The American Language
various charges against the Americans, among them that of "making all
the haste they can to rid themselves of the [English] language."
After the opening of the new century all the British reviews
maintained an eager watchfulness for these abhorrent inventions, and
denounced them, when found, with the utmost vehemence. The
/Edinburgh/, which led the charge, opened its attack in October, 1804,
and the appearance of the five volumes of Chief Justice Marshall's
"Life of George Washington," during the three years following, gave
the signal for corrective articles in the /British Critic/, the
/Critical Review/, the /Annual/, the /Monthly/ and the /Eclectic/. The
/British Critic/, in April, 1808, admitted somewhat despairingly that
the damage was already done--that "the common speech of the United
States has departed very considerably from the standard adopted in
England." The others, however, sought to stay the flood by invective
against Marshall and, later, against his rival biographer, the Rev.
Aaron Bancroft. The /Annual/, in 1808, pronounced its high curse and
anathema upon "that torrent of barbarous phraseology" which was
pouring across the Atlantic, and which threatened "to destroy the
purity of the English language."[6] In Bancroft's "Life of George
Washington" [Pg039] (1808), according to the /British Critic/, there
were gross Americanisms, inordinately offensive to Englishmen, "at
almost every page."
The Rev. Jeremy Belknap, long anticipating Elwyn, White and Lounsbury,
tried to obtain a respite from this abuse by pointing out the obvious
fact that many of the Americanisms under fire were merely survivors of
an English that had become archaic in England, but this effort counted
for little, for on the one hand the British purists enjoyed the chase
too much to give it up, and on the other hand there began to dawn in
America a new spirit of nationality, at first very faint, which viewed
the differences objected to, not with shame, but with a fierce sort of
pride. In the first volume of the /North American Review/ William
Ellery Channing spoke out boldly for "the American language and
literature,"[7] and a year later Pickering published his defiant
dictionary of "words and phrases which have been supposed to be
peculiar to the United States." This thin collection of 500 specimens
set off a dispute which yet rages on both sides of the Atlantic.
Pickering, however, was undismayed. He had begun to notice the growing
difference between the English and American vocabulary and
pronunciation, he said, while living in London from 1799 to 1801, and
he had made his collections with the utmost care, and after taking
counsel with various prudent authorities, both English and American.
Already in the first year of the century, he continued, the English
had accused the people of the new republic of a deliberate "design to
effect an entire change in the language" and while no such design was
actually harbored, the facts were the facts, and he cited the current
newspapers, the speeches from pulpit and rostrum, and Webster himself
in support of them. This debate over Pickering's list, as I say, still
continues. Lounsbury, entrenched behind his grotesque categories, once
charged that four-fifths of the words in it had "no business to be
there," and [Pg040] Gilbert M. Tucker[8] has argued that only 70 of
them were genuine Americanisms. But a careful study of the list, in
comparison with the early quotations recently collected by Thornton,
seems to indicate that both of these judgments, and many others no
less, have done injustice to Pickering. He made the usual errors of
the pioneer, but his sound contributions to the subject were anything
but inconsiderable, and it is impossible to forget his diligence and
his constant shrewdness. He established firmly the native origin of a
number of words now in universal use in America--/e. g./,
/backwoodsman/, /breadstuffs/, /caucus/, /clapboard/, /sleigh/ and
/squatter/--and of such familiar derivatives as /gubernatorial/ and
/dutiable/, and he worked out the genesis of not a few loan-words,
including /prairie/, /scow/, /rapids/, /hominy/ and /barbecue/. It was
not until 1848, when the first edition of Bartlett appeared, that his
work was supplanted.
§ 2
/Sources of Early Americanisms/--The first genuine Americanisms were
undoubtedly words borrowed bodily from the Indian dialects--words, in
the main, indicating natural objects that had no counterparts in
England. We find /opossum/, for example, in the form of /opasum/, in
Captain John Smith's "Map of Virginia" (1612), and, in the form of
/apossoun/, in a Virginia document two years older. /Moose/ is almost
as old. The word is borrowed from the Algonquin /musa/, and must have
become familiar to the Pilgrim Fathers soon after their landing in
1620, for the woods of Massachusetts then swarmed with the huge
quadrupeds and there was no English name to designate them. Again,
there are /skunk/ (from the Abenaki Indian /seganku/), /hickory/,
/squash/, /paw-paw/, /raccoon/, /chinkapin/, /porgy/, /chipmunk/,
/pemmican/, /terrapin/, /menhaden/, /catalpa/, /persimmon/ and
/cougar/. Of these, /hickory/ and /terrapin/ are to be found in Robert
Beverley's "History and Present State of Virginia" (1705), and
/squash/, /chinkapin/ and /persimmon/ are in documents of the
preceding century. Many of these words, of course, were shortened
[Pg041] or otherwise modified on being taken into colonial English.
Thus /chinkapin/ was originally /checkinqumin/, and /squash/ appears
in early documents as /isquontersquash/, /askutasquash/,
/isquonkersquash/ and /squantersquash/. But William Penn, in a letter
dated August 16, 1683, used the latter in its present form. Its
variations show a familiar effort to bring a new and strange word into
harmony with the language--an effort arising from what philologists
call the law of Hobson-Jobson. This name was given to it by Col. Henry
Yule and A. C. Burnell, compilers of a standard dictionary of
Anglo-Indian terms. They found that the British soldiers in India,
hearing strange words from the lips of the natives, often converted
them into English words of similar sound, though of widely different
meaning. Thus the words /Hassan/ and /Hosein/, frequently used by the
Mohammedans of the country in their devotions, were turned into
/Hobson-Jobson/. The same process is constantly in operation
elsewhere. By it the French /route de roi/ has become /Rotten Row/ in
English, /écrevisse/ has become /crayfish/, and the English /bowsprit/
has become /beau pré/ (=/beautiful meadow/) in French. The word
/pigeon/, in /Pigeon English/, offers another example; it has no
connection with the bird, but merely represents a Chinaman's attempt
to pronounce the word /business/. No doubt /squash/ originated in the
same way. That /woodchuck/ did so is practically certain. Its origin
is to be sought, not in /wood/ and /chuck/, but in the Cree word
/otchock/, used by the Indians to designate the animal.
In addition to the names of natural objects, the early colonists, of
course, took over a great many Indian place-names, and a number of
words to designate Indian relations and artificial objects in Indian
use. To the last division belong /hominy/, /pone/, /toboggan/,
/canoe/, /tapioca/, /moccasin/, /pow-wow/, /papoose/, /tomahawk/,
/wigwam/, /succotash/ and /squaw/, all of which were in common
circulation by the beginning of the eighteenth century. Finally, new
words were made during the period by translating Indian terms, for
example, /war-path/, /war-paint/, /pale-face/, /medicine-man/,
/pipe-of-peace/ and /fire-water/. The total number of such borrowings,
direct and indirect, was a good deal larger [Pg042] than now appears,
for with the disappearance of the red man the use of loan-words from
his dialects has decreased. In our own time such words as /papoose/,
/sachem/, /tepee/, /wigwam/ and /wampum/ have begun to drop out of
everyday use;[9] at an earlier period the language sloughed off
/ocelot/, /manitee/, /calumet/, /supawn/, /samp/ and /quahaug/, or
began to degrade them to the estate of provincialisms.[10] A curious
phenomenon is presented by the case of /maize/, which came into the
colonial speech from some West Indian dialect, went over into orthodox
English, and from English into French, German and other continental
languages, and was then abandoned by the colonists. We shall see other
examples of that process later on.
Whether or not /Yankee/ comes from an Indian dialect is still
disputed. An early authority, John G. E. Heckwelder, argued that it
was derived from an Indian mispronunciation of the word /English/.[11]
Certain later etymologists hold that it originated more probably in an
Indian mishandling of the French word /Anglais/. Yet others derive it
from the Scotch /yankie/, meaning a gigantic falsehood. A fourth party
derive it from the Dutch, and cite an alleged Dutch model for "Yankee
Doodle," beginning "/Yanker/ didee doodle down."[12] Of these theories
that of Heckwelder is the most plausible. But here, as in other
directions, the investigation of American etymology remains sadly
incomplete. An elaborate dictionary of words derived from the Indian
languages, compiled by the late W. R. Gerard, is in the possession of
the Smithsonian Institution, but on account of a shortage of funds it
remains in manuscript. [Pg043]
From the very earliest days of English colonization the language of
the colonists also received accretions from the languages of the other
colonizing nations. The French word /portage/, for example, was
already in common use before the end of the seventeenth century, and
soon after came /chowder/, /cache/, /caribou/, /voyageur/, and various
words that, like the last-named, have since become localisms or
disappeared altogether. Before 1750 /bureau/,[13] /gopher/, /batteau/,
/bogus/, and /prairie/ were added, and /caboose/, a word of Dutch
origin, seems to have come in through the French. /Carry-all/ is also
French in origin, despite its English quality. It comes, by the law of
Hobson-Jobson, from the French /carriole/. The contributions of the
Dutch during the half century of their conflicts with the English
included /cruller/, /cold-slaw/, /dominie/ (for /parson/), /cookey/,
/stoop/, /span/ (of horses), /pit/ (as in /peach-pit/), /waffle/,
/hook/ (a point of land), /scow/, /boss/, /smearcase/ and /Santa
Claus/.[14] Schele de Vere credits them with /hay-barrack/, a
corruption of /hooiberg/. That they established the use of /bush/ as a
designation for back-country is very probable; the word has also got
into South African English. In American it has produced a number of
familiar derivatives, /e. g./, /bush-whacker/ and /bush-league/.
Barrère and Leland also credit the Dutch with /dander/, which is
commonly assumed to be an American corruption of /dandruff/. They say
that it is from the Dutch word /donder/ (=/thunder/). /Op donderen/,
in Dutch, means to burst into a sudden rage. The chief Spanish
contributions to American were to come after the War of 1812, with the
opening of the West, but /creole/, /calaboose/, /palmetto/, /peewee/,
/key/ (a small island), /quadroon/, /octoroon/, /barbecue/,
/pickaninny/ and /stampede/ had already entered the language in
colonial days. /Jerked beef/ came from the Spanish /charqui/ by the
law of Hobson-Jobson. The Germans who arrived in Pennsylvania in 1682
also undoubtedly gave a few words to the language, though [Pg044] it
is often difficult to distinguish their contributions from those of
the Dutch. It seems very likely, however, that /sauerkraut/[15] and
/noodle/ are to be credited to them. Finally, the negro slaves brought
in /gumbo/, /goober/, /juba/ and /voodoo/ (usually corrupted to
/hoodoo/), and probably helped to corrupt a number of other