223. Sir William Craigie, editor of the Dictionary of American English and one of the editors of the New English Dictionary, is authority for the statement that the infiltration of English by Americanisms began on a large scale more than a hundred years ago. He says:
For some two centuries, roughly down to 1820, the passage of new words or senses across the Atlantic was regularly westward; practically the only exceptions were terms which denoted articles or products peculiar to the new country. With the Nineteenth Century, however, the contrary current begins to set in, bearing with it many a piece of driftwood to the shores of Britain, there to be picked up and incorporated in the structure of the language. The variety of these contributions is no less notable than their number.1
Sir William then proceeds to list some of the principal categories of these adopted Americanisms, as follows:
1. “There are terms which owe their origin to the fresh conditions and experiences of the new country,” e.g., backwoods, blizzard, bluff, canyon, dugout, Indian-file, prairie, squatter.
2. “There are terms of politics and public activity,” e.g., carpet-bagger, caucus, gerrymander, indignation-meeting, lynch-law.
3. “There are words and phrases connected with business pursuits, trades, and manufactures,” e.g., cross-cut saw, elevator, snow-plow, to corner, to strike oil.
4. There is “a large residue of miscellaneous examples,” e.g., at that, to take a back seat, boss, to cave in, cold snap, to face the music, grave-yard, to go back on, half-breed, lengthy, loafer, law-abiding, whole-souled.
How many such Americanisms have actually got into accepted English it would be impossible to say, for on that point there is sharp disagreement among Englishmen. But a large number have become so thoroughly naturalized that the English dictionaries no longer mark them aliens, and even the most intransigent Englishmen have ceased to denounce them, e.g., reliable, lengthy, prairie, caucus and bluff. Others still have the sharp tang of novelty and are avoided by all persons careful of their speech, and in the middle between these two extremes there is a vast twilight zone of Americanisms that have more or less current popularity but may or may not find lodgment in the vocabulary hereafter. In the early days the chief exchanges in both directions were on the upper levels of usage, and most of the Americanisms adopted in England were sponsored on this side of the ocean by such men as Jefferson, John Adams, J. Fenimore Cooper and Noah Webster, but since the beginning of the present century the chief English borrowings have been from American slang. It is generally agreed by English observers that American movies have been mainly responsible for this shift, but it is not to be forgotten that the American comic-strip and American pulp-magazines have also had a powerful influence, and that the American popular humorists of the post-Civil War era opened the way long before movies, comic-strips or pulp-magazines were thought of.1 When the silent movies began to be supplanted by talkies many hopeful Englishmen rejoiced, for they believed that the American accent would be unendurable to their countrymen, that English-made talkies would thus prevail over those from Hollywood, and that the inundation of Americanisms would be stayed at last. But this hope turned out to be in vain, for the Hollywood producers quickly trained their performers to speak what passed sufficiently as English, and in a little while they were deluging the English plain people with even more and much worse Americanisms than had ever appeared in the legends on the silent films.2 The battle between English and American talkies that ensued came to highly significant issues in both countries. In England the commonalty rejoiced in the new influx of American neologisms and soon adopted large numbers of them, but in America the movie fans refused to tolerate the pseudo-Oxford accent and frequent Briticisms of the English actors,1 and in consequence the English films, with relatively-few exceptions, failed dismally. Simultaneously, the educated classes in England resented and resisted the American talkies, and the Anglo-maniacs of the United States welcomed the English talkies with colonial enthusiasm. The educated Englishmen, always powerful in their government, procured the enactment of laws limiting the importation of American films,2 and carried on a violent war upon them in the newspapers, but the English middle and lower classes found them perfectly satisfying, and soon the Americanisms they introduced in such large number were in wide use, and many began to penetrate to the higher levels of speech.3 In the linguistic interchanges between England and the United States this curious dichotomy has been witnessed for a long while. Americanisms get into English use on the lower levels and then work their way upward, but nearly all the Briticisms that reach the United States first appear on the levels of cultural pretension, and most of them stay there, for the common people will have none of them.
As we have already seen in Chapter I, Section 4, the old English battle against the American invasion, which began violently in the closing years of the Eighteenth Century and raged on with frequent bursts of fury for more than a hundred years, has now begun to abate, and a considerable number of Englishmen appear to be convinced that the American tail is destined to wag the English dog hereafter; indeed, there are plenty who try to convince themselves that the inevitable is also the agreeable, and had better be enjoyed as much as possible. It seems to be generally agreed that nothing can be done, short of pumping up a war with the United States, to shut off the flow of Americanisms, at all events on the lower levels of the population. Nor has anyone devised any plausible scheme to keep them from penetrating upward. English newspapers, even the most stiff-necked, admit them constantly and in large number, they are eagerly seized upon by native imitators of the American comic-strips,1 advertisement writers make eager use of them, and it becomes the sign of bonhomie for politicians and other public entertainers to play with them, albeit they usually do so somewhat ponderously, as will appear. Such familiar Americanisms as chain-store, can (for tin), to rattle, to put across, back number, boom, crook, to feature, filling-station, O.K., mass-meeting, up against and up to have now become so familiar in England too that it is no longer necessary to interpret them, and many others, perhaps to the number of thousands, seem destined to make the grade hereafter. So late as 1932 the New York correspondent of the London Observer2 was at pains to explain that hot-dogs were “broiled sausages in split rolls,” but since then the austere London Times has given its countenance to high-brow, the Daily Express has quite nonchalantly characterized the chaplain to a bishop as a fence-sitter,3 the eminent News of the World has adopted gate-crasher,4 the Birkenhead Advertiser has given its imprimatur to to scram,1 the Air Ministry has used hooch in a warning to the gentlemen of the R.A.F.,2 Gilbert Frankau has printed a moving defense of lousy,3 and Edward Shanks has gone earnestly to the bat for alibi, in the American sense of any dubious excuse.4 The list of such yieldings and embracings might be lengthened greatly. New Americanisms are being taken in all the time, sometimes with a time lag, sometimes with a change (or, more accurately, a misunderstanding) of meaning, but usually very promptly and in their native sense. The English newspapers frequently report and philosophize upon a recent novelty, and usually they advise their readers to avoid it, but most of them seem to be convinced that stemming the influx has now become hopeless. In 1935 a contributor to a sedate provincial paper attempted a round-up of the Americanisms “that we constantly employ,” including some “that we hardly recognize as of American origin, so rooted in standard English have they become.”5 Under the letters from H to O his list showed the following:
half-baked
halfbreed6
hand it to him (verb)7
hang out (verb)8
handy9
happen in (verb)10
happy hunting-ground11
hash, to settle his12
have the floor (verb)
have the goods on13
hayseed14
headed for disaster1
headlight2
head off (verb)3
head-on (collision) help (servant)
he-man4
hike, hiker
hard-boiled (in the figurative sense)
highfalutin5
high old time6
hitch (verb, usually with up)7
hitched (married)8
hobble (verb)9
holding company
hold on (imperative)10
hold-up11
home-folks
homely
homesick12
homespun13
honk (verb)14
hook, one’s own15
hoot, to care a16
horse-sense17
house-keep (verb)
house-clean (verb)
hunch18
hurry up
hustler, to hustle19
influential
inside1
interview
iron out (verb)
it2
jack-knife3
jam4
jay-walker
jazz
jell (verb)5
jeopardize6
jiggered7
joker (in card games)8
jolly (verb)9
joy-ride
jugged (jailed)10
jumping-off place11
jump on with both feet
junk (in the sense of refuse)12
just13
keep company with14
keep tabs on15
keep your shirt on16
key man
kick (as in “something with a kick in it”)
kick the bucket17
kid (verb)18
kitchenette
knickers
knife (verb)1
knock about (to wander)2
know him like a book
know the ropes3
kodak
kow-tow4
landslide (political)5
laugh in one’s sleeve
laugh on me
law-abiding6
lemon, to hand him a7
lengthy
let it slide8
level best9
level-headedness10
lid on, to put the
limelight, in the
limit (“the last stage of endurance”)
lip, to keep a stiff upper11
loaf (verb), loafer
lobby (verb)
lounge-lizard lynch (verb)
machine (political)
mad (angry)
make a get-away12
make oneself scarce13
make the fur fly14
make tracks15
mark, easy
mark up (verb)
mass-meeting16
medicine, to take your17
melon18
mending19
mileage
mixer (in the social sense)20
mossback
mutt1
nearby (close at hand)2
N.G.3
nigger in the woodpile4
nothing doing
not on your life
O.K.
old-timer5
one-horse6
on the job
on the level7
on the q.t.
out for8
overcoat9
This list, obviously, was by no means exhaustive. It might have been doubled in length, or tripled, or even quadrupled without putting any strain on the record. Most of the borrowings of the 1930s were probably on the level of slang, but even on that level many of them were so pungent and useful that they quickly found lodgment. “It is difficult to imagine,” wrote Professor Ernest Weekley of Nottingham in 1930,10 “how we got on so long without the word stunt, how we expressed the characters so conveniently summed up in dope-fiend and high-brow, or any other possible way of describing that mixture of the cheap pathetic and the ludicrous which is now universally labeled sob-stuff.”11 Other English philologues of the era were a good deal less hospitable. In 1931 Dr. C. T. Onions, one of the editors of the NED, described it as a “grievance” that English was being “invaded — and degraded — by the current idiom from the United States,”12 and so late as 1936 he was trying to get rid of that grievance by arguing stoutly that the extent of the invasion was “much exaggerated.”13 But even Dr. Onions had to admit that “a certain proportion of the American language of the film caption” would “catch on1 and become permanent.” He noted that to put it across, to get it across, and to put it over2 were already “firmly-domiciled” in England and apparently “entered upon a large career of metaphorical use.” Other Americanisms that he spoke of politely, if not enthusiastically, were bedspread,3 to make good,4 grape-fruit,5 dope,6 mass-meeting, best girl,7 to fire (an employé)8 and to fizzle out.9 But he refused to have any truck with to stand for, glad rags or hot squat, and he described to spill a bibful as “tinged with vulgarity.” Sir William Craigie made it plain in 1936 that he did not agree with Dr. Onions that the number of Americanisms taken into English was “much exaggerated.” To the contrary, he told a correspondent of the London Morning Post10 that “current English contains many more real Americanisms than most people imagine.” Many other authorities, high and low, agreed with him, then and afterward. “England,” wrote Alistair Cooke in 1935,11 “has been absorbing American words at an unbelievable rate.… There are thousands of these borrowings — debts which I am afraid we are never going to pay back to America.… Every Englishman … unconsciously uses thirty or forty Americanisms a day, however much he is opposed to American idiom on principle.” In 1936 H. W. Horwill reported from London in the New York Times12 that the sales of American books were increasing in England, and ascribed it to the ever wider English familiarity with and use of Americanisms. “However much the pedants may rail and the grammarians quake,” wrote an observant Englishman in 1939,1 “American is steadily entering more and more into the Englishman’s written and spoken language. Nobody now would jibe at governmental, hold-up or junk, and the use in conversation of such a phrase as ‘an idea resurrected2 from the Nineteenth Century’ breaks no one’s heart except the ultra-purist’s, while the Times Educational Supplement (of all papers), has used to enthuse in its book reviews.” “The English language,” added a resigned Scotswoman in 1944, “is probably unique in being a blend of two languages — not counting Latin and Greek — and is rapidly absorbing a third — American.”3
The English newspapers frequently print anecdotes designed to show the extent to which American slang has been absorbed from the movies by English children, especially on the lower levels. One tells of a schoolboy who was asked to put the following sentences into his own words: “I see a cow. The cow is pretty. The cow can run.” His reply was: “Boy, lamp de cow. Ain’t she a honey? An’ I ask you, kin she take it on de lam!”4 Another has to do with a boy arrested at Southend for riding a bicycle without lights. His defense was that someone had pinched his dynamo, i.e., his generator.
The Magistrate. You mean stolen it.
The Prisoner. That’s right — pinched it.
The Magistrate. Stolen.
The Prisoner. Yes. Pinched it. Pinched it at the railway-station.5
The arrival of American troops in England and Northern Ireland in 1942 helped along the process that American movies and comic-strips had started. A correspondent of the Belfast News-Letter, early in 1943,6 reported that the erstwhile sonsy wee lassies of the Scotch-Irish North had become swell dames, and that “farmers’ children deep in the heart of Ulster” had learned “Aw, lay off.” A month or so later a correspondent of the Belfast Telegraph7 reported that truck for lorry had come into universal use in Ulster, and that the American guy, meaning simply anybody, had begun to displace the English guy, meaning a grotesque and ridiculous person. Says H. W. Horwill:1
The naturalization of American usage in England … is a process that never slackens.… (1) The use of adverbs to intensify the meaning of verbs, e.g., to close down, to test out, has made rapid headway among English writers and speakers since the beginning of the present century. (2) There is an increasing tendency to adopt those combinations of verb and adverb which Americans prefer to a single verb or a more roundabout expression, e.g., to turn down rather than to reject, and to put across rather than to secure the adoption of. (3) Those sections of the English daily press which have been becoming more and more Americanized in other respects are following the American example in the choice of short words for headlines. (4) Certain uses of familiar words, which at the beginning of the century (or, at the outside, fifty years ago) were peculiar to the United States, are now either completely naturalized … or evidently on their way to naturalization. (5) … Many words and locutions invented in America … have become so thoroughly incorporated in the language that few of us are aware that they are actually American coinages. Every one recognizes, of course, that such terms as banjo, blizzard, bogus, bunkum and lynch law came to us from across the Atlantic, but it would surprise most Englishmen to be told that they owe to American to belittle, boarding-house, business man, governmental, graveyard, hurricane-deck, law-abiding, lengthy, overcoat, telegram and whole-souled.2
Horwill, after discussing the influence of the movies and talkies in this Americanization of English, adds that two other factors have had an important effect: “the increasing attention … paid in England to American books and magazines,” and “the fact that … many members of the staffs of English newspapers are either Americans or English journalists who have spent several years in the practice of their profession in the United States.”3 An example of this class is provided by H. W. Seaman. His ten years of American experience made him a master of the American language, and since his return to England he has recorded a large number of observations of its influence upon English. I leave the subject by offering some of his notes:1
To stop, meaning to stay, has not been adopted in England, but the railways issued stopover tickets.
Peanut has completely ousted monkey-nut.
Chain-store is heard much more often than multiple-shop.2 A stores is almost obsolete. Woolworth’s is a store, not a stores, or even a shop. The corner grocery, however, remains a shop. We speak of the Army and Navy Stores and the Civil Service Stores, but of Selfridge’s store or Gamage’s store: these are department-stores.3 A department-stores sounds old-fashioned.
Cooler, meaning a jail, is now fairly current in England, and even calaboose is understood, thanks to a popular song.
No English dramatic critic would shrink from writing of a flop.
Snag is much used here of late, but only in its figurative sense. Few Englishmen have any idea that it means a sunken or half sunken log in a river.4
Headline in Daily Express, May 16, 1944: Russia Puts Heat on Sweden. No quotes or explanation now necessary.
I came across hamburger, in Roman, with no quotes, in the Times the other day. No eating-place here serves hamburgers, but everybody knows what they are, or nearly. All same hot-dogs. But barbecue, word and thing, is still unknown.
The Daily Chronicle recently explained that a baloney was a sort of breakfast sausage, but all movie-goers know the use of the word.
Kids now say choo-choo instead of puff-puff.5
Boys write “So-and-so is a sap,” or a sis, on walls.
These are now used without a thought of their American origin: bat, to bawl out, blowhard, bunk, darn, golly, gosh, grouch, hick (old English, but apparently reintroduced from America), ice-cream soda, to knock, lid, once-over, peach (of a), pull (influence), roughneck, simp and wop.
These are used as conscious Americanisms: to beat it, bootlegging, dumb-bell, to jail for, to fix, four-flusher, go-getter, good mixer, graft, hunch, nut, room-mate, whale of a.
Tuxedo was used without quotes in the head and body of a story on the sports page of the London Sunday Chronicle, May 14, 1944.6
Bathing-suit is now heard far more often than swim-suit.1
Through, meaning finished, is now respectable English. This has come to pass within ten years or less.2
London Daily Express, May 20, 1944: “The Abbey is an ashcan.” Ashcan is now preferred to dustbin.
Radio has driven wireless virtually out of use. Even the London Times, which clings to aether, has surrendered to radio.
Stag-party is understood, but has not been widely adopted. Stag alone, as an adjective or noun in the American sense, is unknown.
Punch’s theatre article used to be headed “Our Booking Office.” Today everybody speaks and writes of the box-office of a theatre. Only a railway ticket-office is a booking-office.
What it takes is now used freely. Few Englishmen realize that the idiom in “Britain can take it” is American.
Double-cross and four-flush are now respectable English, though poker is not an English popular game.
Good-looker is now fairly common in England, but not good buy for a bargain.
Pin-up girl is in wide use.
To lay off, meaning to desist from, is used editorially in the London Sunday Times, June 11, 1944.
Racket, for a swindling conspiracy, is well known and much used, but so is its English equivalent, ramp.3
Despite the evidence offered in the preceding section that American has had a heavy influence upon English in recent years, it remains a fact that the two languages still show many differences, not only in vocabulary but also in idiom, accent and intonation. When an untraveled American finds himself among Englishmen for the first time these dissimilarities inevitably puzzle him. The English in many cases use different words for the same common objects, they give to common words quite different meanings, they make frequent use of words and phrases that are seldom or never heard in America, they have different répertoires of everyday intensives and cuss-words, they pronounce many words differently and their talk is based upon different speech-tunes.1 The same thing, of course, runs the other way, but I believe that Englishmen, talking one with another, find American considerably less difficult than Americans find English, if only because they have become so familiar with large numbers of American terms and idioms. Unhappily, not a few of them, especially on the more literate levels, resent the notion that English and American are different quite as much as they resent the notion that American is influencing their speech, and anyone who undertakes to investigate either subject is pretty sure to be denounced for his pains. In each of the four editions of “The American Language” I have printed lists of the surviving differences between the current vocabularies of American and English, and each time I have been belabored by such chauvinists as a false prophet, and, indeed, an idiot. More than one of them has added the suggestion that my real motive in undertaking such cruel labors was to drive a wedge between the two great branches of the Anglo-Saxon peoples, and thus prosper the enemies of democracy and Christianity, and more than one American Anglomaniac has played with the same idea. There is in each country, in fact, a highly articulate group which holds that any notice of linguistic disparities between them, however academic, is seditious, immoral and against God. Fortunately, this doctrine does not seem to be shared by their official spokesmen, for when World War II brought American and British troops into contact for the second time in a generation, the General Staffs of both armies, recalling the unpleasantness that had followed misunderstandings in World War I, proceeded at once to issue what amounted, in substance, to American-English dictionaries.2
That of the American Army was included in a pamphlet entitled “A Short Guide to Great Britain,” prepared by the Special Service Division, Service of Supply, and first published in 1942. It did not pretend to be exhaustive, but nevertheless it managed to present a list of no less than 183 everyday American terms, unknown or unfamiliar in England, that are represented in English by equivalents similarly strange in the United States. Soon afterward the Special Service Division prepared like pocket-guides to Northern Ireland, Australia and New Zealand, each containing notes on language differences, and all three were issued jointly by the Army and Navy. On June 15, 1943 there followed a dictionary for American supply men, published in the various editions of the Army paper, the Stars and Stripes,1 and at other times yet other vocabularies were published for other special purposes.2 Meanwhile, the English brought out various pamphlets of the same general tenor, the most widely circulated of which was “Meet the U. S. Army,” written by Louis MacNeice and issued on July 22, 1943. This was put on sale at the low price of fourpence, and had a large circulation in England, Scotland and Northern Ireland, not only among British troops but also among civilians. It was not the first thing of its sort to appear in England under official auspices. Early in 1942, when R.A.F. cadets began coming to the United States for training, the Air Ministry prepared a little pamphlet for them under the title of “Notes For Your Guidance,” and soon afterward the Ministry of Information issued a word-list for the information of British artists invited to exhibit at an Anglo American show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In January, 1943 the N.A.A.F.I.1 brought out a pamphlet for the guidance of its staff in dealing with American soldiers, and later a number of other such treatises were published by other organizations. The pamphlet for air cadets contained this:
What can we say about studying the American people as a whole?… The best key to a nation’s mind is its language. That, you will say, is English. Not at all. It may be called English, but it is American.
The guide for N.A.A.F.I. girls warned them not to be shocked if American soldiers opened a conversation with “How-ya, baby?” If this, it said, seemed saucy, let them remember that it was just as normal to a lad from Iowa as “Lovely day, isn’t it?”2 To these English guides to speech differences the New Zealanders presently added a glossary headed “How We Talk” in a pamphlet entitled “Meet New Zealand.” It explained for the information of American soldiers sent to the Dominion the meaning of such characteristic New Zealanderisms as to argue the toss, benzine (for gasoline), to feel crook, dinkum, jakealoo, lollies, pommie, to shout, to right and up the pole.3
So far as I know, the English foes of the notion that American and English differ have not complained of any of these official lists, but they are sure to denounce any list less authoritatively supported, so I have sought to baffle them by basing the one that follows on the vocabulary in the War Department’s “Short Guide to Great Britain,” and by offering printed evidence, usually English, for most of the other differences noted. In not a few cases it is genuinely difficult to establish the facts, for a great many Americanisms, as we saw in the last section, have got into English use in recent years, and not a few terms that seem distinctively American today are actually English archaisms. It is easy for the English guardians of the language to produce evidence that these archaisms were used, say, by Chaucer or Shakespeare, and to argue thereby that they are not Americanisms at all. In case after case the attitude of such earnest but humorless men toward a given Americanism recalls that of Holy Church toward embarrassing scientific discoveries, as described by Andrew D. White, viz., they first denounce it violently, then admit it quietly, and then end by denying that they were ever against it. This, in brief, has been the history in England of the early reliable and caucus, and no doubt many an Americanism that is still below the salt will follow the pattern. That there are still wide divergences between American and English usage on the level of everyday speech, despite the powerful influence upon the English vocabulary of American movies, was demonstrated beyond cavil by Horwill in his “Dictionary of Modern American Usage” and again in his “Anglo-American Interpreter.”1 There are slips and misunderstandings in both books, and inevitably so,2 but on the whole Horwill is well-informed and painstaking, and I am glad to acknowledge a debt to him. In the following list3 all doublets taken from the Army’s “Short Guide to Great Britain” are indicated by an asterisk (*).
| American | English |
| A.B. (bachelor of arts) | B.A.4 |
| *absorbent cotton | cotton wool5 |
| ad (advertisement) | advert6 |
| admit to the bar (law) | call to the bar1 |
| advertising manager (or director) | advertisement manager2 |
| *aisle (theatre) | gangway3 |
| *alcohol-lamp | spirit-lamp |
| *ale | beer, or bitter |
| Almshouse | workhouse4 |
| alumnus (of a college) | graduate5 |
| A.M. (master of arts) | M.A.6 |
| ambulance-chaser | accident tout7 |
| anxious-bench, or -seat, or mourners-bench, or –seat | penitent-form8 |
| *apartment | flat9 |
| apartment-hotel | service-flats10 |
| *apartment-house | block of flats11 |
| appropriation (legislative) | vote12 |
| *ash-can | dust-bin1 |
| ash-cart, or –truck | dust-cart2 |
| *ashman | dustman3 |
| *atomizer | scent-spray4 |
| *automobile | motor-car5 |
| baby-carriage | perambulator (pram), or baby-coach6 |
| *baggage | luggage7 |
| *baggage-car | luggage-van8 |
| *bakery | baker’s shop |
| banked (curve in a road) | superelevated9 |
| *bartender | barman, or potman1 |
| baseboard (of a wall) | skirting2 |
| bath (sea) | bathe3 |
| *bathrobe | dressing-gown4 |
| *bathtub | bath5 |
| *battery (automobile) | accumulator6 |
| *beach | seaside |
| bed-bug, or chinch | bug7 |
| *beer | lager |
| Beet | beetroot |
| bellboy, or bellhop | page, or buttons8 |
| *bill (money) | banknote, or note9 |
| *billboard | hoarding10 |
| bill-fold | wallet11 |
| billion | milliard1 |
| bingo | house, or housey-housey2 |
| *biscuit | scone, or tea-cake3 |
| blackjack | life-preserver4 |
| blank | form5 |
| blow-torch | brazing lamp6 |
| boards | deals7 |
| boot | Wellington, or Wellington boot8 |
| boulevard, or main road | arterial road, or trunk road9 |
| *bouncer | chucker-out10 |
| *bowling-alley | skittle-alley11 |
| box-car | covered waggon12 |
| brief-case | portfolio13 |
| *broiled (meat) | grilled14 |
| bucket | pail15 |
| bug | insect1 |
| building (in a proper name) | house2 |
| bulletin-board | notice-board3 |
| bureau | chest of drawers4 |
| business suit | lounge suit5 |
| caboose (railroad) | brake-van6 |
| cab-stand | cab-rank7 |
| calendar (of a court) | cause-list8 |
| call-boy (railroad) | knocker-up9 |
| can (vessel) | tin10 |
| candy | sweets11 |
| *candy (hard) | boiled sweets |
| *candy-store | sweet-shop12 |
| *cane | stick1 |
| *can-opener | tin-opener, or key |
| *car (railway passenger) | carriage |
| carnival | fun-fair2 |
| *carom (billiards) | cannon |
| carrousel | merry-go-round, or roundabout3 |
| catalogue (school or college) | calendar4 |
| catnip | catmint5 |
| * chain-store | multiple-shop, or -stores6 |
| check (restaurant) | bill7 |
| * check baggage (verb) | register luggage |
| *checkers (game) | draughts8 |
| check-room | left-luggage office, or -room9 |
| cheese-cloth | butter-muslin10 |
| * chicken-yard | fowl-run, or chicken-run11 |
| cigar-store | tobacconist’s shop |
| *cigarette-butt | cigarette-end |
| city hall | town hall, or guildhall1 |
| clapboard | shiplap2 |
| clean-up campaign | cleansing campaign3 |
| clipping (newspaper) | cutting4 |
| clipping-bureau | press-cutting agency5 |
| closed season (for game) | close season |
| *closet | cupboard |
| clothespin | clothespeg6 |
| *coal oil7 | paraffin |
| *collar-button | collar-stud, or back-stud8 |
| commencement (school) | speech day, or prize-day9 |
| common stock | ordinary shares |
| commutation ticket | season ticket1 |
| commuter | season-ticket holder2 |
| *conductor (railroad) | guard3 |
| cone (ice-cream) | cornet4 |
| confidence game | confidence trick5 |
| consent decree (courts) | agreed verdict |
| cook-book | cookery-book6 |
| *cop | bobby |
| copy-reader (newspaper) | sub-editor |
| *corn | maize, or Indian corn |
| corner (street) | turning7 |
| *cornmeal | Indian meal |
| cornstarch | cornflour8 |
| corporation | limited liability company9 |
| councilman (municipal) | councillor10 |
| *cracker | biscuit |
| cruising (taxi) | crawling11 |
| crystal (watch) | watch-glass12 |
| custom-made | bespoke1 |
| cut (railroad) | cutting2 |
| daylight-house | sun-trap3 |
| * daylight-saving time | Summer time4 |
| *deck (of cards) | pack5 |
| delegation | deputation |
| deliveryman (say of milk or bread) | roundsman6 |
| * derby (hat) | bowler, or hard hat7 |
| * dessert | sweet course8 |
| denatured alcohol | methylated spirit |
| detour (road) | road diversion, or loopway9 |
| dime-novel | penny-dreadful10 |
| dining-car, or diner | restaurant-car11 |
| dipper (water) | pannikin12 |
| *dishpan | washing-up bowl, or washer13 |
| distributor (of merchandise) | stockist1 |
| district (legislative) | division, or constituency2 |
| district attorney, or State’s attorney | public prosecutor3 |
| Dock | wharf4 |
| Domestic mails | inland mails5 |
| down-town | the City6 |
| *drawers (men’s)7 | Pants |
| Dredge | dredger8 |
| *druggist | chemist9 |
| *drug-store | chemist’s shop10 |
| *drygoods-store | draper’s shop11 |
| dumbwaiter | service lift12 |
| Dump | refuse tip13 |
| editorial (noun) | leading article, or leader14 |
| electric heater | radiator1 |
| *elevator | lift2 |
| engineer (locomotive) | engine-driver3 |
| Eraser | Indian-rubber4 |
| espantoon, or night-stick (policeman’s) | Truncheon |
| Excelsior | wood wool5 |
| expelled (from college) | sent down |
| express company | carrier6 |
| Extension (university) | extra-mural studies |
| Extension-wire | flex7 |
| faculty (school or college) | staff8 |
| Fall | Autumn9 |
| farm-hand | agricultural labourer10 |
| *fender (automobile) | wing, or mudguard11 |
| filling-station | petrol-pump1 |
| fire-bug | fire-raiser2 |
| fire department | fire-brigade3 |
| first floor | ground floor4 |
| *fish-dealer | Fishmonger |
| *five-and-ten (store) | bazaar5 |
| Flashlight | torch6 |
| floor-space | carpet-area7 |
| *floorwalker | Shopwalker8 |
| flophouse | doss house |
| *frame house | wooden house9 |
| fraternal order | friendly society |
| *freight-car | goods-waggon10 |
| *fruitseller (or -dealer) | fruiterer11 |
| *fruit-store, or -stand | fruiterer’s12 |
| full time (adverb) | full out13 |
| fusion (political) | coalition |
| game (e.g., football) | match |
| garbage can | dust-bin1 |
| garbage man | dustman2 |
| *garter (men’s) | sock-suspender3 |
| *gasoline, or gas | petrol4 |
| *gear-shift (automobile) | gear-lever |
| general delivery (post office) | poste restante5 |
| *generator (automobile) | dynamo6 |
| ginger-snap | ginger-nut7 |
| given name, or first name | Christian name8 |
| gondola (railroad) | mineral-waggon9 |
| grab-bag | lucky-dip10 |
| grade (road) | gradient11 |
| grade (school) | form, standard or class12 |
| grade-crossing (railroad) | level crossing13 |
| graduate (of a school)1 | old boy |
| grocery | grocer’s shop, or grocer’s2 |
| *ground-wire (radio) | earth-wire |
| guard, or deputy warden (prison) | warder |
| hall, or hallway (in a private house) | passage3 |
| *hardware | ironmongery4 |
| hardware-dealer | ironmonger |
| hash | shepherd’s pie5 |
| *headliner (theatre, and figuratively) | topliner |
| *highball | whiskey and soda |
| hike (verb) | tramp |
| hitch-hike | lorry-jump or -hop6 |
| hockey | ice-hockey7 |
| hog-pen | pig-sty8 |
| hog-raiser, or -grower | pig-breeder9 |
| holdup man, or stickup man, or highjacker | raider10 |
| *hood (automobile) | bonnet1 |
| hook-and-ladder | fire-escape2 |
| hope-chest | bottom-drawer3 |
| horn (automobile) or siren | hooter4 |
| *hospital (private) | nursing-home |
| hot-water bag | stomach-warmer5 |
| house-wrecker | housebreaker or house-demolisher6 |
| *huckster7 | coster, or hawker |
| *hunting | shooting8 |
| ice-cream | ice9 |
| identification-tag | identity disk10 |
| Inc. | Ltd.11 |
| information-bureau | inquiry-office1 |
| inning | innings2 |
| *instalment plan | hire-purchase system, or hire system3 |
| insurance (life) | assurance4 |
| *intermission (theatre) | interval |
| internal revenue | inland revenue5 |
| *janitor | caretaker, or porter6 |
| jimmy (burglar’s) | jemmy7 |
| *junk | rubbish |
| landscape architect | landscape gardener8 |
| landslide | landslip9 |
| lease | let10 |
| *legal holiday | bank holiday11 |
| letter-man (college) | blue12 |
| life-guard | life-saver13 |
| life-preserver | life-belt1 |
| limited (in the name of a train) | express2 |
| *line up (verb) | queue up3 |
| *living-room | sitting-room4 |
| *long-distance (telephone)5 | trunk |
| *low gear (automobile) | first speed |
| lumber | timber6 |
| lunch | snack7 |
| machine-tender, or -operator | machine-minder8 |
| mad | angry |
| post, or letters9 | |
| *mail a letter | post a letter |
| mail-box | letter-box, or pillar-box10 |
| robber and mail-wagon are. | |
| mail-car, or railway-postoffice | postal van1 |
| *marriage certificate | marriage lines2 |
| master of ceremonies (of a show) | compère3 |
| maybe | perhaps4 |
| *molasses | treacle5 |
| *monkey-wrench | spanner, adjustable spanner, or screw-spanner6 ” motorman |
| driver7 | |
| *movie | cinema8 |
| moving | moving house9 |
| *mucilage | gum10 |
| *muffler (automobile) | silencer |
| napkin (table) | serviette11 |
| *necktie | tie1 |
| newsdealer | news-agent |
| *newsstand | kiosk2 |
| notions | fancy goods, or novelties, or haberdashery3 |
| oarlock | rowlock4 |
| *oatmeal (boiled) | porridge5 |
| occupant (of a building) | occupier6 |
| office (doctor’s or dentist’s) | surgery7 |
| office (lawyer’s) | chambers8 |
| *oil-pan (automobile) | sump |
| on (a street) | in9 |
| one-way ticket | single ticket |
| operating cost | running, or working expense10 |
| *orchestra seat (theatre) | stall11 |
| ordinance (municipal) | by-law1 |
| overcoat | greatcoat2 |
| *package | parcel3 |
| pantry | larder4 |
| paraffin | white wax5 |
| parking-lot | car-park6 |
| parlor-car | saloon-carriage7 |
| parole (for a criminal) | ticket-of-leave8 |
| patrolman (police) | constable9 |
| peanut | monkey-nut10 |
| *pebbly beach11 | shingle |
| penitentiary | prison12 |
| pen-point | nib13 |
| period (punctuation) | full stop1 |
| personal (business) | private2 |
| *phonograph | gramophone3 ” |
| *pie (fruit) | tart4 |
| pin-boy (bowling) | thrower-up5 |
| *pitcher | jug6 |
| plumbing, or sewerage (house) | drains |
| porch-climber | cat-burglar |
| porterhouse (steak) | sirloin7 |
| postpaid | post-free8 |
| *poolroom | billiards-saloon9 |
| *potato-chip | crisp10 |
| pot-pie | meat-pie11 |
| preferred stock | preference shares12 |
| president (of a corporation) | chairman13 |
| pry (to raise or separate) | prise14 |
| public comfort station | public convenience |
| public-school | council-school1 |
| publisher (newspaper) | proprietor2 |
| pumps | court-shoes3 |
| puncture (tire) | flat |
| *pushcart | barrow |
| *race-track | race-course4 |
| *radio | wireless5 |
| railroad | railway6 |
| *raincoat | mackintosh, or mac, or waterproof |
| *raise (in pay) | rise7 |
| rare (of meat) | underdone8 |
| recess (school) | break1 |
| *roadster (automobile) | two-seater2 |
| *roast (of meat) | joint3 |
| *roller-coaster | switchback-railway or scenic-railway4 |
| roll of bills | sheaf of notes |
| room-clerk (hotel) | reception-clerk |
| *roomer | lodger5 |
| rooster | cock6 |
| rotogravure | intaglio7 |
| roundhouse (railroad) | running shed8 |
| *round trip | return trip9 |
| rubber-check | stumer-cheque10 |
| *rubberneck-wagon, or car, or bus | char-a-banc11 |
| *rubbers | galoshes |
| *rumble-seat | dickey |
| *run (in a stocking) | ladder12 |
| run (political verb) | stand |
| rutabaga | Swede1 |
| *saloon | public-house, or pub2 |
| saloon-keeper | publican |
| scab (labor) | blackleg3 |
| *scallion | Spring onion4 |
| schedule (railroad) | time-table5 |
| scholarship | studentship6 |
| school-ma’am | school-mistress |
| *scrambled eggs | buttered eggs |
| scratch-pad | scribbling-block |
| scrimmage (football) | scrum7 |
| *second floor | first floor8 |
| *sedan (automobile) | saloon-car9 |
| sell out (verb) | sell up10 |
| *shade (window) | blind11 |
| shingle (sign) | brass plate12 |
| shoe | boot13 |
| shoe-clerk | bootmaker’s assistant1 |
| *shoestring | bootlace, or shoelace2 |
| *shot (athletics) | weight |
| *shoulder (of road) | verge |
| sidewalk | pavement3 |
| silent partner | sleeping partner4 |
| *silverware | plate5 |
| sirloin | rump6 |
| *slacks | bags |
| slingshot | catapult7 |
| *smoked herring | kipper8 |
| snap (a bargain, a sure thing) | snip9 |
| *soda-biscuit, or -cracker | cream-cracker10 |
| soda-fountain | soda-bar1 |
| *soft drinks | minerals2 |
| *spark-plug | sparking-plug |
| special delivery (post-office) | express delivery, or express post3 |
| speed-cop | mobile police4 |
| *spigot (or faucet) | tap5 |
| spool (of thread) | reel6 |
| sports goods | sporting requisites7 |
| *squash | vegetable marrow8 |
| *stairway | staircase, or stairs9 |
| stenographer | shorthand-writer10 |
| *store | shop11 |
| straight (of a drink) | neat12 |
| straw hat | boater1 |
| stream-lined | swept-out2 |
| street-cleaner | road-sweeper3 |
| *string-bean | French bean4 |
| student (school) | schoolboy, or -girl5 |
| *subway | underground6 |
| *sugar-bowl | sugar-basin |
| surplus (corporation) | reserve7 |
| *suspenders | braces8 |
| *sweater | pull-over9 |
| sweet (of butter) | fresh10 |
| *syrup | treacle11 |
| *taffy | toffee |
| taxes (local) | rates |
| *taxi-stand | cab-rank |
| telephone-booth | call-box12 |
| *tenderloin (of beef) | undercut, or fillet |
| *tenpins | ninepins13 |
| thriller | shocker1 |
| *thumb-tack, or push-pin | drawing-pin2 |
| ticket-agent (railroad) | booking-clerk3 |
| ticket-broker (or speculator) | library4 |
| *ticket-office (railway) | booking office5 |
| ticket-seller | booking-clerk6 |
| tie (railroad) | sleeper7 |
| tie-up (traffic) | hold-up8 |
| *toilet | lavatory, or closet9 |
| *top (automobile) | hood |
| touchdown (football) | try |
| tracklayer (railroad) | platelayer |
| trained nurse | hospital nurse10 |
| *transom (door) | fanlight11 |
| transport (Army ship) | troopship, or trooper |
| *trolley, or street car12 | tram, or tram-car |
| trolley-line | tramway |
| *truck | lorry1 |
| truck-farmer | market-gardener2 |
| truck-line | road-haulier3 |
| trunk | box4 |
| tube (radio) | wireless valve5 |
| *undershirt | vest, or singlet6 |
| union station | joint station7 |
| *union-suit | combinations8 |
| vacationist9 | holiday-maker |
| *vaudeville | variety10 |
| *vaudeville-theatre | music-hall |
| *vest | waistcoat11 |
| *vomit (verb) | to be sick |
| warden (prison)12 | governor |
| *washbowl13 | washbasin |
| wash-day | washing-day14 |
| *wash-rag | face-cloth15 |
| *washstand | wash-hand stand1 |
| wastebasket | waste-paper basket2 |
| *water-heater | geyser3 |
| weather bureau | meteorological office4 |
| weather man | clerk of the weather |
| white-collar (worker) | black-coat5 |
| windshield (automobile) | wind-screen6 |
| witness-stand | witness-box7 |
| wrecking-crew | breakdown gang8 |
A list similar to the foregoing, made up of words which occur in both American and English, but in quite different senses, would run to like length. Overalls, to an Englishman, means “tight trousers which fit over the boots,”9 corn means any kind of grain for human consumption, lumber means disused articles of furniture, a longshoreman may mean a man who takes oysters along the seashore, a prep-school does not train for college but for what we call prep-schools,10 a cranberry is a fruit about half the size of ours, partridge never means grouse or quail, a dodger is always a rascal and never an advertising leaflet or a corn-cake, a frontier is always a boundary between two countries, an orchestra is always a band of music and never a section of seats in a theatre, a check (always spelled cheque) is never a bar-check or rain-check, and so on and so on.1 Horwill gives many other examples in his excellent “Dictionary of Modern American Usage.” He explains, for example, that precinct, to an Englishman, means an enclosed space, especially one including a church, and that the American sense of a political subdivision is unknown to him. The type called ruby in England is agate in America, and the American ruby is brilliant in England, but these old names are going out, for the printers of both countries now designate type-sizes by the point system, in which the English ruby is 5½ and the American 3½. The American use of brotherhood to designate a railroad trades union is unknown in England. So is dues used for what the English call a subscription to a club or other such organization. They know, of course, the word senior, but they never use it to designate a last-year college student. Homestead, they know too, but not in our special sense of a grant of free land. They never use to fit in the sense of to prepare for college. They distinguish between hunting foxes or stags and shooting birds. They never call a judge a jurist, but reserve the term for “one versed in the science of law,” i.e., a legal writer or professor. They do not regard politics as an opprobrious word, they know nothing of office politics, or campus politics, or church politics, nor do they play politics. What we call a citizen they commonly call a subject. They seldom use to conclude in the sense of to decide, and they think of tardy as meaning slow-moving rather than behind time. Thrifty, in the sense of a thrifty plant, is confined to a few English dialects, and town is never used in the New England sense of a rural area. A football gridiron, to them, is simply a football field, and they know nothing of to knife and pork in the political senses. We have many words in blue that they do not use, e.g., blue laws, blue-sky laws, blue grass and blue-nose. They know nothing of the policeman’s nightstick, nor of night-riders, nor of scratch-pads.
Even the common measures differ in England and the United States, sometimes in name but more often in value. When, in 1942, World War II took officers and men of the Quartermaster Corps, U.S.A., to England, they were greatly puzzled by these differences until Colonel Wayne Allen prepared his bilingual glossary, already mentioned, for the Quartermaster Review.1 I quote the following from his accompanying discourse:
Goods or produce usually sold in the United States by capacity, such as bushels, are here sold by weight, sometimes expressed in stones or scores. A stone is equivalent to 14 pounds, and a score is equal to 20 pounds. Packaging of articles in half-stone (7 lbs.) or quarter-stone (3½ lbs.) weights is customary.…
We refer to nails in terms of pennyweights, which is a vestige of the past and originally meant the weight of a silver penny, equivalent approximately to½0 ounce. The British describe nails by their length. We had a great deal of difficulty in correlating these two methods, because our people never knew how long a six-penny nail was, but after getting together with the British and inspecting samples of our nails and samples of theirs we were able to arrive at a common understanding.…
We describe rope in measurements of the diameter and the weight in pounds, whereas the British describe it in measurement of circumference and the length in fathoms.… Rope, manila, 5/16" diameter is, in British terminology, cordage, sisal, white, 1" circumference.2
Colonel Allen seems to have been in error about the value of a stone, which is actually a variable quantity. Said a writer in the London Observer in 1935:3
Whilst a stone-weight of a living man is 14 lb., that of a dead ox is 8 lb. A stone of cheese is 16 lb., of glass 5 lb., of iron 14 lb., of hemp 32 lb., of wool sold by growers and woolstaplers 14 lb., but sold to each other 15 lb.
The same writer offered the following notes upon other English weights and measures:
A barrel of beef is 200 lb., butter 224 lb., flour 196 lb., gunpowder 100 lb., soft soap 256 lb., beer 36 gallons, and tar 26½ gallons, while a barrel of herrings is 500 fish.
Butter in England is sold by the pound of 16 oz., by the roll of 24 oz., by the stone and by the hundredweight, which is not 100 lb., as in Canada and the United States, but 112 lb.
Even the English gallon differs from the American gallon. In 1937, when large numbers of Americans went to London for the coronation of King George VI, some of them taking their automobiles, a writer in the London Daily Express thus sought to enlighten them:1
Gallon: you will receive 277½ cubic inches of petrol. In the States you would have to be content with 231 cubic inches of gas.
Pint: English, 20 fluid ounces; American, 16 ditto.2
One of the most striking differences between even nearly related languages is their varying use of fundamentally identical prepositions: it is almost unheard of for both members of an apparent pair to be used similarly in all situations. The German über, for example, may serve for above, over, across or about (concerning) in English, and the English to may call for zu, nach or um zu in German.3 A few examples will show how, in this field, English usage sometimes differs from American:
Helstonleigh, Emsworth, Hants … will be offered to auction in October.4
Since the sale of the property it has been offered for resale by auction.5
He knows everything it contains off by heart.6
Strube … was entertained to dinner by his colleagues of the Express.7
“What is the use of waving a red flag to a bull?” he asked.8
31 ft. 6 in. frontage to Curzon St.9
Many other examples might be cited. An Englishman, as we have seen, does not live on a street, but in it, though he lives on a road. He does not get on a train or aboard it, but in it, and when he leaves it he does not get off it but out of it.1 There are also curious differences in the use of up and down. Says R. Howard Claudius:2
Our general rule is to say up when we are going north and down when we go south; with the English, in most of their goings about, a quite different idea underlies their feeling of direction. It is an idea they inherit, through their railroads, from old stagecoach days, that of one end of the run being of more importance than the other, and, consequently, being the up end. London is up for points lying around it for many miles in all directions, and every other city enjoys the same prerogative. Every railroad running into a city has its up-line and its down-line, and every Englishman knows which is which — as long as he is in that particular city. But how far can he go from that city, toward the city at the other end of the run, before the up-line becomes the down-line and the down-line the up-line? When in London he may freely speak of going down to Liverpool, but in Liverpool that would be patronizing.3
In the United States up and down tracks are not unknown, but it is much more common to use eastbound, westbound, northbound, and southbound. The latter terms are also used in the London underground, but otherwise they are foreign to English practise. The DAE, rather curiously, marks eastbound, westbound and southbound, in railroad use, Americanisms, but not northbound; that, however, may be only one more proof that lexicography is not yet an exact science. It traces all four to the early 80s, but I suspect that they are actually much older. There are some other peculiarities, in American, in the use of indicators of geographical direction. Our downtown and uptown are seldom, if ever, encountered in England: the DAE records both in American use in the early part of the last century.4 Down East, as noun, adjective and adverb, dates from the same period, and so does down-country, but up-country seems to have been in English use, at all events in the colonies, for many years. The DAE does not list up-State, but it shows that up-boat is recorded in 1857, upbound in 1884, and up-river in 1848. Up-south and up-east are also to be found, but only, apparently, as nonce-words. Down is in common use in New England when the journey is to Boston or to Maine. Says Claudius:
Out to the coast is to the Pacific what down to the shore is to the Atlantic except that you must not be too near the Pacific when you say the former nor too far from the Atlantic when you say the latter. This out seems to be a survival from frontier days; its opposite is back. In Denver we say we are going back to Omaha. Up applies to altitude as well as to latitude; in Colorado Springs we go up to Cripple Creek. Over very obviously applies where some water must be crossed by bridge or ferry; New Yorkers go over to Jersey City or Brooklyn. But, not so obviously, Philadelphians go over to New York, and New Yorkers return the compliment, if that is what it is.
The use of at before points of the compass, as in at the North, is an Americanism, and Bartlett, in his second edition of 1859, recorded that it then “offended an English ear.” The DAE traces at the East in American use to 1636, at the southward to 1697, at the South to 1835, at the West to 1839 and at the North to 1841. The form seems to be going out, though Atcheson L. Hench has recorded its use so recently as 1910.1 The English West End, which the NED traces to 1807, is in common use in the United States, but West Side seems to be preferred, and East End, traced to 1883 in England, is almost unknown. East Side is traced by the DAE to 1894, but is probably much older, for West Side is traced to 1858. North Side and South Side are also in use in the United States, though the DAE lists neither of them.
In 1939 the late Dr. Stuart Robertson of Temple University published in American Speech2 an interesting discussion of other differences in American and British usage in dealing with the minor coins of speech — a subject not often studied, for most observers seem to be chiefly interested in disparities in vocabulary. For example, the English rule3 that to may be omitted when the accusative object is a pronoun, e.g., “Give it me” instead of the usual American “Give it to me.” There are also some curious differences in the use of the definite article. The English commonly insert it before High street, and use it in situations wherein Americans would use a, e.g., “ten shillings the bushel.” Contrariwise, they omit it altogether before government and out of window. Robertson called attention to the fact that this last struck Mark Twain as one of the salient differences between American and English usage.1 In late years there has been a war upon the article in American journalistic writing, chiefly, as I have recorded, under the influence of Time, and the English have begun to join in it. They have also imitated the American present subjunctive, as in “It was moved that the meeting stand adjourned,” where orthodox English usage would ordain “should stand adjourned.”2 The English plural verb following collective nouns seems to be holding out better, though even here there are some signs of yielding. Nearly all the English newspapers still use the plural after government, committee, company, ministry and vestry, and even after proper names designating groups or institutions.3 In 1938 a Tasmanian journalist specializing in cricket and football news wrote to the lexicographer of John o’ London’s Weekly asking for advice about the use of the plural after, say, Eton and Harrow, and was told that he should use the singular when referring to “the team as a whole” and the plural when speaking of “the individual players in that team.” “As a matter of literary grace,” said the John o’ London expert, “it is going too far to attach a plural verb to the name of the team.”4 Nevertheless, plenty of English sports writers still do it, and such headlines as “Jesus Outplay All Souls” are still common in the newspapers.5 “The real proof for the existence of an American language,” said the New York Times less than two months after the Tasmanian called for help, “is not that we say suspenders and elevator and the British say braces and lift. These are mere dialectical differences. The rub comes when the British newspapers say that their government have been exploring all possible channels, whereas we say our government has been exploring. The British say that Kent face an emergency, by which they mean that the Kent county cricket team faces an emergency. Reporting one of our own boat faces, the British papers would say that Harvard have a big advantage over Yale.”1 The English are also fond of using are after United States. This was also the American custom in the early days, but is was substituted before the War of 1812. In 1942 a magazine called Philippines, published by the Philippine resident commission at Washington, protested against the use of are after Philippines. It said:
The constitution of the Philippines, formulated in English and approved by the President of the United States, employs a singular verb to predicate the Philippines. For the phrase Philippine Islands, however, the plural verb is used. Thus, the Philippines is, and the Philippine Islands are.2
The House of Lords has a watchman, Lord Bertie of Thame, who devotes himself to seeing that consistency in number is maintained in drawing up government bills. He does not object to the singular verb per se, but insists that when a bill starts off with a plural verb, which is usually, it must so continue to the end. In 1936, when the National Health Insurance bill was before a joint committee of Lords and Commons, he kicked up such a pother on the subject that the newspapers took notice.3 Lord Bertie also insists that who instead of which shall be used in referring to the government. The majority of Englishmen, in fact, seem to prefer who after all collective nouns, and there are some curious specimens in my collections, e.g., “Many big concerns who are excellent employers,”1 and “The Bank of France, who today lowered the bank rate.”2 But, with that dogged inconsistency which is one of their chief national glories, they use which in reference to God in their official version of the Lord’s Prayer, and in 1944 the London Times actually dismissed the use of who therein as “American idiom.”3
Two common words that differ widely in meaning in England and the United States are guy and homely. The English guy, which signifies a grotesque and ludicrous person, owes its origin to the effigies of Guy Fawkes, leader of the Gunpowder Plot of 1605, which used to be burned by English schoolboys on November 5; the American word, which may designate anyone and is not necessarily opprobrious, seems to be derived from the guy-rope of a circus tent, and first appeared in the forms of main-guy and head-guy. This etymology was first suggested by Thomas P. Beyer in American Speech in 1926,4 and though the DAE casts doubts upon it I am inclined to cling to it. The effort to connect the word with the English guy has always come to grief; they are too far apart in meaning to be the same.5 The English word was in some use in the United States before the American guy was born, and it survives today in the verb to guy. That verb gave birth to the verb-phrase to guy the life out of not later than 1880, and by 1890 to guy itself was being used by American actors in the sense of to trifle with a part. But the noun guy, in the simple sense of a man, a fellow, with no derogatory significance, seems to have come in a bit later and the DAE’s first example is from George Ade’s “Artie,” 1896. Partridge says that it began to be heard in England c. 1910, and soon afterward it was made familiar by American movies, but it still strikes the more elegant sort of Englishman as rather strange. In 1931 Dr. Walther Fischer of Giessen suggested in Anglia6 that it may have come from the Yiddish goy, meaning a heathen and hence a Christian, but this etymology seems to me to be improbable, for goy always carries a disparaging significance. The essence of the American guy is that it is not necessarily opprobrious.
Homely, in the United States, always means ill-favored, but in England its principal meaning is simple, friendly, home-loving, folksy. The American meaning was formerly familiar to the English, and in 1590 Shakespeare wrote:
Hath homely age th’ alluring beauty took
From my poor cheek?1
The NED offers other English examples from 1634 (Milton), 1669 (William Penn), 1706 (John Phillips, nephew of Milton), 1797 (Horace Walpole), 1873 (Ouida) and 1886 (Mrs. Linn Lynton), but the use of homely in this sense of “commonplace in appearance or features, not beautiful, plain, uncomely” has been rare in England since the Eighteenth Century, and the Englishman of today always understands the word to be complimentary rather than otherwise. The following from the London News Review, an imitator of the American Time, no doubt seemed patriotic and felicitous on its home-grounds, but must have struck American readers, if any, as in very bad taste:
Homely Queen Elizabeth, First Lady of England, spends much time planning the deft touches which take the formal austerity out of state visits paid by European rulers to the court of St. James.2
The English meaning may be discerned in certain phrases that have survived in America, e.g., homely fare and homely charm,3 but no American, without hostile intent, would apply homely to a woman. Its opprobrious significance seems to go back a long way, for on October 19, 1709 William Byrd of Westover wrote in his diary:
About ten o’clock we went to court, where a man was tried for ravishing a very homely woman.4
A number of very common American words, entering into many compounds and idioms in the United States, are known in England only as exoticisms, for example, swamp. The NED suggests that swamp may have been in use in some English dialect before it was adopted in this country, but the first example so far unearthed is from Captain John Smith’s “General History of Virginia,” 1624, a mine of early Americanisms. The word is old in English as an adjective meaning lean, unthriving, and it is possible that the American noun was derived from this adjective, but Weekley prefers to connect it with the German noun sumpf, which means precisely what Americans call a swamp. The late George Philip Krapp, in “The English Language in America,”1 suggested that the word, to the early colonists, was occasionally used to designate quite dry ground, and in support of this he cited various passages in the town records of Dedham, Mass. But a careful study of those records by Miss Martha Jane Gibson2 has demonstrated that Dr. Krapp was in error. The word was invariably used, she says,
to mark off a certain condition of soil — not inundated intermittently, as were meadows; not extremely boggy, as were marshes; and yet a soil too wet for easy going on foot, or for actual cultivation with the plow, but one at the same time rich and productive of either trees, underwood, or grass for pasturage.
Swamp has produced many derivatives in the United States, e.g., to be swamped in the sense of to be overwhelmed, traced by NED to 1646; swamp-angel and swamper, a dweller in a swamp, traced to 1857 and 1840 respectively;3 swamp-apple, a gall growing on the wild azalea, 1805; swamp ash, any one of various ashes growing in swamps, 1815; swamp-blackbird, 1794; swamp-chestnut-oak, 1801; swamp-grass, 1845; swamp-hickory, 1805; swamp-honeysuckle, 1814; swamp-huckleberry, 1800; swamp-land, 1663; swamp-laurel, 1743; swamp-lily, 1737; swamp-lot, 1677; swamp-maple, 1810; swamp-milkweed, 1857; swamp-oak, 1681; swamp-pine, 1731; swamp-pink, an azalea, 1784; swamp-prairie, 1791; swamp-rabbit, 1845; swamp-rose, 1785; swamp-sassafras, 1785; swamp-sparrow, 1811; swamp-warbler, 1865; swamp-willow, 1795; and swamp-wood, 1666. During the Revolution the South Carolina leader, Francis Marion, was called the Swamp Fox. Swampoodle, after the Civil War, came to be the designation of a city slum.
I have recorded in AL4, pp. 26 ff, the fact that to fix is used in the United States in many senses unknown to the English, and that this large use of the verb has attracted the notice of English travelers for many years. A number of American observers, in the early days, called to fix a Southernism or Westernism,1 but the DAE’s examples come from all parts, including Canada. The verb, of course, was no invented in America, but its meanings became greatly extended here, and the DAE marks it an Americanism in such sentences as “He stopped to fix the lock of his rifle,” “Clarence will fix you all right,” “You fix my pillow,” “Fix the table,” “The politicians fix primaries,” “The race was fixed,” “I’ll fix you,” and “We had better fix the fire.” The DAE devotes more than three pages to it, as verb, as noun and in various compounds; indeed, it gives more space to fix than to any other word. The meanings of the verb are divided into fourteen categories, five of them further subdivided into sub-categories, and one into no less than eight. Of the fourteen, twelve are marked American, and in addition there are eight different definitions of the noun, all of them marked American. In the sense of to repair or mend the DAE traces to fix to 1737, in that of to accommodate wants to 1779, in that of to arrange to 1796, in that of to tidy or make trim to 1820, in that of to clean up to 1836, in that of to adjust in any manner and in that of to repair a fire to the same year, in that of to prepare a meal to 1839, in that of to influence a jury to 1882, and in that of to tamper with a race-horse to 1881.2 “In England,” says Horwill, “it is commonly restricted to the meaning of to establish, make stable, place in a permanent position, but in America it is a word-of-all-work which saves the trouble of finding the specific term to describe almost any kind of adjustment or repair.” Like many other American verbs, to fix is frequently coupled with adverbs. To fix out is traced to 1725, to fix down to 1787, and to fix up to 1817. As a noun the word seems to be wholly an Americanism; the DAE traces it, as such, to 1809. There are numerous derivatory nouns and adjectives, e.g., fixer, traced to 1889; fix-up, to 1843; well-fixed, to 1822; fixings, to 1820; and Mr. Fix-It.
English observers have frequently remarked, in recent years, a like heavy use, in the United States, of to get.1 Some of the American significances of the unadorned verb are relatively old — for example, the sense of to track down and kill, traced by the DAE to 1853, the sense of to depart, traced to 1869, the sense of to vex or annoy, traced to 1867—, but most of them have come in within recent years — for example, the sense of to grasp or comprehend, traced only to 1907. So with the verb compounds. The DAE traces to get around to 1848, to get away with to 1878, to get back at to 1888, to get behind (in the sense of to support) to 1903, to get down on to 1898, to get into (in the sense of to get a hold on) to 1876, to get on to to 1889, to get through (say a bill in Congress) to 1873, to get together to 1904, to get up and get to 1877, to get busy to 1904, to get off (a joke) to 1849, to get one’s back up to 1854, to get even with to 1845, to get one’s goat to 1912, to get the hang of to 1840, to get one’s mad up to 1867, to get a move on to 1893, and to get one dead to 1891. All these verb phrases are Americanisms. So are to get going, to get wise, to get religion, to get right with God, to get back at, to get by with, to get on the right side of, to get next to, to get by, to get there, to get the bulge on, to get the drop on, to get ahead of, to get solid with, and to get sore.2 So also, are get out, an exclamation of incredulity, all get-out, it gets me, get-rich-quick and the lovely go-getter. Some of these Americanisms have become more or less familiar in English, but the rest strike an Englishman as strange, and Horwill is at pains to explain the meaning of a number of them. From go-getter, he says, a new verb, to go get, has been produced by back formation.3 Right is also in much more frequent use in the United States than in England, and Charles Dickens marvelled upon some of its combinations so long ago as 1840.1 Thornton traces right away to 1818 and hazards the guess that it may have been brought in by Irish immigrants. The DAE lists it along with right about, right along, right in, right down, right off and right smart as an Americanism, and the NED marks right there and right here “now chiefly U.S.” Other forms in right are old in English, e.g., right now, right from, right on, right at, right then and right round. Sometimes American phrases in right are used strangely by Englishmen. I find the following use of right away in a colonial paper:2 “In a studio right away from his home … Low does his work.”
On the English side there are many words and idioms which puzzle an American, for, as I have noted, the exchanges in vocabulary run mainly eastward, and Americans have nothing to help them toward an understanding of English comparable to the American movies which introduce Englishmen to all the latest Americanisms. In several areas of speech the English make daily use of terms that have never penetrated to the United States — for example, in that of ecclesiastical activity. No American ever makes natural use of such words as dissenter and nonconformist, and to most Americans they are quite meaningless. As for such common English terms as vicar, canon, verger, primate, curate, chapter, locum tenens, suffragan, dean, lay-reader, holy orders and churchman, they are seldom used in the United States, at least in their English senses, save by members of the Protestant Episcopal Church, the crown colony of the Church of England. To the average American outside that loyal fold a curate must seem as puzzling a mammal as an archimandrite, and a locum tenens must suggest inevitably what, in the vulgate, is known as jimjams. The NED traces dissenter to 1663, and says that “in early use” it included Roman Catholics, but is “now usually restricted to those legally styled Protestant dissenters.” Jews, like Catholics, are excluded. Nonconformist, of the same meaning, is traced to 1672, but nonconformist conscience is not listed, though every civilized Englishman is its goat. Many of the English dissenters are harmless sectarians analogous to our Dunkers and Jehovah’s Witnesses, but among them are also nearly all the more violent wowsers3 of the land. In Scotland one who refuses to swallow the national Presbyterianism is likewise a dissenter. The term was in use in America in colonial days, but disappeared when the battered fragment of the Church of England among us became converted into the Protestant Episcopal Church. In 1928 the New York Times began to use nonconformist to designate Protestant churches outside the Protestant Episcopal fold, e.g., the Congregational, but this imitation of English usage did not take and was presently abandoned.1 In their “Mark Twain Lexicon”2 Robert L. Ramsay and Frances Guthrie Emberson take me somewhat waspishly to task for saying that dissenters are unknown in the United States, and cite the use of dissentering in “Huckleberry Finn,”3 but a brief inspection is enough to show that dissentering is here used as a quoted Briticism. The English have a number of dissenting sects whose very names are unknown in the United States, but the American crop is much larger and considerably more bizarre. The Census Bureau’s official list of American denominations omits, unaccountably and to my personal regret, the Holy Rollers and the Footwash and Hardshell Baptists, but includes the General Six Principle Baptists, the Two-Seed-in-the-Spirit Predestinarian Baptists, the Progressive Dunkers, the United Zion’s Children, the Christadelphians, the Hutterian Brethren, the Schwenkfelders, the Social Brethren and the members of the Apostolic Overcoming Holy Church of God, Christ’s Sanctified Holy Church, the Church of the Full Gospel, the Church of Daniel’s Band, the Pillar of Fire, the House of David, the Church of Illumination, the Italian Pentacostal Assembly of God, the Kodesh Church of Immanuel, the Mennonite Kleine Gemeinde, the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, the Evangelical Unity of Bohemian and Moravian Churches, the Pentecostal Assemblies of Jesus Christ, and the United Holy Church of America, not to mention more than a dozen cubicles and cell-blocks of the Church of God.
The English educational terminology also differs from our own, and on all levels from that of the universities to that of what we would call the public-schools. I attempted, in AL4, pp. 240 ff, to list and define some of the English terms unknown in the United States, bat fell, I fear, into sundry errors. For the following illuminating gloss upon my exposition I am indebted to Mr. P. A. Browne, an inspector of the English Board of Education:1
Council-schools are those schools in the public elementary system that are “provided” by the Local Education Authority. Nearly half, if not more than half, of the schools that are run by these Authorities are “non-provided,” i.e., they were built by other bodies (e.g., the Church of England, the Wesleyans);2 except for certain regulations about the appointment of teachers, the management of religious instruction, and the upkeep and use of the buildings outside school hours, they are run by the Authorities on a par with council-schools, i.e., the Authorities pay the teachers, provide books and equipment, and make such improvements to the premises internally as are required by “fair wear and tear.” …
After the babies class a child moves into class four, class three, class two and class one, i.e., the nomenclature goes backwards, the top class of infants being class one. It is by no means universal that the sexes should be separate above the infants’ school; I fancy that more than half of the public elementary schools of England that deal with children of seven or more are still “mixed.” Nor will a boy always be put under a male teacher at the third or fourth standard. Sometimes he will meet one in Standard 1, while in small schools he may be under a woman teacher until he leaves.…
The time at which children go from elementary school to secondary school in England is now pretty universally at the age of eleven. The standard system is being gradually replaced by a class system in elementary schools other than infants’ schools. These are called forms in secondary schools, and I have met with them occasionally in the swaggerer elementary schools, though they are still not frequent there.
Head-mistresses are found in mixed schools as well as girls’ schools, though not usually if there are men on the staff. The lower pedagogues used to be called ushers in the so-called public schools,3 and still are at Harrow (at Winchester they are called dons), but are now masters or assistant masters (or mistresses) at public-schools and secondary schools, though far more usually teachers at elementary schools.4
245. [The English keep up most of the old distinctions between barristers and solicitors. A barrister is greatly superior to a solicitor. He alone can address the higher courts and the parliamentary committees; a solicitor must keep to office work and the inferior courts.] In part, the distinction is like that between the American trial-lawyer and office-lawyer, but only in part, for an American may function as both, whereas an English lawyer must stick to his class. In the London Sunday Express, in 1938,1 Viscount Castlerosse described eloquently the pains and costs of becoming a barrister. First, the candidate must be entered at one of the Inns of Court, the English equivalent of our law-schools, and there he must prove his diligence by eating thirty-six dinners with its resident bigwigs, or, if he is not a university man, seventy-two. Said Castlerosse:
This is rather the same as at a university, where there is no obligation to swallow the food, but a man must check in. At the university he waves his hat at the marker, but for legal purposes a student must stay there from “the grace before dinner until the concluding grace should have been said.” Dinners cost 3s. 6d. each, and some diners consider they do not get much value for the money. Joining an Inn is expensive. The admission documents cost £1 1s., government stamp £25, admission fees £20, lecture fees £12 12s. — in all £58 13s. Also, unless the student can get two householders to put up a bond for him, he has to deposit £50. Next come the examinations, and then, if successful, the business of being called,2 which costs £100, of which £50 is bagged by the government.
Finally, there is the outfit. A wig costs £8 8s. Second-hand wigs are half-price, but it is not everybody who likes to wear second-hand wigs, and, besides, they have a way of going to bits. The tin box to keep the wig in costs 6s. 6d.; the gown costs £4 4s., — why I cannot imagine; white bands 2s. a pair, and the blue bag 10s. 6d.
Even though our friend has got through the sacred portals he still has to go on paying out. He reads in chambers for twelve months, during which period he devils for some junior counsel.3 Instead of getting paid he has to shell out 100 guineas plus five guineas to the clerk of the chambers. When the year is out he has to get chambers of his own, and he is now taken over by a clerk.
A barrister’s clerk is a truly remarkable man, and requires qualities not found in any other profession. The perfect barrister’s clerk must be able to imbibe endless quantities of alcohol without feeling it. He must be on friendly terms with every solicitor’s clerk, and, as all wise men know, there’s only one way to do that. Further, he must know how to put his man over.
At the beginning the young barrister pays his clerk a pound a week. After that the clerk collects about 7 per cent, on the earnings of the barrister, who, by the way, loses about another 7 per cent, through bad debts. Eventually work will come to a barrister, probably in the shape of inquests in the suburbs at £1 3s. 6d. a time, which works out at £1 1s. net to the barrister.
The American visitor to England is often brought up by Briticisms so seldom heard in the United States, even as quotations, that they have the effect on him of foreign words. When, on passing a butcher’s shop, he sees a sign offering offals, he is unpleasantly affected until someone tells him that, to an Englishman, the word simply means liver, kidneys, tongue, heart, etc. Nor can he grasp without aid the meaning of the silversides, gigots and stewing steak offered at the same place, nor of the brill, raker, monkfish, coalfish, periwinkles, prawns, ling, doreys and witches announced by the nearest fishmonger, nor of the Forfar bridles, Scotch baps and treacle scones on the list of the adjacent pastry-cook,1 nor of the fireside-suites and surrounds advertised by the dealers in house-furnishings, nor of the judge’s kettles, secateurs, coal-cauidrons and spark-guards to be had of the same. He is puzzled by the rubric Au Pair in the want-ad columns of the newspapers — until he reads the ads and finds that it simply indicates an offer of services for board and lodging. In their news columns he finds that the police are on the hunt for smash-and-grab raiders and gutter-crawling motorists: the meaning of the first he readily penetrates, but it takes him some time to discover that gutter-crawling is practised by mashers who run close to the sidewalk, hoping to pick up light-headed girls. To tout, he finds after a while, may have the harmless meaning of to collect party funds, and making a whip-round is only passing the hat. But what is a tomasha, and what are gold-sticks, crocodiles, satellite towns, navvies, hydros, tied houses, hooroosh, tarmac? How can there be such a thing as a proper bungalow? What, precisely, is good form?2 This American finds it hard, sometimes, to claw the news out of the English newspapers. To be sure, most of them are full of Americanisms or pseudo-Americanisms, but they are also full, and to much nearer the brim, of Briticisms, and some of those Briticisms, when he guesses at their meaning, turn out to mean something quite different. Nor is he helped, in reading the papers, by the archaic and murky past perfect tense in which they commonly report the speeches of the national haruspices. A sample:
Good pictures could only be made by building up writers, directors, and stars and keeping them in this country. This could only be done with money, and Mr. Rank was the only man who rightly had attempted to do so. He (Lord Grantley) was the last person to wish to see any monopoly in the film industry, but so far from worrying about the so-called Rank monopoly and the fact that Mr. Rank would become a Colossus in the industry, striding over it, he would like one or two more colossi like him to help them, because money was the only thing that put pictures on the celluloid. Mr. Rank had done a tremendous lot to improve the quality of the pictures manufactured in this country, and to achieve good marketing.1
Contrariwise, there are many familiar and characteristic Americanisms that have not been adopted in England, and are little known there, e.g., snarl (tangle), lye (household), to hospitalize, truck-garden, immortelles (the English call them everlasting flowers), to shuck (oysters), gum for chewing-gum (in England it always means mucilage), in back of (though the English use in front of), dirt (for earth, though dirt-track is coming into use), jigger, bung-starter, powder-room (though it is occasionally used), stein, to sashay, scallion, waist and shirtwaist (the English always use blouse), lima-bean, pipe-dream, goose-pimple (the English use chicken-flesh) and badger-game. Some of these are old English terms that have become obsolete in England, e.g., scallion, which the NED traces to the Fourteenth Century. “An Englishman,” says Seaman, “never calls his car his machine. His machine would be his bicycle.… Closet, for cupboard or wardrobe, always rouses a titter in an English cinema. Here it means a W. C.… We still speak of having our teeth stopped, but the American filled is coming in.”1
255. [Very few English authors, even those who have made lengthy visits to the United States, ever manage to write American in a realistic manner.] In the earlier days their attempts were usually upon the so-called Yankee or Down East dialect. The pioneer was apparently the anonymous author of “The Adventures of Jonathan Corncob,” brought out in London in 1787. He had his Americans use I snore and I snort as expletives,2 and stretched their vowels out into such forms as blaaze away like daavils, get aloong and let me alo-one.3 By 1866, when Charles Dickens published “Mugsby Junction,” this Yankee dialect had developed, in English hands, into the following:4
I tell Yew what ’t is, ma’arm. I la’af. Theer! I la’af. I Dew. I oughter ha’ seen most things, for I hail from the Onlimited side of the Atlantic Ocean, and I haive travelled right slick over the Limited, head on through Jee-rusalemm and the East, and likeways France and Italy, Europe, Old World, and am now upon the track to the Chief European Village; but such an Institution as Yew, and Yewer young ladies, and Yewer fixin’s solid and liquid, afore the glorious Tarnal I never did see yet! And if I hain’t found the eighth wonder of monarchical Creation, in finding Yew, and Yewer young ladies, and Yewer fixin’s solid and liquid, all as aforesaid, established in a country where the people air not absolute Loonaticks, I am Extra Double Darned with a Nip and Frizzle to the innermostest grit! Wheerfur — Theer! — I la’af! I Dew, ma’arm, I la’af!
This was supposed to be addressed by a traveling American to a strange Englishwoman at a railway refreshment-counter. I should add that there were English critics who recognized that it was excessively bad reporting, and denounced it accordingly. One of them was Edward Dicey, who declared that “you might travel through the United States for years and never hear such a speech uttered out of a lunatic asylum.”1 But there was often more than bad reporting in such stuff; there was also (and preëminently in Dickens’s case) a bitter dislike of all things American. “How can we wonder Americans do not love us,” added Dicey, “when, as Hawthorne said, with too much truth, ‘not an Englishman of them all ever spared America for courtesy’s sake or kindness’?” In the years since 1866 there have appeared English authors whose loathing of the United States and its people is less apparent than Dickens’s, but even the most friendly of them runs into difficulties when he tries to report American colloquial speech. The only latter-day English novelist, said an American correspondent of the Manchester Guardian in 1937, “who can speak American” is P. G. Wodehouse.2 John Galsworthy’s difficulties with it were discussed by the late Dr. Stuart Robertson in American Speech in 1932,3 and some specimen blunders are given in AL4, p. 257. Many of them arose from Galsworthy’s apparent belief that Americans use gotten instead of got in all situations, instead of only in the sense of acquired or become. Said Robertson:
The following sentence from “Maid in Waiting”: “I fear you’ve gotten a grouch against me, Miss Cherrell,” is wrong unless Hallorsen means “You’ve acquired a grouch.” The context shows, however, that he does not; what he means is “You have (or cherish) a grouch.” In the following instances there can be no manner of doubt as to the error: “You’ve lost the spirit of inquiry; or if you’ve still gotten it, you have a dandy way of hiding it up.” … “We haven’t gotten your roots and your old things.”4
Arnold Bennett, E. Phillips Oppenheim, Edgar Wallace and Bram Stoker were other English novelists, popular in the United States, who had distressing difficulties with American speech.5 Here is a specimen of the curious jargon that Stoker put into the mouth of an American supposed to hail from “Isthmian City, Bleeding Gulch, Maple Tree county, Nebraska”:
Not me, ma’am. Why, I’m as tender as a Maine cherry-tree. Lor’ bless me, I wouldn’t hurt the poor pooty little critter more’n I’d scalp a baby. An’ you may bet your variegated socks on that.1
The whole tribe, for some occult reason, seems to be convinced that all Americans give a u-sound to the er in such words as very and American, and usually they double the r.2 At other times Americanisms are used in senses and situations that must inevitably give every actual American a start. In 1942, for example, the lady novelist, Margaret Louise Allingham, in a book review in the English edition of Time add Tide, described two quite respectable American girl characters as floosies.3 During the same year another lady novelist, Elizabeth Bo wen, used Americanisms in an amazing (if usually correct) manner in a serious historical work, “Bowen’s Court.” Some examples:
The Stuarts gestured, flattered and double-crossed (p. 47).
Lord Muskerry was putting something across (p. 55).
On the claim of having discovered a papist plot (which they faked), etc. (p. 58).4
Again in 1942 a third lady novelist, Dorothy Sayers, got into hot water by introducing indecorous Americanisms into a serial radio life of Christ, e.g., to hop it. She was flayed for the sacrilege in the London Star by the Rev. James Colville, pastor of St. Peter’s Presbyterian Church, Balham,5 and the Star announced primly that “M.P.’s have been told that a number of alterations to the original script are being considered.” A fourth lady novelist, Rosamund Lehmann, did measurably better, and one of her American reviewers was moved to exclaim at her correct (and frequent) use of boy friend, bunk and kidding.6 But to counterbalance this a he-novelist, Bruce Graeme, brought out a crime shocker, reprinted in the United States, in which American gangsters were made to use blimey and ruddy.7 “There are very few English writers,” concluded a resigned London journalist in 1937, “who can employ American slang correctly.”1
Errors in its use made by English statesmen and other such more austere characters are not infrequently reported in the American newspapers, e.g., the late Neville Chamberlain’s extension of jitterbug to indicate an alarmist.2 At about the same time the Opposition Leader, the Right Hon. C. R. Attlee, accused Chamberlain of trying to put sob stuff over the House, forgetting the on that, by American rules, should have followed over.3 Chamberlain replied by describing himself as a go-getter for peace. He was very fond of Americanisms, and occasionally used them more or less correctly. One of his favorites was in the neighborhood of. His predecessor, Stanley Baldwin (created an earl in 1937), had a formidable répertoire, and made precise use of to try out, to deliver the goods,4 rattled, more to it,5 best-seller,6 and party dog-fight.7 Sometimes he was accused by purists of mouthing Americanisms when he was actually using ancient English terms, as when he adorned a debate with backslider, which the NED traces to 1581. Winston Churchill, who is half American, clings to the Oxford accent but lards his discourses with many American terms, e.g., proposition and cold feet. Nevertheless, he once rebuked a Conservative M.P., Arthur Hugh Elsdale Molson, for using stooge in a question asked in the House of Commons. “I am not prepared,” he said primly, “to answer a question couched in such very unseemly terms.”1 Other M.P.’s have shocked patriotic Englishmen in recent years with Americanisms that, in some cases, are not indecorous to American ears. In 1943, for example, Lord Morris got into the newspapers by using skullduggery in a debate in the House of Lords;2 in 1937 the Commons was thrown upon its haunches by to debunk;3 and in 1940 Capt. Harold Harington Balfour caused a raising of eyebrows by saying to a Labor member, Emanuel Shinwell, “I apologize if I got you wrong.”4 Even higher dignitaries have occasionally sinned. In 1936 no less a character than the Archbishop of Canterbury used up against in a public pronunciamento, and during the same year King Edward VIII used both radio and to broadcast in his first fireside chat to his lieges.5 As Prince of Wales he had employed Americanisms in a number of speeches — a fact hailed by a few advanced Englishmen as “evidence of a charming disposition to speak the democratic language of a democratic age, to speak to genial Englishmen, not in the trappings of princely oratory, but as another genial Englishman like themselves,” but frowned upon by old-timers on the ground that it was “the duty of the king’s son to defend the king’s English against the undesirable aliens of speech.”6 The former king’s cousin, Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten (geb. Battenberg), speaks American fluently, for in the interval between the two wars he made intensive linguistic and other studies at Hollywood. On September 24, 1943, he told the scholars assembled at a luncheon of the Royal Naval Film Corporation in London that he thought he was fully qualified to act as an interpreter between the British and American forces in Southeastern Asia.7 Three years before this Sir Eric Phipps, then British ambassador to France, had warned a luncheon meeting of the American Club in Paris that World War II was not a phony war.1 Some of the earlier American political terms, e.g., caucus, gerrymander and carpet-bagger, have been taken over, as we have seen in Chapter IV, Section 2, by the English politicos. According to the political correspondent of the Eastern Evening News (Norwich),2 carpet-bagger was first used in the parliamentary campaign of 1880. How the meaning of caucus has been perverted in England has been described. The English have done almost as badly with gerrymander, which they employ to indicate any “method whereby one political party obtains an unfair advantage over another.”3 The New Deal boondoggling, when it reached England, was converted into boonwiggling,4 and the London Times, until 1939, was still calling the Brain Trust the brains trust, and spelling it with small letters.5 Even the English newspapers on levels where American neologisms may be presumed to be more familiar often make shining blunders. In the News of the World, for example, I once encountered sawn-down for sawed-off in a description of fire-arms.6 Some of the interpretations of Americanisms in English editions of American books are far from illuminating. When Marjorie Hillis’s “Live Alone and Like It” was published in London in 1936 Junior Leaguers was changed to Girl Guides.7