Some
other contractions of ours have a vulgar air about them.
other contractions of ours have a vulgar air about them.
James Russell Lowell
For its antiquity I cite the rhyme of _verse
and pierce_ in Chapman and Donne, and in some commendatory verses by a
Mr. Berkenhead before the poems of Francis Beaumont. Our _pairlous_ for
_perilous_ is of the same kind, and is nearer Shakespeare's _parlous_
than the modern pronunciation. One other Gallicism survives in our
pronunciation. Perhaps I should rather call it a semi-Gallicism, for it
is the result of a futile effort to reproduce a French sound with
English lips. Thus for _joint_, _employ_, _royal_, we have _jynt_,
_emply_, _r[)y]le_, the last differing only from _rile_ (_roil_) in a
prolongation of the _y_ sound. I find _royal_ so pronounced in the
'Mirror for Magistrates. ' In Walter de Biblesworth I find _solives_
Englished by _gistes_. This, it is true, may have been pronounced
_jeests_, but the pronunciation _jystes_ must have preceded the present
spelling, which was no doubt adopted after the radical meaning was
forgotten, as analogical with other words in _oi_. In the same way after
Norman-French influence had softened the _l_ out of _would_ (we already
find _woud_ for _veut_ in N. F. poems), _should_ followed the example,
and then an _l_ was foisted into _could_, where it does not belong, to
satisfy the logic of the eye, which has affected the pronunciation and
even the spelling of English more than is commonly supposed. I meet with
_eyster_ for _oyster_ as early as the fourteenth century. I find _viage_
in Bishop Hall and Middleton the dramatist, _bile_ for _boil_ in Donne
and Chrononhotonthologos, _line_ for _loin_ in Hall, _ryall_ and _chyse_
(for choice) _dystrye_ for _destroy_, in the Coventry Plays. In
Chapman's 'All Fools' is the misprint of _employ_ for _imply_, fairly
inferring an identity of sound in the last syllable. Indeed, this
pronunciation was habitual till after Pope, and Rogers tells us that the
elegant Gray said _naise_ for _noise_ just as our rustics still do. Our
_cornish_ (which I find also in Herrick) remembers the French better
than _cornice_ does. While clinging more closely to the Anglo-Saxon in
dropping the _g_ from the end of the present participle, the Yankee now
and then pleases himself with an experiment in French nasality in words
ending in _n_. It is not, so far as my experience goes, very common,
though it may formerly have been more so. _Capting_, for instance, I
never heard save in jest, the habitual form being _kepp'n_. But at any
rate it is no invention of ours. In that delightful old volume, 'Ane
Compendious Buke of Godly and Spirituall Songs,' in which I know not
whether the piety itself or the simplicity of its expression be more
charming, I find _burding_, _garding_, and _cousing_, and in the State
Trials _uncerting_ used by a gentleman. I confess that I like the _n_
better than _ng_.
Of Yankee preterites I find _risse_ and _rize_ for _rose_ in Beaumont
and Fletcher, Middleton and Dryden, _clim_ in Spenser, _chees_ (_chose_)
in Sir John Mandevil, _give_ (_gave_) in the Coventry Plays, _shet_
(_shut_) in Golding's Ovid, _het_ in Chapman and in Weever's Epitaphs,
_thriv_ and _smit_ in Drayton, _quit_ in Ben Jonson and Henry More, and
_pled_ in the Paston Letters, nay, even in the fastidious Landor. _Rid_
for _rode_ was anciently common. So likewise was _see_ for _saw_, but I
find it in no writer of authority (except Golding), unless Chaucer's
_seie_ and Gower's _sigh_ were, as I am inclined to think, so sounded.
_Shew_ is used by Hector Boece, Giles Fletcher, Drummond of Hawthornden,
and in the Paston Letters. Similar strong preterites, like _snew_,
_thew_, and even _mew_, are not without example. I find _sew_ for
_sewed_ in 'Piers Ploughman. ' Indeed, the anomalies in English
preterites are perplexing. We have probably transferred _flew_ from
_flow_ (as the preterite of which I have heard it) to _fly_ because we
had another preterite in _fled_. Of weak preterites the Yankee retains
_growed_, _blowed_, for which he has good authority, and less often
_knowed_. His _sot_ is merely a broad sounding of _sat_, no more
inelegant than the common _got_ for _gat_, which he further degrades
into _gut_. When he says _darst_, he uses a form as old as Chaucer.
The Yankee has retained something of the long sound of the _a_ in such
words as _axe_, _wax_, pronouncing them _exe_, _wex_ (shortened from
_aix_, _waix_). He also says _hev_ and _hed_ (_h[=a]ve_, _h[=a]d_ for
_have_ and _had_). In most cases he follows an Anglo-Saxon usage. In
_aix_ for _axle_ he certainly does. I find _wex_ and _aisches_ (_ashes_)
in Pecock, and _exe_ in the Paston Letters. Golding rhymes _wax_ with
_wexe_ and spells _challenge_ _chelenge_. Chaucer wrote _hendy_. Dryden
rhymes _can_ with _men_, as Mr. Biglow would. Alexander Gill, Milton's
teacher, in his 'Logonomia' cites _hez_ for _hath_ as peculiar to
Lincolnshire. I find _hayth_ in Collier's 'Bibliographical Account of
Early English Literature' under the date 1584, and Lord Cromwell so
wrote it. Sir Christopher Wren wrote _belcony_. Our _fect_ is only the
O. F. _faict_. _Thaim_ for _them_ was common in the sixteenth century. We
have an example of the same thing in the double form of the verb
_thrash_, _thresh_. While the New Englander cannot be brought to say
_instead_ for _instid_ (commonly _'stid_ where not the last word in a
sentence), he changes the _i_ into _e_ in _red_ for _rid_, _tell_ for
_till_, _hender_ for _hinder_, _rense_ for _rinse_. I find _red_ in the
old interlude of 'Thersytes,' _tell_ in a letter of Daborne to
Henslowe, and also, I shudder to mention it, in a letter of the great
Duchess of Marlborough, Atossa herself! It occurs twice in a single
verse of the Chester Plays,
'_Tell_ the day of dome, _tell_ the beames blow. '
From the word _blow_ (in another sense) is formed _blowth_, which I
heard again this summer after a long interval. Mr. Wright[24] explains it
as meaning 'a blossom. ' With us a single blossom is a _blow_, while
_blowth_ means the blossoming in general. A farmer would say that there
was a good blowth on his fruit-trees. The word retreats farther inland
and away from the railways, year by year. Wither rhymes _hinder_ with
_slender_, and Shakespeare and Lovelace have _renched_ for _rinsed_. In
'Gammer Gurton' and 'Mirror for Magistrates' is _sence_ for _since_;
Marlborough's Duchess so writes it, and Donne rhymes _since_ with
_Amiens_ and _patience_, Bishop Hall and Otway with _pretence_, Chapman
with _citizens_, Dryden with _providence_. Indeed, why should not
_sithence_ take that form? Dryden's wife (an earl's daughter) has _tell_
for _till_, Margaret, mother of Henry VII. , writes _seche_ for _such_,
and our _ef_ finds authority in the old form _yeffe_.
_E_ sometimes takes the place of _u_, as _jedge, tredge, bresh_. I find
_tredge_ in the interlude of 'Jack Jugler,' _bresh_ in a citation by
Collier from 'London Cries' of the middle of the seventeenth century,
and _resche_ for _rush_ (fifteenth century) in the very valuable 'Volume
of Vocabularies' edited by Mr. Wright. _Resce_ is one of the Anglo-Saxon
forms of the word in Bosworth's A. -S. Dictionary. Golding has _shet_.
The Yankee always shortens the _u_ in the ending _ture_, making _ventur,
natur, pictur_, and so on. This was common, also, among the educated of
the last generation. I am inclined to think it may have been once
universal, and I certainly think it more elegant than the vile _vencher,
naycher, pickcher_, that have taken its place, sounding like the
invention of a lexicographer to mitigate a sneeze. Nash in his 'Pierce
Penniless' has _ventur_, and so spells it, and I meet it also in
Spenser, Drayton, Ben Jonson, Herrick, and Prior. Spenser has
_tort'rest_, which can be contracted only from _tortur_ and not from
_torcher_. Quarles rhymes _nature_ with _creator_, and Dryden with
_satire_, which he doubtless pronounced according to its older form of
_satyr_. Quarles has also _torture_ and _mortar_. Mary Boleyn writes
_kreatur_. I find _pikter_ in Izaak Walton's autograph will.
I shall now give some examples which cannot so easily be ranked under
any special head. Gill charges the Eastern counties with _kiver_ for
_cover_, and _ta_, for _to_. The Yankee pronounces both _too_ and _to_
like _ta_ (like the _tou_ in _touch_) where they are not emphatic. When
they are, both become _tu_. In old spelling, _to_ is the common (and
indeed correct) form of _too_, which is only _to_ with the sense of _in
addition_. I suspect that the sound of our _too_ has caught something
from the French _tout_, and it is possible that the old _too too_ is not
a reduplication, but a reminiscence of the feminine form of the same
word (_toute_) as anciently pronounced, with the _e_ not yet silenced.
Gill gives a Northern origin to _geaun_ for _gown_ and _waund_ for
_wound_ (_vulnus_). Lovelace has _waund_, but
there is something too dreadful in suspecting Spenser (who _borealised_
in his pastorals) of having ever been guilty of _geaun! _ And yet some
delicate mouths even now are careful to observe the Hibernicism of
_ge-ard_ for _guard_, and _ge-url_ for _girl_. Sir Philip Sidney
(_credite posteri! _) wrote _furr_ for _far_. I would hardly have
believed it had I not seen it in _facsimile_. As some consolation, I
find _furder_ in Lord Bacon and Donne, and Wittier rhymes _far_ with
_cur_. The Yankee, who omits the final _d_ in many words, as do the
Scotch, makes up for it by adding one in _geound_. The purist does not
feel the loss of the _d_ sensibly in _lawn_ and _yon_, from the former
of which it has dropped again after a wrongful adoption (retained in
_laundry_), while it properly belongs to the latter. But what shall we
make of _git, yit_, and _yis_? I find _yis_ and _git_ in Warner's
'Albion's England,' _yet_ rhyming with _wit, admit_, and _fit_ in Donne,
with _wit_ in the 'Revenger's Tragedy,' Beaumont, and Suckling, with
_writ_ in Dryden, and latest of all with _wit_ in Sir Hanbury Williams.
Prior rhymes _fitting_ and _begetting_. Worse is to come. Among others,
Donne rhymes _again_ with _sin_, and Quarles repeatedly with _in_. _Ben_
for _been_, of which our dear Whittier is so fond, has the authority of
Sackville, 'Gammer Gurton' (the work of a bishop), Chapman, Dryden, and
many more, though _bin_ seems to have been the common form. Whittier's
accenting the first syllable of _rom'ance_ finds an accomplice in
Drayton among others, and, though manifestly wrong, is analogous with
_Rom'ans_. Of other Yankeeisms, whether of form or pronunciation, which
I have met with I add a few at random. Pecock writes _sowdiers (sogers,
soudoyers)_, and Chapman and Gill _sodder_. This absorption of the _l_
is common in various dialects, especially in the Scottish. Pecock writes
also _biyende_, and the authors of 'Jack Jugler' and 'Gammer Gurton'
_yender_. The Yankee includes '_yon_' in the same catagory, and says
'hither an' yen,' for 'to and fro. ' (Cf. German _jenseits_. ) Pecock and
plenty more have _wrastle_. Tindal has _agynste, gretter, shett, ondone,
debyte_, and _scace_. 'Jack Jugler' has _scacely_ (which I have often
heard, though _skurce_ is the common form), and Donne and Dryden make
_great_ rhyme with _set_. In the inscription on Caxton's tomb I find
_ynd_ for _end_, which the Yankee more often makes _eend_, still using
familiarly the old phrase 'right anend' for 'continuously. ' His 'stret
(straight) along' in the same sense, which I thought peculiar to him, I
find in Pecock. Tindal's _debyte_ for _deputy_ is so perfectly Yankee
that I could almost fancy the brave martyr to have been deacon of the
First Parish at Jaalam Centre. 'Jack Jugler' further gives us _playsent_
and _sartayne_. Dryden rhymes _certain_ with _parting_, and Chapman and
Ben Jonson use _certain_, as the Yankee always does, for _certainly_.
The 'Coventry Mysteries' have _occapied, massage, nateralle, materal
(material),_ and _meracles_,--all excellent Yankeeisms. In the 'Quatre
fils, Aymon' (1504),[25] is _vertus_ for _virtuous_. Thomas Fuller called
_volume vollum_, I suspect, for he spells it _volumne_. However, _per
contra_, Yankees habitually say _colume_ for _column_. Indeed, to
prove that our ancestors brought their pronunciation with them from the
Old Country, and have not wantonly debased their mother tongue, I need
only to cite the words _scriptur_, _Israll_, _athists_, and
_cherfulness_ from Governor Bradford's 'History. ' So the good man wrote
them, and so the good descendants of his fellow-exiles still pronounce
them. Brampton Gurdon writes _shet_ in a letter to Winthrop. _Purtend_
(_pretend_) has crept like a serpent into the 'Paradise Of Dainty
Devices;' _purvide_, which is not so bad, is in Chaucer. These, of
course, are universal vulgarisms, and not peculiar to the Yankee. Butler
has a Yankee phrase, and pronunciation too, in 'To which these
_carr'ings-on_ did tend. ' Langham or Laneham, who wrote an account of
the festivities at Kenilworth in honor of Queen Bess, and who evidently
tried to spell phonetically, makes _sorrows_ into _sororz_. Herrick
writes _hollow_ for _halloo_, and perhaps pronounced it (_horresco
suggerens_! ) _hollo_, as Yankees do. Why not, when it comes from _hola_?
I find _ffelaschyppe_ (fellowship) in the Coventry Plays. Spenser and
his queen neither of them scrupled to write _afore_, and the former
feels no inelegance even in _chaw_ and _idee_. _'Fore_ was common till
after Herrick. Dryden has _do's_ for _does_, and his wife spells _worse_
_wosce_. _Afeared_ was once universal. Warner has _ery_ for _ever a_;
nay, he also has illy, with which we were once ignorantly reproached by
persons more familiar with Murray's Grammar than with English
literature. And why not _illy_? Mr. Bartlett says it is 'a word used by
writers of an inferior class, who do not seem to perceive that _ill_ is
itself an adverb, without the termination _ly_,' and quotes Dr. Mosser,
President of Brown University, as asking triumphantly, 'Why don't you
say '_welly_? ' I should like to have had Dr. Messer answer his own
question. It would be truer to say that it was used by people who still
remembered that _ill_ was an adjective, the shortened form of _evil_,
out of which Shakespeare and the translators of the Bible ventured to
make _evilly_. This slurred _evil_ is 'the dram of _eale_' in 'Hamlet. '
I find, _illy_ in Warner. The objection to _illy_ is not an etymological
one, but simply that it is contrary to good usage,--a very sufficient
reason. _Ill_ as an adverb was at first a vulgarism, precisely like the
rustic's when he says, 'I was treated _bad_. ' May not the reason of this
exceptional form be looked for in that tendency to dodge what is hard to
pronounce, to which I have already alluded? If the letters were
distinctly uttered, as they should be, it would take too much time to
say _ill-ly_, _well-ly_, and it is to be observed that we have avoided
_smally_[26] and _tally_ in the same way, though we add _ish_ to them
without hesitation in _smallish_ and _tallish_. We have, to be sure,
_dully_ and _fully_, but for the one we prefer _stupidly_, and the other
(though this may have come from eliding the _y_ before _a_s) is giving
way to _full_. The uneducated, whose utterance is slower, still make
adverbs when they will by adding _like_ to all manner of adjectives. We
have had _big_ charged upon us, because we use it where an Englishman
would now use _great_. I fully admit that it were better to distinguish
between them, allowing to _big_ a certain contemptuous quality; but as
for authority, I want none better than that of Jeremy Taylor, who, in
his noble sermon 'On the Return of Prayer,' speaks of 'Jesus, whose
spirit was meek and gentle up to the greatness of the _biggest_
example. ' As for our double negative, I shall waste no time in quoting
instances of it, because it was once as universal in English as it still
is in the neo-Latin languages, where it does not strike us as vulgar. I
am not sure that the loss of it is not to be regretted. But surely I
shall admit the vulgarity of slurring or altogether eliding certain
terminal consonants? I admit that a clear and sharp-cut enunciation is
one of the crowning charms and elegances of speech. Words so uttered are
like coins fresh from the mint, compared with the worn and dingy drudges
of long service,--I do not mean American coins, for those look less
badly the more they lose of their original ugliness. No one is more
painfully conscious than I of the contrast between the rifle-crack of an
Englishman's _yes_ and _no_, and the wet-fuse drawl of the same
monosyllables in the mouths of my countrymen. But I do not find the
dropping of final consonants disagreeable in Allan Ramsay or Burns, nor
do I believe that our literary ancestors were sensible of that
inelegance in the fusing them together of which we are conscious. How
many educated men pronounce the _t_ in _chestnut_? how many say
_pentise_ for _penthouse_, as they should. When a Yankee skipper says
that he is "boun' for Gloster" (not Gloucester, with the leave of the
Universal Schoolmaster),[27] he but speaks like Chaucer or an old
ballad-singer, though they would have pronounced it _boon_. This is one
of the cases where the _d_ is surreptitious, and has been added in
compliment to the verb _bind_, with which it has nothing to do. If we
consider the root of the word (though of course I grant that every race
has a right to do what it will with what is so peculiarly its own as its
speech), the _d_ has no more right there than at the end of _gone_,
where it is often put by children, who are our best guides to the
sources of linguistic corruption, and the best teachers of its
processes. Cromwell, minister of Henry VIII. , writes _worle_ for world.
Chapman has _wan_ for _wand_, and _lawn_ has rightfully displaced
_laund_, though with no thought, I suspect, of etymology. Rogers tells
us that Lady Bathurst sent him some letters written to William III. by
Queen Mary, in which she addresses him as '_Dear Husban_. ' The old form
_expoun'_, which our farmers use, is more correct than the form with a
barbarous _d_ tacked on which has taken its place. Of the kind opposite
to this, like our _gownd_ for _gown_, and the London cockney's _wind_
for _wine_, I find _drownd_ for _drown_ in the 'Misfortunes of Arthur'
(1584) and in Swift. And, by the way, whence came the long sound of wind
which our poets still retain, and which survives in 'winding' a horn, a
totally different word from 'winding' a kite-string? We say _beh[=i]nd_
and _h[=i]nder_ (comparative) and yet to _h[)i]nder_. Shakespeare
pronounced _kind_ _k[)i]nd_, or what becomes of his play on that word
and _kin_ in 'Hamlet'? Nay, did he not even (shall I dare to hint it? )
drop the final _d_ as the Yankee still does? John Lilly plays in the
same way on _kindred_ and _kindness_.
But to come to some other ancient instances. Warner rhymes _bounds_ with
_crowns_, _grounds_ with _towns_, _text_ with _sex_, _worst_ with
_crust_, _interrupts_ with _cups_; Drayton, _defects_ with _sex_;
Chapman, _amends_ with _cleanse_; Webster, _defects_ with _checks_; Ben
Jonson, _minds_ with _combines_; Marston, _trust_ and _obsequious_,
_clothes_ and _shows_; Dryden gives the same sound to _clothes_, and has
also _minds_ with _designs_. Of course, I do not affirm that their ears
may not have told them that these were imperfect rhymes (though I am by
no means sure even of that), but they surely would never have tolerated
any such had they suspected the least vulgarity in them. Prior has the
rhyme _first_ and _trust_, but puts it into the mouth of a landlady.
Swift has _stunted_ and _burnt_ it, an intentionally imperfect rhyme, no
doubt, but which I cite as giving precisely the Yankee pronunciation of
_burned_. Donne couples in unhallowed wedlock _after_ and _matter_, thus
seeming to give to both the true Yankee sound; and it is not uncommon to
find _after_ and _daughter_. Worse than all, in one of Dodsley's Old
Plays we have _onions_ rhyming with _minions_,--I have tears in my eyes
while I record it. And yet what is viler than the universal _Misses_
(_Mrs. _) for _Mistress_? This was once a vulgarism, and in 'The Miseries
of Inforced Marriage' the rhyme (printed as prose in Dodsley's Old Plays
by Collier),
'To make my young _mistress_
Delighting in _kisses_,'
is put into the mouth of the clown. Our people say _Injun_ for _Indian_.
The tendency to make this change where _i_ follows _d_ is common. The
Italian _giorno_ and French _jour_ from _diurnus_ are familiar examples.
And yet _Injun_ is one of those depravations which the taste challenges
peremptorily, though it have the authority of Charles Cotton--who rhymes
'_Indies_' with '_cringes_'--and four English lexicographers, beginning
with Dr. Sheridan, bid us say _invidgeous_. Yet after all it is no worse
than the debasement which all our terminations in _tion_ and _tience_
have undergone, which yet we hear with _resignashun_ and _payshunce_,
though it might have aroused both _impat-i-ence_ and _in-dig-na-ti-on_
in Shakespeare's time. When George Herbert tells us that if the sermon
be dull,
'God takes a text and preacheth patience,'
the prolongation of the word seems to convey some hint at the
longanimity of the virtue. Consider what a poor curtal we have made of
Ocean. There was something of his heave and expanse in _o-ce-an_, and
Fletcher knew how to use it when he wrote so fine a verse as the second
of these, the best deep-sea verse I know,--
'In desperate storms stem with a little rudder
The tumbling ruins of the ocean. '
Oceanus was not then wholly shorn of his divine proportions, and our
modern _oshun_ sounds like the gush of small-beer in comparison.
Some
other contractions of ours have a vulgar air about them. _More 'n_ for
_more than_, as one of the worst, may stand for a type of such. Yet our
old dramatists are full of such obscurations (elisions they can hardly
be called) of the _th_, making _whe'r_ of _whether_, _where_ of
_whither_, _here_ of _hither_, _bro'r_ of _brother_, _smo'r_ of
_smother_, _mo'r_ of _mother_, and so on. And dear Brer Rabbit, can I
forget him? Indeed, it is this that explains the word _rare_ (which has
Dryden's support), and which we say of meat where an Englishman would
use _underdone_. I do not believe, with the dictionaries, that it had
ever anything to do with the Icelandic _hrar_ (_raw_), as it plainly has
not in _rareripe_, which means earlier ripe,--President Lincoln said of
a precocious boy that 'he was a _rareripe_. ' And I do not believe it,
for this reason, that the earliest form of the word with us was, and the
commoner now in the inland parts still is, so far as I can discover,
_raredone_. Golding has 'egs reere-rosted,' which, whatever else it
mean, cannot mean _raw_-roasted, I find _rather_ as a monosyllable in
Donne, and still better, as giving the sound, rhyming with _fair_ in
Warner. There is an epigram of Sir Thomas Browne in which the words
_rather than_ make a monosyllable;--
'What furie is't to take Death's part
And rather than by Nature, die by Art! '
The contraction _more'n_ I find in the old play 'Fuimus Troes,' in a
verse where the measure is so strongly accented as to leave it beyond
doubt,--
'A golden crown whose heirs
More than half the world subdue. '
It may be, however, that the contraction is in 'th'orld. ' It is
unmistakable in the 'Second Maiden's Tragedy:'--
'It were but folly,
Dear soul, to boast of _more than_ I can perform. '
Is our _gin_ for _given_ more violent than _mar'l_ for _marvel_, which
was once common, and which I find as late as Herrick? Nay, Herrick has
_gin_ (spelling it _gen_), too, as do the Scotch, who agree with us
likewise in preferring _chimly_ to _chimney_.
I will now leave pronunciation and turn to words or phrases which have
been supposed peculiar to us, only pausing to pick up a single dropped
stitch, in the pronunciation of the word _supreme_, which I had thought
native till I found it in the well-languaged Daniel. I will begin with a
word of which I have never met with any example in any English writer of
authority. We express the first stage of withering in a green plant
suddenly cut down by the verb _to wilt_. It is, of course, own cousin of
the German _welken_, but I have never come upon it in literary use, and
my own books of reference give me faint help. Graff gives _welhen_,
_marcescere_, and refers to _weih_ (_weak_), and conjecturally to A. -S,
_hvelan_. The A. -S. _wealwian_ (_to wither_) is nearer, but not so near
as two words in the Icelandic, which perhaps put us on the track of its
ancestry,--_velgi_, _tepefacere_, (and _velki_, with the derivative)
meaning _contaminare_. _Wilt_, at any rate, is a good word, filling, as
it does, a sensible gap between drooping and withering, and the
imaginative phrase 'he wilted right down,' like 'he caved right in,' is
a true Americanism. _Wilt_ occurs in English provincial glossaries, but
is explained by _wither_, which with us it does not mean. We have a few
words such as _cache_, _cohog_, _carry_ (_portage_), _shoot_ (_chute_),
_timber_ (_forest_), _bushwhack_ (to pull a boat along by the bushes on
the edge of a stream), _buckeye_ (a picturesque word for the
horse-chestnut); but how many can we be said to have fairly brought into
the language, as Alexander Gill, who first mentions Americanisms, meant
it when he said, '_Sed et ab Americanis nonnulla mutuamur ut_ MAIZ _et_
CANOA'? Very few, I suspect, and those mostly by borrowing from the
French, German, Spanish, or Indian. [28] 'The Dipper,' for the 'Great
Bear,' strikes me as having a native air. _Bogus_, in the sense of
_worthless_, is undoubtedly ours, but is, I more than suspect, a
corruption of the French _bagasse_ (from low Latin _bagasea_), which
travelled up the Mississippi from New Orleans, where it was used for the
refuse of the sugar-cane. It is true, we have modified the meaning of
some words. We use _freshet_ in the sense of _flood_, for which I have
not chanced upon any authority. Our New England cross between Ancient
Pistol and Dugald Dalgetty, Captain Underhill, uses the word (1638) to
mean a _current_, and I do not recollect it elsewhere in that sense. I
therefore leave it with a? for future explorers. _Crick_ for _creek_ I
find in Captain John Smith and in the dedication of Fuller's 'Holy
Warre,' and _run_, meaning a _small stream_, in Waymouth's 'Voyage'
(1605). _Humans_ for _men_, which Mr. Bartlett includes in his
'Dictionary of Americanisms,' is Chapman's habitual phrase in his
translation of Homer. I find it also in the old play of 'The Hog hath
lost his Pearl. ' _Dogs_ for _andirons_ is still current in New England,
and in Walter de Biblesworth I find _chiens_ glossed in the margin by
_andirons_. _Gunning_ for _shooting_ is in Drayton. We once got credit
for the poetical word _fall_ for _autumn_, but Mr. Bartlett and the last
edition of Webster's Dictionary refer us to Dryden. It is even older,
for I find it in Drayton, and Bishop Hall has _autumn fall_. Middleton
plays upon the word: 'May'st thou have a reasonable good _spring_, for
thou art like to have many dangerous foul _falls_. ' Daniel does the
same, and Coleridge uses it as we do. Gray uses the archaism _picked_
for _peaked_, and the word _smudge_ (as our backwoodsmen do) for a
smothered fire. Lord Herbert of Cherbury (more properly perhaps than
even Sidney, the last _preux chevalier_) has 'the Emperor's folks' just
as a Yankee would say it. _Loan_ for _lend_, with which we have hitherto
been blackened, I must retort upon the mother island, for it appears so
long ago as in 'Albion's England. ' _Fleshy_, in the sense of _stout_,
may claim Ben Jonson's warrant, and I find it also so lately as in
Francklin's 'Lucian. ' _Chore_ is also Jonson's word, and I am inclined
to prefer it to _chare_ and _char_, because I think that I see a more
natural origin for it in the French _jour_--whence it might come to mean
a day's work, and thence a job--than anywhere else. [29] _At onst_ for _at
once_ I thought a corruption of our own, till I found it in the Chester
Plays. I am now inclined to suspect it no corruption at all, but only an
erratic and obsolete superlative _at onest_. _To progress_ was flung in
our teeth till Mr. Pickering retorted with Shakespeare's 'doth progress
down thy cheeks. ' I confess that I was never satisfied with this answer,
because the accent was different, and because the word might here be
reckoned a substantive quite as well as a verb. Mr. Bartlett (in his
dictionary above cited) adds a surrebutter in a verse from Ford's
'Broken Heart. ' Here the word is clearly a verb, but with the accent
unhappily still on the first syllable. Mr. Bartlett says that he
'cannot say whether the word was used in Bacon's time or not. ' It
certainly was, and with the accent we give to it. Ben Jonson, in the
'Alchemist,' had this verse,
'Progress so from extreme unto extreme,'
and Sir Philip Sidney,
'Progressing then from fair Turias' golden place. '
Surely we may now sleep in peace, and our English cousins will forgive
us, since we have cleared ourselves from any suspicion of originality in
the matter! Even after I had convinced myself that the chances were
desperately against our having invented any of the _Americanisms_ with
which we are _faulted_ and which we are in the habit of _voicing_, there
were one or two which had so prevailingly indigenous an accent as to
stagger me a little. One of these was 'the biggest _thing out_. ' Alas,
even this slender comfort is denied me. Old Gower has
'So harde an herte was none _oute_,'
and
'That such merveile was none _oute_. '
He also, by the way, says 'a _sighte_ of flowres' as naturally as our
up-country folk would say it. _Poor_ for _lean_, _thirds_ for _dower_,
and _dry_ for _thirsty_ I find in Middleton's plays. _Dry_ is also in
Skelton and in the 'World' (1754). In a note on Middleton, Mr. Dyce
thinks it needful to explain the phrase _I can't tell_ (universal in
America) by the gloss _I could not say_. Middleton also uses _sneeked_,
which I had believed an Americanism till I saw it there. It is, of
course, only another form of _snatch_, analogous to _theek_ and _thatch_
(cf. the proper names Dekker and Thacher), _break_ (_brack_) and
_breach_, _make_ (still common with us) and _match_. _'Long on_ for
_occasioned by_ ('who is this 'long on? ') occurs constantly in Gower and
likewise in Middleton. _'Cause why_ is in Chaucer. _Raising_ (an English
version of the French _leaven_) for _yeast_ is employed by Gayton in his
'Festivous Notes on Don Quixote. ' I have never seen an instance of our
New England word _emptins_ in the same sense, nor can I divine its
original. Gayton has _limekill_; also _shuts_ for _shutters_, and the
latter is used by Mrs. Hutchinson in her 'Life of Colonel Hutchinson. '
Bishop Hall, and Purchas in his 'Pilgrims,' have _chist_ for _chest_,
and it is certainly nearer _cista_, as well as to its form in the
Teutonic languages, whence probably we got it. We retain the old sound
from _cist_, but _chest_ is as old as Chaucer. Lovelace says _wropt_ for
_wrapt_. 'Musicianer' I had always associated with the militia-musters
of my boyhood, and too hastily concluded it an abomination of our own,
but Mr. Wright calls it a Norfolk word, and I find it to be as old as
1642 by an extract in Collier. 'Not worth the time of day,' had passed
with me for native till I saw it in Shakespeare's 'Pericles. ' For
_slick_ (which is only a shorter sound of _sleek_, like _crick_ and the
now universal _britches_ for _breeches_) I will only call Chapman and
Jonson. 'That's a sure card! ' and 'That's a stinger! ' both sound like
modern slang, but you will find the one in the old interlude of
'Thersytes' (1537), and the other in Middleton. 'Right here,' a favorite
phrase with our orators and with a certain class of our editors, turns
up _passim_ in the Chester and Coventry plays. Mr. Dickens found
something very ludicrous in what he considered our neologism _right
away_. But I find a phrase very like it, and which I would gladly
suspect to be a misprint for it, in 'Gammer Gurton:'--
'Lyght it and bring it _tite away_. '
But _tite_ is the true word in this case. After all, what is it but
another form of _straightway_? _Cussedness_, meaning _wickedness,
malignity_, and _cuss_, a sneaking, ill-natured fellow, in such phrases
as 'He done it out o' pure cussedness,' and 'He is a nateral cuss,' have
been commonly thought Yankeeisms. To vent certain contemptuously
indignant moods they are admirable in their rough-and-ready way. But
neither is our own. _Cursydnesse_, in the same sense of malignant
wickedness, occurs in the Coventry Plays, and _cuss_ may perhaps claim
to have come in with the Conqueror. At least the term is also French.
Saint Simon uses it and confesses its usefulness. Speaking of the Abbe
Dubois, he says, 'Qui etoit en plein ce qu'un mauvais francois appelle
un _sacre_, mais qui ne se peut guere exprimer autrement. ' 'Not worth a
cuss,' though supported by 'not worth a damn,' may be a mere corruption,
since 'not worth a _cress_' is in 'Piers Ploughman. ' 'I don't see it,'
was the popular slang a year or two ago, and seemed to spring from the
soil; but no, it is in Cibber's 'Careless Husband. ' _Green sauce_ for
_vegetables_ I meet in Beaumont and Fletcher, Gayton, and elsewhere. Our
rustic pronunciation _sahce_ (for either the diphthong _au_ was
anciently pronounced _ah_, or else we have followed abundant analogy in
changing it to the latter sound, as we have in _chance, dance_, and so
many more) may be the older one, and at least gives some hint at its
ancestor _salsa_. _Warn_, in the sense of _notify_, is, I believe, now
peculiar to us, but Pecock so employs it. I find _primmer_ (_primer_, as
we pronounce it) in Beaumont and Fletcher, and a 'square eater' too
(compare our '_square_ meal'), _heft_ for _weight_, and 'muchness' in
the 'Mirror for Magistrates,' _bankbill_ in Swift and Fielding, and _as_
for _that_ I might say _passim_. _To cotton to_ is, I rather think, an
Americanism. The nearest approach to it I have found is _cotton
together_, in Congreve's 'Love for Love. ' To _cotton_ or _cotten_, in
another sense, is old and common. Our word means to _cling_, and its
origin, possibly, is to be sought in another direction, perhaps in A. S.
_cvead_, which means _mud, clay_ (both proverbially clinging), or better
yet, in the Icelandic _qvoda_ (otherwise _kod_), meaning _resin_ and
_glue_, which are [Greek: kat' exochaen], sticky substances. To _spit
cotton_ is, I think, American, and also, perhaps, to _flax_ for to
_beat_. _To the halves_ still survives among us, though apparently
obsolete in England. It means either to let or to hire a piece of land,
receiving half the profit in money or in kind (_partibus locare_). I
mention it because in a note by some English editor, to which I have
lost my reference, I have seen it wrongly explained. The editors of
Nares cite Burton. _To put_, in the sense of _to go_, as _Put! _ for
_Begone! _ would seem our own, and yet it is strictly analogous to the
French _se mettre a la voie_, and the Italian _mettersi in via_. Indeed,
Dante has a verse,
'_Io sarei_ [for _mi sarei_] _gia messo per lo sentiero_,'
which, but for the indignity, might be translated,
'I should, ere this, have _put_ along the way,'
I deprecate in advance any share in General Banks's notions of
international law, but we may all take a just pride in his exuberant
eloquence as something distinctively American. When he spoke a few years
ago of 'letting the Union slide,' even those who, for political
purposes, reproached him with the sentiment, admired the indigenous
virtue of his phrase. Yet I find 'let the world slide' in Heywood's
Edward IV. ;' and in Beaumont and Fletcher's 'Wit without Money,'
Valentine says,
'Will you go drink,
And let the world slide? '
So also in Sidney's 'Arcadia,'
'Let his dominion slide. '
In the one case it is put into the mouth of a clown, in the other, of a
gentleman, and was evidently proverbial. It has even higher sanction,
for Chaucer writes,
'Well nigh all other cures _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. '
Here the meaning is to _profit by_. In Fuller's 'Holy Warre' (1647), we
have 'The Egyptians standing on the firm ground, were thereby enabled to
_improve_ and enforce their darts to the utmost. ' Here the word might
certainly mean _to make use of_. Mrs. Hutchison (Life of Colonel H. )
uses the word in the same way: 'And therefore did not _emproove_ his
interest to engage the country in the quarrel. ' Swift in one of his
letters says: 'There is not an acre of land in Ireland turned to half
its advantage; yet it is better _improved_ than the people. ' I find it
also in 'Strength out of Weakness' (1652), and Plutarch's
'Morals'(1714), but I know of only one example of its use in the purely
American sense, and that is 'a very good _improvement_ for a mill' in
the 'State Trials' (Speech of the Attorney. General in the Lady Ivy's
case, 1864). In the sense of _employ_, I could cite a dozen old English
authorities.
In running over the fly-leaves of those delightful folios for this
reference, I find a note which reminds me of another word, for our abuse
of which we have been deservedly ridiculed. I mean _lady,_ It is true I
might cite the example of the Italian _donna_[30] (_domina_), which has
been treated in the same way by a whole nation, and not, as _lady_ among
us, by the uncultivated only.
and pierce_ in Chapman and Donne, and in some commendatory verses by a
Mr. Berkenhead before the poems of Francis Beaumont. Our _pairlous_ for
_perilous_ is of the same kind, and is nearer Shakespeare's _parlous_
than the modern pronunciation. One other Gallicism survives in our
pronunciation. Perhaps I should rather call it a semi-Gallicism, for it
is the result of a futile effort to reproduce a French sound with
English lips. Thus for _joint_, _employ_, _royal_, we have _jynt_,
_emply_, _r[)y]le_, the last differing only from _rile_ (_roil_) in a
prolongation of the _y_ sound. I find _royal_ so pronounced in the
'Mirror for Magistrates. ' In Walter de Biblesworth I find _solives_
Englished by _gistes_. This, it is true, may have been pronounced
_jeests_, but the pronunciation _jystes_ must have preceded the present
spelling, which was no doubt adopted after the radical meaning was
forgotten, as analogical with other words in _oi_. In the same way after
Norman-French influence had softened the _l_ out of _would_ (we already
find _woud_ for _veut_ in N. F. poems), _should_ followed the example,
and then an _l_ was foisted into _could_, where it does not belong, to
satisfy the logic of the eye, which has affected the pronunciation and
even the spelling of English more than is commonly supposed. I meet with
_eyster_ for _oyster_ as early as the fourteenth century. I find _viage_
in Bishop Hall and Middleton the dramatist, _bile_ for _boil_ in Donne
and Chrononhotonthologos, _line_ for _loin_ in Hall, _ryall_ and _chyse_
(for choice) _dystrye_ for _destroy_, in the Coventry Plays. In
Chapman's 'All Fools' is the misprint of _employ_ for _imply_, fairly
inferring an identity of sound in the last syllable. Indeed, this
pronunciation was habitual till after Pope, and Rogers tells us that the
elegant Gray said _naise_ for _noise_ just as our rustics still do. Our
_cornish_ (which I find also in Herrick) remembers the French better
than _cornice_ does. While clinging more closely to the Anglo-Saxon in
dropping the _g_ from the end of the present participle, the Yankee now
and then pleases himself with an experiment in French nasality in words
ending in _n_. It is not, so far as my experience goes, very common,
though it may formerly have been more so. _Capting_, for instance, I
never heard save in jest, the habitual form being _kepp'n_. But at any
rate it is no invention of ours. In that delightful old volume, 'Ane
Compendious Buke of Godly and Spirituall Songs,' in which I know not
whether the piety itself or the simplicity of its expression be more
charming, I find _burding_, _garding_, and _cousing_, and in the State
Trials _uncerting_ used by a gentleman. I confess that I like the _n_
better than _ng_.
Of Yankee preterites I find _risse_ and _rize_ for _rose_ in Beaumont
and Fletcher, Middleton and Dryden, _clim_ in Spenser, _chees_ (_chose_)
in Sir John Mandevil, _give_ (_gave_) in the Coventry Plays, _shet_
(_shut_) in Golding's Ovid, _het_ in Chapman and in Weever's Epitaphs,
_thriv_ and _smit_ in Drayton, _quit_ in Ben Jonson and Henry More, and
_pled_ in the Paston Letters, nay, even in the fastidious Landor. _Rid_
for _rode_ was anciently common. So likewise was _see_ for _saw_, but I
find it in no writer of authority (except Golding), unless Chaucer's
_seie_ and Gower's _sigh_ were, as I am inclined to think, so sounded.
_Shew_ is used by Hector Boece, Giles Fletcher, Drummond of Hawthornden,
and in the Paston Letters. Similar strong preterites, like _snew_,
_thew_, and even _mew_, are not without example. I find _sew_ for
_sewed_ in 'Piers Ploughman. ' Indeed, the anomalies in English
preterites are perplexing. We have probably transferred _flew_ from
_flow_ (as the preterite of which I have heard it) to _fly_ because we
had another preterite in _fled_. Of weak preterites the Yankee retains
_growed_, _blowed_, for which he has good authority, and less often
_knowed_. His _sot_ is merely a broad sounding of _sat_, no more
inelegant than the common _got_ for _gat_, which he further degrades
into _gut_. When he says _darst_, he uses a form as old as Chaucer.
The Yankee has retained something of the long sound of the _a_ in such
words as _axe_, _wax_, pronouncing them _exe_, _wex_ (shortened from
_aix_, _waix_). He also says _hev_ and _hed_ (_h[=a]ve_, _h[=a]d_ for
_have_ and _had_). In most cases he follows an Anglo-Saxon usage. In
_aix_ for _axle_ he certainly does. I find _wex_ and _aisches_ (_ashes_)
in Pecock, and _exe_ in the Paston Letters. Golding rhymes _wax_ with
_wexe_ and spells _challenge_ _chelenge_. Chaucer wrote _hendy_. Dryden
rhymes _can_ with _men_, as Mr. Biglow would. Alexander Gill, Milton's
teacher, in his 'Logonomia' cites _hez_ for _hath_ as peculiar to
Lincolnshire. I find _hayth_ in Collier's 'Bibliographical Account of
Early English Literature' under the date 1584, and Lord Cromwell so
wrote it. Sir Christopher Wren wrote _belcony_. Our _fect_ is only the
O. F. _faict_. _Thaim_ for _them_ was common in the sixteenth century. We
have an example of the same thing in the double form of the verb
_thrash_, _thresh_. While the New Englander cannot be brought to say
_instead_ for _instid_ (commonly _'stid_ where not the last word in a
sentence), he changes the _i_ into _e_ in _red_ for _rid_, _tell_ for
_till_, _hender_ for _hinder_, _rense_ for _rinse_. I find _red_ in the
old interlude of 'Thersytes,' _tell_ in a letter of Daborne to
Henslowe, and also, I shudder to mention it, in a letter of the great
Duchess of Marlborough, Atossa herself! It occurs twice in a single
verse of the Chester Plays,
'_Tell_ the day of dome, _tell_ the beames blow. '
From the word _blow_ (in another sense) is formed _blowth_, which I
heard again this summer after a long interval. Mr. Wright[24] explains it
as meaning 'a blossom. ' With us a single blossom is a _blow_, while
_blowth_ means the blossoming in general. A farmer would say that there
was a good blowth on his fruit-trees. The word retreats farther inland
and away from the railways, year by year. Wither rhymes _hinder_ with
_slender_, and Shakespeare and Lovelace have _renched_ for _rinsed_. In
'Gammer Gurton' and 'Mirror for Magistrates' is _sence_ for _since_;
Marlborough's Duchess so writes it, and Donne rhymes _since_ with
_Amiens_ and _patience_, Bishop Hall and Otway with _pretence_, Chapman
with _citizens_, Dryden with _providence_. Indeed, why should not
_sithence_ take that form? Dryden's wife (an earl's daughter) has _tell_
for _till_, Margaret, mother of Henry VII. , writes _seche_ for _such_,
and our _ef_ finds authority in the old form _yeffe_.
_E_ sometimes takes the place of _u_, as _jedge, tredge, bresh_. I find
_tredge_ in the interlude of 'Jack Jugler,' _bresh_ in a citation by
Collier from 'London Cries' of the middle of the seventeenth century,
and _resche_ for _rush_ (fifteenth century) in the very valuable 'Volume
of Vocabularies' edited by Mr. Wright. _Resce_ is one of the Anglo-Saxon
forms of the word in Bosworth's A. -S. Dictionary. Golding has _shet_.
The Yankee always shortens the _u_ in the ending _ture_, making _ventur,
natur, pictur_, and so on. This was common, also, among the educated of
the last generation. I am inclined to think it may have been once
universal, and I certainly think it more elegant than the vile _vencher,
naycher, pickcher_, that have taken its place, sounding like the
invention of a lexicographer to mitigate a sneeze. Nash in his 'Pierce
Penniless' has _ventur_, and so spells it, and I meet it also in
Spenser, Drayton, Ben Jonson, Herrick, and Prior. Spenser has
_tort'rest_, which can be contracted only from _tortur_ and not from
_torcher_. Quarles rhymes _nature_ with _creator_, and Dryden with
_satire_, which he doubtless pronounced according to its older form of
_satyr_. Quarles has also _torture_ and _mortar_. Mary Boleyn writes
_kreatur_. I find _pikter_ in Izaak Walton's autograph will.
I shall now give some examples which cannot so easily be ranked under
any special head. Gill charges the Eastern counties with _kiver_ for
_cover_, and _ta_, for _to_. The Yankee pronounces both _too_ and _to_
like _ta_ (like the _tou_ in _touch_) where they are not emphatic. When
they are, both become _tu_. In old spelling, _to_ is the common (and
indeed correct) form of _too_, which is only _to_ with the sense of _in
addition_. I suspect that the sound of our _too_ has caught something
from the French _tout_, and it is possible that the old _too too_ is not
a reduplication, but a reminiscence of the feminine form of the same
word (_toute_) as anciently pronounced, with the _e_ not yet silenced.
Gill gives a Northern origin to _geaun_ for _gown_ and _waund_ for
_wound_ (_vulnus_). Lovelace has _waund_, but
there is something too dreadful in suspecting Spenser (who _borealised_
in his pastorals) of having ever been guilty of _geaun! _ And yet some
delicate mouths even now are careful to observe the Hibernicism of
_ge-ard_ for _guard_, and _ge-url_ for _girl_. Sir Philip Sidney
(_credite posteri! _) wrote _furr_ for _far_. I would hardly have
believed it had I not seen it in _facsimile_. As some consolation, I
find _furder_ in Lord Bacon and Donne, and Wittier rhymes _far_ with
_cur_. The Yankee, who omits the final _d_ in many words, as do the
Scotch, makes up for it by adding one in _geound_. The purist does not
feel the loss of the _d_ sensibly in _lawn_ and _yon_, from the former
of which it has dropped again after a wrongful adoption (retained in
_laundry_), while it properly belongs to the latter. But what shall we
make of _git, yit_, and _yis_? I find _yis_ and _git_ in Warner's
'Albion's England,' _yet_ rhyming with _wit, admit_, and _fit_ in Donne,
with _wit_ in the 'Revenger's Tragedy,' Beaumont, and Suckling, with
_writ_ in Dryden, and latest of all with _wit_ in Sir Hanbury Williams.
Prior rhymes _fitting_ and _begetting_. Worse is to come. Among others,
Donne rhymes _again_ with _sin_, and Quarles repeatedly with _in_. _Ben_
for _been_, of which our dear Whittier is so fond, has the authority of
Sackville, 'Gammer Gurton' (the work of a bishop), Chapman, Dryden, and
many more, though _bin_ seems to have been the common form. Whittier's
accenting the first syllable of _rom'ance_ finds an accomplice in
Drayton among others, and, though manifestly wrong, is analogous with
_Rom'ans_. Of other Yankeeisms, whether of form or pronunciation, which
I have met with I add a few at random. Pecock writes _sowdiers (sogers,
soudoyers)_, and Chapman and Gill _sodder_. This absorption of the _l_
is common in various dialects, especially in the Scottish. Pecock writes
also _biyende_, and the authors of 'Jack Jugler' and 'Gammer Gurton'
_yender_. The Yankee includes '_yon_' in the same catagory, and says
'hither an' yen,' for 'to and fro. ' (Cf. German _jenseits_. ) Pecock and
plenty more have _wrastle_. Tindal has _agynste, gretter, shett, ondone,
debyte_, and _scace_. 'Jack Jugler' has _scacely_ (which I have often
heard, though _skurce_ is the common form), and Donne and Dryden make
_great_ rhyme with _set_. In the inscription on Caxton's tomb I find
_ynd_ for _end_, which the Yankee more often makes _eend_, still using
familiarly the old phrase 'right anend' for 'continuously. ' His 'stret
(straight) along' in the same sense, which I thought peculiar to him, I
find in Pecock. Tindal's _debyte_ for _deputy_ is so perfectly Yankee
that I could almost fancy the brave martyr to have been deacon of the
First Parish at Jaalam Centre. 'Jack Jugler' further gives us _playsent_
and _sartayne_. Dryden rhymes _certain_ with _parting_, and Chapman and
Ben Jonson use _certain_, as the Yankee always does, for _certainly_.
The 'Coventry Mysteries' have _occapied, massage, nateralle, materal
(material),_ and _meracles_,--all excellent Yankeeisms. In the 'Quatre
fils, Aymon' (1504),[25] is _vertus_ for _virtuous_. Thomas Fuller called
_volume vollum_, I suspect, for he spells it _volumne_. However, _per
contra_, Yankees habitually say _colume_ for _column_. Indeed, to
prove that our ancestors brought their pronunciation with them from the
Old Country, and have not wantonly debased their mother tongue, I need
only to cite the words _scriptur_, _Israll_, _athists_, and
_cherfulness_ from Governor Bradford's 'History. ' So the good man wrote
them, and so the good descendants of his fellow-exiles still pronounce
them. Brampton Gurdon writes _shet_ in a letter to Winthrop. _Purtend_
(_pretend_) has crept like a serpent into the 'Paradise Of Dainty
Devices;' _purvide_, which is not so bad, is in Chaucer. These, of
course, are universal vulgarisms, and not peculiar to the Yankee. Butler
has a Yankee phrase, and pronunciation too, in 'To which these
_carr'ings-on_ did tend. ' Langham or Laneham, who wrote an account of
the festivities at Kenilworth in honor of Queen Bess, and who evidently
tried to spell phonetically, makes _sorrows_ into _sororz_. Herrick
writes _hollow_ for _halloo_, and perhaps pronounced it (_horresco
suggerens_! ) _hollo_, as Yankees do. Why not, when it comes from _hola_?
I find _ffelaschyppe_ (fellowship) in the Coventry Plays. Spenser and
his queen neither of them scrupled to write _afore_, and the former
feels no inelegance even in _chaw_ and _idee_. _'Fore_ was common till
after Herrick. Dryden has _do's_ for _does_, and his wife spells _worse_
_wosce_. _Afeared_ was once universal. Warner has _ery_ for _ever a_;
nay, he also has illy, with which we were once ignorantly reproached by
persons more familiar with Murray's Grammar than with English
literature. And why not _illy_? Mr. Bartlett says it is 'a word used by
writers of an inferior class, who do not seem to perceive that _ill_ is
itself an adverb, without the termination _ly_,' and quotes Dr. Mosser,
President of Brown University, as asking triumphantly, 'Why don't you
say '_welly_? ' I should like to have had Dr. Messer answer his own
question. It would be truer to say that it was used by people who still
remembered that _ill_ was an adjective, the shortened form of _evil_,
out of which Shakespeare and the translators of the Bible ventured to
make _evilly_. This slurred _evil_ is 'the dram of _eale_' in 'Hamlet. '
I find, _illy_ in Warner. The objection to _illy_ is not an etymological
one, but simply that it is contrary to good usage,--a very sufficient
reason. _Ill_ as an adverb was at first a vulgarism, precisely like the
rustic's when he says, 'I was treated _bad_. ' May not the reason of this
exceptional form be looked for in that tendency to dodge what is hard to
pronounce, to which I have already alluded? If the letters were
distinctly uttered, as they should be, it would take too much time to
say _ill-ly_, _well-ly_, and it is to be observed that we have avoided
_smally_[26] and _tally_ in the same way, though we add _ish_ to them
without hesitation in _smallish_ and _tallish_. We have, to be sure,
_dully_ and _fully_, but for the one we prefer _stupidly_, and the other
(though this may have come from eliding the _y_ before _a_s) is giving
way to _full_. The uneducated, whose utterance is slower, still make
adverbs when they will by adding _like_ to all manner of adjectives. We
have had _big_ charged upon us, because we use it where an Englishman
would now use _great_. I fully admit that it were better to distinguish
between them, allowing to _big_ a certain contemptuous quality; but as
for authority, I want none better than that of Jeremy Taylor, who, in
his noble sermon 'On the Return of Prayer,' speaks of 'Jesus, whose
spirit was meek and gentle up to the greatness of the _biggest_
example. ' As for our double negative, I shall waste no time in quoting
instances of it, because it was once as universal in English as it still
is in the neo-Latin languages, where it does not strike us as vulgar. I
am not sure that the loss of it is not to be regretted. But surely I
shall admit the vulgarity of slurring or altogether eliding certain
terminal consonants? I admit that a clear and sharp-cut enunciation is
one of the crowning charms and elegances of speech. Words so uttered are
like coins fresh from the mint, compared with the worn and dingy drudges
of long service,--I do not mean American coins, for those look less
badly the more they lose of their original ugliness. No one is more
painfully conscious than I of the contrast between the rifle-crack of an
Englishman's _yes_ and _no_, and the wet-fuse drawl of the same
monosyllables in the mouths of my countrymen. But I do not find the
dropping of final consonants disagreeable in Allan Ramsay or Burns, nor
do I believe that our literary ancestors were sensible of that
inelegance in the fusing them together of which we are conscious. How
many educated men pronounce the _t_ in _chestnut_? how many say
_pentise_ for _penthouse_, as they should. When a Yankee skipper says
that he is "boun' for Gloster" (not Gloucester, with the leave of the
Universal Schoolmaster),[27] he but speaks like Chaucer or an old
ballad-singer, though they would have pronounced it _boon_. This is one
of the cases where the _d_ is surreptitious, and has been added in
compliment to the verb _bind_, with which it has nothing to do. If we
consider the root of the word (though of course I grant that every race
has a right to do what it will with what is so peculiarly its own as its
speech), the _d_ has no more right there than at the end of _gone_,
where it is often put by children, who are our best guides to the
sources of linguistic corruption, and the best teachers of its
processes. Cromwell, minister of Henry VIII. , writes _worle_ for world.
Chapman has _wan_ for _wand_, and _lawn_ has rightfully displaced
_laund_, though with no thought, I suspect, of etymology. Rogers tells
us that Lady Bathurst sent him some letters written to William III. by
Queen Mary, in which she addresses him as '_Dear Husban_. ' The old form
_expoun'_, which our farmers use, is more correct than the form with a
barbarous _d_ tacked on which has taken its place. Of the kind opposite
to this, like our _gownd_ for _gown_, and the London cockney's _wind_
for _wine_, I find _drownd_ for _drown_ in the 'Misfortunes of Arthur'
(1584) and in Swift. And, by the way, whence came the long sound of wind
which our poets still retain, and which survives in 'winding' a horn, a
totally different word from 'winding' a kite-string? We say _beh[=i]nd_
and _h[=i]nder_ (comparative) and yet to _h[)i]nder_. Shakespeare
pronounced _kind_ _k[)i]nd_, or what becomes of his play on that word
and _kin_ in 'Hamlet'? Nay, did he not even (shall I dare to hint it? )
drop the final _d_ as the Yankee still does? John Lilly plays in the
same way on _kindred_ and _kindness_.
But to come to some other ancient instances. Warner rhymes _bounds_ with
_crowns_, _grounds_ with _towns_, _text_ with _sex_, _worst_ with
_crust_, _interrupts_ with _cups_; Drayton, _defects_ with _sex_;
Chapman, _amends_ with _cleanse_; Webster, _defects_ with _checks_; Ben
Jonson, _minds_ with _combines_; Marston, _trust_ and _obsequious_,
_clothes_ and _shows_; Dryden gives the same sound to _clothes_, and has
also _minds_ with _designs_. Of course, I do not affirm that their ears
may not have told them that these were imperfect rhymes (though I am by
no means sure even of that), but they surely would never have tolerated
any such had they suspected the least vulgarity in them. Prior has the
rhyme _first_ and _trust_, but puts it into the mouth of a landlady.
Swift has _stunted_ and _burnt_ it, an intentionally imperfect rhyme, no
doubt, but which I cite as giving precisely the Yankee pronunciation of
_burned_. Donne couples in unhallowed wedlock _after_ and _matter_, thus
seeming to give to both the true Yankee sound; and it is not uncommon to
find _after_ and _daughter_. Worse than all, in one of Dodsley's Old
Plays we have _onions_ rhyming with _minions_,--I have tears in my eyes
while I record it. And yet what is viler than the universal _Misses_
(_Mrs. _) for _Mistress_? This was once a vulgarism, and in 'The Miseries
of Inforced Marriage' the rhyme (printed as prose in Dodsley's Old Plays
by Collier),
'To make my young _mistress_
Delighting in _kisses_,'
is put into the mouth of the clown. Our people say _Injun_ for _Indian_.
The tendency to make this change where _i_ follows _d_ is common. The
Italian _giorno_ and French _jour_ from _diurnus_ are familiar examples.
And yet _Injun_ is one of those depravations which the taste challenges
peremptorily, though it have the authority of Charles Cotton--who rhymes
'_Indies_' with '_cringes_'--and four English lexicographers, beginning
with Dr. Sheridan, bid us say _invidgeous_. Yet after all it is no worse
than the debasement which all our terminations in _tion_ and _tience_
have undergone, which yet we hear with _resignashun_ and _payshunce_,
though it might have aroused both _impat-i-ence_ and _in-dig-na-ti-on_
in Shakespeare's time. When George Herbert tells us that if the sermon
be dull,
'God takes a text and preacheth patience,'
the prolongation of the word seems to convey some hint at the
longanimity of the virtue. Consider what a poor curtal we have made of
Ocean. There was something of his heave and expanse in _o-ce-an_, and
Fletcher knew how to use it when he wrote so fine a verse as the second
of these, the best deep-sea verse I know,--
'In desperate storms stem with a little rudder
The tumbling ruins of the ocean. '
Oceanus was not then wholly shorn of his divine proportions, and our
modern _oshun_ sounds like the gush of small-beer in comparison.
Some
other contractions of ours have a vulgar air about them. _More 'n_ for
_more than_, as one of the worst, may stand for a type of such. Yet our
old dramatists are full of such obscurations (elisions they can hardly
be called) of the _th_, making _whe'r_ of _whether_, _where_ of
_whither_, _here_ of _hither_, _bro'r_ of _brother_, _smo'r_ of
_smother_, _mo'r_ of _mother_, and so on. And dear Brer Rabbit, can I
forget him? Indeed, it is this that explains the word _rare_ (which has
Dryden's support), and which we say of meat where an Englishman would
use _underdone_. I do not believe, with the dictionaries, that it had
ever anything to do with the Icelandic _hrar_ (_raw_), as it plainly has
not in _rareripe_, which means earlier ripe,--President Lincoln said of
a precocious boy that 'he was a _rareripe_. ' And I do not believe it,
for this reason, that the earliest form of the word with us was, and the
commoner now in the inland parts still is, so far as I can discover,
_raredone_. Golding has 'egs reere-rosted,' which, whatever else it
mean, cannot mean _raw_-roasted, I find _rather_ as a monosyllable in
Donne, and still better, as giving the sound, rhyming with _fair_ in
Warner. There is an epigram of Sir Thomas Browne in which the words
_rather than_ make a monosyllable;--
'What furie is't to take Death's part
And rather than by Nature, die by Art! '
The contraction _more'n_ I find in the old play 'Fuimus Troes,' in a
verse where the measure is so strongly accented as to leave it beyond
doubt,--
'A golden crown whose heirs
More than half the world subdue. '
It may be, however, that the contraction is in 'th'orld. ' It is
unmistakable in the 'Second Maiden's Tragedy:'--
'It were but folly,
Dear soul, to boast of _more than_ I can perform. '
Is our _gin_ for _given_ more violent than _mar'l_ for _marvel_, which
was once common, and which I find as late as Herrick? Nay, Herrick has
_gin_ (spelling it _gen_), too, as do the Scotch, who agree with us
likewise in preferring _chimly_ to _chimney_.
I will now leave pronunciation and turn to words or phrases which have
been supposed peculiar to us, only pausing to pick up a single dropped
stitch, in the pronunciation of the word _supreme_, which I had thought
native till I found it in the well-languaged Daniel. I will begin with a
word of which I have never met with any example in any English writer of
authority. We express the first stage of withering in a green plant
suddenly cut down by the verb _to wilt_. It is, of course, own cousin of
the German _welken_, but I have never come upon it in literary use, and
my own books of reference give me faint help. Graff gives _welhen_,
_marcescere_, and refers to _weih_ (_weak_), and conjecturally to A. -S,
_hvelan_. The A. -S. _wealwian_ (_to wither_) is nearer, but not so near
as two words in the Icelandic, which perhaps put us on the track of its
ancestry,--_velgi_, _tepefacere_, (and _velki_, with the derivative)
meaning _contaminare_. _Wilt_, at any rate, is a good word, filling, as
it does, a sensible gap between drooping and withering, and the
imaginative phrase 'he wilted right down,' like 'he caved right in,' is
a true Americanism. _Wilt_ occurs in English provincial glossaries, but
is explained by _wither_, which with us it does not mean. We have a few
words such as _cache_, _cohog_, _carry_ (_portage_), _shoot_ (_chute_),
_timber_ (_forest_), _bushwhack_ (to pull a boat along by the bushes on
the edge of a stream), _buckeye_ (a picturesque word for the
horse-chestnut); but how many can we be said to have fairly brought into
the language, as Alexander Gill, who first mentions Americanisms, meant
it when he said, '_Sed et ab Americanis nonnulla mutuamur ut_ MAIZ _et_
CANOA'? Very few, I suspect, and those mostly by borrowing from the
French, German, Spanish, or Indian. [28] 'The Dipper,' for the 'Great
Bear,' strikes me as having a native air. _Bogus_, in the sense of
_worthless_, is undoubtedly ours, but is, I more than suspect, a
corruption of the French _bagasse_ (from low Latin _bagasea_), which
travelled up the Mississippi from New Orleans, where it was used for the
refuse of the sugar-cane. It is true, we have modified the meaning of
some words. We use _freshet_ in the sense of _flood_, for which I have
not chanced upon any authority. Our New England cross between Ancient
Pistol and Dugald Dalgetty, Captain Underhill, uses the word (1638) to
mean a _current_, and I do not recollect it elsewhere in that sense. I
therefore leave it with a? for future explorers. _Crick_ for _creek_ I
find in Captain John Smith and in the dedication of Fuller's 'Holy
Warre,' and _run_, meaning a _small stream_, in Waymouth's 'Voyage'
(1605). _Humans_ for _men_, which Mr. Bartlett includes in his
'Dictionary of Americanisms,' is Chapman's habitual phrase in his
translation of Homer. I find it also in the old play of 'The Hog hath
lost his Pearl. ' _Dogs_ for _andirons_ is still current in New England,
and in Walter de Biblesworth I find _chiens_ glossed in the margin by
_andirons_. _Gunning_ for _shooting_ is in Drayton. We once got credit
for the poetical word _fall_ for _autumn_, but Mr. Bartlett and the last
edition of Webster's Dictionary refer us to Dryden. It is even older,
for I find it in Drayton, and Bishop Hall has _autumn fall_. Middleton
plays upon the word: 'May'st thou have a reasonable good _spring_, for
thou art like to have many dangerous foul _falls_. ' Daniel does the
same, and Coleridge uses it as we do. Gray uses the archaism _picked_
for _peaked_, and the word _smudge_ (as our backwoodsmen do) for a
smothered fire. Lord Herbert of Cherbury (more properly perhaps than
even Sidney, the last _preux chevalier_) has 'the Emperor's folks' just
as a Yankee would say it. _Loan_ for _lend_, with which we have hitherto
been blackened, I must retort upon the mother island, for it appears so
long ago as in 'Albion's England. ' _Fleshy_, in the sense of _stout_,
may claim Ben Jonson's warrant, and I find it also so lately as in
Francklin's 'Lucian. ' _Chore_ is also Jonson's word, and I am inclined
to prefer it to _chare_ and _char_, because I think that I see a more
natural origin for it in the French _jour_--whence it might come to mean
a day's work, and thence a job--than anywhere else. [29] _At onst_ for _at
once_ I thought a corruption of our own, till I found it in the Chester
Plays. I am now inclined to suspect it no corruption at all, but only an
erratic and obsolete superlative _at onest_. _To progress_ was flung in
our teeth till Mr. Pickering retorted with Shakespeare's 'doth progress
down thy cheeks. ' I confess that I was never satisfied with this answer,
because the accent was different, and because the word might here be
reckoned a substantive quite as well as a verb. Mr. Bartlett (in his
dictionary above cited) adds a surrebutter in a verse from Ford's
'Broken Heart. ' Here the word is clearly a verb, but with the accent
unhappily still on the first syllable. Mr. Bartlett says that he
'cannot say whether the word was used in Bacon's time or not. ' It
certainly was, and with the accent we give to it. Ben Jonson, in the
'Alchemist,' had this verse,
'Progress so from extreme unto extreme,'
and Sir Philip Sidney,
'Progressing then from fair Turias' golden place. '
Surely we may now sleep in peace, and our English cousins will forgive
us, since we have cleared ourselves from any suspicion of originality in
the matter! Even after I had convinced myself that the chances were
desperately against our having invented any of the _Americanisms_ with
which we are _faulted_ and which we are in the habit of _voicing_, there
were one or two which had so prevailingly indigenous an accent as to
stagger me a little. One of these was 'the biggest _thing out_. ' Alas,
even this slender comfort is denied me. Old Gower has
'So harde an herte was none _oute_,'
and
'That such merveile was none _oute_. '
He also, by the way, says 'a _sighte_ of flowres' as naturally as our
up-country folk would say it. _Poor_ for _lean_, _thirds_ for _dower_,
and _dry_ for _thirsty_ I find in Middleton's plays. _Dry_ is also in
Skelton and in the 'World' (1754). In a note on Middleton, Mr. Dyce
thinks it needful to explain the phrase _I can't tell_ (universal in
America) by the gloss _I could not say_. Middleton also uses _sneeked_,
which I had believed an Americanism till I saw it there. It is, of
course, only another form of _snatch_, analogous to _theek_ and _thatch_
(cf. the proper names Dekker and Thacher), _break_ (_brack_) and
_breach_, _make_ (still common with us) and _match_. _'Long on_ for
_occasioned by_ ('who is this 'long on? ') occurs constantly in Gower and
likewise in Middleton. _'Cause why_ is in Chaucer. _Raising_ (an English
version of the French _leaven_) for _yeast_ is employed by Gayton in his
'Festivous Notes on Don Quixote. ' I have never seen an instance of our
New England word _emptins_ in the same sense, nor can I divine its
original. Gayton has _limekill_; also _shuts_ for _shutters_, and the
latter is used by Mrs. Hutchinson in her 'Life of Colonel Hutchinson. '
Bishop Hall, and Purchas in his 'Pilgrims,' have _chist_ for _chest_,
and it is certainly nearer _cista_, as well as to its form in the
Teutonic languages, whence probably we got it. We retain the old sound
from _cist_, but _chest_ is as old as Chaucer. Lovelace says _wropt_ for
_wrapt_. 'Musicianer' I had always associated with the militia-musters
of my boyhood, and too hastily concluded it an abomination of our own,
but Mr. Wright calls it a Norfolk word, and I find it to be as old as
1642 by an extract in Collier. 'Not worth the time of day,' had passed
with me for native till I saw it in Shakespeare's 'Pericles. ' For
_slick_ (which is only a shorter sound of _sleek_, like _crick_ and the
now universal _britches_ for _breeches_) I will only call Chapman and
Jonson. 'That's a sure card! ' and 'That's a stinger! ' both sound like
modern slang, but you will find the one in the old interlude of
'Thersytes' (1537), and the other in Middleton. 'Right here,' a favorite
phrase with our orators and with a certain class of our editors, turns
up _passim_ in the Chester and Coventry plays. Mr. Dickens found
something very ludicrous in what he considered our neologism _right
away_. But I find a phrase very like it, and which I would gladly
suspect to be a misprint for it, in 'Gammer Gurton:'--
'Lyght it and bring it _tite away_. '
But _tite_ is the true word in this case. After all, what is it but
another form of _straightway_? _Cussedness_, meaning _wickedness,
malignity_, and _cuss_, a sneaking, ill-natured fellow, in such phrases
as 'He done it out o' pure cussedness,' and 'He is a nateral cuss,' have
been commonly thought Yankeeisms. To vent certain contemptuously
indignant moods they are admirable in their rough-and-ready way. But
neither is our own. _Cursydnesse_, in the same sense of malignant
wickedness, occurs in the Coventry Plays, and _cuss_ may perhaps claim
to have come in with the Conqueror. At least the term is also French.
Saint Simon uses it and confesses its usefulness. Speaking of the Abbe
Dubois, he says, 'Qui etoit en plein ce qu'un mauvais francois appelle
un _sacre_, mais qui ne se peut guere exprimer autrement. ' 'Not worth a
cuss,' though supported by 'not worth a damn,' may be a mere corruption,
since 'not worth a _cress_' is in 'Piers Ploughman. ' 'I don't see it,'
was the popular slang a year or two ago, and seemed to spring from the
soil; but no, it is in Cibber's 'Careless Husband. ' _Green sauce_ for
_vegetables_ I meet in Beaumont and Fletcher, Gayton, and elsewhere. Our
rustic pronunciation _sahce_ (for either the diphthong _au_ was
anciently pronounced _ah_, or else we have followed abundant analogy in
changing it to the latter sound, as we have in _chance, dance_, and so
many more) may be the older one, and at least gives some hint at its
ancestor _salsa_. _Warn_, in the sense of _notify_, is, I believe, now
peculiar to us, but Pecock so employs it. I find _primmer_ (_primer_, as
we pronounce it) in Beaumont and Fletcher, and a 'square eater' too
(compare our '_square_ meal'), _heft_ for _weight_, and 'muchness' in
the 'Mirror for Magistrates,' _bankbill_ in Swift and Fielding, and _as_
for _that_ I might say _passim_. _To cotton to_ is, I rather think, an
Americanism. The nearest approach to it I have found is _cotton
together_, in Congreve's 'Love for Love. ' To _cotton_ or _cotten_, in
another sense, is old and common. Our word means to _cling_, and its
origin, possibly, is to be sought in another direction, perhaps in A. S.
_cvead_, which means _mud, clay_ (both proverbially clinging), or better
yet, in the Icelandic _qvoda_ (otherwise _kod_), meaning _resin_ and
_glue_, which are [Greek: kat' exochaen], sticky substances. To _spit
cotton_ is, I think, American, and also, perhaps, to _flax_ for to
_beat_. _To the halves_ still survives among us, though apparently
obsolete in England. It means either to let or to hire a piece of land,
receiving half the profit in money or in kind (_partibus locare_). I
mention it because in a note by some English editor, to which I have
lost my reference, I have seen it wrongly explained. The editors of
Nares cite Burton. _To put_, in the sense of _to go_, as _Put! _ for
_Begone! _ would seem our own, and yet it is strictly analogous to the
French _se mettre a la voie_, and the Italian _mettersi in via_. Indeed,
Dante has a verse,
'_Io sarei_ [for _mi sarei_] _gia messo per lo sentiero_,'
which, but for the indignity, might be translated,
'I should, ere this, have _put_ along the way,'
I deprecate in advance any share in General Banks's notions of
international law, but we may all take a just pride in his exuberant
eloquence as something distinctively American. When he spoke a few years
ago of 'letting the Union slide,' even those who, for political
purposes, reproached him with the sentiment, admired the indigenous
virtue of his phrase. Yet I find 'let the world slide' in Heywood's
Edward IV. ;' and in Beaumont and Fletcher's 'Wit without Money,'
Valentine says,
'Will you go drink,
And let the world slide? '
So also in Sidney's 'Arcadia,'
'Let his dominion slide. '
In the one case it is put into the mouth of a clown, in the other, of a
gentleman, and was evidently proverbial. It has even higher sanction,
for Chaucer writes,
'Well nigh all other cures _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. '
Here the meaning is to _profit by_. In Fuller's 'Holy Warre' (1647), we
have 'The Egyptians standing on the firm ground, were thereby enabled to
_improve_ and enforce their darts to the utmost. ' Here the word might
certainly mean _to make use of_. Mrs. Hutchison (Life of Colonel H. )
uses the word in the same way: 'And therefore did not _emproove_ his
interest to engage the country in the quarrel. ' Swift in one of his
letters says: 'There is not an acre of land in Ireland turned to half
its advantage; yet it is better _improved_ than the people. ' I find it
also in 'Strength out of Weakness' (1652), and Plutarch's
'Morals'(1714), but I know of only one example of its use in the purely
American sense, and that is 'a very good _improvement_ for a mill' in
the 'State Trials' (Speech of the Attorney. General in the Lady Ivy's
case, 1864). In the sense of _employ_, I could cite a dozen old English
authorities.
In running over the fly-leaves of those delightful folios for this
reference, I find a note which reminds me of another word, for our abuse
of which we have been deservedly ridiculed. I mean _lady,_ It is true I
might cite the example of the Italian _donna_[30] (_domina_), which has
been treated in the same way by a whole nation, and not, as _lady_ among
us, by the uncultivated only.
