and /to get the bulge on/. And in many others the authentic American is no less plain, for example, in /to kick the bucket/, /to put a bug in his [Pg079] ear/, /to see the elephant/, /to crack up/, /to do up brown/, /to bark up the wrong tree/, /to jump on with both feet/, /to go the whole hog/, /to make a kick/, /to buck the tiger/, /to let it slide/ and /to come out at the little end of the horn/. /To play possum/ belongs to this list. To it Thornton adds /to knock into a cocked hat/, despite its English sound, and /to have an ax to grind/. /To go for/, both in the sense of belligerency and in that of partisanship, is also American, and so is /to go through/ (/i. e./, to plunder). Of adjectives the list is scarcely less long. Among the coinages of the first half of the century that are in good use today are /non-committal/, /highfalutin/, /well-posted/, /down-town/, /played-out/, /flat-footed/, /whole-souled/ and /true-blue/. The first appears in a Senate debate of 1841; /highfalutin/ in a political speech of the same decade. Both are useful words; it is impossible, not employing them, to convey the ideas behind them without circumlocution. The use of /slim/ in the sense of meagre, as in /slim chance/, /slim attendance/ and /slim support/, goes back still further. The English use /small/ in place of it. Other, and less respectable contributions of the time are /brash/, /brainy/, /peart/, /locoed/, /pesky/, /picayune/, /scary/, /well-heeled/, /hardshell/ (/e. g./, Baptist), /low-flung/, /codfish/ (to indicate opprobrium) and /go-to-meeting/. The use of /plumb/ as an adjective, as in /plumb crazy/, is an English archaism that was revived in the United States in the early years of the century. In the more orthodox adverbial form of /plump/ it still survives, for example, in "she fell /plump/ into his arms." But this last is also good English.