/deacon/ and /baccalaureate/ in merely rhetorical senses.[30] [Pg125] When we come to words, that, either intrinsically or by usage, are improper, a great many curious differences between English and American reveal themselves. The Englishman, on the whole, is more plain-spoken than the American, and such terms as /bitch/, /mare/ and /in foal/ do not commonly daunt him, largely, perhaps, because of his greater familiarity with country life; but he has a formidable index of his own, and it includes such essentially harmless words as /sick/, /stomach/, /bum/ and /bug/. The English use of /ill/ for /sick/ I have already noticed, and the reasons for the English avoidance of /bum/. /Sick/, over there, means nauseated, and when an Englishman says that he was /sick/ he means that he vomited, or, as an American would say, was /sick at the stomach/. The older (and still American) usage, however, survives in various compounds. /Sick-list/, for example, is official in the Navy,[31] and /sick-leave/ is known in the Army, though it is more common to say of a soldier that he is /invalided home/. /Sick-room/ and /sick-bed/ are also in common use, and /sick-flag/ is used in place of the American /quarantine-flag/. But an Englishman hesitates to mention his stomach in the presence of ladies, though he discourses freely about his liver. To avoid the necessity he employs such euphemisms as /Little Mary/. As for /bug/, he restricts its use very rigidly to the /Cimex lectularius/, or common bed-bug, and hence the word has a highly impolite connotation. All other crawling things he calls /insects/. An American of my acquaintance once greatly offended an English friend by using /bug/ for /insect/. The two were playing billiards one summer evening in the Englishman's house, and various flying things came through the window and alighted on the cloth. The American, essaying a shot, remarked that he had killed a /bug/ with his cue. To the Englishman this seemed a slanderous reflection upon the cleanliness of his house.[32] [Pg126]