intrinsic qualities, but upon the surrounding circumstances. It is the
user that determines the matter, and particularly the user's habitual
way of thinking. If he chooses words carefully, with a full
understanding of their meaning and savor, then no word that he uses
seriously will belong to slang, but if his speech is made up chiefly
of terms poll-parroted, and he has no sense of their shades and
limitations, then slang will bulk largely in his vocabulary. In its
origin it is nearly always respectable; it is devised not by the
stupid populace, but by individuals of wit and ingenuity; as Whitney
says, it is a product of an "exuberance of mental activity, and the
natural delight of language-making." But when its inventions happen to
strike the popular fancy and are adopted by the mob, they are soon
worn thread-bare and so lose all piquancy and significance, and, in
Whitney's words, become "incapable of expressing anything that is
real."[12] This is the history of such slang phrases, often
interrogative, as "How'd you like to be the ice-man?" "How's your poor
feet?" "Merci pour la langouste," "Have a heart," "This is the life,"
"Where did you get that hat?" "Would you for fifty cents?" "Let her
go, Gallegher," "Shoo-fly, don't bother me," "Don't wake him up" and
"Let George do it." The last well exhibits the process. It originated
in France, as "Laissez faire à Georges," during the fifteenth century,
and at the start had satirical reference to the multiform activities
of Cardinal Georges d'Amboise, prime minister to Louis XII.[13] It
later [Pg309] became common slang, was translated into English, had a
revival during the early days of David Lloyd-George's meteoric career,
was adopted into American without any comprehension of either its
first or its latest significance, and enjoyed the brief popularity of
a year.
Krapp attempts to distinguish between slang and sound idiom by setting
up the doctrine that the former is "more expressive than the situation
demands." "It is," he says, "a kind of hyperesthesia in the use of
language. /To laugh in your sleeve/ is idiom because it arises out of
a natural situation; it is a metaphor derived from the picture of one
raising his sleeve to his face to hide a smile, a metaphor which arose
naturally enough in early periods when sleeves were long and flowing;
but /to talk through your hat/ is slang, not only because it is new,
but also because it is a grotesque exaggeration of the truth."[14] The
theory, unluckily, is combated by many plain facts. /To hand it to
him/, /to get away with it/ and even /to hand him a lemon/ are
certainly not metaphors that transcend the practicable and probable,
and yet all are undoubtedly slang. On the other hand, there is
palpable exaggeration in such phrases as "he is not worth the powder
it would take to kill him," in such adjectives as /break-bone/
(fever), and in such compounds as /fire-eater/, and yet it would be
absurd to dismiss them as slang. Between /block-head/ and /bone-head/
there is little to choose, but the former is sound English, whereas
the latter is American slang. So with many familiar similes, /e. g./,
/like greased lightning/, /as scarce as hen's teeth/; they are
grotesque hyperboles, but surely not slang.
The true distinction between slang and more seemly idiom, in so far as
any distinction exists at all, is that indicated by Whitney. Slang
originates in an effort, always by ingenious individuals, to make the
language more vivid and expressive. When in the form of single words
it may appear as new metaphors, [Pg310] /e. g./, /bird/ and /peach/;
as back formations, /e. g./, /beaut/ and /flu/; as composition-forms,
/e. g./, /whatdyecallem/; as picturesque compounds, /e. g./,
/booze-foundry/; as onomatopes, /e. g./, /biff/ and /zowie/; or in any
other of the shapes that new terms take. If, by the chances that
condition language-making, it acquires a special and limited meaning,
not served by any existing locution, it enters into sound idiom and is
presently wholly legitimatized; if, on the contrary, it is adopted by
the populace as a counter-word and employed with such banal
imitativeness that it soon loses any definite significance whatever,
then it remains slang and is avoided by the finical. An example of the
former process is afforded by /Tommy-rot/. It first appeared as
English school-boy slang, but its obvious utility soon brought it into
good usage. In one of Jerome K. Jerome's books, "Paul Kelver," there
is the following dialogue:
"The wonderful songs that nobody ever sings, the wonderful pictures
that nobody ever paints, and all the rest of it. It's /Tommy-rot/!"
"I wish you wouldn't use slang."
"Well, you know what I mean. What is the proper word? Give it to me."
"I suppose you mean /cant/."
"No, I don't. /Cant/ is something that you don't believe in yourself.
It's /Tommy-rot/; there isn't any other word."
Nor was there any other word for /hubbub/ and to /dwindle/ in
Shakespeare's time; he adopted and dignified them because they met
genuine needs. Nor was there any other satisfactory word for /graft/
when it came in, nor for /rowdy/, nor for /boom/, nor for /joy-ride/,
nor for /omnibus-bill/, nor for /slacker/, nor for /trust-buster/.
Such words often retain a humorous quality; they are used satirically
and hence appear but seldom in wholly serious discourse. But they have
standing in the language nevertheless, and only a prig would hesitate
to use them as Saintsbury used /the best of the bunch/ and
/joke-smith/.
On the other hand, many an apt and ingenious neologism, by falling too
quickly into the gaping maw of the proletariat, is spoiled forthwith.
Once it becomes, in Oliver Wendell Holmes' phrase, "a cheap generic
term, a substitute for differentiated [Pg311] specific expressions,"
it quickly acquires such flatness that the fastidious flee it as a
plague. One recalls many capital verb-phrases, thus ruined by
unintelligent appreciation, /e. g./, /to hand him a lemon/, /to freeze
on to/, /to have the goods/, /to fall for it/, and /to get by/. One
recalls, too, some excellent substantives, /e. g./, /dope/ and /dub/,
and compounds, /e. g./, /come-on/ and /easy-mark/, and verbs, /e. g./,
/to vamp/. These are all quite as sound in structure as the great
majority of our most familiar words, but their adoption by the
ignorant and their endless use and misuse in all sorts of situations
have left them tattered and obnoxious, and they will probably go the
way, as Matthews says, of all the other "temporary phrases which
spring up, one scarcely knows how, and flourish unaccountably for a
few months, and then disappear forever, leaving no sign." Matthews is
wrong in two particulars here. They do not arise by any mysterious
parthenogenesis, but come from sources which, in many cases, may be
determined. And they last, alas, a good deal more than a month.
/Shoo-fly/ afflicted the American people for at least two years, and
"I /don't/ think" and /aber nit/ quite as long. Even "good-/night/"
lasted a whole year.
A very large part of our current slang is propagated by the
newspapers, and much of it is invented by newspaper writers. One needs
but turn to the slang of baseball to find numerous examples. Such
phrases as /to clout the sphere/, /the initial sack/, /to slam the
pill/ and /the dexter meadow/ are obviously not of bleachers
manufacture. There is not enough imagination in that depressing army
to devise such things; more often than not, there is not even enough
intelligence to comprehend them. The true place of their origin is the
perch of the newspaper reporters, whose competence and compensation is
largely estimated, at least on papers of wide circulation, by their
capacity for inventing novelties. The supply is so large that
connoisseurship has grown up; an extra-fecund slang-maker on the press
has his following. During the summer of 1913 the /Chicago
Record-Herald/, somewhat alarmed by the extravagant fancy of its
baseball reporters, asked its readers if they would prefer a return to
plain English. Such of them as were literate enough [Pg312] to send
in their votes were almost unanimously against a change. As one of
them said, "one is nearer the park when Schulte /slams the pill/ than
when he merely /hits the ball/." In all other fields the newspapers
originate and propagate slang, particularly in politics. Most of our
political slang-terms since the Civil War, from /pork-barrel/ to
/steam-roller/, have been their inventions. The English newspapers,
with the exception of a few anomalies such as the /Pink-Un/, lean in
the other direction; their fault is not slanginess, but an otiose
ponderosity--in Dean Alford's words, "the insisting on calling common
things by uncommon names; changing our ordinary short Saxon nouns and
verbs for long words derived from the Latin."[15] The American
newspapers, years ago, passed through such a stage of bombast, but
since the invention of yellow journalism by the elder James Gordon
Bennett--that is, the invention of journalism for the frankly ignorant
and vulgar--they have gone to the other extreme. Edmund Clarence
Stedman noted the change soon after the Civil War. "The whole
country," he wrote to Bayard Taylor in 1873, "owing to the contagion
of our newspaper 'exchange' system, is flooded, deluged, swamped
beneath a muddy tide of slang."[16] A thousand alarmed watchmen have
sought to stay it since, but in vain. The great majority of our
newspapers, including all those of large circulation, are chiefly
written, as one observer says, "not in English, but in a strange
jargon of words that would have made Addison or Milton shudder in
despair."[17]
§ 3
/The Future of the Language/--The great Jakob Grimm, the founder of
comparative philology, hazarded the guess more than three-quarters of
a century ago that English would one day become [Pg313] the chief
language of the world, and perhaps crowd out several of the then
principal idioms altogether. "In wealth, wisdom and strict economy,"
he said, "none of the other living languages can vie with it." At that
time the guess was bold, for English was still in fifth place, with
not only French and German ahead of it, but also Spanish and Russian.
In 1801, according to Michael George Mulhall, the relative standing of
the five, in the number of persons using them, was as follows:
French 31,450,000
Russian 30,770,000
German 30,320,000
Spanish 26,190,000
English 20,520,000
The population of the United States was then but little more than
5,000,000, but in twenty years it had nearly doubled, and thereafter
it increased steadily and enormously, and by 1860 it was greater than
that of the United Kingdom. Since that time the majority of
English-speaking persons in the world have lived on this side of the
water; today there are nearly three times as many as in the United
Kingdom and nearly twice as many as in the whole British Empire. This
great increase in the American population, beginning with the great
immigrations of the 30's and 40's, quickly lifted English to fourth
place among the languages, and then to third, to second and to first.
When it took the lead the attention of philologists was actively
directed to the matter, and in 1868 one of them, a German named
Brackebusch, first seriously raised the question whether English was
destined to obliterate certain of the older tongues.[18] Brackebusch
decided against on various philological grounds, [Pg314] none of them
sound. His own figures, as the following table from his dissertation
shows,[19] were against him:
English 60,000,000
German 52,000,000
Russian 45,000,000
French 45,000,000
Spanish 40,000,000
This in 1868. Before another generation had passed the lead of
English, still because of the great growth of the United States, was
yet more impressive, as the following figures for 1890 show:
English 111,100,000
German 75,200,000
Russian 75,000,000
French 51,200,000
Spanish 42,800,000
Italian 33,400,000
Portuguese 13,000,000[20]
Today the figures exceed even these. They show that English is now
spoken by two and a half times as many persons as spoke it at the
close of the American Civil War and by nearly eight times as many as
spoke it at the beginning of the nineteenth century. No other language
has spread in any such proportions. Even German, which is next on the
list, shows but a four-fold gain since 1801, or just half that of
English. The number of persons speaking Russian, despite the vast
extension of the Russian empire during the last century of the czars,
has little more than tripled, and the number speaking French has less
than doubled. But here are the figures for 1911:
English 160,000,000
German 130,000,000
Russian 100,000,000
French 70,000,000
Spanish 50,000,000
Italian 50,000,000
Portuguese 25,000,000[21]
Japanese, perhaps, should follow French: it is spoken by 60,000,000
persons. But Chinese may be disregarded, for it is split into half a
dozen mutually unintelligible dialects, and shows no sign of spreading
beyond the limits of China. The same may be said of Hindustani, which
is the language of 100,000,000 inhabitants of British India; it shows
wide dialectical variations and the people who speak it are not likely
to spread. But English is the possession of a race that is still
pushing in all directions, and wherever that race settles the existing
languages tend to succumb. Thus French, despite the passionate
resistance of the French-Canadians, is gradually decaying in Canada;
in all the newly-settled regions English is universal. And thus
Spanish is dying out in our own Southwest, and promises to meet with
severe competition in some of the nearer parts of Latin-America. The
English control of the sea has likewise carried the language into far
places. There is scarcely a merchant ship-captain on deep water, of
whatever nationality, who does not find some acquaintance with it
necessary, and it has become, in debased forms, the /lingua franca/ of
Oceanica and the Far East generally. "Three-fourths of the world's
mail matter," says E. H. Babbitt, "is now addressed in English," and
"more than half of the world's newspapers are printed in English."[22]
Brackebusch, in the speculative paper just mentioned, came to the
conclusion that the future domination of English would be prevented by
its unphonetic spelling, its grammatical decay and the general
difficulties that a foreigner encounters in seeking to master it. "The
simplification of its grammar," he said, "is the commencement of
dissolution, the beginning of the end, and its extraordinary tendency
to degenerate into slang of [Pg316] every kind is the foreshadowing
of its approaching dismemberment." But in the same breath he was
forced to admit that "the greater development it has obtained" was the
result of this very simplification of grammar, and an inspection of
the rest of his reasoning quickly shows its unsoundness, even without
an appeal to the plain facts. The spelling of a language, whether it
be phonetic or not, has little to do with its spread. Very few men
learn it by studying books; they learn it by hearing it spoken. As for
grammatical decay, it is not a sign of dissolution, but a sign of
active life and constantly renewed strength. To the professional
philologist, perhaps, it may sometimes appear otherwise. He is apt to
estimate languages by looking at their complexity; the Greek aorist
elicits his admiration because it presents enormous difficulties and
is inordinately subtle. But the object of language is not to bemuse
grammarians, but to convey ideas, and the more simply it accomplishes
that object the more effectively it meets the needs of an energetic
and practical people and the larger its inherent vitality. The history
of every language of Europe, since the earliest days of which we have
record, is a history of simplifications. Even such languages as
German, which still cling to a great many exasperating inflections,
including the absurd inflection of the article for gender, are less
highly inflected than they used to be, and are proceeding slowly but
surely toward analysis. The fact that English has gone further along
that road than any other civilized tongue is not a proof of its
decrepitude, but a proof of its continued strength. Brought into free
competition with another language, say German or French or Spanish, it
is almost certain to prevail, if only because it is vastly
easier--that is, as a spoken language--to learn. The foreigner
essaying it, indeed, finds his chief difficulty, not in mastering its
forms, but in grasping its lack of forms. He doesn't have to learn a
new and complex grammar; what he has to do is to forget grammar.
Once he has done so, the rest is a mere matter of acquiring a
vocabulary. He can make himself understood, given a few nouns,
pronouns, verbs and numerals, without troubling [Pg317] himself in
the slightest about accidence. "Me see she" is bad English, perhaps,
but it would be absurd to say that it is obscure--and on some not too
distant tomorrow it may be very fair American. Essaying an inflected
language, the beginner must go into the matter far more deeply before
he may hope to be understood. Bradley, in "The Making of English,"[23]
shows clearly how German and English differ in this respect, and how
great is the advantage of English. In the latter the verb /sing/ has
but eight forms, and of these three are entirely obsolete, one is
obsolescent, and two more may be dropped out without damage to
comprehension. In German the corresponding verb, /singen/, has no less
than sixteen forms. How far English has proceeded toward the complete
obliteration of inflections is shown by such barbarous forms of it as
Pigeon English and Beach-la-Mar, in which the final step is taken
without appreciable loss of clarity. The Pigeon English verb is
identical in all tenses. /Go/ stands for both /went/ and /gone/;
/makee/ is both /make/ and /made/. In the same way there is no
declension of the pronoun for case. /My/ is thus /I/, /me/, /mine/ and
our own /my/. "No belong /my/" is "it is not /mine/"--a crude
construction, of course, but still clearly intelligible. Chinamen
learn Pigeon English in a few months, and savages in the South Seas
master Beach-la-Mar almost as quickly. And a white man, once he has
accustomed himself to either, finds it strangely fluent and
expressive. He cannot argue politics in it, nor dispute upon
transubstantiation, but for all the business of every day it is
perfectly satisfactory.
As we have seen in Chapters V and VI, the American dialect of English
has gone further along the road thus opened ahead than the mother
dialect, and is moving faster. For this reason, and because of the
fact that it is already spoken by a far larger and more rapidly
multiplying body of people than the latter, it seems to me very likely
that it will determine the final form of the language. For the old
control of English over American to be reasserted is now quite
unthinkable; if the two dialects are not to drift apart entirely
English must follow in American's tracks. This yielding seems to have
begun; the exchanges from [Pg318] American into English grow steadily
larger and more important than the exchanges from English into
American. John Richard Green, the historian, discerning the inevitable
half a century ago, expressed the opinion, amazing and unpalatable
then, that the Americans were already "the main branch of the English
people." It is not yet wholly true; a cultural timorousness yet shows
itself; there is still a class which looks to England as the Romans
long looked to Greece. But it is not the class that is shaping the
national language, and it is not the class that is carrying it beyond
the national borders. The Americanisms that flood the English of
Canada are not borrowed from the dialects of New England Loyalists and
fashionable New Yorkers, but from the common speech that has its
sources in the native and immigrant proletariat and that displays its
gaudiest freightage in the newspapers.
The impact of this flood is naturally most apparent in Canada, whose
geographical proximity and common interests completely obliterate the
effects of English political and social dominance. By an Order in
Council, passed in 1890, the use of the redundant /u/ in such words as
/honor/ and /labor/ is official in Canada, but practically all the
Canadian newspapers omit it. In the same way the American flat /a/ has
swept whole sections of the country, and American slang is everywhere
used, and the American common speech prevails almost universally in
the newer provinces. More remarkable is the influence that American
has exerted upon the speech of Australia and upon the crude dialects
of Oceanica and the Far East. One finds such obvious Americanisms as
/tomahawk/, /boss/, /bush/, /canoe/, /go finish/ (=/to die/) and
/pickaninny/ in Beach-la-Mar[24] and more of them in Pigeon English.
And one observes a very large number of American words and phrases in
the slang of Australia. The Australian common speech, in pronunciation
and intonation, resembles Cockney English, and a great many
Cockneyisms are in it, but despite the small number of Americans in
the Antipodes [Pg319] it has adopted, of late, so many Americanisms
that a Cockney visitor must often find it difficult. Among them are
the verb and verb-phrases, /to beef/, /to biff/, /to bluff/, /to
boss/, /to break away/, /to chase one's self/, /to chew the rag/, /to
chip in/, /to fade away/, /to get it in the neck/, /to back and fill/,
/to plug along/, /to get sore/, /to turn down/ and /to get wise/; the
substantives, /dope/, /boss/, /fake/, /creek/, /knockout-drops/ and
/push/ (in the sense of /crowd/); the adjectives, /hitched/ (in the
sense of /married/) and /tough/ (as before /luck/), and the adverbial
phrases, /for keeps/ and /going strong/.[25] Here, in direct
competition with English locutions, and with all the advantages on the
side of the latter, American is making steady progress.