Mr. Andrew Lang says: "Plenty of other words are formed on the same analogy: the Greeks, in the verb 'to Medize,' set the example. But we happen to have no use for 'scientist.'" It is not quite clear whether Mr. Lang employs "have no use" in the American sense, expressing sheer dislike, or in the literal and English sense. In the latter case I can only say that he has been fortunate in never coming across conjunctures in which "man of science" came in awkwardly and inelegantly.
IV
Let me note a few of the Americanisms, good, bad, and indifferent, which specially struck me, whether in talk or in books, during my recent visit to the United States. I call them Americanisms without inquiring into their history. Some of them may be of English origin; but for practical purposes an Americanism may be taken to mean an expression commonly used in America and not commonly used in England.
I had not been three hours on American soil before I heard a charming young lady remark, "Oh, it was bully!" I gathered that this expression is considered admissible, in the conversation of grown-up people, only in and about New York. I often heard it there, and never anywhere else. A very distinguished officer, who served as a volunteer in Cuba, was asked to state his impressions of war. "War," he said, "is a terrible thing. You can't exaggerate its horrors. When you sit in your tent the night before the battle, and think of home and your wife and children, you feel pretty sick and downhearted. But," he added, "next day, when you're in it, oh, it is bully!"
The general use of picturesque metaphor is of course a striking feature of American conversation. Many of these expressions have taken firm root in England, such as "to have no use for" a man, or "to take no stock in" a theory. But fresh inventions crop up on every hand in America. For instance, where an English theatrical manager would say, "We must get this play well talked about and paragraphed in advance," an American manager puts the whole thing much more briefly and forcibly in the phrase, "We don't want this piece to come in on rubbers." Metaphor apart, many Americans have a gift of fantastic extravagance of phrase which often produces an irresistible effect. A gentleman in high political office had one day to receive a deputation with whose objects he had no sympathy. He listened for some time to the spokesman of the party, and then, at a pause, broke in with the remark: "Gentlemen, you need proceed no further. I am not an entirely dishevelled jackass!" One would give something for a snapshot photograph of the faces of that deputation.
Small differences of expression (other than those with which every one is familiar—such as "elevator," "baggage," "depot," &c.)—strike one in daily life. The American for "To let" is "For rent;" a "thing one would wish to have expressed otherwise" is, more briefly, "a bad break;" instead of "He married money" an American will say "He married rich;" but this, I take it, is a vulgarism—as, indeed, is the English expression. I find that in the modern American novel, setting forth the sayings and doings of more or less educated people, there are apt to be, on an average, about half a dozen words and phrases at which the English reader stumbles for a moment. Mr. Howells, a master of English, may be taken as a faithful reporter of the colloquial speech of Boston and New York. In one of his comediettas, he makes Willis Campbell say, "Let me turn out my sister's cup" (pour her a cup of tea). Mrs. Roberts, in another of these delightful little pieces, says, "I'll smash off a note," where an English Mrs. Roberts would say "dash off "; and where an English Mrs. Roberts would ring the bell, her American namesake "touches the annunciator." It is commonly believed in England that there is no such thing as a "servant" in America, but only "hired girls" and "helps." This is certainly not so in New York. I once "rang up" a friend's house by telephone, and, on asking who was speaking to me, received the answer, in a feminine voice, "I'm one of Mr. So-and-so's servants."
The heroine of The Story of a Play says to her husband, "Are you still thinking of our scrap of this morning?" "Scrap," in the sense of "quarrel," is one of the few exceedingly common American expressions which, have as yet taken little hold in England.[[V]] Admiral Dewey, for instance, is admired as a "scrapper," or, as we should phrase it, a fighting Admiral. Mr. Henry Fuller, of Chicago, in his powerful novel The Cliff Dwellers, uses a still less elegant synonym for "scrap"—he talks of a "connubial spat." In the same book I note the phrases "He teetered back and forth on his toes," "He was a stocky young man," "One of his brief noonings," "That's right, Claudia—score the profession." "Score," as used in America, does not mean "score off," but rather, I take it, "attack and leave your mark upon." It is very common in this sense. For instance, I note among the headlines of a New York paper, "Mr. So-and-so scores Yellow Journalism." Talking of Yellow Journalism, by the way, the expressions "a beat," and "a scoop," for what we in England call an "exclusive" item of news, were unknown to me until I went to America. I was a little bewildered, too, when I was told of a family which "lived on air-tights." Their diet consisted of canned (or, as we should say, tinned) provisions.