is getting his education free, but that his father is paying a good
round sum for it and is accepted as a gentleman. A /public school/
over there corresponds to our /prep school/; it is a place maintained
chiefly by endowments, wherein boys of the upper classes are prepared
for the universities. What we know as a /public school/ is called a
/board school/ in England, not because the pupils are boarded but
because it is managed by a school board. English school-boys are
divided, not into /classes/, or /grades/, but into /forms/, which are
numbered, the lowest being the /first form/. The benches they sit on
are also called /forms/. The principal of an English school is a
/head-master/ or /head-mistress/; the lower pedagogues used to be
/ushers/, but are now /assistant masters/ (or /mistresses/). The head
of a university is a /chancellor/. He is always some eminent public
man, and a /vice-chancellor/ performs his duties. The head of a mere
college may be a /president/, /principal/, /rector/, /dean/ or
/provost/. At the universities the students are not divided into
/freshmen/, /sophomores/, /juniors/ and /seniors/, as with us, but are
simply /first-year men/, /second-year men/, and so on. Such
distinctions, however, are not as important in England as in America;
members of the university (they are called [Pg105] /members/, not
/students/) do not flock together according to seniority. An English
university man does not /study/; he /reads/. He knows nothing of
/frats/, /class-days/, /senior-proms/ and such things; save at
Cambridge and Dublin he does not even have a /commencement/. On the
other hand his daily speech is full of terms unintelligible to an
American student, for example, /wrangler/, /tripos/, /head/,
/pass-degree/ and /don/.
The upkeep of board-schools in England comes out of the /rates/, which
are local taxes levied upon householders. For that reason an English
municipal taxpayer is called a /ratepayer/. The functionaries who
collect and spend his money are not /office-holders/ but
/public-servants/. The head of the local police is not a /chief of
police/, but a /chief constable/. The fire /department/ is the fire
/brigade/. The /street-cleaner/ is a /crossing-sweeper/. The parish
/poorhouse/ is a /workhouse/. If it is maintained by two or more
parishes jointly it becomes a /union/. A pauper who accepts its
hospitality is said to be /on the rates/. A policeman is a /bobby/
familiarly and /constable/ officially. He is commonly mentioned in the
newspapers, not by his surname, but as /P. C. 643a/--/i. e./, Police
Constable No. 643a. The /fire laddie/, the /ward executive/, the
/roundsman/, the /strong-arm squad/ and other such objects of American
devotion are unknown in England. An English saloon-keeper is
officially a licensed /victualler/. His saloon is a /public house/,
or, colloquially, a /pub/. He does not sell beer by the /bucket/ or
/can/ or /growler/ or /schooner/, but by the /pint/. He and his
brethren, taken together, are the /licensed trade/. His back-room is a
/parlor/. If he has a few upholstered benches in his place he usually
calls it a /lounge/. He employs no /bartenders/ or /mixologists/.
/Barmaids/ do the work, with maybe a /barman/ to help.
The American language, as we have seen, has begun to take in the
English /boot/ and /shop/, and it is showing hospitality to
/head-master/, /haberdasher/ and /week-end/, but /subaltern/, /civil
servant/, /porridge/, /moor/, /draper/, /treacle/, /tram/ and /mufti/
are still strangers in the United States, as /bleachers/, /picayune/,
/air-line/, /campus/, /chore/, /scoot/, /stogie/ and /hoodoo/ are in
England. A /subaltern/ is a commissioned officer in the army, under
the rank of [Pg106] captain. A /civil servant/ is a public servant in
the national civil service; if he is of high rank, he is usually
called a /permanent official/. /Porridge/, /moor/, /scullery/,
/draper/, /treacle/ and /tram/, though unfamiliar, still need no
explanation. /Mufti/ means ordinary male clothing; an army officer out
of uniform is said to be in /mufti/. To this officer a sack-suit or
business-suit is a /lounge-suit/. He carries his clothes, not in a
/trunk/ or /grip/ or /suit-case/, but in a /box/. He does not /miss/ a
train; he /loses/ it. He does not ask for a /round-trip/ ticket, but
for a /return/ ticket. If he proposes to go to the theatre he does not
/reserve/ or /engage/ seats; he /books/ them, and not at the
/box-office/, but at the /booking-office/. If he sits downstairs, it
is not in the /orchestra/, but in the /stalls/. If he likes
vaudeville, he goes to a /music-hall/, where the /head-liners/ are
/top-liners/. If he has to stand in line, he does it, not in a /line/,
but in a /queue/.
In England a corporation is a /public company/ or /limited liability
company/. The term /corporation/, over there, is applied to the mayor,
aldermen and sheriffs of a city, as in /the London corporation/. An
Englishman writes /Ltd./ after the name of an incorporated bank or
trading company as we write /Inc./ He calls its president its
/chairman/ or /managing director/. Its stockholders are its
/shareholders/, and hold /shares/ instead of /stock/ in it. Its bonds
are /debentures/. The place wherein such companies are floated and
looted--the Wall Street of England--is called the /City/, with a
capital /C/. Bankers, stock-jobbers, promoters, directors and other
such leaders of its business are called /City/ men. The financial
editor of a newspaper is its /City/ editor. Government bonds are
/consols/, or /stocks/, or the /funds/.[5] To have /money in the
stocks/ is to own such bonds. Promissory notes are /bills/. An
Englishman hasn't a /bank-account/, but a /banking-account/. He draws
/cheques/ (not /checks/), not on his /bank/, but on his /bankers/.[6]
In England there is a rigid distinction between a /broker/ and a
/stock-broker/. A /broker/ means, not a dealer in [Pg107] securities,
as in our /Wall Street broker/, but a dealer in second-hand furniture.
/To have the brokers/[7] /in the house/ means to be bankrupt, with
one's very household goods in the hands of one's creditors.
/Tariff reform/, in England, does not mean a movement toward free
trade, but one toward protection. The word /Government/, meaning what
we call the administration, is always capitalized and plural, /e. g./,
"The Government /are/ considering the advisability, etc." /Vestry/,
/committee/, /council/, /ministry/ and even /company/ are also plural,
though sometimes not capitalized. A member of Parliament does not
/run/ for office; he /stands/.[8] He does not make a /campaign/, but a
/canvass/. He does not represent a /district/, but a /division/ or
/constituency/. He never makes a /stumping trip/, but always a
/speaking tour/. When he looks after his fences he calls it /nursing
the constituency/. At a political meeting (they are often rough in
England) the /bouncers/ are called /stewards/; the suffragettes used
to delight in stabbing them with hatpins. A member of Parliament is
not afflicted by the numerous bugaboos that menace an American
congressman. He knows nothing of /lame ducks/, /pork barrels/,
/gag-rule/, /junkets/, /gerrymanders/, /omnibus bills/, /snakes/,
/niggers in the woodpile/, /Salt river/, /crow/, /bosses/, /ward
heelers/, /men higher up/, /silk-stockings/, /repeaters/, /ballot-box
stuffers/ and /straight/ and /split tickets/ (he always calls them
/ballots/ or /voting papers/). He has never heard of /direct
primaries/, the /recall/ or the /initiative and referendum/. A
/roll-call/ in Parliament is a /division/. A member speaking is said
to be /up/ or /on his legs/. When the house adjourns it is said to
/rise/. A member referring to another in the course of a debate does
not say "the gentleman from Manchester," but "the /honorable/
gentleman" (written /hon. gentleman/) or, if he happens to be a privy
councillor, "the /right honorable/ gentleman," or, if he is a member
for one of the universities, "the /honorable and learned/ gentleman."
If the speaker chooses to be intimate or facetious, he may say "my
honorable /friend/." [Pg108]
In the United States a /pressman/ is a man who runs a printing press;
in England he is a newspaper reporter, or, as the English usually say,
a /journalist/.[9] This journalist works, not at /space/ rates, but at
/lineage/ rates. A printing press is a /machine/. An editorial in a
newspaper is a /leading article/ or /leader/. An editorial paragraph
is a /leaderette/. A newspaper clipping is a /cutting/. A proof-reader
is a /corrector of the press/. A pass to the theatre is an /order/.
The room-clerk of a hotel is the /secretary/. A real-estate agent or
dealer is an /estate-agent/. The English keep up most of the old
distinctions between physicians and surgeons, barristers and
solicitors. A surgeon is often plain /Mr./, and not /Dr./ Neither he
nor a doctor has an /office/, but always a /surgery/ or /consulting
room/. A barrister is greatly superior to a solicitor. He alone can
address the higher courts and the parliamentary committees; a
solicitor must keep to office work and the courts of first instance. A
man with a grievance goes first to his solicitor, who then /instructs/
or /briefs/ a barrister for him. If that barrister, in the course of
the trial, wants certain evidence removed from the record, he moves
that it be /struck out/, not /stricken out/, as an American lawyer
would say. Only barristers may become judges. An English barrister,
like his American brother, takes a /retainer/ when he is engaged. But
the rest of his fee does not wait upon the termination of the case: he
expects and receives a /refresher/ from time to time. A barrister is
never admitted to the bar, but is always /called/. If he becomes a
/King's Counsel/, or /K. C./ (a purely honorary appointment), he is
said to have /taken silk/.
The common objects and phenomena of nature are often differently named
in English and American. As we saw in a previous chapter, such
Americanisms as /creek/ and /run/, for small streams, are practically
unknown in England, and the English /moor/ and /downs/ early
disappeared from American. The Englishman knows the meaning of /sound/
(/e. g./, Long Island /Sound/), but he [Pg109] nearly always uses
/channel/ in place of it. In the same way the American knows the
meaning of the English /bog/, but rejects the English distinction
between it and /swamp/, and almost always uses /swamp/, or /marsh/
(often elided to /ma'sh/). The Englishman seldom, if ever, describes a
severe storm as a /hurricane/, a /cyclone/, a /tornado/ or a
/blizzard/. He never uses /cold-snap/, /cloudburst/ or /under the
weather/. He does not say that the temperature is /29 degrees/
(Fahrenheit) or that the thermometer or the mercury is at 29 degrees,
but that there are /three degrees of frost/. He calls ice water
/iced-water/. He knows nothing of /blue-grass/ country or of
/pennyr'yal/. What we call the /mining regions/ he knows as the /black
country/. He never, of course, uses /down-East/ or /up-State/. Many of
our names for common fauna and flora are unknown to him save as strange
Americanisms, /e. g./, /terrapin/, /moose/, /persimmon/, /gumbo/,
/egg-plant/, /alfalfa/, /sweet-corn/, /sweet-potato/ and /yam/. Until
lately he called the /grapefruit/ a /shaddock/. He still calls the
/beet/ a /beet-root/ and the /rutabaga/ a /mangel-wurzel/. He is
familiar with many fish that we seldom see, /e. g./, the /turbot/. He
also knows the /hare/, which is seldom heard of in America. But he
knows nothing of /devilled-crabs/, /crab-cocktails/, /clam-chowder/ or
/oyster-stews/, and he never goes to /oyster-suppers/, /clam-bakes/ or
/burgoo-picnics/. He doesn't buy /peanuts/ when he goes to the circus.
He calls them /monkey-nuts/, and to eat them publicly is /infra dig/.
The common American use of /peanut/ as an adjective of disparagement,
as in /peanut politics/, is incomprehensible to him.
In England a /hack/ is not a public coach, but a horse let out at
hire, or one of similar quality. A life insurance policy is usually
not an insurance policy at all, but an /assurance/ policy. What we
call the normal income tax is the /ordinary/ tax; what we call the
surtax is the /supertax/.[10] An Englishman never lives /on/ a street,
but always /in/ it. He never lives in a /block/ of houses, but in a
/row/; it is never in a /section/ of the city, but always in a
/district/. Going home by train he always takes the /down-train/, no
matter whether he be proceeding southward to Wimbleton, [Pg110]
westward to Shepherd's Bush, northward to Tottenham or eastward to
Noak's Hill. A train headed toward London is always an /up-train/, and
the track it runs on is the /up-line/. /Eastbound/ and /westbound/
tracks and trains are unknown in England. When an Englishman boards a
bus it is not at a /street-corner/, but at a /crossing/, though he is
familiar with such forms as Hyde Park /Corner/. The place he is bound
for is not three /squares/ or /blocks/ away, but three /turnings/.
/Square/, in England, always means a small park. A backyard is a
/garden/. A subway is always a /tube/, or the /underground/, or the
/Metro/. But an underground passage for pedestrians is a /subway/.
English streets have no /sidewalks/; they always call them /pavements/
or /footways/. An automobile is always a /motor-car/ or /motor/.
/Auto/ is almost unknown, and with it the verb /to auto/. So is
/machine/. So is /joy-ride/.
An Englishman always calls russet, yellow or tan shoes /brown/ shoes
(or, if they cover the ankle, /boots/). He calls a pocketbook a
/purse/, and gives the name of /pocketbook/ to what we call a
/memorandum-book/. His walking-stick is always a /stick/, never a
/cane/. By /cord/ he means something strong, almost what we call
/twine/; a thin cord he always calls a /string/; his /twine/ is the
lightest sort of /string/. When he applies the adjective /homely/ to a
woman he means that she is simple and home-loving, not necessarily
that she is plain. He uses /dessert/, not to indicate the whole last
course at dinner, but to designate the fruit only; the rest is /ices/
or /sweets/. He uses /vest/, not in place of /waistcoat/, but in place
of /undershirt/. Similarly, he applies /pants/, not to his trousers,
but to his drawers. An Englishman who inhabits bachelor quarters is
said to live in /chambers/; if he has a flat he calls it a /flat/, and
not an /apartment/;[11] /flat-houses/ are often /mansions/. The
janitor or superintendent thereof is a /care-taker/. The scoundrels
who snoop around in search of divorce evidence are not /private
detectives/, but /private enquiry agents/. [Pg111]
The Englishman is naturally unfamiliar with baseball, and in
consequence his language is bare of the countless phrases and
metaphors that it has supplied to American. Many of these phrases and
metaphors are in daily use among us, for example, /fan/, /rooter/,
/bleachers/, /batting-average/, /double-header/, /pennant-winner/,
/gate-money/, /busher/, /minor-leaguer/, /glass-arm/, /to strike out/,
/to foul/, /to be shut out/, /to coach/, /to play ball/, /on the
bench/, /on to his curves/ and /three strikes and out/. The national
game of draw-poker has also greatly enriched American with terms that
are either quite unknown to the Englishman, or known to him only as
somewhat dubious Americanisms, among them /cold-deck/, /kitty/,
/full-house/, /divvy/, /a card up his sleeve/, /three-of-a-kind/, /to
ante up/, /to pony up/, /to hold out/, /to cash in/, /to go it one
better/, /to chip in/ and /for keeps/. But the Englishman uses many
more racing terms and metaphors than we do, and he has got a good many
phrases from other games, particularly cricket. The word /cricket/
itself has a definite figurative meaning. It indicates, in general,
good sportsmanship. To take unfair advantage of an opponent is not
/cricket/. The sport of boating, so popular on the Thames, has also
given colloquial English some familiar terms, almost unknown in the
United States, /e. g./, /punt/ and /weir/. Contrariwise, /pungy/,
/batteau/ and /scow/ are unheard of in England, and /canoe/ is not
long emerged from the estate of an Americanism.[12] The game known as
/ten-pins/ in America is called /nine-pins/ in England, and once had
that name over here. The Puritans forbade it, and its devotees changed
its name in order to evade the prohibition.[13] Finally, there is
/soccer/, a form of football quite unknown in the United States. What
we call simply football is /Rugby/ or /Rugger/ to the Englishman. The
word /soccer/ is derived from /association/; the rules of the game
were [Pg112] established by the London Football Association. /Soccer/
is one of the relatively few English experiments in ellipsis. Another
is to be found in /Bakerloo/, the name of one of the London
underground lines, from /Baker-street/ and /Waterloo/, its termini.
The English have an ecclesiastical vocabulary with which we are almost
unacquainted, and it is in daily use, for the church bulks large in
public affairs over there. Such terms as /vicar/, /canon/, /verger/,
/prebendary/, /primate/, /curate/, /non-conformist/, /dissenter/,
/convocation/, /minster/, /chapter/, /crypt/, /living/,
/presentation/, /glebe/, /benefice/, /locum tenens/, /suffragan/,
/almoner/, /dean/ and /pluralist/ are to be met with in the English
newspapers constantly, but on this side of the water they are seldom
encountered. Nor do we hear much of /matins/, /lauds/, /lay-readers/,
/ritualism/ and the /liturgy/. The English use of /holy orders/ is
also strange to us. They do not say that a young man is /studying for
the ministry/, but that he is /reading for holy orders/. They do not
say that he is /ordained/, but that he /takes orders/. Save he be in
the United Free Church of Scotland, he is never a /minister/; save he
be a nonconformist, he is never a /pastor/; a clergyman of the
Establishment is always either a /rector/, a /vicar/ or a /curate/,
and colloquially a /parson/.
In American /chapel/ simply means a small church, usually the branch
of some larger one; in English it has the special sense of a place of
worship unconnected with the establishment. Though three-fourths of
the people of Ireland are Catholics (in Munster and Connaught, more
than nine-tenths), and the Protestant Church of Ireland has been
disestablished since 1871, a Catholic place of worship in the country
is still a /chapel/ and not a /church/.[14] So is a Methodist
wailing-place in England, however large it may be, though now and then
/tabernacle/ is substituted. In the same way the English Catholics
sometimes vary /chapel/ with /oratory/, as in /Brompton Oratory/. A
Methodist, in Great [Pg113] Britain, is not a /Methodist/, but a
/Wesleyan/. Contrariwise, what the English call simply a /churchman/
is an /Episcopalian/ in the United States, what they call the /Church/
(always capitalized!) is the /Protestant Episcopal/ Church,[15] what
they call a /Roman Catholic/ is simply a /Catholic/, and what they
call a /Jew/ is usually softened (if he happens to be an advertiser)
to a /Hebrew/. The English Jews have no such idiotic fear of the plain
name as that which afflicts the more pushing and obnoxious of the race
in America.[16] "News of /Jewry/" is a common head-line in the /London
Daily Telegraph/, which is owned by Lord Burnham, a Jew, and has had
many Jews on its staff, including Judah P. Benjamin, the American. The
American language, of course, knows nothing of /dissenters/. Nor of
such gladiators of dissent as the /Plymouth Brethren/, nor of the
/nonconformist conscience/, though the United States suffers from it
even more damnably than England. The English, to make it even, get on
without /circuit-riders/, /holy-rollers/, /Dunkards/, /Seventh Day
Adventists/ and other such American /ferae naturae/, and are born,
live, die and go to heaven without the aid of either the /uplift/ or
the /chautauqua/.
In music the English cling to an archaic and unintelligible
nomenclature, long since abandoned in America. Thus they call a double
whole note a /breve/, a whole note a /semibreve/, a half note a /minim/,
a quarter note a /crotchet/, an eighth note a /quaver/, a sixteenth note
a /semi-quaver/, a thirty-second note a /demisemiquaver/, and a
sixty-fourth note a /hemidemisemiquaver/, or /semidemisemiquaver/. If,
by any chance, an English musician should write a one-hundred-and-
twenty-eighth note he probably wouldn't know what to call it. This
clumsy terminology goes back to the days of plain chant, with its
/longa/, /brevis/, /semi-brevis/, /minima/ and /semiminima/. The French
and Italians cling to a system almost as confusing, but the Germans use
/ganze/, /halbe/, /viertel/, [Pg114] /achtel/, etc. I have been unable
to discover the beginnings of the American system, but it would seem to
be borrowed from the German. Since the earliest times the majority of
music teachers in the United States have been Germans, and most of the
rest have had German training.
In the same way the English hold fast to a clumsy and inaccurate
method of designating the sizes of printers' types. In America the
simple point system makes the business easy; a line of /14-point/ type
occupies exactly the vertical space of two lines of /7-point/. But the
English still indicate differences in size by such arbitrary and
confusing names as /brilliant/, /diamond/, /small pearl/, /pearl/,
/ruby/, /ruby-nonpareil/, /nonpareil/, /minion-nonpareil/, /emerald/,
/minion/, /brevier/, /bourgeois/, /long primer/, /small pica/, /pica/,
/English/, /great primer/ and /double pica/. They also cling to a
fossil system of numerals in stating ages. Thus, an Englishman will
say that he is /seven-and-forty/, not that he is /forty-seven/. This
is probably a direct survival, preserved by more than a thousand years
of English conservatism, of the Anglo-Saxon /seofan-and-feowertig/. He
will also say that he weighs eleven /stone/ instead of 154 pounds. A
/stone/ is 14 pounds, and it is always used in stating the heft of a
man. Finally, he employs such designations of time as /fortnight/ and
/twelvemonth/ a great deal more than we do, and has certain special
terms of which we know nothing, for example, /quarter-day/, /bank
holiday/, /long vacation/, /Lady Day/ and /Michaelmas/. /Per contra/,
he knows nothing whatever of our /Thanksgiving/, /Arbor/, /Labor/ and
/Decoration Days/, or of /legal holidays/, or of /Yom Kippur/.
In English usage, to proceed, the word /directly/ is always used to
signify /immediately/; in American a contingency gets into it, and it
may mean no more than /soon/. In England /quite/ means "completely,
wholly, entirely, altogether, to the utmost extent, nothing short of,
in the fullest sense, positively, absolutely"; in America it is
conditional, and means only nearly, approximately, substantially, as
in "he sings /quite/ well." An Englishman does not say "I will pay you
/up/" for an injury, but "I will pay you /back/." He doesn't look /up/
a definition in a dictionary; he looks it /out/. He doesn't say, being
ill, "I am /getting/ on well," but [Pg115] "I am /going/ on well." He
doesn't use the American "different /from/" or "different /than/"; he
uses "different /to/." He never adds the pronoun in such locutions as
"it hurts /me/," but says simply "it hurts." He never "catches /up
with you/" on the street; he "catches /you up/." He never says "are
you through?" but "have you finished?" He never uses /to notify/ as a
transitive verb; an official act may be /notified/, but not a person.
He never uses /gotten/ as the perfect participle of /get/; he always
uses plain /got/.[17] An English servant never washes the /dishes/;
she always washes the /dinner/ or /tea things/. She doesn't /live
out/, but /goes into service/. She smashes, not the /mirror/, but the
/looking-glass/. Her beau is not her /fellow/, but her /young man/.
She does not /keep company/ with him but /walks out/ with him.