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
[18] /Log-cabin/ came in later. Thornton's first quotation is dated
1818. The /Log-Cabin/ campaign was in 1840.
[19] Theo. Roosevelt: Gouverneur Morris; Boston, 1888, p. 104.
[20] William Brown Meloney: The Heritage of Tyre; New York, 1916, p.
15.
[21] /Vide/ his preface to Every-Day English, pp. xxi and xv,
respectively.
[22] /Vide/ Lyell's Travels in North America; London, 1845.
[23] Pref. to the Biglow Papers, 2nd series, 1866.
[24] Reprinted in Helpful Hints in Writing and Reading, comp. by
Grenville Kleiser; New York, 1911, pp. 15-17.
[25] A. Cleveland Coxe: Americanisms in England, /Forum/, Oct., 1886.
[26] Edwin S. Gould: Good English, or, Popular Errors in Language: New
York, 1867; pp. 25-27.
[27] /Cf./ Ch. I, § 5, and Ch. V, § 1.
[28] /Lott/ appears in the Connecticut Code of 1650. /Vide/ the
edition of Andrus; Hartford, 1822. On page 35 is "their landes,
/lotts/ and accommodations." On page 46 is "meadow and home /lotts/."
[29] /Vide/ Hutchinson's Diary, vol. i, p. 171; London, 1883-6.
[30] The definitions are from the Concise Oxford Dictionary of Current
English (1914) and the Standard Dictionary (1906), respectively.
[31] S. Sewall: Diary, April 14, 1712: "I lay'd a /Rock/ in the
North-east corner of the Foundation of the Meeting-house."
[32] The Americana, ... /art./ Americanisms: New York, 1903-6.
[33] Immigration, 2nd ed.; New York, 1913, p. 4. Sir J. R. Seeley
says, in The Expansion of England (2nd ed.; London, 1895, p. 84) that
the emigration from England to New England, after the meeting of the
Long Parliament (1640), was so slight for a full century that it
barely balanced "the counter-movement of colonists quitting the
colony." Richard Hildreth, in his History of the United States, vol.
i, p. 267, says that the departures actually exceeded the arrivals.
[34] Works, ed. by Sparks: vol. ii, p. 319.
[35] /Cf./ Pehr Kalm: Travels into N. America, tr. by J. R. Forster, 3
vols.; London, 1770-71.
[36] Sydney George Fisher: The True Story of the American Revolution;
Phila. and London, 1902, p. 27. See also John T. Morse's Life of
Thomas Jefferson in the American Statesmen series (Boston and New
York, 1898), p. 2. Morse points out that Washington, Jefferson and
Madison belonged to this new aristocracy, not to the old one.
[37] /Cf./ the Cambridge History of American Literature, vol. i, p.
119. Francis Jeffrey, writing on Franklin in the /Edinburgh Review/
for July, 1806, hailed him as a prodigy who had arisen "in a society
where there was no relish and no encouragement for literature."
[38] Examples of its use in the American sense, considered vulgar and
even indecent in England, are to be found in Gen. xlviii, 1; II Kings
viii, 7; John xi, 1, and Acts ix, 37.
[39] J. O. Halliwell (Phillips): A Dictionary of Archaisms and
Provincialisms, Containing Words now Obsolete in England All of Which
are Familiar and in Common Use in America, 2nd ed.; London, 1850.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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