"Well, now, she'll walk right into you, and talk to you like a book;"
or, as I have heard them say, "she'll talk you out of sight."
The word ugly is used for cross, ill-tempered. "I did feel so _ugly_
when he said that."
_Bad_ is used in an odd sense: it is employed for awkward,
uncomfortable: sorry:--
"I did feel so _bad_ when I read that"--awkward.
"I have felt quite _bad_ about it ever since"--uncomfortable.
"She was so _bad_, I thought she would cry"--sorry.
And as bad is tantamount to not _good_, I have heard a lady say, "I
don't feel _at all good_ this morning."
Mean is occasionally used for ashamed.
"I never felt so mean in my life."
The word handsome is oddly used.
"We reckon this very handsome scenery, sir," said an American to me,
pointing to the landscape.
"I consider him very truthful," is another expression.
"He stimulates too much."
"He dissipates awfully."
And they are very fond of using the noun as a verb, as--"I _suspicion_
that's a fact."
"I _opinion_ quite the contrary."
The word _considerable_ is in considerable demand in the United States.
In a work in which the letters of the party had been given to the public
as specimens of good style and polite literature, it is used as
follows:--
"My dear sister, I have taken up the pen early this morning, as I intend
to write _considerable_." (Life and Remains of Charles Pont.)
The word great is oddly used for fine, splendid.
"She's the _greatest_ gal in the whole Union."
But there is one word which we must surrender up to the Americans as
their _very own_, as the children say. I will quote a passage from one
of their papers:--
"The editor of the _Philadelphia Gazette_ is wrong in calling
absquatiated a Kentucky _phrase_ (he may well say phrase instead of
_word_.) It may prevail there, but its origin was in South Carolina,
where it was a few years since regularly derived from the Latin, as we
can prove from undoubted authority. By the way, there is a little
_corruption_ is the word as the _Gazette_ uses it, _absquatalized_ is
the true reading."
Certainly a word worth quarrelling about!
"Are you cold, miss?" said I to a young lady, who pulled the shawl
closer over her shoulders.
"_Some_," was the reply.
The English _what_? implying that you did not hear what was said to you,
is changed in America to the word _how_?
"I reckon", "I calculate", "I guess," are all used as the common English
phrase, "I suppose." Each term is said to be peculiar to different
states, but I found them used everywhere, one as often as the other. _I
opine_, is not so common.