SOME AMERICANISMS.
A very erroneous impression generally exists in this country as to the manner in which the English language is spoken in the United States. This has arisen in some degree from the circumstance that travellers have dwelt upon and exaggerated such peculiarities of language as have come under their observation in various parts of the Union; but also in greater measure from the fact that in English novels and dramas in which an American figures—no matter whether the character depicted be represented as a man of good social position and, presumably, fair education, or not—he is made to express himself in a dialect happily combining the peculiarities of speech of every section of the country from Maine to Texas. With the exception of the late Mr Anthony Trollope’s American Senator, I cannot recall to mind a single work of fiction in which this is not the case. Take, for instance, those portions of Martin Chuzzlewit the scenes of which are laid in the United States; Richard Fairfield, in Bulwer’s My Novel; the Colonel in Lever’s One of Them; Fullalove, in Charles Reade’s Very Hard Cash; the younger Fenton in Yates’s Black Sheep; or the American traveller in Mugby Junction—in each and every instance the result is to convey a most erroneous idea as to the manner in which our common tongue is ordinarily spoken in the United States.
It is the same on the stage. The dialect in which Americans are usually made to express themselves in English dramas is as incorrect and absurd as was the language put into the mouths of their Irish characters by the playwrights of the early part of the eighteenth century.
As a matter of fact, the speech of educated Americans differs but little from that of the same class in Great Britain; whilst, as regards the great bulk of the people of the United States, there can be no question but that they speak purer and more idiomatic English than do the masses here. In every State of the Union the language of the inhabitants can be understood without the slightest difficulty. This is more than can be said of the dialects of the peasantry in various parts of England, these being in many instances perfectly unintelligible to a stranger. Again, the fluency of expression and command of language possessed by Americans even in the humbler ranks of life forms a marked contrast to the poverty of speech of the same class in this country, where, as an eminent philologist has declared, a very considerable proportion of the agricultural population habitually make use of a vocabulary not exceeding three hundred words.
But to return to the subject of this paper. Some words which have become obsolete in this country, or now convey a totally different meaning from that primarily attaching to them, are still current in America in the sense in which they were originally employed. Prink, to ornament or adorn, which is found in Spenser and other writers of the Elizabethan age, is at the present day a common term in the Eastern States. One Yankee girl will say to another, who has been some time at her toilet, ‘Oh, you have been prinking;’ or, ‘What a long while it has taken you to prink.’ In fact the verb is used in all its moods and tenses. Muss, a confused encounter or scramble, is generally supposed to be a purely American idiom. On the contrary, it is good Shakspearean English. In Antony and Cleopatra, Antony says:
‘Of late when I cry’d ho!
Like boys unto a muss, kings would start forth.’
Lamm, to beat, to maltreat, is an American word of English parentage. In a north-country ballad of the time of Edward VI., one line runs, ‘They lammed him and bammed him;’ and the word may also be found in Marlowe. Sick is an expression universally used in the United States in the sense of indisposition. A man will say, ‘I am sick,’ never, ‘I am ill.’ It scarcely need be said that the phrase was perfectly good English two centuries and a half ago, the word ‘ill,’ with the meaning now attaching to it, not once occurring in the translation of the Bible.
Bug, again, employed in America as a generic term for every species of insect, was used in England, formerly, in the same sense. ‘A bug hath buzzed it in mine ears,’ says Bacon in one of his letters. At the present day, the word has in England so limited an application, that when an edition of the works of Edgar Allan Poe was published in London, the editor altered the title of one story, The Golden Bug, to The Golden Beetle, in order not to give offence to ‘ears polite.’
Fearful, which now signifies to inspire terror or awe, has still in the United States the meaning it bore in Shakspeare’s time, when it was invariably used in the sense of timid or afraid. In Romeo and Juliet, when Romeo, after slaying Tybalt, is lying hidden in Friar Lawrence’s cell, the Friar says:
‘Romeo, come forth, come forth, thou fearful man;’
and again, in The Tempest, in that scene in which Prospero threatens Ferdinand, Miranda exclaims:
‘O dear father,
Make not too rash a trial of him, for
He’s gentle and not fearful.’
So obsolete, however, is now the word in the sense in which it is employed by the poet, that in most editions of Shakspeare, a footnote is appended to it, giving the definition as ‘timorous.’ In America, the expression, ‘He is a fearful man,’ or, ‘She is a fearful woman,’ is frequently applied to an individual of timid disposition, the meaning intended to be conveyed being precisely the opposite to that which in this country would attach to the phrase.
Some common English words have in the United States completely lost their original signification, wherefore, it would not be easy to say. Ugly, for instance, means ill-natured; smart, clever; clever, of an amiable disposition; and lovely—although this last locution is not perhaps so common as the others—lovable.
I was, when resident in New York, present during a conversation in the course of which a rather curious equivoque occurred, owing to the peculiar sense in which the words in question are used on the other side of the Atlantic. On the occasion referred to, an American lady and an Englishwoman—who had only been a short time in the United States—were speaking of an old gentleman with whom they both were acquainted. The former was warm in his praises.
‘Mr R——,’ she declared, ‘is quite lovely.’
‘Why,’ was the surprised reply, ‘how can you think so? I consider him decidedly ugly.’
‘Ugly!’ indignantly retorted the first speaker. ‘He is not at all ugly. On the contrary, he is real clever.’
‘That Mr R—— is a man of talent, I admit,’ was the response; ‘but he is certainly anything but good-looking.’
‘Well, I do not deny that he is homely, and I never said that he was not,’ rejoined the other lady.
‘But,’ exclaimed the puzzled Englishwoman, ‘you have just asserted that he was not ugly.’
‘No more he is!’ was the quick retort.
When the dialogue had reached this point, it being obvious not only that the two ladies were at cross-purposes, but that they were, in consequence, becoming a little heated, I deemed it advisable to interpose, and explain how their mutual misapprehension had arisen.
In connection with the phrase, ‘A man of talent,’ made use of by my countrywoman in the course of the above conversation, I may observe that ‘talent’ or ‘talented’ is an expression seldom heard from the lips of a native of New England. Lord Macaulay asserts that these words owe their origin to the ‘Parable of the Talents’ in the New Testament, and on one occasion he challenged Lady Holland to cite a single instance of their being employed by any English writer prior to the latter part of the seventeenth century. To the circumstance, therefore, that at the period when the Puritans left their native land to seek new homes in the New World, the words in question had not been incorporated into the language, may, I conceive, be attributed the fact that to this day they seldom have a place in the vocabulary of the inhabitants of the Eastern States.
When a word is already in existence which is fully adequate to express the idea it is employed to convey, it seems not a little curious that the use of it should be superseded by another, not, indeed, coined for the purpose, but by one divorced from its original meaning. Yet this has been the case in various instances in the United States. A place where goods are sold at retail is called a ‘store,’ not a shop, the use of the latter word being exclusively confined to those establishments in which some manufacturing or other mechanical industry is carried on. When ‘corn’ is spoken of, maize or Indian corn is always meant; all the other cereals being invariably designated by their respective names, as wheat, oats, barley, &c. Railway in America becomes ‘railroad;’ station, ‘depôt;’ line, ‘track;’ carriage, ‘car;’ whilst for tram, the phrase employed is ‘horse-car.’ A timber building is a ‘frame-building;’ a row of houses is a ‘block’ of houses. For poorhouse or workhouse, the expression used is ‘almshouse.’ When the idea intended to be conveyed is that which an Englishman attaches to the latter phrase, the word ‘asylum’ or ‘home’ is used by an American.
In fact, a list which should comprise all the words employed by our transatlantic cousins in a different sense from ourselves would be a tolerably long one. But the desultory examples I have given will suffice to illustrate the fact—to which I have already adverted—that in numerous instances, and without any apparent cause, many common English words have acquired in the United States a totally different meaning from that which they bear in this country.