§ 1
The Diverging1 Streams—Thomas Jefferson, with his usual prevision, saw clearly more than a century ago that the American people, as they increased in numbers and in the diversity of their national interests and racial strains, would make changes in their mother tongue, as they had already made changes in the political institutions of their inheritance. "The new circumstances under which we are placed," he wrote to John Waldo from Monticello on August 16, 1813, "call for new words, new phrases, and for the transfer of old words to new objects. An American dialect will therefore be formed."
Nearly a quarter of a century before this, another great American, and one with an expertness in the matter that the too versatile2 Jefferson could not muster3, had ventured upon a prophecy even more bold and specific. He was Noah Webster, then at the beginning of his stormy career as a lexicographer4. In his little volume of "Dissertations5 on the English Language," printed in 1789 and dedicated6 to "His Excellency, Benjamin Franklin, Esq., LL.D., F.R.S., late President of the Commonwealth7 of Pennsylvania," Webster argued that the time for regarding English usage and submitting to English authority had already passed, and that "a future separation of the American tongue from the English" was "necessary and unavoidable." "Numerous local causes," he continued, "such as a new country, new associations of people, new combinations of ideas in arts and sciences, and some intercourse8 with tribes wholly unknown in Europe, will introduce new words into the American tongue. These causes will produce, in a course of time, a language in [Pg002] North America as different from the future language of England as the modern Dutch, Danish and Swedish are from the German, or from one another."[1]
Neither Jefferson nor Webster put a term upon his prophecy. They may have been thinking, one or both, of a remote era, not yet come to dawn, or they may have been thinking, with the facile imagination of those days, of a period even earlier than our own. In the latter case, they allowed far too little (and particularly Webster) for factors that have worked powerfully against the influences they saw so clearly in operation about them. One of these factors, obviously, has been the vast improvement in communications across the ocean, a change scarcely in vision a century ago. It has brought New York relatively10 nearer to London today than it was to Boston, or even to Philadelphia, during Jefferson's presidency11, and that greater proximity12 has produced a steady interchange of ideas, opinions, news and mere13 gossip. We latter-day Americans know a great deal more about the everyday affairs of England than the early Americans, for we read more English books, and have more about the English in our newspapers, and meet more Englishmen, and go to England much oftener. The effects of this ceaseless traffic in ideas and impressions, so plainly visible in politics, in ethics14 and aesthetics15, and even in the minutae of social intercourse, are also to be seen in the language. On the one hand there is a swift exchange of new inventions on both sides, so that much of our American slang quickly passes to London and the latest English fashions in pronunciation are almost instantaneously imitated, at least by a minority, in New York; and on the other hand the English, by so constantly having the floor, force upon us, out of their firmer resolution and certitude, a somewhat sneaking17 respect for their own greater conservatism of speech, so that our professors of the language, in the overwhelming main, combat all signs of differentiation18 with the utmost diligence, and safeguard the doctrine19 that the standards of English are the only reputable standards of American.
This doctrine, of course, is not supported by the known laws of [Pg003] language, nor has it prevented the large divergences20 that we shall presently examine, but all the same it has worked steadily22 toward a highly artificial formalism, and as steadily against the investigation23 of the actual national speech. Such grammar, so-called, as is taught in our schools and colleges, is a grammar standing24 four-legged upon the theorizings and false inferences of English Latinists, eager only to break the wild tongue of Shakespeare to a rule; and its frank aim is to create in us a high respect for a book language which few of us ever actually speak and not many of us even learn to write. That language, heavily artificial though it may be, undoubtedly25 has notable merits. It shows a sonority26 and a stateliness that you must go to the Latin of the Golden Age to match; its "highly charged and heavy-shotted" periods, in Matthew Arnold's phrase, serve admirably the obscurantist purposes of American pedagogy and of English parliamentary oratory27 and leader-writing; it is something for the literary artists of both countries to prove their skill upon by flouting28 it. But to the average American, bent29 upon expressing his ideas, not stupendously but merely clearly, it must always remain something vague and remote, like Greek history or the properties of the parabola, for he never speaks it or hears it spoken, and seldom encounters it in his everyday reading. If he learns to write it, which is not often, it is with a rather depressing sense of its artificiality. He may master it as a Korean, bred in the colloquial31 Onmun, may master the literary Korean-Chinese, but he never thinks in it or quite feels it.
This fact, I daresay, is largely responsible for the notorious failure of our schools to turn out students who can put their ideas into words with simplicity32 and intelligibility33. What their professors try to teach is not their mother-tongue at all, but a dialect that stands quite outside their common experience, and into which they have to translate their thoughts, consciously and painfully. Bad writing consists in making the attempt, and failing through lack of practise. Good writing consists, as in the case of Howells, in deliberately34 throwing overboard the principles so elaborately inculcated, or, as in the case of Lincoln, in standing unaware35 of them. Thus the study of the language he is [Pg004] supposed to use, to the average American, takes on a sort of bilingual character. On the one hand, he is grounded abominably36 in a grammar and syntax that have always been largely artificial, even in the country where they are supposed to prevail, and on the other hand he has to pick up the essentials of his actual speech as best he may. "Literary English," says Van Wyck Brooks,[2] "with us is a tradition, just as Anglo-Saxon law with us is a tradition. They persist, not as the normal expressions of a race, ... but through prestige and precedent37 and the will and habit of a dominating class largely out of touch with a national fabric38 unconsciously taking form out of school." What thus goes on out of school does not interest the guardians39 of our linguistic40 morals. No attempt to deduce the principles of American grammar, or even of American syntax, from the everyday speech of decently spoken Americans has ever been made. There is no scientific study, general and comprehensive in scope, of the American vocabulary, or of the influences lying at the root of American word-formation. No American philologist41, so far as I know, has ever deigned42 to give the same sober attention to the sermo plebeius of his country that he habitually43 gives to the mythical44 objective case in theoretical English, or to the pronunciation of Latin, or to the irregular verbs in French.
§ 2
The Academic Attitude—This neglect of the vulgate by those professionally trained to investigate it, and its disdainful dismissal when it is considered at all, are among the strangest phenomena46 of American scholarship. In all other countries the everyday speech of the people, and even the speech of the illiterate47, have the constant attention of philologists48, and the laws of their growth and variation are elaborately studied. In France, to name but one agency, there is the Société des Parlers de France, with its diligent49 inquiries50 into changing forms; moreover, the Académie itself is endlessly concerned with the [Pg005] subject, and is at great pains to observe and note every fluctuation51 in usage.[3] In Germany, amid many other such works, there are the admirable grammars of the spoken speech by Dr. Otto Bremer. In Sweden there are several journals devoted52 to the study of the vulgate, and the government has recently granted a subvention of 7500 kronen a year to an organization of scholars called the Unders?kningen av Svenska Folkmaal, formed to investigate it systematically53.[4] In Norway there is a widespread movement to overthrow54 the official Dano-Norwegian, and substitute a national language based upon the speech of the peasants.[5] In Spain the Academia is constantly at work upon its great Diccionario, Ortografía and Gramática, and revises them at frequent intervals55 (the last time in 1914), taking in all new words as they appear and all new forms of old ones. And in Latin-America, to come nearer to our own case, the native philologists have produced a copious56 literature on the matter closest at hand, [Pg006] and one finds in it very excellent works upon the Portuguese57 dialect of Brazil, and the variations of Spanish in Mexico, the Argentine, Chili58, Peru, Ecuador, Uraguay and even Honduras and Costa Rica.[6] But in the United States the business has attracted little attention, and less talent. The only existing formal treatise59 upon the subject[7] was written by a Swede trained in Germany and is heavy with errors and omissions60. And the only usable dictionary of Americanisms[8] was written in England, and is the work of an expatriated lawyer. Not a single volume by a native philologist, familiar with the language by daily contact and professionally equipped for the business, is to be found in the meagre bibliography61.
I am not forgetting, of course, the early explorations of Noah Webster, of which much more anon, nor the labors62 of our later dictionary makers63, nor the inquiries of the American Dialect Society,[9] nor even the occasional illuminations of such writers as Richard Grant White, Thomas S. Lounsbury and Brander Matthews. But all this preliminary work has left the main field almost uncharted. Webster, as we shall see, was far more a reformer of the American dialect than a student of it. He introduced radical64 changes into its spelling and pronunciation, but he showed little understanding of its direction and genius. One always sees in him, indeed, the teacher rather than the scientific inquirer; the ardor65 of his desire to expound66 and instruct was only matched by his infinite capacity for observing inaccurately67, and his profound ignorance of elementary philological70 principles. In the preface to the first edition of his American Dictionary, published in 1828—the first in which he added the qualifying adjective to the title—he argued eloquently71 for the right of Americans to shape their own speech without regard to English [Pg007] precedents72, but only a year before this he had told Captain Basil Hall[10] that he knew of but fifty genuine Americanisms—a truly staggering proof of his defective73 observation. Webster was the first American professional scholar, and despite his frequent engrossment in public concerns and his endless public controversies74, there was always something sequestered75 and almost medieval about him. The American language that he described and argued for was seldom the actual tongue of the folks about him, but often a sort of Volapük made up of one part faulty reporting and nine parts academic theorizing. In only one department did he exert any lasting76 influence, and that was in the department of orthography77. The fact that our spelling is simpler and usually more logical than the English we chiefly owe to him. But it is not to be forgotten that the majority of his innovations, even here, were not adopted, but rejected, nor is it to be forgotten that spelling is the least of all the factors that shape and condition a language.
The same caveat79 lies against the work of the later makers of dictionaries; they have gone ahead of common usage in the matter of orthography, but they have hung back in the far more important matter of vocabulary, and have neglected the most important matter of idiom altogether. The defect in the work of the Dialect Society lies in a somewhat similar circumscription80 of activity. Its constitution, adopted in 1889, says that "its object is the investigation of the spoken English of the United States and Canada," but that investigation, so far, has got little beyond the accumulation of vocabularies of local dialects, such as they are. Even in this department its work is very far from finished, and the Dialect Dictionary announced years ago has not yet appeared. Until its collections are completed and synchronized81, it will be impossible for its members to make any profitable inquiry82 into the general laws underlying83 the development of American, or even to attempt a classification of the materials common to the whole speech. The meagreness of the materials accumulated in the five slow-moving volumes of Dialect Notes shows clearly, indeed, how little the American philologist is [Pg008] interested in the language that falls upon his ears every hour of the day. And in Modern Language Notes that impression is reinforced, for its bulky volumes contain exhaustive studies of all the other living languages and dialects, but only an occasional essay upon American.
Now add to this general indifference84 a persistent85 and often violent effort to oppose any formal differentiation of English and American, initiated86 by English purists but heartily87 supported by various Americans, and you come, perhaps, to some understanding of the unsatisfactory state of the literature of the subject. The pioneer dictionary of Americanisms, published in 1816 by John Pickering, a Massachusetts lawyer,[11] was not only criticized unkindly; it was roundly denounced as something subtly impertinent and corrupting88, and even Noah Webster took a formidable fling at it.[12] Most of the American philologists of the early days—Witherspoon, Worcester, Fowler, Cobb and their like—were uncompromising advocates of conformity89, and combatted every indication of a national independence in speech with the utmost vigilance. One of their company, true enough, stood out against the rest. He was George Perkins Marsh91, and in his "Lectures on the English Language"[13] he argued that "in point of naked syntactical accuracy, the English of America is not at all inferior to that of England." But even Marsh expressed the hope that Americans would not, "with malice92 prepense, go about to republicanize our orthography and our syntax, our grammars and our dictionaries, our nursery hymns93 (sic) and our Bibles" to the point of actual separation.[14] Moreover, he was a philologist only by courtesy; the regularly ordained94 school-masters were all against him. The fear voiced by William C. Fowler, professor of rhetoric95 at Amherst, that Americans might "break loose from the laws of the English language"[15] altogether, was [Pg009] echoed by the whole fraternity, and so the corrective bastinado was laid on.
It remained, however, for two professors of a later day to launch the doctrine that the independent growth of American was not only immoral96, but a sheer illusion. They were Richard Grant White, for long the leading American writer upon language questions, at least in popular esteem97, and Thomas S. Lounsbury, for thirty-five years professor of the English language and literature in the Sheffield Scientific School at Yale, and an indefatigable98 controversialist. Both men were of the utmost industry in research, and both had wide audiences. White's "Words and Their Uses," published in 1872, was a mine of erudition, and his "Everyday English," following eight years later, was another. True enough, Fitzedward Hall, the Anglo-Indian-American philologist, disposed of many of his etymologies99 and otherwise did execution upon him,[16] but in the main his contentions100 held water. Lounsbury was also an adept101 and favorite expositor. His attacks upon certain familiar pedantries102 of the grammarians were penetrating103 and effective, and his two books, "The Standard of Usage in English" and "The Standard of Pronunciation in English," not to mention his excellent "History of the English Language" and his numerous magazine articles, showed a profound knowledge of the early development of the language, and an admirable spirit of free inquiry. But both of these laborious104 scholars, when they turned from English proper to American English, displayed an unaccountable desire to deny its existence altogether, and to the support of that denial they brought a critical method that was anything but unprejudiced. White devoted not less than eight long articles in the Atlantic Monthly[17] to a review of the fourth edition of John [Pg010] Russell Bartlett's American Glossary105,[18] and when he came to the end he had disposed of nine-tenths of Bartlett's specimens106 and called into question the authenticity107 of at least half of what remained. And no wonder, for his method was simply that of erecting109 tests so difficult and so arbitrary that only the exceptional word or phrase could pass them, and then only by a sort of chance. "To stamp a word or a phrase as an Americanism," he said, "it is necessary to show that (1) it is of so-called 'American' origin—that is, that it first came into use in the United States of North America, or that (2) it has been adopted in those States from some language other than English, or has been kept in use there while it has wholly passed out of use in England." Going further, he argued that unless "the simple words in compound names" were used in America "in a sense different from that in which they are used in England" the compound itself could not be regarded as an Americanism. The absurdity110 of all this is apparent when it is remembered that one of his rules would bar out such obvious Americanisms as the use of sick in place of ill, of molasses for treacle111, and of fall for autumn, for all of these words, while archaic112 in England, are by no means wholly extinct; and that another would dispose of that vast category of compounds which includes such unmistakably characteristic Americanisms as joy-ride, rake-off, show-down, up-lift, out-house, rubber-neck, chair-warmer, fire-eater and back-talk.
Lounsbury went even further. In the course of a series of articles in Harper's Magazine, in 1913,[19] he laid down the dogma that "cultivated speech ... affords the only legitimate113 basis of comparison between the language as used in England and in America," and then went on:
In the only really proper sense of the term, an Americanism is a word or phrase naturally used by an educated American which under similar conditions would not be used by an educated Englishman. The emphasis, it will be seen, lies in the word "educated."
This curious criterion, fantastic as it must have seemed to [Pg011] European philologists, was presently reinforced, for in his fourth article Lounsbury announced that his discussion was "restricted to the written speech of educated men." The result, of course, was a wholesale114 slaughter115 of Americanisms. If it was not impossible to reject a word, like White, on the ground that some stray English poet or other had once used it, it was almost always possible to reject it on the ground that it was not admitted into the vocabulary of a college professor when he sat down to compose formal book-English. What remained was a small company, indeed—and almost the whole field of American idiom and American grammar, so full of interest for the less austere116 explorer, was closed without even a peek117 into it.
White and Lounsbury dominated the arena118 and fixed119 the fashion. The later national experts upon the national language, with a few somewhat timorous120 exceptions, pass over its peculiarities122 without noticing them. So far as I can discover, there is not a single treatise in type upon one of its most salient characters—the wide departure of some of its vowel123 sounds from those of orthodox English. Marsh, C. H. Grandgent and Robert J. Menner have printed a number of valuable essays upon the subject, but there is no work that co-ordinates their inquiries or that attempts otherwise to cover the field. When, in preparing materials for the following chapters, I sought to determine the history of the a-sound in America, I found it necessary to plow124 through scores of ancient spelling-books, and to make deductions125, perhaps sometimes rather rash, from the works of Franklin, Webster and Cobb. Of late the National Council of Teachers of English has appointed a Committee on American Speech and sought to let some light into the matter, but as yet its labors are barely begun and the publications of its members get little beyond preliminaries. Such an inquiry involves a laboriousness126 which should have intrigued127 Lounsbury: he once counted the number of times the word female appears in "Vanity Fair." But you will find only a feeble dealing128 with the question in his book on pronunciation. Nor is there any adequate work (for Schele de Vere's is full of errors and omissions) upon the influences felt by American through contact with the languages of our millions [Pg012] of immigrants, nor upon our peculiarly rich and characteristic slang. There are several excellent dictionaries of English slang, and many more of French slang, but I have been able to find but one devoted exclusively to American slang, and that one is a very bad one.
§ 3
The View of Writing Men—But though the native Gelehrten thus neglect the vernacular129, or even oppose its study, it has been the object of earnest lay attention since an early day, and that attention has borne fruit in a considerable accumulation of materials, if not in any very accurate working out of its origins and principles. The English, too, have given attention to it—often, alas130, satirically, or even indignantly. For a long while, as we shall see, they sought to stem its differentiation by heavy denunciations of its vagaries131, and so late as the period of the Civil War they attached to it that quality of abhorrent132 barbarism which they saw as the chief mark of the American people. But in later years they have viewed it with a greater showing of scientific calm, and its definite separation from correct English, at least as a spoken tongue, is now quite frankly133 admitted. The Cambridge History of English Literature, for example, says that English and American are now "notably134 dissimilar" in vocabulary, and that the latter is splitting off into a distinct dialect.[20] The Eleventh Edition of the Encyclopaedia135 Britannica, going further, says that the two languages are already so far apart that "it is not uncommon136 to meet with [American] newspaper articles of which an untravelled Englishman would hardly be able to understand a sentence."[21] A great many other academic authorities, including A. H. Sayce and H. W. and F. G. Fowler, bear testimony137 to the same effect.
On turning to the men actually engaged in writing English, and particularly to those aspiring138 to an American audience, one finds nearly all of them adverting139, at some time or other, to the growing difficulties of intercommunication. William Archer140, [Pg013] Arnold Bennett, H. G. Wells, Sidney Low, the Chestertons and Kipling are some of those who have dealt with the matter at length. Low, in an article in the Westminster Gazette[22] ironically headed "Ought American to be Taught in our Schools?" has described how the latter-day British business man is "puzzled by his ignorance of colloquial American" and "painfully hampered141" thereby143 in his handling of American trade. He continues:
In the United States of North America the study of the English tongue forms part of the educational scheme. I gather this because I find that they have professors of the English language and literature in the Universities there, and I note that in the schools there are certain hours alloted for "English" under instructors146 who specialize in that subject. This is quite right. English is still far from being a dead language, and our American kinsfolk are good enough to appreciate the fact.
But I think we should return the compliment. We ought to learn the American language in our schools and colleges. At present it is strangely neglected by the educational authorities. They pay attention to linguistic attainments147 of many other kinds, but not to this. How many thousands of youths are at this moment engaged in puzzling their brains over Latin and Greek grammar only Whitehall knows. Every well-conducted seminary has some instructor145 who is under the delusion148 that he is teaching English boys and girls to speak French with a good Parisian accent. We teach German, Italian, even Spanish, Russian, modern Greek, Arabic, Hindustani. For a moderate fee you can acquire a passing acquaintance with any of these tongues at the Berlitz Institute and the Gouin Schools. But even in these polyglot150 establishments there is nobody to teach you American. I have never seen a grammar of it or a dictionary. I have searched in vain at the book-sellers for "How to Learn American in Three Weeks" or some similar compendium151. Nothing of the sort exists. The native speech of one hundred millions of civilized152 people is as grossly neglected by the publishers as it is by the schoolmasters. You can find means to learn Hausa or Swahili or Cape153 Dutch in London more easily than the expressive154, if difficult, tongue which is spoken in the office, the bar-room, the tram-car, from the snows of Alaska to the mouths of the Mississippi, and is enshrined in a literature that is growing in volume and favor every day.
Low then quotes an extract from an American novel appearing [Pg014] serially155 in an English magazine—an extract including such Americanisms as side-stepper, saltwater-taffy, Prince-Albert (coat), boob, bartender and kidding, and many characteristically American extravagances of metaphor156. It might be well argued, he goes on, that this strange dialect is as near to "the tongue that Shakespeare spoke30" as "the dialect of Bayswater or Brixton," but that philological fact does not help to its understanding. "You might almost as well expect him [the British business man] to converse157 freely with a Portuguese railway porter because he tried to stumble through Caesar when he was in the Upper Fourth at school."
In the London Daily Mail, W. G. Faulkner lately launched this proposed campaign of education by undertaking158 to explain various terms appearing in American moving-pictures to English spectators. Mr. Faulkner assumed that most of his readers would understand sombrero, sidewalk, candy-store, freight-car, boost, elevator, boss, crook159 and fall (for autumn) without help, but he found it necessary to define such commonplace Americanisms as hoodlum, hobo, bunco-steerer, rubber-neck, drummer, sucker, dive (in the sense of a thieves' resort), clean-up, graft160 and to feature. Curiously161 enough, he proved the reality of the difficulties he essayed to level by falling into error as to the meanings of some of the terms he listed, among them dead-beat, flume, dub162 and stag. Another English expositor, apparently163 following him, thought it necessary to add definitions of hold-up, quitter, rube, shack164, road-agent, cinch, live-wire and scab,[23] but he, too, mistook the meaning of dead-beat, and in addition he misdefined band-wagon and substituted get-out, seemingly an invention of his own, for get-away. Faulkner, somewhat belated in his animosity, seized the opportunity to read a homily upon the vulgarity and extravagance of the American language, and argued that the introduction of its coinages through the moving-picture theatre (Anglais, cinema) "cannot be regarded without serious [Pg015] misgivings165, if only because it generates and encourages mental indiscipline so far as the choice of expressions is concerned." In other words, the greater pliability166 and resourcefulness of American is a fault to be corrected by the English tendency to hold to that which is established.
Cecil Chesterton, in the New Witness, recently called attention to the increasing difficulty of intercommunication, not only verbally, but in writing. The American newspapers, he said, even the best of them, admit more and more locutions that puzzle and dismay an English reader. After quoting a characteristic headline he went on:
I defy any ordinary Englishman to say that that is the English language or that he can find any intelligible167 meaning in it. Even a dictionary will be of no use to him. He must know the language colloquially168 or not at all.... No doubt it is easier for an Englishman to understand American than it would be for a Frenchman to do the same, just as it is easier for a German to understand Dutch than it would be for a Spaniard. But it does not make the American language identical with the English.[24]
Chesterton, however, refrained from denouncing this lack of identity; on the contrary, he allowed certain merits to American. "I do not want anybody to suppose," he said, "that the American language is in any way inferior to ours. In some ways it has improved upon it in vigor169 and raciness. In other ways it adheres more closely to the English of the best period." Testimony to the same end was furnished before this by William Archer. "New words," he said, "are begotten170 by new conditions of life; and as American life is far more fertile of new conditions than ours, the tendency toward neologism cannot but be stronger in America than in England. America has enormously enriched the language, not only with new words, but (since the American mind is, on the whole, quicker and wittier171 than the English) with apt and luminous172 colloquial metaphors173."[25]
The list of such quotations174 might be indefinitely prolonged. [Pg016] There is scarcely an English book upon the United States which does not offer some discussion, more or less profound, of American peculiarities of speech, both as they are revealed in spoken discourse175 (particularly pronunciation and intonation176) and as they show themselves in popular literature and in the newspapers, and to this discussion protest is often added, as it very often is by the reviews and newspapers. "The Americans," says a typical critic, "have so far progressed with their self-appointed task of creating an American language that much of their conversation is now incomprehensible to English people."[26] On our own side there is almost equal evidence of a sense of difference, despite the fact that the educated American is presumably trained in orthodox English, and can at least read it without much feeling of strangeness. "The American," says George Ade, in his book of travel, "In Pastures New," "must go to England in order to learn for a dead certainty that he does not speak the English language.... This pitiful fact comes home to every American when he arrives in London—that there are two languages, the English and the American. One is correct; the other is incorrect. One is a pure and limpid177 stream; the other is a stagnant178 pool, swarming179 with bacilli."[27] This was written in 1906. Twenty-five years earlier Mark Twain had made the same observation. "When I speak my native tongue in its utmost purity in England," he said, "an Englishman can't understand me at all."[28] The languages, continued Mark, "were identical several generations ago, but our changed conditions and the spread of our people far to the south and far to the west have made many alterations180 in our pronunciation, and have introduced new words among us and changed the meanings of old ones." Even before this the great humorist had marked and hailed these differences. Already in "Roughing It" he was celebrating "the vigorous new vernacular of the [Pg017] occidental plains and mountains,"[29] and in all his writings, even the most serious, he deliberately engrafted its greater liberty and more fluent idiom upon the stem of English, and so lent the dignity of his high achievement to a dialect that was as unmistakably American as the point of view underlying it.
The same tendency is plainly visible in William Dean Howells. His novels are mines of American idiom, and his style shows an undeniable revolt against the trammels of English grammarians. In 1886 he made a plea in Harper's for a concerted effort to put American on its own legs. "If we bother ourselves," he said, "to write what the critics imagine to be 'English,' we shall be priggish and artificial, and still more so if we make our Americans talk 'English.' ... On our lips our continental181 English will differ more and more from the insular182 English, and we believe that this is not deplorable but desirable."[30] Howells then proceeded to discuss the nature of the difference, and described it accurately69 as determined183 by the greater rigidity184 and formality of the English of modern England. In American, he said, there was to be seen that easy looseness of phrase and gait which characterized the English of the Elizabethan era, and particularly the Elizabethan hospitality to changed meanings and bold metaphors. American, he argued, made new words much faster than English, and they were, in the main, words of much greater daring and savor185.
The difference between the two tongues, thus noted186 by the writers of both, was made disconcertingly apparent to the American troops when they first got to France and came into contact with the English. Fraternizing was made difficult by the wide divergence21 in vocabulary and pronunciation—a divergence interpreted by each side as a sign of uncouthness187. The Y. M. C. A. made a characteristic effort to turn the resultant feeling of strangeness and homesickness among the Americans to account. In the Chicago Tribune's Paris edition of July 7, 1917, I find a large advertisement inviting188 them to make use of the Y. M. C. A. [Pg018] clubhouse in the Avenue Montaigue, "where American is spoken." Earlier in the war the Illinoiser Staats Zeitung, no doubt seeking to keep the sense of difference alive, advertised that it would "publish articles daily in the American language."
§ 4
Foreign Observers—What English and American laymen189 have thus observed has not escaped the notice of continental philologists. The first edition of Bartlett, published in 1848, brought forth190 a long and critical review in the Archiv für das Studium der neueren Sprachen und Literaturen by Prof. Felix Flügel,[31] and in the successive volumes of the Archiv, down to our own day, there have been many valuable essays upon Americanisms, by such men as Herrig, Koehler and Koeppel. Various Dutch philologists, among them Barentz, Keijzer and Van der Voort, have also discussed the subject, and a work in French has been published by G. A. Barringer.[32] That, even to the lay Continental, American and English now differ considerably191, is demonstrated by the fact that many of the popular German Sprachführer appear in separate editions, Amerikanisch and Englisch. This is true of the "Metoula Sprachführer" published by Prof. F. Lanenscheidt[33] and of the "Polyglott Kuntz" books.[34] The American edition of the latter starts off with the doctrine that "Jeder, der nach Nord-Amerika oder Australien will, muss Englisch k?nnen," but a great many of the words and phrases that appear in its examples would be unintelligible192 to many Englishmen—e. g., free-lunch, real-estate agent, buckwheat, corn (for maize), conductor, pop-corn and drug-store—and a number of others would suggest false meanings or otherwise puzzle—e. g., napkin, saloon, wash-stand, water-pitcher and apple-pie.[35] To [Pg019] these pedagogical examples must be added that of Baedeker, of guide-book celebrity193. In his guide-book to the United States, prepared for Englishmen, he is at pains to explain the meaning of various American words and phrases.
A philologist of Scandinavian extraction, Elias Molee, has gone so far as to argue that the acquisition of correct English, to a people grown so mongrel in blood as the Americans, has become a useless burden. In place of it he proposes a mixed tongue, based on English, but admitting various elements from the other Germanic languages. His grammar, however, is so much more complex than that of English that most Americans would probably find his artificial "American" very difficult of acquirement. At all events it has made no progress.[36]
§ 5
The Characters of American—The characters chiefly noted in American speech by all who have discussed it are, first, its general uniformity throughout the country, so that, dialects, properly speaking, are confined to recent immigrants, to the native whites of a few isolated194 areas and to the negroes of the South; and, secondly195, its impatient disdain45 of rule and precedent, and hence its large capacity (distinctly greater than that of the English of England) for taking in new words and phrases and for manufacturing new locutions out of its own materials. The first of these characters has struck every observer, native and foreign. In place of the local dialects of other countries we have a general Volkssprache for the whole nation, and if it is conditioned [Pg020] at all it is only by minor16 differences in pronunciation and by the linguistic struggles of various groups of newcomers. "The speech of the United States," said Gilbert M. Tucker, "is quite unlike that of Great Britain in the important particular that here we have no dialects."[37] "We all," said Mr. Taft during his presidency, "speak the same language and have the same ideas." "Manners, morals and political views," said the New York World, commenting upon this dictum, "have all undergone a standardization196 which is one of the remarkable197 aspects of American evolution. Perhaps it is in the uniformity of language that this development has been most noteworthy. Outside of the Tennessee mountains and the back country of New England there is no true dialect."[38] "While we have or have had single counties as large as Great Britain," says another American observer, "and in some of our states England could be lost, there is practically no difference between the American spoken in our 4,039,000 square miles of territory, except as spoken by foreigners. We, assembled here, would be perfectly198 understood by delegates from Texas, Maine, Minnesota, Louisiana, or Alaska, or from whatever walk of life they might come. We can go to any of the 75,000 postoffices in this country and be entirely199 sure we will be understood, whether we want to buy a stamp or borrow a match."[39] "From Portland, Maine, to Portland, Oregon," agrees an English critic, "no trace of a distinct dialect is to be found. The man from Maine, even though he may be of inferior education and limited capacity, can completely understand the man from Oregon."[40]
No other country can show such linguistic solidarity200, nor any approach to it—not even Canada, for there a large part of the population resists learning English altogether. The Little Russian of the Ukraine is unintelligible to the citizen of Petrograd; [Pg021] the Northern Italian can scarcely follow a conversation in Sicilian; the Low German from Hamburg is a foreigner in Munich; the Breton flounders in Gascony. Even in the United Kingdom there are wide divergences.[41] "When we remember," says the New International Encyclopaedia[42] "that the dialects of the countries (sic) in England have marked differences—so marked, indeed that it may be doubted whether a Lancashire miner and a Lincolnshire farmer could understand each other—we may well be proud that our vast country has, strictly201 speaking, only one language." This uniformity was noted by the earliest observers; Pickering called attention to it in the preface to his Vocabulary and ascribed it, no doubt accurately, to the restlessness of the Americans, their inheritance of the immigrant spirit, "the frequent removals of people from one part of our country to another." It is especially marked in vocabulary and grammatical forms—the foundation stones of a living speech. There may be slight differences in pronunciation and intonation—a Southern softness, a Yankee drawl, a Western burr—but in the words they use and the way they use them all Americans, even the least tutored, follow the same line. One observes, of course, a polite speech and a common speech, but the common speech is everywhere the same, and its uniform vagaries take the place of the dialectic variations of other lands. A Boston street-car conductor could go to work in Chicago, San Francisco or New Orleans without running the slightest risk of misunderstanding his new fares. Once he had picked up half a dozen localisms, he would be, to all linguistic intents and purposes, fully9 naturalized.
Of the intrinsic differences that separate American from English the chief have their roots in the obvious disparity between the environment and traditions of the American people since the seventeenth century and those of the English. The latter have lived under a stable social order, and it has impressed upon their souls their characteristic respect for what is customary and of [Pg022] good report. Until the war brought chaos202 to their institutions, their whole lives were regulated, perhaps more than those of any other people save the Spaniards, by a regard for precedent. The Americans, though largely of the same blood, have felt no such restraint, and acquired no such habit of conformity. On the contrary, they have plunged203 to the other extreme, for the conditions of life in their new country have put a high value upon the precisely204 opposite qualities of curiosity and daring, and so they have acquired that character of restlessness, that impatience205 of forms, that disdain of the dead hand, which now broadly marks them. From the first, says a recent literary historian, they have been "less phlegmatic206, less conservative than the English. There were climatic influences, it may be; there was surely a spirit of intensity207 everywhere that made for short effort."[43] Thus, in the arts, and thus in business, in politics, in daily intercourse, in habits of mind and speech. The American is not, in truth, lacking in a capacity for discipline; he has it highly developed; he submits to leadership readily, and even to tyranny. But, by a curious twist, it is not the leadership that is old and decorous that fetches him, but the leadership that is new and extravagant208. He will resist dictation out of the past, but he will follow a new messiah with almost Russian willingness, and into the wildest vagaries of economics, religion, morals and speech. A new fallacy in politics spreads faster in the United States than anywhere else on earth, and so does a new fashion in hats, or a new revelation of God, or a new means of killing209 time, or a new metaphor or piece of slang.
Thus the American, on his linguistic side, likes to make his language as he goes along, and not all the hard work of his grammar teachers can hold the business back. A novelty loses nothing by the fact that it is a novelty; it rather gains something, and particularly if it meet the national fancy for the terse210, the vivid, and, above all, the bold and imaginative. The characteristic American habit of reducing complex concepts to the starkest211 abbreviations was already noticeable in colonial times, [Pg023] and such highly typical Americanisms as O. K., N. G., and P. D. Q., have been traced back to the first days of the republic. Nor are the influences that shaped these early tendencies invisible today, for the country is still in process of growth, and no settled social order has yet descended212 upon it. Institution-making is still going on, and so is language-making. In so modest an operation as that which has evolved bunco from buncombe and bunk213 from bunco there is evidence of a phenomenon which the philologist recognizes as belonging to the most primitive214 and lusty stages of speech. The American vulgate is not only constantly making new words, it is also deducing roots from them, and so giving proof, as Prof. Sayce says, that "the creative powers of language are even now not extinct."[44]
But of more importance than its sheer inventions, if only because much more numerous, are its extensions of the vocabulary, both absolutely and in ready workableness, by the devices of rhetoric. The American, from the beginning, has been the most ardent216 of recorded rhetoricians. His politics bristles217 with pungent218 epithets219; his whole history has been bedizened with tall talk; his fundamental institutions rest as much upon brilliant phrases as upon logical ideas. And in small things as in large he exercises continually an incomparable capacity for projecting hidden and often fantastic relationships into arresting parts of speech. Such a term as rubber-neck is almost a complete treatise on American psychology220; it reveals the national habit of mind more clearly than any labored221 inquiry could ever reveal it. It has in it precisely the boldness and disdain of ordered forms that are so characteristically American, and it has too the grotesque222 humor of the country, and the delight in devastating223 opprobriums, and the acute feeling for the succinct224 and savory225. The same qualities are in rough-house, water-wagon, near-silk, has-been, lame-duck and a thousand other such racy substantives226, and in all the great stock of native verbs and adjectives. There is, indeed, but a shadowy boundary in these new coinages between the various parts of speech. Corral, borrowed [Pg024] from the Spanish, immediately becomes a verb and the father of an adjective. Bust227, carved out of burst, erects228 itself into a noun. Bum229, coming by way of an earlier bummer from the German bummler, becomes noun, adjective, verb and adverb. Verbs are fashioned out of substantives by the simple process of prefixing the preposition: to engineer, to chink, to stump230, to hog78. Others grow out of an intermediate adjective, as to boom. Others are made by torturing nouns with harsh affixes231, as to burglarize and to itemize, or by groping for the root, as to resurrect. Yet others are changed from intransitive to transitive: a sleeping-car sleeps thirty passengers. So with the adjectives. They are made of substantives unchanged: codfish, jitney. Or by bold combinations: down-and-out, up-state, flat-footed. Or by shading down suffixes232 to a barbaric simplicity: scary, classy, tasty. Or by working over adverbs until they tremble on the brink234 between adverb and adjective: right and near are examples.
All of these processes, of course, are also to be observed in the English of England; in the days of its great Elizabethan growth they were in the lustiest possible being. They are, indeed, common to all languages; they keep language alive. But if you will put the English of today beside the American of today you will see at once how much more forcibly they are in operation in the latter than in the former. English has been arrested in its growth by its purists and grammarians. It shows no living change in structure and syntax since the days of Anne, and very little modification235 in either pronunciation or vocabulary. Its tendency is to conserve236 that which is established; to say the new thing, as nearly as possible, in the old way; to combat all that expansive gusto which made for its pliancy237 and resilience in the days of Shakespeare. In place of the old loose-footedness there is set up a preciosity which, in one direction, takes the form of unyielding affectations in the spoken language, and in another form shows itself in the heavy Johnsonese of current English writing—the Jargon238 denounced by Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch in his Cambridge lectures. This "infirmity of speech" Quiller-Couch finds "in parliamentary debates and in the newspapers"; [Pg025] ... "it has become the medium through which Boards of Government, County Councils, Syndicates, Committees, Commercial Firms, express the processes as well as the conclusions of their thought, and so voice the reason of their being." Distinct from journalese, the two yet overlap239, "and have a knack240 of assimilating each other's vices215."[45]
American, despite the gallant241 efforts of the professors, has so far escaped any such suffocating242 formalization. We, too, of course, have our occasional practitioners243 of the authentic108 English Jargon; in the late Grover Cleveland we produced an acknowledged master of it. But in the main our faults in writing lie in precisely the opposite direction. That is to say, we incline toward a directness of statement which, at its greatest, lacks restraint and urbanity altogether, and toward a hospitality which often admits novelties for the mere sake of their novelty, and is quite uncritical of the difference between a genuine improvement in succinctness244 and clarity, and mere extravagant raciness. "The tendency," says one English observer, "is ... to consider the speech of any man, as any man himself, as good as any other."[46] "All beauty and distinction," says another,[47] "are ruthlessly sacrificed to force." Moreover, this strong revolt against conventional bonds is by no means confined to the folk-speech, nor even to the loose conversational245 English of the upper classes; it also gets into more studied discourse, both spoken and written. I glance through the speeches of Dr. Woodrow Wilson, surely a purist if we have one at all, and find, in a few moments, half a dozen locutions that an Englishman in like position would never dream of using, among them we must get a move on,[48] hog as a verb,[49] gum-shoe as an adjective with [Pg026] verbal overtones,[50] onery in place of ordinary,[51] and that is going some.[52] From the earliest days, indeed, English critics have found this gipsy tendency in our most careful writing. They denounced it in Marshall, Cooper, Mark Twain, Poe, Lossing, Lowell and Holmes, and even in Hawthorne and Thoreau; and it was no less academic a work than W. C. Brownell's "French Traits" which brought forth, in a London literary journal, the dictum that "the language most depressing to the cultured Englishman is the language of the cultured American." Even "educated American English," agrees the chief of modern English grammarians, "is now almost entirely independent of British influence, and differs from it considerably, though as yet not enough to make the two dialects—American English and British English—mutually unintelligible."[53]
American thus shows its character in a constant experimentation246, a wide hospitality to novelty, a steady reaching out for new and vivid forms. No other tongue of modern times admits foreign words and phrases more readily; none is more careless of precedents; none shows a greater fecundity247 and originality248 of fancy. It is producing new words every day, by trope, by agglutination, by the shedding of inflections, by the merging249 of parts of speech, and by sheer brilliance250 of imagination. It is full of what Bret Harte called the "sabre-cuts of Saxon"; it meets Montaigne's ideal of "a succulent and nervous speech, short and compact, not as much delicated and combed out as vehement251 and brusque, rather arbitrary than monotonous252, not pedantic253 but soldierly, as Suetonius called Caesar's Latin." One pictures the common materials of English dumped into a pot, exotic flavorings added, and the bubblings assiduously and expectantly skimmed. What is old and respected is already in decay the moment it comes into contact with what is new and vivid. Let American confront a novel problem alongside [Pg027] English, and immediately its superior imaginativeness and resourcefulness become obvious. Movie is better than cinema; it is not only better American, it is better English. Bill-board is better than hoarding254. Office-holder is more honest, more picturesque255, more thoroughly256 Anglo-Saxon that public-servant. Stem-winder somehow has more life in it, more fancy and vividness, than the literal keyless-watch. Turn to the terminology257 of railroading (itself, by the way, an Americanism): its creation fell upon the two peoples equally, but they tackled the job independently. The English, seeking a figure to denominate the wedge-shaped fender in front of a locomotive, called it a plough; the Americans, characteristically, gave it the far more pungent name of cow-catcher. So with the casting where two rails join. The English called it a crossing-plate. The Americans, more responsive to the suggestion in its shape, called it a frog.
This boldness of conceit258, of course, makes for vulgarity. Unrestrained by any critical sense—and the critical sense of the professors counts for little, for they cry wolf too often—it flowers in such barbaric inventions as tasty, alright, no-account, pants, go-aheadativeness, tony, semi-occasional, to fellowship and to doxologize. Let it be admitted: American is not infrequently vulgar; the Americans, too, are vulgar (Bayard Taylor called them "Anglo-Saxons relapsed into semi-barbarism"); America itself is unutterably vulgar. But vulgarity, after all, means no more than a yielding to natural impulses in the face of conventional inhibitions, and that yielding to natural impulses is at the heart of all healthy language-making. The history of English, like the history of American and every other living tongue, is a history of vulgarisms that, by their accurate meeting of real needs, have forced their way into sound usage, and even into the lifeless catalogues of the grammarians. The colonial pedants259 denounced to advocate as bitterly as they ever denounced to compromit or to happify, and all the English authorities gave them aid, but it forced itself into the American language despite them, and today it is even accepted as English and has got into the Oxford260 Dictionary. To donate, so late as 1870, was dismissed by Richard Grant White as ignorant and [Pg028] abominable261 and to this day the English will have none of it, but there is not an American dictionary that doesn't accept it, and surely no American writer would hesitate to use it.[54] Reliable, gubernatorial, standpoint and scientist have survived opposition262 of equal ferocity. The last-named was coined by William Whewell, an Englishman, in 1840, but was first adopted in America. Despite the fact that Fitzedward Hall and other eminent263 philologists used it and defended it, it aroused almost incredible opposition in England. So recently as 1890 it was denounced by the London Daily News as "an ignoble264 Americanism," and according to William Archer it was finally accepted by the English only "at the point of the bayonet."[55]
The purist performs a useful office in enforcing a certain logical regularity265 upon the process, and in our own case the omnipresent example of the greater conservatism of the English corrects our native tendency to go too fast, but the process itself is as inexorable in its workings as the precession of the equinoxes, and if we yield to it more eagerly than the English it is only a proof, perhaps, that the future of what was once the Anglo-Saxon tongue lies on this side of the water. "The story of English grammar," says Murison, "is a story of simplification, of dispensing266 with grammatical forms."[56] And of the most copious and persistent enlargement of vocabulary and mutation267 of idiom ever recorded, perhaps, by descriptive philology268. English now has the brakes on, but American continues to leap in the dark, and the prodigality269 of its movement is all the [Pg029] indication that is needed of its intrinsic health, its capacity to meet the ever-changing needs of a restless and iconoclastic270 people, constantly fluent in racial composition, and disdainful of hampering271 traditions. "Language," says Sayce, "is no artificial product, contained in books and dictionaries and governed by the strict rules of impersonal272 grammarians. It is the living expression of the mind and spirit of a people, ever changing and shifting, whose sole standard of correctness is custom and the common usage of the community.... The first lesson to be learned is that there is no intrinsic right or wrong in the use of language, no fixed rules such as are the delight of the teacher of Latin prose. What is right now will be wrong hereafter, what language rejected yesterday she accepts today."[57]
§ 6
The Materials of American—One familiar with the habits of pedagogues273 need not be told that, in their grudging274 discussions of American, they have spent most of their energies upon vain attempts to classify its materials. White and Lounsbury, as I have shown, carried the business to the limits of the preposterous275; when they had finished identifying and cataloguing Americanisms there were no more Americanisms left to study. The ladies and gentlemen of the American Dialect Society, though praiseworthy for their somewhat deliberate industry, fall into a similar fault, for they are so eager to establish minute dialectic variations that they forget the general language almost altogether.
Among investigators276 of less learning there is a more spacious277 view of the problem, and the labored categories of White and Lounsbury are much extended. Pickering, the first to attempt a list of Americanisms, rehearsed their origin under the following headings:
1. "We have formed some new words."
3. "Others, which have long been obsolete279 in England, are still retained in common use among us."
Bartlett, in the second edition of his dictionary, dated 1859, increased these classes to nine;
1. Archaisms, i. e., old English words, obsolete, or nearly so, in England, but retained in use in this country.
2. English words used in a different sense from what they are in England. These include many names of natural objects differently applied280.
3. Words which have retained their original meaning in the United States, though not in England.
4. English provincialisms adopted into general use in America.
5. Newly coined words, which owe their origin to the productions or to the circumstances of the country.
6. Words borrowed from European languages, especially the French, Spanish, Dutch and German.
7. Indian words.
8. Negroisms.
9. Peculiarities of pronunciation.
Some time before this, but after the publication of Bartlett's first edition in 1848, William C. Fowler, professor of rhetoric at Amherst, devoted a brief chapter to "American Dialects" in his well-known work on English[58] and in it one finds the following formidable classification of Americanisms:
1. Words borrowed from other languages.
a. Indian, as Kennebec, Ohio, Tombigbee; sagamore, quahaug, succotash.
b. Dutch, as boss, kruller, stoop.
c. German, as spuke (?), sauerkraut.
e. Spanish, as calaboose, chapparal, hacienda, rancho, ranchero.
f. Negro, as buckra.
2. Words "introduced from the necessity of our situation, in order to express new ideas."
a. Words "connected with and flowing from our political institutions," as selectman, presidential, congressional, caucus283, mass-meeting, lynch-law, help (for servants).
b. Words "connected with our ecclesiastical institutions," as associational, consociational, to fellowship, to missionate.
3. Miscellaneous Americanisms.
a. Words and phrases become obsolete in England, as talented, offset285 (for set-off), back and forth (for backward and forward).
b. Old words and phrases "which are now merely provincial281 in England," as hub, whap (?), to wilt286.
c. Nouns formed from verbs by adding the French suffix233 -ment, as publishment, releasement, requirement.
d. Forms of words "which fill the gap or vacancy287 between two words which are approved," as obligate (between oblige and obligation) and variate (between vary and variation).
e. "Certain compound terms for which the English have different compounds," as bank-bill, (bank-note), book-store (book-seller's shop), bottom-land (interval land), clapboard (pale), sea-board (sea-shore), side-hill (hill-side).
f. "Certain colloquial phrases, apparently idiomatic288, and very expressive," as to cave in, to flare289 up, to flunk290 out, to fork over, to hold on, to let on, to stave off, to take on.
g. Intensives, "often a matter of mere temporary fashion," as dreadful, mighty291, plaguy, powerful.
h. "Certain verbs expressing one's state of mind, but partially292 or timidly," as to allot144 upon (for to count upon), to calculate, to expect (to think or believe), to guess, to reckon.
i. "Certain adjectives, expressing not only quality, but one's subjective293 feelings in regard to it," as clever, grand, green, likely, smart, ugly.
j. Abridgments, as stage (for stage-coach), turnpike (for turnpike-road), spry (for sprightly), to conduct (for to conduct one's self).
k. "Quaint149 or burlesque294 terms," as to tote, to yank; humbug295, loafer, muss, plunder296 (for baggage), rock (for stone).
l. "Low expressions, mostly political," as slangwhanger, loco foco, hunker; to get the hang of.
m. "Ungrammatical expressions, disapproved297 by all," as do don't, used to could, can't come it, Universal preacher (for Universalist), there's no two ways about it.
Elwyn, in 1859, attempted no classification.[59] He confined his glossary to archaic English words surviving in America, and sought only to prove that they had come down "from our remotest ancestry298" and were thus undeserving of the reviling299 [Pg032] lavished300 upon them by English critics. Schele de Vere, in 1872, followed Bartlett, and devoted himself largely to words borrowed from the Indian dialects, and from the French, Spanish and Dutch. But Farmer, in 1889,[60] ventured upon a new classification, prefacing it with the following definition:
An Americanism may be defined as a word or phrase, old or new, employed by general or respectable usage in America in a way not sanctioned by the best standards of the English language. As a matter of fact, however, the term has come to possess a wider meaning, and it is now applied not only to words and phrases which can be so described, but also to the new and legitimately301 born words adapted to the general needs and usages, to the survivals of an older form of English than that now current in the mother country, and to the racy, pungent vernacular of Western life.
He then proceeded to classify his materials thus:
a. Indian and aboriginal303 life.
b. Pioneer and frontier life.
c. The church.
d. Politics.
e. Trades of all kinds.
a. The German element.
b. The French.
c. The Spanish.
d. The Dutch.
e. The negro.
f. The Chinese.
3. Names of American things, embracing:
a. Natural products.
b. Manufactured articles.
5. Obsolete English words still in good use in America.
6. English words, American by inflection and modification.
7. Odd and ignorant popular phrases, proverbs, vulgarisms, and colloquialisms307, cant308 and slang.
8. Individualisms.
9. Doubtful and miscellaneous.
Clapin, in 1902,[61] reduced these categories to four:
1. Genuine English words, obsolete or provincial in England, and universally used in the United States.
2. English words conveying, in the United States, a different meaning from that attached to them in England.
3. Words introduced from other languages than the English:—French, Dutch, Spanish, German, Indian, etc.
4. Americanisms proper, i. e., words coined in the country, either representing some new idea or peculiar121 product.
Thornton, in 1912, substituted the following:
1. Forms of speech now obsolete or provincial in England, which survive in the United States, such as allow, bureau, fall, gotten, guess, likely, professor, shoat.
2. Words and phrases of distinctly American origin, such as belittle309, lengthy310, lightning-rod, to darken one's doors, to bark up the wrong tree, to come out at the little end of the horn, blind tiger, cold snap, gay Quaker, gone coon, long sauce, pay dirt, small potatoes, some pumpkins311.
3. Nouns which indicate quadrupeds, birds, trees, articles of food, etc., that are distinctively312 American, such as ground-hog, hang-bird, hominy, live-oak, locust313, opossum, persimmon, pone314, succotash, wampum, wigwam.
4. Names of persons and classes of persons, and of places, such as Buckeye, Cracker315, Greaser, Hoosier, Old Bullion316, Old Hickory, the Little Giant, Dixie, Gotham, the Bay State, the Monumental City.
5. Words which have assumed a new meaning, such as card, clever, fork, help, penny, plunder, raise, rock, sack, ticket, windfall.
In addition, Thornton added a provisional class of "words and phrases of which I have found earlier examples in American than in English writers; ... with the caveat that further research may reverse the claim"—a class offering specimens in alarmist, capitalize, eruptiveness, horse of another colour (sic!), the jig's up, nameable, omnibus bill, propaganda and whitewash317.
No more than a brief glance at these classifications is needed to show that they hamper142 the inquiry by limiting its scope—not so much, to be sure, as the ridiculous limitations of White and Lounsbury, but still very seriously. They meet the ends of [Pg034] purely descriptive lexicography, but largely leave out of account some of the most salient characters of a living language, for example, pronunciation and idiom. Only Bartlett and Farmer establish a separate category of Americanisms produced by changes in pronunciation, though even Thornton, of course, is obliged to take notice of such forms as bust and bile. None of them, however, goes into the matter at any length, nor even into the matter of etymology318. Bartlett's etymologies are scanty319 and often inaccurate68; Schele de Vere's are sometimes quite fanciful; Thornton offers scarcely any at all. The best of these collections of Americanisms, and by long odds320, is Thornton's. It presents an enormous mass of quotations, and they are all very carefully dated, and it corrects most of the more obvious errors in the work of earlier inquirers. But its very dependence90 upon quotations limits it chiefly to the written language, and so the enormously richer materials of the spoken language are passed over, and particularly the materials evolved during the past twenty years. One searches the two fat volumes in vain for such highly characteristic forms as would of, near-accident, and buttinski, the use of sure as an adverb, and the employment of well as a sort of general equivalent of the German also.
These grammatical and syntactical tendencies are beyond the scope of Thornton's investigation, but it is plain that they must be prime concerns of any future student who essays to get at the inner spirit of the language. Its difference from standard English is not merely a difference in vocabulary, to be disposed of in an alphabetical321 list; it is, above all, a difference in pronunciation, in intonation, in conjugation and declension, in metaphor and idiom, in the whole fashion of using words. A page from one of Ring W. Lardner's baseball stories contains few words that are not in the English vocabulary, and yet the thoroughly American color of it cannot fail to escape anyone who actually listens to the tongue spoken around him. Some of the elements which enter into that color will be considered in the following pages. The American vocabulary, of course, must be given first attention, for in it the earliest American divergences are embalmed322 and it tends to grow richer and freer year after year, [Pg035] but attention will also be paid to materials and ways of speech that are less obvious, and in particular to certain definite tendencies of the grammar of spoken American, hitherto wholly neglected.
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diverging
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| 分开( diverge的现在分词 )； 偏离； 分歧； 分道扬镳 | |
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versatile
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| adj.通用的，万用的；多才多艺的，多方面的 | |
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muster
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| v.集合，收集，鼓起，激起；n.集合，检阅，集合人员，点名册 | |
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lexicographer
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| n.辞典编纂人 | |
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dissertations
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| 专题论文，学位论文( dissertation的名词复数 ) | |
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dedicated
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| adj.一心一意的；献身的；热诚的 | |
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commonwealth
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| n.共和国，联邦，共同体 | |
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intercourse
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| n.性交；交流，交往，交际 | |
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fully
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| adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地 | |
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relatively
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| adv.比较...地，相对地 | |
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presidency
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| n.总统(校长，总经理)的职位(任期) | |
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proximity
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| n.接近，邻近 | |
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mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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ethics
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| n.伦理学；伦理观，道德标准 | |
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15
aesthetics
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| n.(尤指艺术方面之)美学，审美学 | |
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16
minor
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| adj.较小(少)的，较次要的；n.辅修学科；vi.辅修 | |
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17
sneaking
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| a.秘密的，不公开的 | |
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18
differentiation
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| n.区别，区分 | |
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19
doctrine
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| n.教义；主义；学说 | |
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20
divergences
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| n.分叉( divergence的名词复数 )；分歧；背离；离题 | |
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21
divergence
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| n.分歧，岔开 | |
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22
steadily
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| adv.稳定地；不变地；持续地 | |
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23
investigation
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| n.调查，调查研究 | |
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24
standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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25
undoubtedly
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| adv.确实地，无疑地 | |
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26
sonority
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| n.响亮，宏亮 | |
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27
oratory
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| n.演讲术；词藻华丽的言辞 | |
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28
flouting
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| v.藐视，轻视( flout的现在分词 ) | |
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29
bent
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| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
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30
spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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31
colloquial
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| adj.口语的，会话的 | |
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32
simplicity
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| n.简单，简易；朴素；直率，单纯 | |
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33
intelligibility
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| n.可理解性，可理解的事物 | |
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34
deliberately
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| adv.审慎地；蓄意地；故意地 | |
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35
unaware
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| a.不知道的，未意识到的 | |
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36
abominably
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| adv. 可恶地，可恨地，恶劣地 | |
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37
precedent
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| n.先例，前例；惯例；adj.在前的，在先的 | |
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38
fabric
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| n.织物，织品，布；构造，结构，组织 | |
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39
guardians
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| 监护人( guardian的名词复数 )； 保护者，维护者 | |
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40
linguistic
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| adj.语言的，语言学的 | |
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41
philologist
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| n.语言学者，文献学者 | |
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42
deigned
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| v.屈尊，俯就( deign的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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43
habitually
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| ad.习惯地，通常地 | |
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44
mythical
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| adj.神话的；虚构的；想像的 | |
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45
disdain
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| n.鄙视，轻视；v.轻视，鄙视，不屑 | |
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46
phenomena
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| n.现象 | |
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47
illiterate
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| adj.文盲的；无知的；n.文盲 | |
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48
philologists
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| n.语文学( philology的名词复数 ) | |
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49
diligent
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| adj.勤勉的，勤奋的 | |
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50
inquiries
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| n.调查( inquiry的名词复数 )；疑问；探究；打听 | |
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51
fluctuation
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| n.(物价的)波动，涨落；周期性变动；脉动 | |
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52
devoted
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| adj.忠诚的，忠实的，热心的，献身于...的 | |
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53
systematically
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| adv.有系统地 | |
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54
overthrow
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| v.推翻，打倒，颠覆；n.推翻，瓦解，颠覆 | |
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55
intervals
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| n.[军事]间隔( interval的名词复数 )；间隔时间；[数学]区间；（戏剧、电影或音乐会的）幕间休息 | |
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56
copious
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| adj.丰富的，大量的 | |
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57
Portuguese
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| n.葡萄牙人；葡萄牙语 | |
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58
chili
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| n.辣椒 | |
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59
treatise
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| n.专著；(专题)论文 | |
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60
omissions
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| n.省略( omission的名词复数 )；删节；遗漏；略去或漏掉的事（或人） | |
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61
bibliography
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| n.参考书目；(有关某一专题的)书目 | |
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62
labors
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| v.努力争取(for)( labor的第三人称单数 )；苦干；详细分析；（指引擎）缓慢而困难地运转 | |
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63
makers
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| n.制造者，制造商（maker的复数形式） | |
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64
radical
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| n.激进份子，原子团，根号；adj.根本的，激进的，彻底的 | |
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65
ardor
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| n.热情，狂热 | |
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66
expound
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| v.详述；解释；阐述 | |
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67
inaccurately
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| 不精密地，不准确地 | |
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68
inaccurate
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| adj.错误的，不正确的，不准确的 | |
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69
accurately
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| adv.准确地，精确地 | |
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70
philological
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| adj.语言学的，文献学的 | |
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71
eloquently
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| adv. 雄辩地(有口才地, 富于表情地) | |
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72
precedents
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| 引用单元； 范例( precedent的名词复数 )； 先前出现的事例； 前例； 先例 | |
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73
defective
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| adj.有毛病的，有问题的，有瑕疵的 | |
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74
controversies
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| 争论 | |
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75
sequestered
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|
| adj.扣押的；隐退的；幽静的；偏僻的v.使隔绝，使隔离( sequester的过去式和过去分词 )；扣押 | |
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76
lasting
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|
| adj.永久的，永恒的；vbl.持续，维持 | |
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77
orthography
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| n.拼字法，拼字式 | |
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78
hog
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| n.猪；馋嘴贪吃的人；vt.把…占为己有，独占 | |
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79
caveat
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| n.警告； 防止误解的说明 | |
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80
circumscription
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| n.界限；限界 | |
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81
synchronized
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| 同步的 | |
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82
inquiry
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| n.打听，询问，调查，查问 | |
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83
underlying
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| adj.在下面的，含蓄的，潜在的 | |
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84
indifference
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| n.不感兴趣，不关心，冷淡，不在乎 | |
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85
persistent
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| adj.坚持不懈的，执意的；持续的 | |
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86
initiated
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|
| n. 创始人 adj. 新加入的 vt. 开始，创始，启蒙，介绍加入 | |
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87
heartily
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| adv.衷心地，诚恳地，十分，很 | |
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88
corrupting
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| （使）败坏( corrupt的现在分词 )； （使）腐化； 引起（计算机文件等的）错误； 破坏 | |
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89
conformity
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| n.一致，遵从，顺从 | |
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90
dependence
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| n.依靠，依赖；信任，信赖；隶属 | |
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91
marsh
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| n.沼泽，湿地 | |
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92
malice
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| n.恶意，怨恨，蓄意；[律]预谋 | |
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93
hymns
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| n.赞美诗，圣歌，颂歌( hymn的名词复数 ) | |
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94
ordained
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| v.任命（某人）为牧师( ordain的过去式和过去分词 )；授予（某人）圣职；（上帝、法律等）命令；判定 | |
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95
rhetoric
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| n.修辞学，浮夸之言语 | |
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96
immoral
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| adj.不道德的，淫荡的，荒淫的，有伤风化的 | |
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97
esteem
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| n.尊敬，尊重；vt.尊重，敬重；把…看作 | |
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98
indefatigable
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| adj.不知疲倦的，不屈不挠的 | |
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99
etymologies
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| n.词源学，词源说明( etymology的名词复数 ) | |
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100
contentions
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| n.竞争( contention的名词复数 )；争夺；争论；论点 | |
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101
adept
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| adj.老练的，精通的 | |
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102
pedantries
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| n.假学问，卖弄学问，迂腐( pedantry的名词复数 ) | |
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103
penetrating
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|
| adj.（声音）响亮的，尖锐的adj.（气味）刺激的adj.（思想）敏锐的，有洞察力的 | |
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104
laborious
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| adj.吃力的，努力的，不流畅 | |
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105
glossary
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| n.注释词表；术语汇编 | |
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106
specimens
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| n.样品( specimen的名词复数 )；范例；（化验的）抽样；某种类型的人 | |
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107
authenticity
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| n.真实性 | |
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108
authentic
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| a.真的，真正的；可靠的，可信的，有根据的 | |
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109
erecting
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| v.使直立，竖起( erect的现在分词 )；建立 | |
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110
absurdity
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| n.荒谬，愚蠢；谬论 | |
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111
treacle
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| n.糖蜜 | |
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112
archaic
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| adj.(语言、词汇等)古代的，已不通用的 | |
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113
legitimate
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| adj.合法的，合理的，合乎逻辑的；v.使合法 | |
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114
wholesale
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| n.批发；adv.以批发方式；vt.批发，成批出售 | |
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115
slaughter
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| n.屠杀，屠宰；vt.屠杀，宰杀 | |
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116
austere
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| adj.艰苦的；朴素的，朴实无华的；严峻的 | |
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117
peek
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| vi.偷看，窥视；n.偷偷的一看，一瞥 | |
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118
arena
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| n.竞技场，运动场所；竞争场所，舞台 | |
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119
fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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120
timorous
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| adj.胆怯的，胆小的 | |
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121
peculiar
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| adj.古怪的，异常的；特殊的，特有的 | |
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122
peculiarities
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| n. 特质, 特性, 怪癖, 古怪 | |
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123
vowel
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| n.元音；元音字母 | |
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124
plow
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| n.犁，耕地，犁过的地；v.犁，费力地前进[英]plough | |
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125
deductions
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| 扣除( deduction的名词复数 )； 结论； 扣除的量； 推演 | |
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126
laboriousness
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127
intrigued
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| adj.好奇的，被迷住了的v.搞阴谋诡计(intrigue的过去式)；激起…的兴趣或好奇心；“intrigue”的过去式和过去分词 | |
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128
dealing
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| n.经商方法，待人态度 | |
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129
vernacular
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|
| adj.地方的，用地方语写成的；n.白话；行话；本国语；动植物的俗名 | |
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130
alas
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| int.唉(表示悲伤、忧愁、恐惧等) | |
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131
vagaries
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| n.奇想( vagary的名词复数 )；异想天开；异常行为；难以预测的情况 | |
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132
abhorrent
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|
| adj.可恶的，可恨的，讨厌的 | |
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133
frankly
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| adv.坦白地，直率地；坦率地说 | |
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134
notably
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| adv.值得注意地，显著地，尤其地，特别地 | |
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135
encyclopaedia
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| n.百科全书 | |
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136
uncommon
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| adj.罕见的，非凡的，不平常的 | |
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137
testimony
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| n.证词；见证，证明 | |
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138
aspiring
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| adj.有志气的；有抱负的；高耸的v.渴望；追求 | |
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139
adverting
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| 引起注意（advert的现在分词形式） | |
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140
archer
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| n.射手，弓箭手 | |
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141
hampered
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| 妨碍，束缚，限制( hamper的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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142
hamper
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| vt.妨碍，束缚，限制；n.(有盖的)大篮子 | |
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143
thereby
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| adv.因此，从而 | |
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144
allot
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| v.分配；拨给；n.部分；小块菜地 | |
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145
instructor
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| n.指导者，教员，教练 | |
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146
instructors
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| 指导者，教师( instructor的名词复数 ) | |
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147
attainments
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| 成就，造诣； 获得( attainment的名词复数 )； 达到； 造诣； 成就 | |
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148
delusion
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| n.谬见，欺骗，幻觉，迷惑 | |
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149
quaint
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| adj.古雅的，离奇有趣的，奇怪的 | |
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150
polyglot
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| adj.通晓数种语言的；n.通晓多种语言的人 | |
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151
compendium
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| n.简要，概略 | |
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152
civilized
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| a.有教养的，文雅的 | |
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153
cape
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| n.海角，岬；披肩，短披风 | |
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154
expressive
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| adj.表现的，表达…的，富于表情的 | |
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155
serially
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| adv.连续地，连续刊载地 | |
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156
metaphor
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| n.隐喻，暗喻 | |
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157
converse
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| vi.谈话，谈天，闲聊；adv.相反的，相反 | |
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158
undertaking
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| n.保证，许诺，事业 | |
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159
crook
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| v.使弯曲；n.小偷，骗子，贼；弯曲(处) | |
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160
graft
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| n.移植，嫁接，艰苦工作，贪污；v.移植，嫁接 | |
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161
curiously
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| adv.有求知欲地；好问地；奇特地 | |
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162
dub
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| vt.（以某种称号）授予，给...起绰号，复制 | |
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163
apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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164
shack
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| adj.简陋的小屋，窝棚 | |
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165
misgivings
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| n.疑虑，担忧，害怕；疑虑，担心，恐惧( misgiving的名词复数 )；疑惧 | |
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166
pliability
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| n.柔韧性；可弯性 | |
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167
intelligible
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| adj.可理解的，明白易懂的，清楚的 | |
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168
colloquially
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| adv.用白话，用通俗语 | |
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169
vigor
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| n.活力，精力，元气 | |
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170
begotten
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| v.为…之生父( beget的过去分词 )；产生，引起 | |
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171
wittier
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| 机智的，言辞巧妙的，情趣横生的( witty的比较级 ) | |
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172
luminous
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| adj.发光的，发亮的；光明的；明白易懂的；有启发的 | |
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173
metaphors
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| 隐喻( metaphor的名词复数 ) | |
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174
quotations
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| n.引用( quotation的名词复数 )；[商业]行情（报告）；（货物或股票的）市价；时价 | |
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discourse
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| n.论文，演说；谈话；话语；vi.讲述，著述 | |
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176
intonation
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| n.语调，声调；发声 | |
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177
limpid
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| adj.清澈的，透明的 | |
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178
stagnant
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|
| adj.不流动的，停滞的，不景气的 | |
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179
swarming
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|
| 密集( swarm的现在分词 )； 云集； 成群地移动； 蜜蜂或其他飞行昆虫成群地飞来飞去 | |
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180
alterations
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| n.改动( alteration的名词复数 )；更改；变化；改变 | |
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181
continental
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| adj.大陆的，大陆性的，欧洲大陆的 | |
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182
insular
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| adj.岛屿的，心胸狭窄的 | |
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183
determined
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| adj.坚定的；有决心的 | |
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184
rigidity
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|
| adj.钢性，坚硬 | |
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185
savor
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| vt.品尝，欣赏；n.味道，风味；情趣，趣味 | |
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186
noted
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| adj.著名的，知名的 | |
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187
uncouthness
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188
inviting
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| adj.诱人的，引人注目的 | |
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189
laymen
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| 门外汉，外行人( layman的名词复数 )； 普通教徒（有别于神职人员） | |
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190
forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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191
considerably
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|
| adv.极大地；相当大地；在很大程度上 | |
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192
unintelligible
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|
| adj.无法了解的，难解的，莫明其妙的 | |
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193
celebrity
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| n.名人，名流；著名，名声，名望 | |
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194
isolated
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| adj.与世隔绝的 | |
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195
secondly
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| adv.第二，其次 | |
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196
standardization
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| n.标准化 | |
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197
remarkable
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|
| adj.显著的，异常的，非凡的，值得注意的 | |
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198
perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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199
entirely
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|
| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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200
solidarity
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|
| n.团结；休戚相关 | |
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201
strictly
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|
| adv.严厉地，严格地；严密地 | |
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202
chaos
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| n.混乱，无秩序 | |
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203
plunged
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|
| v.颠簸( plunge的过去式和过去分词 )；暴跌；骤降；突降 | |
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204
precisely
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|
| adv.恰好，正好，精确地，细致地 | |
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205
impatience
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|
| n.不耐烦，急躁 | |
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206
phlegmatic
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|
| adj.冷静的，冷淡的，冷漠的，无活力的 | |
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207
intensity
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| n.强烈，剧烈；强度；烈度 | |
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208
extravagant
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|
| adj.奢侈的；过分的；(言行等)放肆的 | |
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209
killing
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|
| n.巨额利润；突然赚大钱，发大财 | |
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210
terse
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|
| adj.(说话，文笔)精炼的，简明的 | |
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211
starkest
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|
| （指区别）明显的( stark的最高级 )； 完全的； 了无修饰的； 僵硬的 | |
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212
descended
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| a.为...后裔的，出身于...的 | |
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213
bunk
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|
| n.(车、船等倚壁而设的)铺位；废话 | |
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214
primitive
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|
| adj.原始的；简单的；n.原(始)人，原始事物 | |
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215
vices
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|
| 缺陷( vice的名词复数 )； 恶习； 不道德行为； 台钳 | |
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216
ardent
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|
| adj.热情的，热烈的，强烈的，烈性的 | |
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217
bristles
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|
| 短而硬的毛发，刷子毛( bristle的名词复数 ) | |
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218
pungent
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|
| adj.（气味、味道）刺激性的，辛辣的；尖锐的 | |
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219
epithets
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|
| n.（表示性质、特征等的）词语( epithet的名词复数 ) | |
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220
psychology
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| n.心理，心理学，心理状态 | |
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221
labored
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|
| adj.吃力的，谨慎的v.努力争取(for)( labor的过去式和过去分词 )；苦干；详细分析；（指引擎）缓慢而困难地运转 | |
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222
grotesque
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|
| adj.怪诞的，丑陋的；n.怪诞的图案，怪人（物） | |
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223
devastating
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|
| adj.毁灭性的，令人震惊的，强有力的 | |
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224
succinct
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| adj.简明的，简洁的 | |
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225
savory
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| adj.风味极佳的，可口的，味香的 | |
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226
substantives
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| n.作名词用的词或词组（substantive的复数形式） | |
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227
bust
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|
| vt.打破；vi.爆裂；n.半身像；胸部 | |
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228
erects
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|
| v.使直立，竖起( erect的第三人称单数 )；建立 | |
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229
bum
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| n.臀部；流浪汉，乞丐；vt.乞求，乞讨 | |
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230
stump
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| n.残株，烟蒂，讲演台；v.砍断，蹒跚而走 | |
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231
affixes
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|
| v.附加( affix的第三人称单数 )；粘贴；加以；盖（印章） | |
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232
suffixes
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|
| n.后缀，词尾( suffix的名词复数 ) | |
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233
suffix
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|
| n.后缀；vt.添后缀 | |
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234
brink
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|
| n.(悬崖、河流等的)边缘，边沿 | |
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235
modification
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|
| n.修改，改进，缓和，减轻 | |
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236
conserve
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| vt.保存，保护，节约，节省，守恒，不灭 | |
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237
pliancy
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| n.柔软，柔顺 | |
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238
jargon
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|
| n.术语，行话 | |
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239
overlap
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|
| v.重叠，与…交叠；n.重叠 | |
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240
knack
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| n.诀窍，做事情的灵巧的，便利的方法 | |
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241
gallant
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| adj.英勇的，豪侠的；(向女人)献殷勤的 | |
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242
suffocating
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| a.使人窒息的 | |
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243
practitioners
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|
| n.习艺者，实习者( practitioner的名词复数 )；从业者（尤指医师） | |
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244
succinctness
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| n.简洁；简要；简明 | |
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245
conversational
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| adj.对话的，会话的 | |
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246
experimentation
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| n.实验，试验，实验法 | |
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247
fecundity
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| n.生产力；丰富 | |
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248
originality
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| n.创造力，独创性；新颖 | |
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249
merging
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| 合并（分类） | |
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250
brilliance
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|
| n.光辉，辉煌，壮丽，（卓越的）才华，才智 | |
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251
vehement
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| adj.感情强烈的；热烈的；(人)有强烈感情的 | |
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252
monotonous
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|
| adj.单调的，一成不变的，使人厌倦的 | |
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253
pedantic
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| adj.卖弄学问的；迂腐的 | |
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254
hoarding
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|
| n.贮藏；积蓄；临时围墙；囤积v.积蓄并储藏（某物）( hoard的现在分词 ) | |
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255
picturesque
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|
| adj.美丽如画的，（语言）生动的，绘声绘色的 | |
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256
thoroughly
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|
| adv.完全地，彻底地，十足地 | |
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257
terminology
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| n.术语；专有名词 | |
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258
conceit
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| n.自负，自高自大 | |
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259
pedants
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| n.卖弄学问的人，学究，书呆子( pedant的名词复数 ) | |
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260
Oxford
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| n.牛津（英国城市） | |
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261
abominable
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|
| adj.可厌的，令人憎恶的 | |
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262
opposition
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| n.反对，敌对 | |
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263
eminent
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|
| adj.显赫的，杰出的，有名的，优良的 | |
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264
ignoble
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|
| adj.不光彩的，卑鄙的；可耻的 | |
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265
regularity
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|
| n.规律性，规则性；匀称，整齐 | |
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266
dispensing
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| v.分配( dispense的现在分词 )；施与；配（药） | |
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267
mutation
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| n.变化，变异，转变 | |
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268
philology
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| n.语言学；语文学 | |
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269
prodigality
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|
| n.浪费，挥霍 | |
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270
iconoclastic
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|
| adj.偶像破坏的，打破旧习的 | |
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271
hampering
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|
| 妨碍，束缚，限制( hamper的现在分词 ) | |
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272
impersonal
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| adj.无个人感情的，与个人无关的，非人称的 | |
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273
pedagogues
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| n.教师，卖弄学问的教师( pedagogue的名词复数 ) | |
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274
grudging
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| adj.勉强的，吝啬的 | |
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275
preposterous
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|
| adj.荒谬的，可笑的 | |
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276
investigators
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|
| n.调查者，审查者( investigator的名词复数 ) | |
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spacious
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| adj.广阔的，宽敞的 | |
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affixed
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| adj.[医]附着的，附着的v.附加( affix的过去式和过去分词 )；粘贴；加以；盖（印章） | |
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obsolete
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| adj.已废弃的，过时的 | |
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applied
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| adj.应用的；v.应用，适用 | |
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provincial
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| adj.省的，地方的；n．外省人，乡下人 | |
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282
crevasse
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| n. 裂缝，破口；v.使有裂缝 | |
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283
caucus
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| n.秘密会议；干部会议；v.（参加）干部开会议 | |
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squatter
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| n.擅自占地者 | |
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offset
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| n.分支，补偿；v.抵消，补偿 | |
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286
wilt
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| v.(使)植物凋谢或枯萎；(指人)疲倦，衰弱 | |
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vacancy
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| n.（旅馆的）空位，空房，（职务的）空缺 | |
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idiomatic
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| adj.成语的，符合语言习惯的 | |
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flare
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| v.闪耀，闪烁；n.潮红；突发 | |
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flunk
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| v.(考试)不及格(=fail) | |
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291
mighty
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| adj.强有力的；巨大的 | |
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292
partially
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| adv.部分地，从某些方面讲 | |
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293
subjective
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| a.主观(上)的，个人的 | |
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294
burlesque
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| v.嘲弄，戏仿；n.嘲弄，取笑，滑稽模仿 | |
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humbug
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| n.花招，谎话，欺骗 | |
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296
plunder
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| vt.劫掠财物，掠夺；n.劫掠物，赃物；劫掠 | |
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297
disapproved
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| v.不赞成( disapprove的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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298
ancestry
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| n.祖先，家世 | |
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299
reviling
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| v.辱骂，痛斥( revile的现在分词 ) | |
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lavished
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| v.过分给予，滥施( lavish的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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legitimately
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| ad.合法地；正当地，合理地 | |
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purely
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| adv.纯粹地，完全地 | |
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303
aboriginal
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| adj.（指动植物）土生的，原产地的，土著的 | |
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ashore
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| adv.在(向)岸上，上岸 | |
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colonists
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| n.殖民地开拓者，移民，殖民地居民( colonist的名词复数 ) | |
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306
perverted
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| adj.不正当的v.滥用( pervert的过去式和过去分词 )；腐蚀；败坏；使堕落 | |
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307
colloquialisms
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| n.俗话，白话，口语( colloquialism的名词复数 ) | |
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cant
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| n.斜穿，黑话，猛扔 | |
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belittle
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| v.轻视，小看，贬低 | |
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lengthy
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| adj.漫长的，冗长的 | |
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pumpkins
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| n.南瓜( pumpkin的名词复数 )；南瓜的果肉，南瓜囊 | |
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distinctively
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| adv.特殊地，区别地 | |
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locust
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| n.蝗虫；洋槐，刺槐 | |
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pone
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| n.玉米饼 | |
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cracker
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| n.（无甜味的）薄脆饼干 | |
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316
bullion
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| n.金条，银条 | |
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317
whitewash
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| v.粉刷，掩饰；n.石灰水，粉刷，掩饰 | |
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etymology
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| n.语源；字源学 | |
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319
scanty
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| adj.缺乏的，仅有的，节省的，狭小的，不够的 | |
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320
odds
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| n.让步，机率，可能性，比率；胜败优劣之别 | |
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alphabetical
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| adj.字母（表）的，依字母顺序的 | |
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embalmed
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| adj.用防腐药物保存（尸体）的v.保存（尸体）不腐( embalm的过去式和过去分词 )；使不被遗忘；使充满香气 | |
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