seen, have come from the German immigrants of half a century ago, from the so-called Pennsylvania Dutch (who are notoriously ignorant and uncouth), and from the Irish, who brought with them a form of English already very corrupt. The same and similar elements greatly reinforce the congenital tendencies of the dialect--toward the facile manufacture of compounds, toward a disregard of the distinctions between parts of speech, and, above all, toward the throwing off of all etymological restraints. § 5 /Processes of Word Formation/--Some of these tendencies, it has been pointed out, go back to the period of the first growth of American, and were inherited from the English of the time. They are the products of a movement which, reaching its height in the English of Elizabeth, was dammed up at home, so to speak, by the rise of linguistic self-consciousness toward the end of the reign of Anne, but continued almost unobstructed in the colonies. For example, there is what philologists call the habit of back-formation--a sort of instinctive search, etymologically unsound, for short roots in long words. This habit, in Restoration days, precipitated a quasi-English word, /mobile/, from the Latin [Pg160] /mobile vulgus/, and in the days of William and Mary it went a step further by precipitating /mob/ from /mobile/. /Mob/ is now sound English, but in the eighteenth century it was violently attacked by the new sect of purists,[58] and though it survived their onslaught they undoubtedly greatly impeded the formation and adoption of other words of the same category. But in the colonies the process went on unimpeded, save for the feeble protests of such stray pedants as Witherspoon and Boucher. /Rattler/ for /rattlesnake/, /pike/ for /turnpike/, /draw/ for /drawbridge/, /coon/ for /raccoon/, /possum/ for /opossum/, /cuss/ for /customer/, /cute/ for /acute/, /squash/ for /askutasquash/--these American back-formations are already antique; /Sabbaday/ for /Sabbath-day/ has actually reached the dignity of an archaism. To this day they are formed in great numbers; scarcely a new substantive of more than two syllables comes in without bringing one in its wake. We have thus witnessed, within the past two years, the genesis of scores now in wide use and fast taking on respectability; /phone/ for /telephone/, /gas/ for /gasoline/, /co-ed/ for /co-educational/, /pop/ for /populist/, /frat/ for /fraternity/, /gym/ for /gymnasium/, /movie/ for /moving-picture/, /prep-school/ for /preparatory-school/, /auto/ for /automobile/, /aero/ for /aeroplane/. Some linger on the edge of vulgarity: /pep/ for /pepper/, /flu/ for /influenza/, /plute/ for /plutocrat/, /pen/ for /penitentiary/, /con/ for /confidence/ (as in /con-man/, /con-game/ and /to con/), /convict/ and /consumption/, /defi/ for /defiance/, /beaut/ for /beauty/, /rep/ for /reputation/, /stenog/ for /stenographer/, /ambish/ for /ambition/, /vag/ for /vagrant/, /champ/ for /champion/, /pard/ for /partner/, /coke/ for