caulkers' meetings/. The Rev. William Gordon, in his History of the
Rise and Independence of the United States, Including the Late War,
published in London in 1788, said that "more than fifty years ago Mr.
Samuel Adams' father and twenty others, one or two from the north end
of the town [Boston], where the ship business is carried on, used to
meet, make a /caucus/, and lay their plans for introducing certain
persons into places of trust and power."
[3] Americanisms Old and New; p. vii.
[4] A. Cleveland Coxe: Americanisms in England, /Forum/, Oct. 1886.
[5] Reprinted, in part, in the /New York Sun/, May 12, 1918.
[6] Vol. xiv. pp. 507, 512.
[7] In this connection it is curious to note that, though the raccoon
is an animal quite unknown in England, there was, until lately, a
destroyer called the /Raccoon/ in the British Navy. This ship was lost
with all hands off the Irish coast, Jan. 9, 1918.
[8] The Unexpurgated Case Against Woman Suffrage; London, 1913, p. 9.
/To bluff/ has also gone into other languages, notably the Spanish.
During the Cuban revolution of March, 1917, the newspapers of Havana,
objecting to the dispatches sent out by American correspondents,
denounced the latter as /los blofistas/. Meanwhile, /to bluff/ has
been shouldered out in the country of its origin, at least
temporarily, by a verb borrowed from the French, /to camouflage/. This
first appeared in the Spring of 1917.
[9] Book iv, ch. iii. The first of the six volumes was published in
1858 and the last in 1865.
[10] Words and Their Use, new ed.; New York, 1876, p. 198.
[11] Boston, 1918, pp. 1-43.
[12] /Green Book Magazine/, Nov., 1913, p. 768.
[13] An interesting note on this characteristic is in College Words
and Phrases, by Eugene H. Babbitt, /Dialect Notes/, vol. ii, pt. i, p.
11.
[14] America's Coming of Age; p. 15.
[15] March 26, 1918, pp. 4376-7.
[16] Jan. 14, 1918, p. 903.
[17] Mr. Campbell, of Kansas, in the House, Jan. 19, 1918, p. 1134.
[18] Mr. Hamlin, of Missouri, in the House, Jan. 19, 1918, p. 1154.
[19] Mr. Kirby, of Arkansas, in the Senate, Jan. 24, 1918, p. 1291;
Mr. Lewis, of Illinois, in the Senate, June 6, 1918, p. 8024.
[20] Mr. Weeks of Massachusetts, in the Senate, Jan. 17, 1918, p. 988.
[21] Mr. Smith, of South Carolina, in the Senate, Jan. 17, 1918, p.
991.
[22] Mr. Borland, of Missouri, in the House, Jan. 29, 1918, p. 1501.
[23] May 4, 1917, p. 1853.
[24] Mr. Snyder, of New York, Dec. 11, 1917.
[25] /Balled-up/ and its verb, /to ball up/, were originally somewhat
improper, no doubt on account of the slang significance of /ball/, but
of late they have made steady progress toward polite acceptance.
[26] After the passage of the first War Revenue Act cigar-boxes began
to bear this inscription: "The contents of this box have been /taxed
paid/ as cigars of Class B as indicated by the Internal Revenue stamp
affixed." Even /tax-paid/, which was later substituted, is obviously
better than this clumsy double inflection.
[27] Mr. Bankhead, of Alabama, in the Senate, May 14, 1918, p. 6995.
[28] /Bust/ seems to be driving out /burst/ completely when used
figuratively. Even in a literal sense it creeps into more or less
respectable usage. Thus I find "a /busted/ tire" in a speech by Gen.
Sherwood, of Ohio, in the House, Jan. 24, 1918. The familiar American
derivative, /buster/, as in /Buster Brown/, is unknown to the English.
[29] Pp. 133-154.
[30] L. Pearsall Smith, in The English Language, p. 29, says that "the
differentiation is ... so complicated that it can hardly be mastered
by those born in parts of the British Islands in which it has not yet
been established"--/e. g./, all of Ireland and most of Scotland.
[31] Quoted by White, in Words and Their Uses, pp. 264-5. White,
however, dissented vigorously and devoted 10 pages to explaining the
difference between the two auxiliaries. Most of the other authorities
of the time were also against Marsh--for example, Richard Meade Bache
(See his Vulgarisms and Other Errors of Speech, p. 92 /et seq./). Sir
Edmund Head, governor-general of Canada from 1854 to 1861, wrote a
whole book upon the subject: /Shall/ and /Will/, or Two Chapters on
Future Auxiliary Verbs; London, 1856.
[32] The probable influence of Irish immigration upon the American
usage is not to be overlooked. Joyce says flatly (English As We Speak
It in Ireland, p. 77) that, "like many another Irish idiom this is
also found in American society chiefly through the influence of the
Irish." At all events, the Irish example must have reinforced it. In
Ireland "/Will/ I light the fire, ma'am?" is colloquially sound.
[33] Often with such amusing results as "/whom/ is your father?" and
"/whom/ spoke to me?" The exposure of excesses of that sort always
attracts the wits, especially Franklin P. Adams.
[34] "It is /I/" is quite as unsound historically. The correct form
would be "it /am/ I" or "I am it." Compare the German: "ich /bin/ es,"
not, "es /ist/ ich."
[35] A common direction to motormen and locomotive engineers. The
English form is "slow down." I note, however, that "drive slow/ly/" is
in the taxicab shed at the Pennsylvania Station, in New York.
[36] I quote from a speech made by Senator Sherman, of Illinois, in
the United States Senate on June 20, 1918. /Vide/ /Congressional
Record/ for that day, p. 8743. Two days later, "There is no question
/but/ that" appeared in a letter by John Lee Coulter, A.M., Ph.D.,
dean of West Virginia University. It was read into the /Record/ of
June 22 by Mr. Ashwell, one of the Louisiana representatives. Even the
pedantic Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, oozing Harvard from every pore,
uses /but that/. /Vide/ the /Record/ for May 14, 1918, p. 6996.
[37] June 15, 1918, p. 62.
[38] The English Language, p. 79.
[39] This phrase, of course, is a Briticism, and seldom used in
America. The American form is "to take a matter up."
[40] P. 30.
[41] A Contribution /Towards/, etc., by Prof. H. Tallichet, vol. 1,
pt. iv.
[42] /Yale Review/, April, 1918, p. 545.
[43] I Speak United States, /Saturday Review/, Sept. 22, 1894.
[44] Our Dictionaries, pp. 84-86.
[45] Should Language Be Abolished? by Harold Goddard, /Atlantic
Monthly/, July, 1918, p. 63.
[46] In Yiddish, /ish ka bibble/. The origin and meaning of the phrase
have been variously explained. The prevailing notion seems to be that
it is a Yiddish corruption of the German /nicht gefiedelt/ (=/not
fiddled/=/not flustered/). But this seems to me to be fanciful. To the
Jews /ish/ is obviously the first personal pronoun and /kaa/ probably
corruption of /kann/. As for /bibble/ I suspect that it is the
offspring of /bedibbert/ (=/embarrassed/, /intimidated/). The phrase
thus has an ironical meaning, /I should be embarrassed/, almost
precisely equivalent to /I should worry/.
[47] All of which, of course, are coming into American, along with
many other Yiddish words. These words tend to spread far beyond the
areas actually settled by Jews. Thus I find /mazuma/ in A Word-List
from Kansas, from the collectanea of Judge J. C. Ruppenthal, of
Russell, Kansas, /Dialect Notes/, vol. iv. pt. v, 1916, p. 322.
[48] Louise Pound: Domestication of the Suffix /-fest/, /Dialect
Notes/, vol. iv, pt. v, 1916. Dr. Pound, it should be mentioned, has
also printed a brief note on /-inski/. Her observation of American is
peculiarly alert and accurate.
[49] For example, see the /Congressional Record/ for April 3, 1918, p.
4928.
[50] /Paprika/ is in the Standard Dictionary, but I have been unable
to find it in any English dictionary. Another such word is /kimono/,
from the Japanese.
[51] /Cf./ Vogue Affixes in Present-Day Word-Coinage, by Louise Pound,
/Dialect Notes/, vol. v, pt. i, 1918. Dr. Pound ascribes the vogue of
/super-/ to German influences, and is inclined to think that /-dom/
may be helped by the German /-thum/.
[52] /Vide/ Pennsylvania Dutch, by S. S. Haldeman; Philadelphia, 1872.
Also, The Pennsylvania German Dialect, by M. D. Learned; Baltimore,
1889. Also Die Zukunft deutscher Bildung in Amerika, by O. E. Lessing,
/Monatshefte für deutsche Sprache und Pedagogik/, Dec., 1916. Also,
Where Do You Stand? by Herman Hagedorn; New York, 1918, pp. 106-7.
Also, On the German Dialect Spoken in the Valley of Virginia, by H. M.
Hays, /Dialect Notes/, vol. iii, pt. iv, 1908, pp. 263-78.
[53] /Vide/ Notes on American-Norwegian, by Nils Flaten, /Dialect
Notes/, vol. ii, 1900. Also, for similar corruptions, The Jersey Dutch
Dialect, by J. Dyneley Prince, /ibid./, vol. iii, pt. vi, 1910, pp.
461-84. Also, see under Hempl, Flom, Bibaud, Buies and A. M. Elliott
in the bibliography.
[54] For all these examples of American Yiddish I am indebted to the
kindness of Abraham Cahan, editor of the /Jewish Daily Forward/. Mr.
Cahan is not only editor of the chief Yiddish newspaper of the United
States, but also an extraordinarily competent writer of English, as
his novel, The Rise of David Levinsky, demonstrates.
[55] What Americans Talk in the Philippines, /American Review of
Reviews/, Aug., 1913.
[56] /Cf./ The English of the Lower Classes in New York City and
Vicinity, /Dialect Notes/, vol. i, pt. ix, 1896. It is curious to note
that the same corruption occurs in the Spanish spoken in Santo
Domingo. The Dominicans thus change /porque/ into /poique/. /Cf./
Santo Domingo, by Otto Schoenrich; New York, 1918, p. 172. See also
High School Circular No. 17, Dept. of Education, City of New York,
June 19, 1912, p. 6.
[57] The American People, 2 vols.; New York, 1909-11, vol. ii, pp.
449-50. For a discussion of this effect of contact with foreigners
upon a language see also Beach-la-Mar, by William Churchill;
Washington, 1911, p. 11 /et seq./
[58] /Vide/ Lounsbury: The Standard of Usage in English, pp. 65-7.
[59] For an exhaustive discussion of these formations /cf./ Clipped
Words, by Elizabeth Wittman, /Dialect Notes/, vol. iv, pt. ii, 1914.
[60] Americanisms Old and New, p. 1.
[61] /Cf./ Semi-Secret Abbreviations, by Percy W. Long, /Dialect
Notes/, vol. iv, pt. iii, 1915.
[62] The classical example is in a parliamentary announcement by Sir
Robert Peel: "When that question is made to me in a proper time, in a
proper place, under proper qualifications, and with proper motives, I
will hesitate long before I will refuse to take it into
consideration."
[63] /Cf./ On the Art of Writing, by Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch; p. 100
/et seq./
[64] This use of /tenderloin/ is ascribed to Alexander (alias
"Clubber") Williams, a New York police captain. /Vide/ the /New York
Sun/, July 11, 1913. Williams, in 1876, was transferred from an
obscure precinct to West Thirtieth Street. "I've been having chuck
steak ever since I've been on the force," he said, "and now I'm going
to have a bit of tenderloin." "The name," says the /Sun/, "has endured
more than a generation, moving with the changed amusement geography of
the city, and has been adopted in all parts of the country."
[65] /New York Evening Mail/, Feb. 2, 1918, p. 1.
[66] Horizons, by Francis Hackett; New York, 1918, p. 53.
[67] It has even got into the Continental languages. In October, 1917,
the Verband Deutscher Amateurphotographen-Vereine was moved to issue
the following warning: "Es gibt kein deutschen /Kodaks/. /Kodak/, als
Sammelname für photographische Erzeugnisse ist falsch und bezeichnet
nur die Fabrikate der Eastman-/Kodak/-Company. Wer von einem /Kodak/
spricht und nur allgemein eine photographische Kamera meint, bedenkt