The American Language: A Preliminary Inquiry into the Development of English in the United StatesMencken, H. L. (Henry Louis)
General
The American Language: A Preliminary Inquiry into the Development of English in the United States
Mencken, H. L. (Henry Louis)
Americanisms; English language; Names -- United States; Names, Personal -- United States
Mr. Faulkner goes on to say that a great many other Americanisms are
constantly employed by Englishmen "who have not been affected by the
avalanche ... which has come upon us through the picture palace."
"Thus today," he says, "we hear people speak of the /fall/ of the
year, a /stunt/ they have in hand, their desire to /boost/ a
particular business, a /peach/ when they mean a pretty girl, a
/scab/--a common term among strikers,--the /glad-eye/, /junk/ when
they mean worthless material, their efforts /to make good/, the
/elevator/ in the hotel or office, the /boss/ or manager, the /crook/
or swindler; and they will tell you that they have the /goods/--that
is, they possess the requisite qualities for a given position." The
venerable Frederic Harrison, writing in the /Fortnightly Review/ in
the Spring of 1918, denounced this tendency with a vigor recalling the
classical anathemas of Dean Alford and Sydney Smith.[5] "Stale
American phrases, ..." [Pg134] he said, "are infecting even our
higher journalism and our parliamentary and platform oratory.... A
statesman is now /out/ for victory; he is /up against/ pacificism....
He has a /card up his sleeve/, by which the enemy are at last to be
/euchred/. Then a fierce fight in which hundreds of noble fellows are
mangled or drowned is a /scrap/.... To criticise a politician is to
call for his /scalp/.... The other fellow is beaten to a /frazzle/."
And so on. "Bolshevism," concluded Harrison sadly, "is ruining
language as well as society."
But though there are still many such alarms by constables of the
national speech, the majority of Englishmen continue to make
borrowings from the tempting and ever-widening American vocabulary.
What is more, some of these loan-words take root, and are presently
accepted as sound English, even by the most watchful. The two Fowlers,
in "The King's English," separate Americanisms from other current
vulgarisms, but many of the latter on their list are actually American
in origin, though they do not seem to know it--for example, /to
demean/ and /to transpire/. More remarkable still, the Cambridge
History of English Literature lists /backwoodsman/, /know-nothing/ and
/yellow-back/ as English compounds, apparently in forgetfulness of
their American origin, and adds /skunk/, /squaw/ and /toboggan/ as
direct importations from the Indian tongues, without noting that they
came through American, and remained definite Americanisms for a long
while.[6] It even adds /musquash/, a popular name for the /Fiber
zibethicus/, borrowed from the Algonquin /muskwessu/ but long since
degenerated to /musk-rat/ in America. /Musquash/ has been in disuse in
this country, indeed, since the middle of the last century, save as a
stray localism, but the English have preserved it, and it appears in
the Oxford Dictionary.[7]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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