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