when he desires to attract a friend's attention or register a
protestation of incredulity--this perhaps is too familiar to need
notice. His "/hear, hear!/" and "/oh, oh!/" are also well known. He is
much less prodigal with /good-bye/ than the American; he uses
/good-day/ and /good-afternoon/ far more often. A shop-assistant would
never say /good-bye/ to a customer. To an Englishman it would have a
subtly offensive smack; /good-afternoon/ would be more respectful.
Another word that makes him flinch is /dirt/. He never uses it, as we
do, to describe the soil in the garden; he always says /earth/.
Various very common American phrases are quite unknown to him, for
example, /over his signature/, /on time/ and /planted to corn/. The
first-named he never uses, and he has no equivalent for it; an
Englishman who issues a signed statement simply makes it /in writing/.
He knows nothing of our common terms of disparagement, such as /kike/,
/wop/, /yap/ and /rube/. His pet-name for a tiller of the soil is not
/Rube/ or /Cy/, but /Hodge/. When he goes gunning he does not call it
/hunting/, but /shooting/; /hunting/ is reserved for the chase of the
fox.
An intelligent Englishwoman, coming to America to live, told me that
the two things which most impeded her first communications with
untravelled Americans, even above the gross differences [Pg116]
between England and American pronunciation and intonation, were the
complete absence of the general utility adjective /jolly/ from the
American vocabulary, and the puzzling omnipresence and versatility of
the American verb /to fix/. In English colloquial usage /jolly/ means
almost anything; it intensifies all other adjectives, even including
/miserable/ and /homesick/. An Englishman is /jolly/ tired, /jolly/
hungry or /jolly well/ tired; his wife is /jolly/ sensible; his dog is
/jolly/ keen; the prices he pays for things are /jolly dear/ (never
/steep/ or /stiff/ or /high/: all Americanisms). But he has no noun to
match the American /proposition/, meaning proposal, business, affair,
case, consideration, plan, theory, solution and what not: only the
German /zug/ can be ranged beside it.[18] And he has no verb in such
wide practise as /to fix/. In his speech it means only to make fast or
to determine. In American it may mean to repair, as in "the plumber
/fixed/ the pipe"; to dress, as in "Mary /fixed/ her hair"; to
prepare, as in "the cook is /fixing/ the gravy"; to bribe, as in "the
judge was /fixed/"; to settle, as in "the quarrel was /fixed/ up"; to
heal, as in "the doctor /fixed/ his boil"; to finish, as in "Murphy
/fixed/ Sweeney in the third round"; to be well-to-do, as in "John is
well-/fixed/"; to arrange, as in "I /fixed/ up the quarrel"; to be
drunk, as in "the whiskey /fixed/ him"; to punish, as in "I'll /fix/
him"; and to correct, as in "he /fixed/ my bad Latin." Moreover, it is
used in all its English senses. An Englishman never goes to a dentist
to have his teeth /fixed/. He does not /fix/ the fire; he /makes it
up/, or /mends/ it. He is never /well-fixed/, either in money or by
liquor.[19]
The English use /quite/ a great deal more than we do, and, as we have
seen, in a different sense. /Quite rich/, in American, [Pg117] means
tolerably rich, richer than most; /quite so/, in English, is identical
in meaning with /exactly so/. In American /just/ is almost equivalent
to the English /quite/, as in /just lovely/. Thornton shows that this
use of /just/ goes back to 1794. The word is also used in place of
/exactly/ in other ways, as in /just in time/, /just how many/ and
/just what do you mean?/
§ 3
/Honorifics/--Among the honorifics and euphemisms in everyday use one
finds many notable divergences between the two languages. On the one
hand the English are almost as diligent as the Germans in bestowing
titles of honor upon their men of mark, and on the other hand they are
very careful to withhold such titles from men who do not legally bear
them. In America every practitioner of any branch of the healing art,
even a chiropodist or an osteopath, is a doctor /ipso facto/, but in
England, as we have seen, a good many surgeons lack the title and it
is not common in the lesser ranks. Even graduate physicians may not
have it, but here there is a yielding of the usual meticulous
exactness, and it is customary to address a physician in the second
person as /Doctor/, though his card may show that he is only
/Medicinae Baccalaureus/, a degree quite unknown in America. Thus an
Englishman, when he is ill, always sends for the /doctor/, as we do.
But a surgeon is usually plain /Mr./[20] An English veterinarian or
dentist or druggist or masseur is never /Dr./
Nor /Professor/. In all save a few large cities of America every male
pedagogue is a professor, and so is every band leader, dancing master
and medical consultant. But in England the title is very rigidly
restricted to men who hold chairs in the universities, a necessarily
small body. Even here a superior title [Pg118] always takes
precedence. Thus, it used to be /Professor/ Almroth Wright, but now it
is always /Sir/ Almroth Wright. Huxley was always called /Professor/
Huxley until he was appointed to the Privy Council. This appointment
gave him the right to have /Right Honourable/ put before his name, and
thereafter it was customary to call him simply /Mr./ Huxley, with the
/Right Honourable/, so to speak, floating in the air. The combination,
to an Englishman, was more flattering than /Professor/, for the
English always esteem political dignities far more than the dignities
of learning. This explains, perhaps, why their universities distribute
so few honorary degrees. In the United States every respectable
Protestant clergyman is a D.D., and it is almost impossible for a man
to get into the papers without becoming an LL.D.,[21] but in England
such honors are granted only grudgingly. So with military titles. To
promote a war veteran from sergeant to colonel by acclamation, as is
often done in the United States, is unknown over there. The English
have nothing equivalent to the gaudy tin soldiers of our governors'
staffs, nor to the bespangled colonels and generals of the Knights
Templar and Patriarchs Militant, nor to the nondescript captains and
majors of our country towns. An English railroad conductor (/railway
guard/) is never /Captain/, as he always is in the United States. Nor
are military titles used by the police. Nor is it the custom to make
every newspaper editor a colonel, as is done south of the Potomac. Nor
is an attorney-general or postmaster-general called /General/. Nor are
the glories of public office, after they have officially come to an
end, embalmed in such clumsy quasi-titles as /ex-United States
Senator/, /ex-Judge of the Circuit Court of Appeals/, /ex-Federal
Trade Commissioner/ and /former Chief of the Fire Department/.
But perhaps the greatest difference between English and American usage
is presented by /the Honorable/. In the United States the title is
applied loosely to all public officials of apparent respectability,
from senators and ambassadors to the mayors of [Pg119] fifth-rate
cities and the members of state legislatures, and with some show of
official sanction to many of them, especially congressmen. But it is
questionable whether this application has any actual legal standing,
save perhaps in the case of certain judges. Even the President of the
United States, by law, is not /the Honorable/, but simply /the
President/. In the First Congress the matter of his title was
exhaustively debated; some members wanted to call him /the Honorable/
and others proposed /His Excellency/ and even /His Highness/. But the
two Houses finally decided that it was "not proper to annex any style
or title other than that expressed by the Constitution." Congressmen
themselves are not /Honorables/. True enough, the /Congressional
Record/, in printing a set speech, calls it "Speech of /Hon./ John
Jones" (without the /the/ before the /Hon./--a characteristic
Americanism), but in reporting the ordinary remarks of a member it
always calls him plain /Mr./ Nevertheless, a country congressman would
be offended if his partisans, in announcing his appearance on the
stump, did not prefix /Hon./ to his name. So would a state senator. So
would a mayor or governor. I have seen the sergeant-at-arms of the
United States Senate referred to as /Hon./ in the records of that
body.[22] More, the prefix is actually usurped by the Superintendent
of State Prisons of New York.[23]
In England the thing is more carefully ordered, and bogus /Hons./ are
unknown. The prefix is applied to both sexes and belongs by law,
/inter alia/, to all present or past maids of honor, to all justices
of the High Court during their terms of office, to the Scotch Lords of
Session, to the sons and daughters of viscounts and barons, to the
younger sons and all daughters of earls, and to the members of the
legislative and executive councils of the colonies. But /not/ to
members of Parliament, though each is, in debate, an /hon. gentleman/.
Even a member of the cabinet is not an /Hon./, though he is a /Right
Hon./ by virtue of membership in the Privy Council, of which the
Cabinet is legally merely a committee. This last honorific belongs,
not only to [Pg120] privy councillors, but also to all peers lower
than marquesses (those above are /Most Hon./), to Lord Mayors during
their terms of office, to the Lord Advocate and to the Lord Provosts
of Edinburgh and Glasgow. Moreover, a peeress whose husband is a
/Right Hon./ is a /Right Hon./ herself.
The British colonies follow the jealous usage of the mother-country.
Even in Canada the lawless American example is not imitated. I have
before me a "Table of Titles to be Used in Canada," laid down by royal
warrant, which lists those who are /Hons./ and those who are not
/Hons./ in the utmost detail. Only privy councillors of Canada (not to
be confused with imperial privy councillors) are permitted to retain
the prefix after going out of office, though ancients who were
legislative councillors at the time of the union, July 1, 1867, may
still use it by a sort of courtesy, and former speakers of the
Dominion Senate and House of Commons and various retired judges may do
so on application to the King, countersigned by the governor-general.
The following are lawfully /the Hon./, but only during their tenure of
office: the solicitor-general, the speaker of the House of Commons,
the presidents and speakers of the provincial legislatures, members of
the executive councils of the provinces, the chief justice, the judges
of the Supreme and Exchequer Courts, the judges of the Supreme Courts
of Ontario, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, British Columbia, Prince
Edward Island, Saskatchewan and Alberta, the judges of the Courts of
Appeal of Manitoba and British Columbia, the Chancery Court of Prince
Edward Island, and the Circuit Court of Montreal--these, and no more.
A lieutenant-governor of a province is not /the Hon./, but /His
Honor/. The governor-general is /His Excellency/, and so is his wife,
but in practise they usually have superior honorifics, and do not
forget to demand their use.
But though an Englishman, and, following him, a colonial, is thus very
careful to restrict /the Hon./ to proper uses, he always insists, when
he serves without pay as an officer of any organization, to indicate
his volunteer character by writing /Hon./ before the name of his
office. If he leaves it off it is a sign that he is a hireling. Thus,
the agent of the New Zealand [Pg121] government in London, a paid
officer, is simply the /agent/, but the agents at Brisbane and
Adelaide, in Australia, who serve for the glory of it, are /hon.
agents/. In writing to a Briton one must be careful to put /Esq./,
behind his name, and not /Mr./, before it. The English make a clear
distinction between the two forms. /Mr./, on an envelope, indicates
that the sender holds the receiver to be his inferior; one writes to
/Mr./ John Jackson, one's green-grocer, but to James Thompson, /Esq./,
one's neighbor. Any man who is entitled to the /Esq./ is a
/gentleman/, by which an Englishman means a man of sound connections
and dignified occupation--in brief, of ponderable social position.
Thus a dentist, a shop-keeper or a clerk can never be a gentleman in
England, even by courtesy, and the qualifications of an author, a
musical conductor, a physician, or even a member of Parliament have to
be established. But though he is thus enormously watchful of masculine
dignity, an Englishman is quite careless in the use of /lady/. He
speaks glibly of /lady-clerks/, /lady-typists/, /lady-doctors/ and
/lady-inspectors/. In America there is a strong disposition to use the
word less and less, as is revealed by the substitution of /saleswoman/
and /salesgirl/ for the /saleslady/ of yesteryear. But in England
/lady/ is still invariably used instead of woman in such compounds as
/lady-golfer/, /lady-secretary/ and /lady-champion/. The /women's
singles/, in England tennis, are always /ladies' singles/; /women's
wear/, in English shops, is always /ladies' wear/. Perhaps the cause
of this distinction between /lady/ and /gentleman/ has been explained
by Price Collier in "England and the English." In England, according
to Collier, the male is always first. His comfort goes before his
wife's comfort, and maybe his dignity also. /Gentleman-clerk/ or
/gentleman-author/ would make an Englishman howl, though he uses
/gentleman-rider/. So would the growing American custom of designating
the successive heirs of a private family by the numerals proper to
royalty. John Smith /3rd/ and William Simpson /IV/ are gravely
received at Harvard; at Oxford they would be ragged unmercifully.
An Englishman, in speaking or writing of public officials, avoids
those long and clumsy combinations of title and name [Pg122] which
figure so copiously in American newspapers. Such locutions as
/Assistant Secretary of the Interior/ Jones, /Fourth Assistant
Postmaster-General/ Brown, /Inspector of Boilers/ Smith, /Judge of the
Appeal Tax Court/ Robinson, /Chief Clerk of the Treasury/ Williams and
/Collaborating Epidermologist/ White[24] are quite unknown to him.
When he mentions a high official, such as the Secretary for Foreign
Affairs, he does not think it necessary to add the man's name; he
simply says "the Secretary for Foreign Affairs" or "the Foreign
Secretary." And so with the Lord Chancellor, the Chief Justice, the
Prime Minister, the Bishop of Carlisle, the Chief Rabbi, the First
Lord (of the Admiralty), the Master of Pembroke (College), the Italian
Ambassador, and so on. Certain ecclesiastical titles are sometimes
coupled to surnames in the American manner, as in /Dean Stanley/, and
/Canon Wilberforce/, but /Prime Minister Lloyd-George/ would seem
heavy and absurd. But in other directions the Englishman has certain
clumsinesses of his own. Thus, in writing a letter to a relative
stranger, he sometimes begins it, not /My dear Mr. Jones/ but /My dear
John Joseph Jones/. He may even use such a form as /My dear Secretary
for War/ in place of the American /My dear Mr. Secretary/. In English
usage, incidentally, /My dear/ is more formal than simply /Dear/. In
America, of course, this distinction is lost, and such forms as /My
dear John Joseph Jones/ appear only as conscious imitations of English
usage.
I have spoken of the American custom of dropping the definite article
before /Hon./ It extends to /Rev./ and the like, and has the authority
of very respectable usage behind it. The opening sentence of the
/Congressional Record/ is always: "The Chaplain, /Rev./--------, D.D.,
offered the following prayer." When chaplains for the army or navy are
confirmed by the Senate they always appear in the /Record as Revs./,
never as /the Revs./ I also find the honorific without the article in
the New International Encyclopaedia, in the /World/ Almanac, and in a
widely-popular [Pg123] American grammar-book.[25] So long ago as
1867, Gould protested against this elision as barbarous and idiotic,
and drew up the following /reductio ad absurdum/:
At last annual meeting of Black Book Society, honorable John Smith
took the chair, assisted by reverend John Brown and venerable John
White. The office of secretary would have been filled by late John
Green, but for his decease, which rendered him ineligible. His place
was supplied by inevitable John Black. In the course of the evening
eulogiums were pronounced on distinguished John Gray and notorious
Joseph Brown. Marked compliment was also paid to able historian
Joseph White, discriminating philosopher Joseph Green, and learned
professor Joseph Black. But conspicuous speech of the evening was
witty Joseph Gray's apostrophe to eminent astronomer Jacob Brown,
subtle logician Jacob White, etc., etc.[26]
Richard Grant White, a year or two later, joined the attack in the New
York /Galaxy/, and William Cullen Bryant included the omission of the
article in his /Index Expurgatorius/, but these anathemas were as
ineffective as Gould's irony. The more careful American journals, of
course, incline to the /the/, and I note that it is specifically
ordained on the Style-sheet of the /Century Magazine/, but the
overwhelming majority of American newspapers get along without it, and
I have often noticed its omission on the sign-boards at church
entrances.[27] In England it is never omitted. [Pg124]
§ 4
/Euphemisms and Forbidden Words/--But such euphemisms as /lady-clerk/
are, after all, much rarer in English than in American usage. The
Englishman seldom tries to gloss menial occupations with sonorous
names; on the contrary, he seems to delight in keeping their menial
character plain. He says /servants/, not /help/. Even his railways and
banks have /servants/; the chief trades-union of the English railroad
men is the Amalgamated Society of Railway /Servants/. He uses
/employé/ in place of /clerk/, /workman/ or /laborer/ much less often
than we do. True enough he calls a boarder a /paying-guest/, but that
is probably because even a boarder may be a gentleman. Just as he
avoids calling a fast train the /limited/, the /flier/ or the
/cannon-ball/, so he never calls an /undertaker/ a /funeral director/
or /mortician/,[28] or a /dentist/ a /dental surgeon/ or /ontologist/,
or an /optician/ an /optometrist/, or a /barber shop/ (he always makes
it /barber's shop/) a /tonsorial parlor/, or a common public-house a
/café/, a /restaurant/, an /exchange/, a /buffet/ or a /hotel/, or a
tradesman a /storekeeper/ or /merchant/, or a fresh-water college a
/university/. A /university/, in England, always means a collection of
colleges.[29] He avoids displacing terms of a disparaging or
disagreeable significance with others less brutal, or thought to be
less brutal, /e. g./, /ready-to-wear/ or /ready-tailored/ for
/ready-made/, /used/ or /slightly-used/ for /second-hand/,
/mahoganized/ for /imitation-mahogany/, /aisle manager/ for
/floor-walker/ (he makes it /shop-walker/), /loan-office/ for
/pawn-shop/. Also, he is careful not to use such words as /rector/,
/deacon/ and /baccalaureate/ in merely rhetorical senses.[30] [Pg125]
When we come to words, that, either intrinsically or by usage, are
improper, a great many curious differences between English and
American reveal themselves. The Englishman, on the whole, is more
plain-spoken than the American, and such terms as /bitch/, /mare/ and
/in foal/ do not commonly daunt him, largely, perhaps, because of his
greater familiarity with country life; but he has a formidable index
of his own, and it includes such essentially harmless words as /sick/,
/stomach/, /bum/ and /bug/. The English use of /ill/ for /sick/ I have
already noticed, and the reasons for the English avoidance of /bum/.
/Sick/, over there, means nauseated, and when an Englishman says that
he was /sick/ he means that he vomited, or, as an American would say,
was /sick at the stomach/. The older (and still American) usage,
however, survives in various compounds. /Sick-list/, for example, is
official in the Navy,[31] and /sick-leave/ is known in the Army,
though it is more common to say of a soldier that he is /invalided
home/. /Sick-room/ and /sick-bed/ are also in common use, and
/sick-flag/ is used in place of the American /quarantine-flag/. But an
Englishman hesitates to mention his stomach in the presence of ladies,
though he discourses freely about his liver. To avoid the necessity he
employs such euphemisms as /Little Mary/. As for /bug/, he restricts
its use very rigidly to the /Cimex lectularius/, or common bed-bug,
and hence the word has a highly impolite connotation. All other
crawling things he calls /insects/. An American of my acquaintance
once greatly offended an English friend by using /bug/ for /insect/.
The two were playing billiards one summer evening in the Englishman's
house, and various flying things came through the window and alighted
on the cloth. The American, essaying a shot, remarked that he had
killed a /bug/ with his cue. To the Englishman this seemed a
slanderous reflection upon the cleanliness of his house.[32] [Pg126]
The Victorian era saw a great growth of absurd euphemisms in England,
including /second wing/ for the leg of a fowl, but it was in America
that the thing was carried farthest. Bartlett hints that /rooster/
came into use in place of /cock/ as a matter of delicacy, the latter
word having acquired an indecent significance, and tells us that, at
one time, even /bull/ was banned as too vulgar for refined ears. In
place of it the early purists used /cow-creature/, /male-cow/ and even
/gentleman-cow/.[33] /Bitch/, /ram/, /buck/ and /sow/ went the same
way, and there was a day when even /mare/ was prohibited. Bache tells
us that /pismire/ was also banned, /antmire/ being substituted for it.
In 1847 the word /chair/ was actually barred out and /seat/ was
adopted in its place.[34] These were the palmy days of euphemism. The
delicate /female/ was guarded from all knowledge, and even from all
suspicion, of evil. "To utter aloud in her presence the word /shirt/,"
says one historian, "was an open insult."[35] Mrs. Trollope, writing
in 1832, tells of "a young German gentleman of perfectly good manners"
who "offended one of the principal families ... by having pronounced
the word /corset/ before the ladies of it."[36] The word /woman/, in
those sensitive days, became a term of reproach, comparable to the
German /mensch/; the uncouth /female/ took its place.[37] In the same
way the legs of the fair became /limbs/ and their breasts /bosoms/,
and /lady/ was substituted for /wife/. /Stomach/, under the ban in
England, was transformed, by some unfathomable magic, into a euphemism
denoting the whole region from the nipples to the pelvic arch. It was
during [Pg127] this time that the newspapers invented such locutions
as /interesting/ (or /delicate/) /condition/, /criminal operation/,
/house of ill/ (or /questionable/) /repute/, /disorderly-house/,
/sporting-house/, /statutory offense/, /fallen woman/ and /criminal
assault/. Servant girls ceased to be seduced, and began to be
/betrayed/. Various French terms, /enceinte/ and /accouchement/ among
them, were imported to conceal the fact that lawful wives occasionally
became pregnant and had lyings-in.