English and American are visible; in both fields they go back to the
era before the Civil War. They are politics and that department of
social intercourse which has to do with drinking. Many characteristic
American political terms originated in revolutionary days, and have
passed over into English. Of such sort are /caucus/ and /mileage/. But
the majority of those in common use today were coined during the
extraordinarily exciting campaigns following the defeat of Adams by
Jefferson. Charles Ledyard Norton has devoted a whole book to their
etymology and meaning;[23] the number is far too large for a list of
them to be attempted here. But a few characteristic specimens may be
recalled, for example, the simple agglutinates: /omnibus-bill/,
/banner-state/, /favorite-son/, /anxious-bench/, /gag-rule/,
/office-seeker/ and /straight-ticket/; the humorous metaphors:
/pork-barrel/, /pie-counter/, /wire-puller/, /land-slide/,
/carpet-bagger/, /lame-duck/ and /on the fence/; the old words put to
new uses: /plank/, /platform/, /machine/, /precinct/, /slate/,
/primary/, /floater/, /repeater/, /bolter/, /stalwart/, /filibuster/,
/regular/ and /fences/; the new coinages: /gerrymander/, /heeler/,
/buncombe/, /roorback/, /mugwump/ and /to bulldoze/; the new
derivatives: /abolitionist/, /candidacy/, /boss-rule/, [Pg084]
/per-diem/, /to lobby/ and /boodler/; and the almost innumerable verbs
and verb-phrases: /to knife/, /to split a ticket/, /to go up Salt
River/, /to bolt/, /to eat crow/, /to boodle/, /to divvy/, /to grab/
and /to run/. An English candidate never /runs/; he /stands/. To
/run/, according to Thornton, was already used in America in 1789; it
was universal by 1820. /Platform/ came in at the same time. /Machine/
was first applied to a political organization by Aaron Burr. The use
of /mugwump/ is commonly thought to have originated in the Blaine
campaign of 1884, but it really goes back to the 30's. /Anxious-bench/
(or /anxious-seat/) at first designated only the place occupied by the
penitent at revivals, but was used in its present political sense in
Congress so early as 1842. /Banner-state/ appears in /Niles' Register/
for December 5, 1840. /Favorite-son/ appears in an ode addressed to
Washington on his visit to Portsmouth, N. H., in 1789, but it did not
acquire its present ironical sense until it was applied to Martin Van
Buren. Thornton has traced /bolter/ to 1812, /filibuster/ to 1863,
/roorback/ to 1844, and /split-ticket/ to 1842. /Regularity/ was an
issue in Tammany Hall in 1822.[24] There were /primaries/ in New York
city in 1827, and hundreds of /repeaters/ voted. In 1829 there were
/lobby-agents/ at Albany, and they soon became /lobbyists/; in 1832
/lobbying/ had already extended to Washington. All of these terms are
now as firmly imbedded in the American vocabulary as /election/ or
/congressman/.
In the department of conviviality the imaginativeness of Americans has
been shown in both the invention and the naming of new and often
highly complex beverages. So vast has been the production of
novelties, in fact, that England has borrowed many of them, and their
names with them. And not only England: one buys /cocktails/ and
/gin-fizzes/ in "American bars" that stretch from Paris to Yokohama.
/Cocktail/, /stone-fence/ and /sherry-cobbler/ were mentioned by
Irving in 1809;[25] by Thackeray's day they were already well-known in
England. Thornton traces the /sling/ to 1788, and the /stinkibus/ and
/anti-fogmatic/, [Pg085] both now extinct, to the same year. The
origin of the /rickey/, /fizz/, /sour/, /cooler/, /skin/, /shrub/ and
/smash/, and of such curious American drinks as the /horse's neck/,
/Mamie Taylor/, /Tom-and-Jerry/, /Tom-Collins/, /John-Collins/,
/bishop/, /stone-wall/, /gin-fix/, /brandy-champarelle/,
/golden-slipper/, /hari-kari/, /locomotive/, /whiskey-daisy/,
/blue-blazer/, /black-stripe/, /white-plush/ and /brandy-crusta/ is
quite unknown; the historians of alcoholism, like the philologists,
have neglected them.[26] But the essentially American character of
most of them is obvious, despite the fact that a number have gone over
into English. The English, in naming their drinks, commonly display a
far more limited imagination. Seeking a name, for example, for a
mixture of whiskey and soda-water, the best they could achieve was
/whiskey-and-soda/. The Americans, introduced to the same drink, at
once gave it the far more original name of /high-ball/. So with
/ginger-ale/ and /ginger-pop/. So with /minerals/ and /soft-drinks/.
Other characteristic Americanisms (a few of them borrowed by the
English) are /red-eye/, /corn-juice/, /eye-opener/, /forty-rod/,
/squirrel-whiskey/, /phlegm-cutter/, /moon-shine/, /hard-cider/,
/apple-jack/ and /corpse-reviver/, and the auxiliary drinking terms,
/speak-easy/, /sample-room/, /blind-pig/, /barrel-house/, /bouncer/,
/bung-starter/, /dive/, /doggery/, /schooner/, /shell/, /stick/,
/duck/, /straight/, /saloon/, /finger/, /pony/ and /chaser/. Thornton
shows that /jag/, /bust/, /bat/ and /to crook the elbow/ are also
Americanisms. So are /bartender/ and /saloon-keeper/. To them might be
added a long list of common American synonyms for /drunk/, for
example, /piffled/, /pifflicated/, /awry-eyed/, /tanked/, /snooted/,
/stewed/, /ossified/, /slopped/, /fiddled/, /edged/, /loaded/,
/het-up/, /frazzled/, /jugged/, /soused/, /jiggered/, /corned/,
/jagged/ and /bunned/. Farmer and Henley list /corned/ and /jagged/
among English synonyms, but the former is obviously an Americanism
derived from /corn-whiskey/ or /corn-juice/, and Thornton says that
the latter originated on this side of the Atlantic also. [Pg086]
§ 4
/Loan-Words/--The Indians of the new West, it would seem, had little
to add to the contributions already made to the American vocabulary
by the Algonquins of the Northeast. The American people, by the
beginning of the second quarter of the nineteenth century, knew
almost all they were destined to know of the aborigine, and they had
names for all the new objects that he had brought to their notice and
for most of his peculiar implements and ceremonies. A few translated
Indian terms, /e. g./, /squaw-man/, /big-chief/, /great-white-father/
and /happy-hunting ground/, represent the meagre fresh stock that
the western pioneers got from him. Of more importance was the
suggestive and indirect effect of his polysynthetic dialects, and
particularly of his vivid proper names, /e. g./, /Rain-in-the-Face/,
/Young-Man-Afraid-of-His-Wife/ and /Voice-Like-Thunder/. These names,
and other word-phrases like them, made an instant appeal to American
humor, and were extensively imitated in popular slang. One of the
surviving coinages of that era is /Old-Stick-in-the-Mud/, which
Farmer and Henley note as having reached England by 1823.
Contact with the French in Louisiana and along the Canadian border,
and with the Spanish in Texas and further West, brought many more new
words. From the Canadian French, as we have already seen, /prairie/,
/batteau/, /portage/ and /rapids/ had been borrowed during colonial
days; to these French contributions /bayou/, /picayune/, /levee/,
/chute/, /butte/, /crevasse/, and /lagniappe/ were now added, and
probably also /shanty/ and /canuck/. The use of /brave/ to designate
an Indian warrior, almost universal until the close of the Indian
wars, was also of French origin.
From the Spanish, once the Mississippi was crossed, and particularly
after the Mexican war, in 1846, there came a swarm of novelties, many
of which have remained firmly imbedded in the language. Among them
were numerous names of strange objects: /lariat/, /lasso/, /ranch/,
/loco/ (weed), /mustang/, /sombrero/, /canyon/, /desperado/, /poncho/,
/chapparel/, /corral/, /broncho/, /plaza/, [Pg087] /peon/, /cayuse/,
/burro/, /mesa/, /tornado/, /sierra/ and /adobe/. To them, as soon as
gold was discovered, were added /bonanza/, /eldorado/, /placer/ and
/vigilante/. /Cinch/ was borrowed from the Spanish /cincha/ in the
early Texas days, though its figurative use did not come in until much
later. /Ante/, the poker term, though the etymologists point out its
obvious origin in the Latin, probably came into American from the
Spanish. Thornton's first example of its use in its current sense is
dated 1857, but Bartlett reported it in the form of /anti/ in 1848.
/Coyote/ came from the Mexican dialect of Spanish; its first parent
was the Aztec /coyotl/. /Tamale/ had a similar origin, and so did
/frijole/ and /tomato/. None of these is good Spanish.[27] As usual,
derivatives quickly followed the new-comers, among them /peonage/,
/broncho-buster/, /ranchman/ and /ranch-house/, and the verbs /to
ranch/, /to lasso/, /to corral/, /to ante up/, and /to cinch/. /To
vamose/ (from the Spanish /vamos/, let us go), came in at the same
time. So did /sabe/. So did /gazabo/.
This was also the period of the first great immigrations, and the
American people now came into contact, on a large scale, with peoples
of divergent race, particularly Germans, Irish Catholics from the
South of Ireland (the Irish of colonial days "were descendants of
Cromwell's army, and came from the North of Ireland"),[28] and, on the
Pacific Coast, Chinese. So early as the 20's the immigration to the
United States reached 25,000 in a year; in 1824 the Legislature of New
York, in alarm, passed a restrictive act.[29] The Know-Nothing
movement of the 50's need not concern us here. Suffice it to recall
that the immigration of 1845 passed the 100,000 mark, and that that of
1854 came within sight of 500,000. These new Americans, most of them
Germans and Irish, did not all remain in the East; a great many spread
through the West and Southwest with the other pioneers. Their effect
upon the language was not large, [Pg088] perhaps, but it was still
very palpable, and not only in the vocabulary. Of words of German
origin, /saurkraut/ and /noodle/, as we have seen, had come in during
the colonial period, apparently through the so-called Pennsylvania
Dutch, /i. e./, a mixture, much debased, of the German dialects of
Switzerland, Suabia and the Palatinate. The new immigrants now
contributed /pretzel/, /pumpernickel/, /hausfrau/, /lager-beer/,
/pinocle/, /wienerwurst/, /dumb/ (for stupid), /frankfurter/,
/bock-beer/, /schnitzel/, /leberwurst/, /blutwurst/, /rathskeller/,
/schweizer/ (cheese), /delicatessen/, /hamburger/ (/i. e./, steak),
/kindergarten/ and /katzenjammer/.[30] From them, in all probability,
there also came two very familiar Americanisms, /loafer/ and /bum/.
The former, according to the Standard Dictionary, is derived from the
German /laufen/; another authority says that it originated in a German
mispronounciation of /lover/, /i. e./, as /lofer/.[31] Thornton shows
that the word was already in common use in 1835. /Bum/ was originally
/bummer/, and apparently derives from the German /bummler/.[32] Both
words have produced derivatives: /loaf/ (noun), /to loaf/,
/corner-loafer/, /common-loafer/, /to bum/, /bum/ (adj.) and
/bummery/, not to mention /on the [Pg089] bum/. /Loafer/ has migrated
in England, but /bum/ is still unknown there in the American sense. In
English, indeed, /bum/ is used to designate an unmentionable part of
the body and is thus not employed in polite discourse.
Another example of debased German is offered by the American /Kriss
Kringle/. It is from /Christkindlein/, or /Christkind'l/, and properly
designates, of course, not the patron saint of Christmas, but the
child in the manger. A German friend tells me that the form /Kriss
Kringle/, which is that given in the Standard Dictionary, and the form
/Krisking'l/, which is that most commonly used in the United States,
are both quite unknown in Germany. Here, obviously, we have an example
of a loan-word in decay. Whole phrases have gone through the same
process, for example, /nix come erous/ (from /nichts kommt heraus/)
and /'rous mit 'im/ (from /heraus mit ihm/). These phrases, like /wie
geht's/ and /ganz gut/, are familiar to practically all Americans, no
matter how complete their ignorance of correct German. Most of them
know, too, the meaning of /gesundheit/, /kümmel/, /seidel/,
/wanderlust/, /stein/, /speck/, /maennerchor/, /schützenfest/,
/sängerfest/, /turnverein/, /hoch/, /yodel/, /zwieback/, and /zwei/
(as in /zwei bier/). I have found /snitz/ (=/schnitz/) in /Town
Topics/.[33] /Prosit/ is in all American dictionaries.[34] /Bower/, as
used in cards, is an Americanism derived from the German /bauer/,
meaning the jack. The exclamation, /ouch!/ is classed as an
Americanism by Thornton, and he gives an example dated 1837. The New
English Dictionary refers it to the German /autsch/, and Thornton says
that "it may have come across with the Dunkers or the Mennonites."
/Ouch/ is not heard in English, save in the sense of a clasp or buckle
set with precious stones (=OF /nouche/), and even in that sense it is
archaic. /Shyster/ is very probably German also; Thornton has traced
it back to the 50's.[35] /Rum-dumb/ is grounded upon the [Pg090]
meaning of /dumb/ borrowed from the German; it is not listed in the
English slang dictionaries.[36] Bristed says that the American meaning
of /wagon/, which indicates almost any four-wheeled, horse-drawn
vehicle in this country but only the very heaviest in England, was
probably influenced by the German /wagen/. He also says that the
American use of /hold on/ for /stop/ was suggested by the German /halt
an/, and White says that the substitution of /standpoint/ for /point
of view/, long opposed by all purists, was first made by an American
professor who sought "an Anglicized form" of the German /standpunkt/.
The same German influence may be behind the general facility with
which American forms compound nouns. In most other languages, for
example, Latin and French, the process is rare, and even English lags
far behind American. But in German it is almost unrestricted. "It is,"
says L. P. Smith, "a great step in advance toward that ideal language
in which meaning is expressed, not by terminations, but by the simple
method of word position."
The immigrants from the South of Ireland, during the period under
review, exerted an influence upon the language that was vastly greater
than that of the Germans, both directly and indirectly, but their
contributions to the actual vocabulary were probably less. They gave
American, indeed, relatively few new words; perhaps /shillelah/,
/colleen/, /spalpeen/, /smithereens/ and /poteen/ exhaust the
unmistakably Gaelic list. /Lallapalooza/ is also probably an Irish
loan-word, though it is not Gaelic. It apparently comes from
/allay-foozee/, a Mayo provincialism, signifying a sturdy fellow.
/Allay-foozee/, in its turn, comes from the French /Allez-fusil/,
meaning "Forward the muskets!"--a memory, [Pg091] according to P. W.
Joyce,[37] of the French landing at Killala in 1798. Such phrases as
/Erin go bragh/ and such expletives as /begob/ and /begorry/ may
perhaps be added: they have got into American, though they are surely
not distinctive Americanisms. But of far more importance than these
few contributions to the vocabulary were certain speech habits that
the Irish brought with them--habits of pronunciation, of syntax and
even of grammar. These habits were, in part, the fruit of efforts to
translate the idioms of Gaelic into English, and in part borrowings
from the English of the age of James I. The latter, preserved by Irish
conservatism in speech,[38] came into contact in America with habits
surviving, with more or less change, from the same time, and so gave
those American habits an unmistakable reinforcement. The Yankees, so
to speak, had lived down such Jacobean pronunciations as /tay/ for
/tea/ and /desave/ for /deceive/, and these forms, on Irish lips,
struck them as uncouth and absurd, but they still clung, in their
common speech, to such forms as /h'ist/ for /hoist/, /bile/ for
/boil/, /chaw/ for /chew/, /jine/ for /join/,[39] /sass/ for /sauce/,
/heighth/ for /height/ and /rench/ for /rinse/ and /lep/ for /leap/,
and the employment of precisely the same forms by the thousands of
Irish immigrants who spread through the country undoubtedly gave them
a certain support, and so protected them, in a measure, from the
assault of the purists. And the same support was given to /drownded/
for /drowned/, /oncet/ for /once/, /ketch/ for /catch/, /ag'in/ for
/against/ and /onery/ for /ordinary/. [Pg092]
Certain usages of Gaelic, carried over into the English of Ireland,
fell upon fertile soil in America. One was the employment of the
definite article before nouns, as in French and German. An Irishman
does not say "I am good at Latin," but "I am good at /the/ Latin." In
the same way an American does not say "I had measles," but "I had
/the/ measles." There is, again, the use of the prefix /a/ before
various adjectives and gerunds, as in /a-going/ and /a-riding/. This
usage, of course, is native to English, as /aboard/ and /afoot/
demonstrate, but it is much more common in the Irish dialect, on
account of the influence of the parallel Gaelic form, as in
/a-n-aice/=/a-near/, and it is also much more common in American.
There is, yet again, a use of intensifying suffixes, often set down as
characteristically American, which was probably borrowed from the
Irish. Examples are /no-siree/ and /yes-indeedy/, and the later
/kiddo/ and /skiddoo/. As Joyce shows, such suffixes, in
Irish-English, tend to become whole phrases. The Irishman is almost
incapable of saying plain yes or no; he must always add some extra and
gratuitous asseveration.[40] The American is in like case. His speech
bristles with intensives: /bet your life/, /not on your life/, /well I
guess/, /and no mistake/, and so on. The Irish extravagance of speech
struck a responsive chord in the American heart. The American
borrowed, not only occasional words, but whole phrases, and some of
them have become thoroughly naturalized. Joyce, indeed, shows the
Irish origin of scores of locutions that are now often mistaken for
native Americanisms, for example, /great shakes/, /dead/ (as an
intensive), /thank you kindly/, /to split one's sides/ (/i. e./,
laughing), and /the tune the old cow died of/, not to mention many
familiar similes and proverbs. Certain Irish pronunciations, Gaelic
rather than archaic English, got into American during the nineteenth
century. Among them, one recalls /bhoy/, which entered our political
slang in the middle 40's and survived into our own time. Again, there
is the very characteristic American word /ballyhoo/, signifying
[Pg093] the harangue of a /ballyhoo-man/, or /spieler/ (that is,
barker) before a cheap show, or, by metaphor, any noisy speech. It is
from /Ballyhooly/, the name of a village in Cork, once notorious for
its brawls. Finally, there is /shebang/. Schele de Vere derives it
from the French /cabane/, but it seems rather more likely that it is
from the Irish /shebeen/.
The propagation of Irishisms in the United States was helped, during
many years, by the enormous popularity of various dramas of Irish
peasant life, particularly those of Dion Boucicault. So recently as
1910 an investigation made by the /Dramatic Mirror/ showed that some
of his pieces, notably "Kathleen Mavourneen," "The Colleen Bawn" and
"The Shaugraun," were still among the favorites of popular audiences.
Such plays, at one time, were presented by dozens of companies, and a
number of Irish actors, among them Andrew Mack, Chauncey Olcott and
Boucicault himself, made fortunes appearing in them. An influence also
to be taken into account is that of Irish songs, once in great vogue.
But such influences, like the larger matter of American borrowings
from Anglo-Irish, remain to be investigated. So far as I have been
able to discover, there is not a single article in print upon the
subject. Here, as elsewhere, our philologists have wholly neglected a
very interesting field of inquiry.
From other languages the borrowings during the period of growth were
naturally less. Down to the last decades of the nineteenth century,
the overwhelming majority of immigrants were either Germans or Irish;
the Jews, Italians and Slavs were yet to come. But the first Chinese
appeared in 1848, and soon their speech began to contribute its
inevitable loan-words. These words, of course, were first adopted by
the miners of the Pacific Coast, and a great many of them have
remained California localisms, among them such verbs as /to yen/ (to
desire strongly, as a Chinaman desires opium) and /to flop-flop/ (to
lie down), and such nouns as /fun/, a measure of weight. But a number
of others have got into the common speech of the whole country, /e. g./,
/fan-tan/, /kow-tow/, /chop-suey/, /ginseng/, /joss/, /yok-a-mi/
and /tong/. Contrary to the popular opinion, /dope/ and /hop/ are not
from the Chinese. [Pg094] Neither, in fact, is an Americanism, though
the former has one meaning that is specially American, /i. e./, that
of information or formula, as in /racing-dope/ and /to dope out/. Most
etymologists derive the word from the Dutch /doop/, a sauce. In
English, as in American, it signifies a thick liquid, and hence the
viscous cooked opium. /Hop/ is simply the common name of the
/Humuluslupulus/. The belief that hops have a soporific effect is very
ancient, and hop-pillows were brought to America by the first English
colonists.
The derivation of /poker/, which came into American from California in
the days of the gold rush, has puzzled etymologists. It is commonly
derived from /primero/, the name of a somewhat similar game, popular
in England in the sixteenth century, but the relation seems rather
fanciful. It may possibly come, indirectly, from the Danish word
/pokker/, signifying the devil. /Pokerish/, in the sense of alarming,
was a common adjective in the United States before the Civil War;
Thornton gives an example dated 1827. Schele de Vere says that
/poker/, in the sense of a hobgoblin, was still in use in 1871, but he
derives the name of the game from the French /poche/ (=/pouche/,
/pocket/). He seems to believe that the bank or pool, in the early
days, was called the /poke/. Barrère and Leland, rejecting all these
guesses, derive /poker/ from the Yiddish /pochger/, which comes in
turn from the verb /pochgen/, signifying to conceal winnings or
losses. This /pochgen/ is obviously related to the German /pocher/
(=/boaster/, /braggart/). There were a good many German Jews in
California in the early days, and they were ardent gamblers. If
Barrère and Leland are correct, then /poker/ enjoys the honor of being
the first loan-word taken into American from the Yiddish.
§ 5