Now and then the spirit of American shows a transient faltering, and its inventiveness is displaced by a banal extension of meaning, so that a single noun comes to signify discrete things. Thus /laundry/, meaning originally a place where linen is washed, has come to mean also the linen itself. So, again, /gun/ has come to mean fire-arms of all sorts, and has entered into such compounds as /gun-man/ and /gun-play/. And in the same way /party/ has been borrowed from the terminology of the law and made to do colloquial duty as a synonym for /person/. But such evidences of poverty are rare and abnormal; the whole movement of the language is toward the multiplication of substantives. A new object gets a new name, and that new name enters into the common vocabulary at once. /Sundae/ and /hokum/ are late examples; their origin is dubious and disputed, but they met genuine needs and so they seem to be secure. A great many more such substantives are deliberate inventions, for example, /kodak/, /protectograph/, /conductorette/, /bevo/, /klaxon/, /vaseline/, /jap-a-lac/, /resinol/, /autocar/, /postum/, /crisco/, /electrolier/, /addressograph/, /alabastine/, /orangeade/, /pianola/, /victrola/, /dictagraph/, /kitchenette/, /crispette/, /cellarette/, /uneeda/, /triscuit/ and /peptomint/. Some of these indicate attempts at description: /oleomargarine/, /phonograph/ and /gasoline/ are older examples of that class. Others represent efforts to devise designations that will meet the conditions of advertising psychology and the trade-marks law, to wit, that they [Pg166] be (/a/) new, (/b/) easily remembered, and (/c/) not directly descriptive. Probably the most successful invention of this sort is /kodak/, which was devised by George Eastman, inventor of the portable camera so called. /Kodak/ has so far won acceptance as a common noun that Eastman is often forced to assert his proprietary right to it.[67] /Vaseline/ is in the same position. The annual crop of such inventions in the United States is enormous.[68] The majority die, but a hearty few always survive. Of analogous character are artificial words of the /scalawag/ and /rambunctious/ class, the formation of which constantly goes on. Some of them are shortened compounds: /grandificent/ (from /grand/ and /magnificent/), /sodalicious/ (from /soda/ and /delicious/) and /warphan/(/age/) (from /war/ and /orphan/(/age/)).[69] Others are made up of common roots and grotesque affixes: /swelldoodle/, /splendiferous/ and /peacharino/. Yet others are mere extravagant inventions: /scallywampus/, /supergobsloptious/ and /floozy/. Most of these are devised by advertisement writers or college students, and belong properly to slang, but there is a steady movement of selected specimens into the common vocabulary. The words in /-doodle/ hint at German influences, and those in /-ino/ owe something to Italian, or at least to popular burlesques of what is conceived to be Italian. § 6