Parts of Speech: Essays on English

by Brander Matthews

Characteristically witty this definition is, no doubt, but not wholly adequate. What is an Americanism? And what is a Briticism? Not long ago a friendly British writer rebuked his fellow-countrymen for a double failing of theirs—for their twin tricks of assuming, first, that every vulgarism unfamiliar to them is an Americanism, and that therefore, and secondly, every Americanism is a vulgarism. In the mouths of many British speakers “Americanism” serves as a term of reproach; and so does “Briticism” in the mouths of some American speakers. But this should not be; the words ought to be used with scientific precision and with no flush of feeling. Before using them, we must ascertain with what exact meaning it is best to employ them.

An American investigator gathered together a dozen or two queer words and phrases that he had noted in recent British books and journals, and as they were then wholly unknown to America, he branded them as Briticisms, only to evoke a prompt protest from Mr. Andrew Lang. For the stigmatized words and phrases Mr. Lang proffered no defense; but he boldly denied that it was fair to call them Briticisms. True, one or another of them had been detected in pages of this or that British author. Yet they were not common property: they were individualisms; they were to be charged against each separate perpetrator and not against the whole United Kingdom. Mr. Lang maintained that when Walter Pater used so odd a term as evanescing, this use “scarcely makes it a Briticism; it was a Paterism.”

This is a plea in confession and avoidance, but its force is indisputable. To admit it, however, gives us a right to insist that the same justice shall be meted out to the so-called Americanisms which Mr. Lang has more than once held up to British execration. If the use of an ill-made word like essayette or leaderette or sermonette by one or more British writers does not make it a Briticism until it can be proved to have come into general use in Great Britain, then, of course, the verbal aberrations of careless Americans, or even the freakish dislocations of the vocabulary indulged in by some of our more acrobatic humorists, does not warrant a British writer in calling any chance phrase of theirs an Americanism. Mr. W. S. Gilbert once manufactured the verb “to burgle,” and Mr. Gilbert is a British writer of good repute; but burgling is not therefore a Briticism: it is a Gilbertism. Mr. Edison, an inventor of another sort, once affirmed that a certain article giving an account of his kineto-phonograph had his “entire indorsation.” According to Mr. Lang’s theory, indorsation, not being in use generally in the United States, is not an Americanism: it is an Edisonism.

The more Mr. Lang’s theory is considered, the sounder it will appear. Individual word-coinages are not redeemable at the national treasury either in the United Kingdom or in the United States. Before a word or a phrase can properly be called a Briticism or an Americanism there must be proof that it has won its way into general use on its own side of the Atlantic. Right away for “at once” is an Americanism beyond all dispute, for it is wide-spread throughout the United States; and so is back of for “behind.” Directly for “as soon as” is a Briticism equally indisputable; and so is different to for “different from.” In each of these four cases there has been a local divergence from the traditional usage of the English language. All four of these divergences may be advantageous, and all four of them may even be accepted hereafter on both sides of the Atlantic; but just now there is no doubt that two of them are fairly to be called Americanisms and two of them are properly to be recorded as Briticisms.

Every student of our speech knows that true Americanisms are abundant enough; but the omission of terms casually employed here and there, seed that fell by the wayside, springing up only to wilt away—the omission of all individualisms of this sort simplifies the list immensely, just as a like course of action in England cuts down the number of Briticisms fairly to be catalogued as such. It must be remarked, however, that the collecting of so-called Americanisms is a pastime that has been carried on since the early years of the nineteenth century, whereas it was only in the closing decades of that century that attention was called to the existence of Briticisms, and to the necessity of a careful collection of them. The bulky tomes which pretend to be ‘Dictionaries of Americanisms’ are stuffed with words and phrases having no right there.

These dictionaries would be very slim if they contained only true Americanisms, that is to say, words and phrases in common use in the United States and not in common use in the United Kingdom. Yet they would be slimmer still if another limitation is imposed on the use of the word. Is a term fairly to be called an Americanism if it can be shown to have been formerly in use in England, even though it may there have dropped out of sight in the past century or two? Now, everybody knows that dozens of so-called Americanisms are good old English, neglected by the British and allowed to die out over there, but cherished and kept alive over here. Such is guess=“incline to think”; such is realise=“to make certain or substantial”; such is reckon=“consider” or “deem”; such is a few=“a little”; such is nights=“at night”; and such are dozens of other words often foolishly animadverted upon as indefensible Americanisms, and all of them solidly established in honorable ancestry. An instructive collection of these survivals can be seen in Mr. H. C. Lodge’s aptly entitled and highly interesting essay on ‘Shakspere’s Americanisms.’

It is with an amused surprise that an American in his occasional reading keeps coming across in the pages of British authors of one century or another what he had supposed to be Americanisms, and even what he had taken sometimes for mere slang. The cert of the New York street-boy, apparently a contraction of certainly, is it not rather the certes of the Elizabethans? And the interrogative how?=“what is it?”—a usage abhorred by Dr. Holmes,—this can be discovered in Massinger’s plays more than once (‘Duke of Milan,’ iii. 3, and ‘Believe as You List,’ ii. 2). “I’m pretty considerably glad to see you,” says Manuel, in Colley Cibber’s ‘She Would and She Would Not.’ To fire out=“expel forcibly,” is in Shakspere’s Sonnets and also in ‘Ralph Roister Doister’—altho, perhaps, with a slightly different connotation from that now obtaining in America. A theatrical manager nowadays likes to have the first performance of a new play out of town so that he can come to the metropolis with a perfected work, and he calls this trying it on the dog; the same expression, almost, is to be found in Pope. In ‘Pickwick,’ Sam Weller proposes to settle the hash of an opponent; and in ‘Tess of the d’Urbervilles’ we find down to the ground used as a superlative, and quite in our own later sense. The Southern peart is in ‘Lorna Doone,’ and the Southwestern dog-gone it is in the ‘Little Minister.’ In Mr. Barrie’s story also do we find to go back on your word; just as in Mr. William Watson’s ‘Excursions in Criticism’ we discover grit=“staying power” or “doggedness.”

Very amusing indeed is the attitude of the ordinary British newspaper reviewer toward words and phrases in this category. Not being a scholar in English, he is unaware that scholarship is a condition precedent to judgment; and he is swift to denounce as American innovations terms firmly rooted in the earlier masters of the language, while he passes the frequent Briticisms in the pages of contemporary London writers without a hint of reproof. From a British author like Rossetti he accepts “the gracile spring,” while he rejects “gracile ease” in an American author like Mr. Howells. Behind this arrogant ignorance is to be perceived the assumption that the English language is in immediate peril of disease and death from American license if British newspapers fail to do their duty. The shriller the shriek of protest is, the slighter the protester’s competence upon the question at issue. No outcry against the deterioration of English in America has come from any of the British scholars who can speak with authority about the language.

What we Americans have done is to keep alive or to revive many a good old English term; and for this service to our common speech our British cousins ought to be properly grateful. We must admit that words and phrases and usages thus reinstated are not true Americanisms—however much we might like to claim them for our very own. We have already seen that most of the individualisms of eccentric or careless writers are also not to be received as true Americanisms. And there is yet a third group of so-called Americanisms not fairly entitled to the name. These are the terms devised in the United States to meet conditions unknown in England. Here is no divergence from the accepted usage of the language, but a development of the common tongue to satisfy a new necessity. The need for the new word or phrase was first felt in America, and here the new term had to be found to supply the immediate want. But the word itself, altho frankly of American origin, is not to be styled an Americanism. It is a new English word, that is all—a word to be used hereafter in the United Kingdom as in the United States. It is an American contribution to the English language; but it is not an Americanism—if we limit Americanism to mean a term having currency only in North America, just as Briticism means a term having currency only in the British Islands. The new thing exists now, and as it came into existence in America, we stood sponsors for it; but the name we gave it is its name once for all, to be used by the British and the Australians and the Canadians as well as by ourselves. Telephone, for example,—both the thing and the word are of American invention,—is there any one so foolish as to call telephone an Americanism?

These American contributions to the English language are not a few. Some of them are brand-new words, minted at the minute of sudden demand, and well made or ill made, as chance would have it; phonograph is one of these; dime is another; and typewriter is a third. Some of them are old words wrenched to a new use, like elevator=“storehouse for grain,” and like ticker=“telegraphic printing-machine.” Some of them are taken from foreign tongues, either translated, like statehouse (from the Dutch), or unchanged, like prairie (from the French), adobe (from the Spanish), and stoop (from the Dutch). Some of them are borrowed from the rude tongues of our predecessors on this continent, like moccasin and tomahawk and wigwam. To be compared with this last group are the words adopted into English from the native languages of India—punka, for example. And I make no doubt that the Australians have taken over from the aborigines round about them more than one word needed in a hurry as a name for something until then nameless in our common language because the something itself was until then unknown or unnoticed. But these Australian contributions to English cannot be called Australianisms any more than telephone and prairie and wigwam can be called Americanisms.