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
The spirit of the language appears scarcely less clearly in some of
the coinages of the other classes. There are, for example, the English
words that have been extended or restricted in meaning, /e. g./,
/docket/ (for court calendar), /betterment/ (for improvement to
property), /collateral/ (for security), /crank/ (for fanatic),
/jumper/ (for tunic), /tickler/ (for memorandum or reminder),[19]
/carnival/ (in such phrases as /carnival of crime/), /scrape/ (for
fight or difficulty),[20] /flurry/ (of snow, or in the market),
/suspenders/, /diggings/ (for habitation) and /range/. Again, there
are the new assemblings of English materials, /e. g./, /doggery/,
/rowdy/, /teetotaler/, /goatee/, /tony/ and /cussedness/. Yet again,
there are the purely artificial words, /e. g./, /sockdolager/,
/hunkydory/, /scalawag/, /guyascutis/, /spondulix/, /slumgullion/,
/rambunctious/, /scrumptious/, [Pg082] /to skedaddle/, /to
absquatulate/ and /to exfluncticate/.[21] In the use of the last-named
coinages fashions change. In the 40's /to absquatulate/ was in good
usage, but it has since disappeared. Most of the other inventions of
the time, however, have to some extent survived, and it would be
difficult to find an American of today who did not know the meaning of
/scalawag/ and /rambunctious/ and who did not occasionally use them. A
whole series of artificial American words groups itself around the
prefix /ker/, for example, /ker-flop/, /ker-splash/, /ker-thump/,
/ker-bang/, /ker-plunk/, /ker-slam/ and /ker-flummux/. This prefix and
its onomatopoeic daughters have been borrowed by the English, but
Thornton and Ware agree that it is American. Its origin has not been
determined. As Sayce says, "the native instinct of language breaks out
wherever it has the chance, and coins words which can be traced back
to no ancestors."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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