'Well nigh all other curës let he slide.'
Mr. Bartlett gives 'above one's bend' as an Americanism; but compare Hamlet's 'to the top of my bent.' In his tracks for immediately has acquired an American accent, and passes where he can for a native, but is an importation nevertheless; for what is he but the Latin e vestigio, or at best the Norman French eneslespas, both which have the same meaning? Hotfoot (provincial also in England), I find in the old romance of 'Tristan,'
'Si s'en parti CHAUT PAS'
Like for as is never used in New England, but is universal in the South and West. It has on its side the authority of two kings (ego sum rex Romanorum et supra grammaticam), Henry VIII. and Charles I. This were ample, without throwing into the scale the scholar and poet Daniel. Them was used as a nominative by the majesty of Edward VI., by Sir P. Hoby, and by Lord Paget (in Froude's 'History'). I have never seen any passage adduced where guess was used as the Yankee uses it. The word was familiar in the mouths of our ancestors, but with a different shade of meaning from that we have given it, which is something like rather think, though the Yankee implies a confident certainty by it when he says, 'I guess I du!' There are two examples in Otway, one of which ('So in the struggle, I guess the note was lost') perhaps might serve our purpose, and Coleridge's
'I guess 'twas fearful there to see'
certainly comes very near. But I have a higher authority than either in Selden, who, in one of his notes to the 'Polyolbion,' writes, 'The first inventor of them (I guess you dislike not the addition) was one Berthold Swartz.' Here he must mean by it, 'I take it for granted.' Robert Greene, in his 'Quip for an Upstart Courtier,' makes Cloth-breeches say, 'but I gesse your maistership never tried what true honor meant.' In this case the word seems to be used with a meaning precisely like that which we give it. Another peculiarity almost as prominent is the beginning sentences, especially in answer to questions, with 'well.' Put before such a phrase as 'How d'e do?' it is commonly short, and has the sound of it wul, but in reply it is deliberative, and the various shades of meaning which can be conveyed by difference of intonation, and by prolonging or abbreviating, I should vainly attempt to describe. I have heard ooa-ahl, wahl, ahl, wal and something nearly approaching the sound of the le in able. Sometimes before 'I' it dwindles to a mere l, as ''l I dunno.' A friend of mine (why should I not please myself, though I displease him, by brightening my page with the initials of the most exquisite of humorists, J.H.?) told me that he once heard five 'wells,' like pioneers, precede the answer to an inquiry about the price of land. The first was the ordinary wul, in deference to custom; the second, the long, perpending ooahl, with a falling inflection of the voice; the third, the same, but with the voice rising, as if in despair of a conclusion, into a plaintively nasal whine; the fourth, wulh, ending in the aspirate of a sigh; and then, fifth, came a short, sharp wal, showing that a conclusion had been reached. I have used this latter form in the 'Biglow Papers,' because, if enough nasality be added, it represents most nearly the average sound of what I may call the interjection.
A locution prevails in the Southern and Middle States which is so curious that, though never heard in New England, I will give a few lines to its discussion, the more readily because it is extinct elsewhere. I mean the use of allow in the sense of affirm, as 'I allow that's a good horse.' I find the word so used in 1558 by Anthony Jenkinson in Hakluyt: 'Corne they sowe not, neither doe eate any bread, mocking the Christians for the same, and disabling our strengthe, saying we live by eating the toppe of a weede, and drinke a drinke made of the same, allowing theyr great devouring of flesh and drinking of milke to be the increase of theyr strength.' That is, they undervalued our strength, and affirmed their own to be the result of a certain diet. In another passage of the same narrative the word has its more common meaning of approving or praising: 'The said king, much allowing this declaration, said.' Ducange quotes Bracton sub voce ADLOCARE for the meaning 'to admit as proved,' and the transition from this to 'affirm,' is by no means violent. Izaak Walton has 'Lebault allows waterfrogs to be good meat,' and here the word is equivalent to affirms. At the same time, when we consider some of the meanings of allow in old English, and of allouer in old French, and also remember that the verbs prize and praise are from one root, I think we must admit allaudare to a share in the paternity of allow. The sentence from Hakluyt would read equally well, 'contemning our strengthe, … and praising (or valuing) their great eating of flesh as the cause of their increase in strength.' After all, if we confine ourselves to allocare, it may turn out that the word was somewhere and somewhen used for to bet, analogously to put up, put down, post (cf. Spanish apostar), and the like. I hear boys in the street continually saying, 'I bet that's a good horse,' or what not, meaning by no means to risk anything beyond their opinion in the matter.
The word improve, in the sense of to 'occupy, make use of, employ,' as Dr. Pickering defines it, he long ago proved to be no neologism. He would have done better, I think, had he substituted profit by for employ. He cites Dr. Franklin as saying that the word had never, so far as he knew, been used in New England before he left it in 1723, except in Dr. Mather's 'Bemarkable Providences,' which he oddly calls a 'very old book.' Franklin, as Dr. Pickering goes on to show, was mistaken.
Mr. Bartlett in his 'Dictionary' merely abridges Pickering. Both of them should have confined the application of the word to material things, its extension to which is all that is peculiar in the supposed American use of it. For surely 'Complete Letter-Writers' have been 'improving this opportunity' time out of mind. I will illustrate the word a little further, because Pickering cites no English authorities. Skelton has a passage in his 'Phyllyp Sparowe,' which I quote the rather as it contains also the word allowed and as it distinguishes improve from employ:—
'His [Chaucer's] Englysh well alowed,
So as it is emprowed
For as it is employd,
There is no English voyd.'