By R. A. PROCTOR.
There are many points in which English and American speakers and writers
of culture differ from each other as to the use of certain words and as
to certain modes of expression.
In America the word “clever” is commonly understood to mean pleasant and
of good disposition, not (as in England) ingenious and skilful. Thus,
though an American may speak of a person as a clever workman, using the
word as we do, yet when he speaks of another as a clever man, he means,
in nine cases out of ten, that the man is good company and well-natured.
Sometimes, I am told, the word is used to signify generous or liberal. I
can not recall any passages from early English literature in which the
word is thus used, but I should not be surprised to learn that the usage
is an old one. In like manner, the words “cunning” and “cute” are often
used in America for “pretty” (German _niedlich_). As I write, an American
lady, who has just played a very sweet passage from one of Mozart’s
symphonies, turns from the piano to ask “whether that passage is not
cute,” meaning pretty.
The word “mad” in America seems nearly always to mean “angry;” at least,
I have seldom heard it used in our English sense. For “mad,” as we
use the word, the Americans say “crazy.” Herein they have manifestly
impaired the language. The words “mad” and “crazy” are quite distinct in
their significance as used in England, and both meanings require to be
expressed in ordinary parlance. It is obviously a mistake to make one
word do duty for both, and to use the word “mad” to imply what is already
expressed by other and more appropriate words.
I have just used the word “ordinary” in the English sense. In America
the word is commonly used to imply inferiority. An “ordinary actor,”
for instance, is a bad actor; a “very ordinary man” is a man very much
below par. There is no authority for this usage in any English writer
of repute, and the usage is manifestly inconsistent with the derivation
of the word. On the other hand, the use of the word “homely” to imply
ugliness, as is usual in America, is familiar at this day in parts of
England, and could be justified by passages in some of the older English
writers. That the word in Shakspere’s time implied inferiority is shown
by the line—
Home keeping youths have ever homely wits.
In like manner, some authority may be found for the American use of the
word “ugly” to signify bad-tempered.
Words are used in America which have ceased to be commonly used in
England, and are, indeed, no longer regarded as admissible. Thus, the
word “unbeknown” which no educated Englishman ever uses, either in
speaking or in writing, is still used in America in common speech and by
writers of repute.
Occasionally, writers from whom one would expect at least correct grammar
make mistakes which in England would be regarded as very bad—mistakes
which are not, indeed, passed over in America, but still attract less
notice there than in England. Thus, Mr. Wilkie, who is so severe on
English English in “Sketches beyond the Seas,” describes himself as
saying (in reply to the question whether Chicago policemen have to use
their pistols much), “I don’t know _as_ they have to as a matter of
law or necessity, but I know they do as a matter of fact;” and I have
repeatedly heard this incorrect use of “as” for “that” in American
conversation. I have also noted in works by educated Americans the use of
the word “that” as an adverb, “that excitable,” “that head-strong,” and
so forth. So the use of “lay” for “lie” seems to me to be much commoner
in America than in England, though it is too frequently heard here also.
In a well-written novelette called “The Man who was not a Colonel,” the
words—“You was” and “Was you?” are repeatedly used, apparently without
any idea that they are ungrammatical. They are much more frequently heard
in America than in England (I refer, of course, to the conversation of
the middle and better classes, not of the uneducated). In this respect it
is noteworthy that the writers of the last century resemble Americans of
to-day; for we often meet in their works the incorrect usage in question.
And here it may be well to consider the American expression “I guess,”
which is often made the subject of ridicule by Englishmen, unaware of
the fact that the expression is good old English. It is found in a few
works written during the last century, and in many written during the
seventeenth century. So careful a writer as Locke used the expression
more than once in his treatise “On the Human Understanding.” In fact,
the disuse of the expression in later times seems to have been due to
a change in the meaning of the word “guess.” An Englishman who should
say “I guess” now, would not mean what Locke did when he used the
expression in former times, or what an American means when he uses it in
our own day. We say, “I guess that riddle,” or “I guess what you mean,”
signifying that we think the answer to the riddle, or the meaning of what
we have heard, may be such and such. But when an American says, “I guess
so,” he does not mean “I think it may be so,” but more nearly “I know
it to be so.” The expression is closely akin to the old English saying,
“I wis.” Indeed, the words “guess” and “wis” are simply different forms
of the same word. Just as we have “guard” and “ward,” “guardian” and
“warden,” “Guillaume” and “William,” “guichet” and “wicket,” etc., so we
have the verbs to “guess” and to “wis.” (In the Bible we have not “I
wis,” but we have “he wist.”) “I wis” means nearly the same as “I know,”
and that this is the root-meaning of the word is shown by such words as
“wit,” “witness,” “wisdom,” the legal phrase “to-wit,” and so forth.
“Guess” was originally used in the same sense; and Americans retain
that meaning, whereas in our modern English the word has changed in
significance.
It may be added, that in many parts of America we find the expression “I
guess” replaced by “I reckon,” and “I calculate” (the “I cal’late” of
the _Biglow Papers_). In the South, “I reckon” is generally used, and
in parts of New England “I calculate,” though (I am told) less commonly
than of yore. It is obvious from the use of such words as “reckon” and
“calculate” as equivalents for “guess,” that the expression “I guess”
is not, as many seem to imagine, equivalent to the English “I suppose”
and “I fancy.” An American friend of mine, in response to the question
by an Englishman (an exceedingly positive and dogmatic person, as it
chanced), “Why do Englishmen never say ‘I guess?’” replied (more wittily
than justly), “Because they are always so positive about everything.” But
it is noteworthy that whereas the American says frequently, “I guess,”
meaning “I know,” the Englishman as freely lards his discourse with the
expression, “You know,” which is, perhaps, more modest. Yet, on the other
side, it may be noted, that the “down east” American often uses the
expression “I want to know,” in the same sense as our English expression
of attentive interest, “Indeed?”