all of which are proffering their words for popular consumption. Every
art and every science, every trade and every calling, every sect and
every sport, has its own special lexicon, the most of the words in
which must always remain outside of the general speech of the whole
people. They are reserves, to be drawn upon to fill up the regular army
in time of need. Legitimate enough when confined to their proper use,
those technicalities become slang when employed out of season, and when
applied out of the special department of human endeavor in which they
have been evolved. Of course, if the public interest in this department
is increased for any reason, more and more words from that technical
vocabulary are adopted into the wider dictionary of popular speech; and
thus the general language is still enriching itself by the taking over
of words and phrases from the terminology devised by experts for their
own use. Not without interest would it be if we could ascertain exactly
how much of the special vocabulary of the mere man of letters is now
understandable by the plain people. It is one of the characters in
‘Middlemarch’ who maintains that “correct English” is only “the slang
of prigs who write history and essays, and the strongest slang of all
is the slang of poets.”
Of recent years many of the locutions of the Stock Exchange have won
their way into general knowledge; and there are few of us who do not
know what _bears_ and _bulls_ are, what a _corner_ is, and what is a
_margin_. The practical application of scientific knowledge makes the
public at large familiar with many principles hitherto the exclusive
possession of the experts, and the public at large gets to use freely
to-day technicalities which even the learned of yesterday would not
have understood. _Current_, for example, and _insulation_, made
familiar by the startlingly rapid extension of electrical possibilities
in the last few years, have been so fully assimilated that they are
now used independently and without avowed reference to their original
electrical meanings.
The prevalence of a sport or of a game brings into general use the
terms of that special amusement. The Elizabethan dramatists, for
example, use _vy_ and _revy_ and the other technicalities of the game
of primero as freely as our western humorists use _going it blind_ and
_calling_ and the other technicalities of the game of poker, which has
been evolved out of primero in the course of the centuries. Some of the
technicalities of euchre also, and of whist, have passed into every-day
speech; and so have many of the terms of baseball and of football, of
racing and of trotting, of rowing and of yachting. These made their
way into the vocabulary of the average man one by one, as the seasons
went around and as the sports followed one another in popularity. So
during the civil war many military phrases were frequent in the mouths
of the people; and some of these established themselves firmly in the
vocabulary.
“In language, as in life,” so Professor Dowden tells us, “there is, so
to speak, an aristocracy and a commonalty: words with a heritage of
dignity, words which have been ennobled, and a rabble of words which
are excluded from positions of honor and trust.” Some writers and
speakers there are with so delicate a sense of refinement that they are
at ease only with the ennobled words, with the words that came over
with the conquerer, with the lords, spiritual and temporal, of the
vocabulary. Others there are, parvenus themselves, and so tainted with
snobbery that they are happy only in the society of their betters; and
these express the utmost contempt for the mass of the vulgar. Yet again
others there are who have Lincoln’s liking for the plain words of the
plain people--the democrats of the dictionary, homely, simple, direct.
These last are tolerant of the words, once of high estate, which have
lost their rank and are fallen upon evil days, preferring them over
the other words, plebeian once, but having pushed their fortunes
energetically in successive generations, until now there are none more
highly placed.
Perhaps the aristocratic figure of speech is a little misleading,
because in the English language, as in France after the Revolution,
we find _la carrière ouverte aux talents_, and every word has a fair
chance to attain the highest dignity in the gift of the dictionary. No
doubt family connections are still potent, and it is much easier for
some words to rise in life than it is for others. Most people would
hold that war and law and medicine made a more honorable pedigree for a
technical term than the stage, for example, or than some sport.
And yet the stage has its own enormous vocabulary, used with the utmost
scientific precision. The theater is a hotbed of temporary slang, often
as lawless, as vigorous, and as picturesque as the phrases of the west;
but it has also a terminology of its own, containing some hundreds of
words, used always with absolute exactness. A _mascot_, meaning one who
brings good luck, and a _hoodoo_, meaning one who brings ill fortune,
are terms invented in the theater, it is true; and many another odd
word can be credited to the same source. But every one behind the
scenes knows also what _sky-borders_ are, and _bunch-lights_, and
_vampire-traps_, and _raking-pieces_--technical terms all of them,
and all used with rigorous exactitude. Like the technicalities of
any other profession, those of the stage are often very puzzling to
the uninitiated, and a greenhorn could hardly even make a guess at
the meaning of terms which every visitor to a green-room might use
at any moment. What layman could explain the office of a _cut-drop_,
the utility of a _carpenter’s scene_, or the precise privileges of a
_bill-board ticket_?
There is one word which the larger vocabulary of the public has lately
taken from the smaller vocabulary of the playhouse, and which some
strolling player of the past apparently borrowed from some other
vagabond familiar with thieves’ slang. This word is _fake_. It has
always conveyed the suggestion of an intent to deceive. “Are you going
to get up new scenery for the new play?” might be asked; and the answer
would be, “No; we shall _fake_ it,” meaning thereby that old scenery
would be retouched and readjusted so as to have the appearance of new.
From the stage the word passed to the newspapers, and a _fake_ is a
story invented, not founded on fact, “made out of whole cloth,” as
the stump-speakers say. Mr. Howells, always bold in using new words,
accepts _fake_ as good enough for him, and prints it in the ‘Quality
of Mercy’ without the stigma of italics or quotation-marks; just as in
the same story he has adopted the colloquial _electrics_ for _electric
lights_--i.e., “He turned off the electrics.”
And hereafter the rest of us may use either _fake_ or _electrics_
with a clear conscience, either hiding ourselves behind Mr. Howells,
who can always give a good account of himself when attacked, or
else coming out into the open and asserting our own right to adopt
either word because it is useful. “Is it called for? Is it accordant
with the analysis of the language? Is it offered or backed by good
authority? These are the considerations by which general consent is
won or repelled,” so Professor Whitney tells us, “and general consent
decides every case without appeal.” It happens that Don Quixote
preceded Professor Whitney in this exposition of the law, for when
he was instructing Sancho Panza, then about to be appointed governor
of an island, he used a Latinized form of a certain word which had
become vulgar, explaining that “if some do not understand these terms
it matters little, for custom will bring them into use in the course
of time so that they will be readily understood. That is the way a
language is enriched; custom and the public are all-powerful there.”
Sometimes the needful word which is thought to be too common for use
is Latinized, as Don Quixote preferred, but more often it is ennobled
without change, being simply lifted out from among its former low
companions.
One of the hardest lessons for the amateurs in linguistics to
learn--and most of them never attain to this wisdom--is that
affectations are fleeting, that vulgarisms die of their own weakness,
and that corruptions do little harm to the language. And the reason
is not far to seek: either the apparent affectation, the alleged
vulgarism, the so-called corruption, is accidental and useless, in
which case its vogue will be brief and it will sink swiftly into
oblivion; or else it represents a need and fills a want, in which
case, no matter how careless it may be or how inaccurately formed, it
will hold its own firmly, and there is really nothing more to be said
about it. In other words, slang and all other variations from the high
standard of the literary language are either temporary or permanent.
If they are temporary only, the damage they can do is inconsiderable.
If they are permanent, their survival is due solely to the fact that
they were convenient or necessary. When a word or a phrase has come to
stay (as _reliable_ has, apparently), it is idle to denounce a decision
rendered by the court of last resort. The most that we can do with
advantage is to refrain from using the word ourselves, if we so prefer.
It is possible to go further, even, and to turn the tables on those
who see in slang an ever-growing evil. Not only is there little
danger to the language to be feared from those alleged corruptions,
and from these doubtful locutions of evanescent popularity, but real
harm is done by the purists themselves, who do not understand every
modification of our language, and who seek to check the development
of idiom and to limit the liberty which enables our speech freely to
provide for its own needs as these are revealed by time. It is these
half-educated censors, prompt to protest against whatever is novel to
them, and swift to set up the standard of a narrow personal experience,
who try to curb the development of a language. It cannot be declared
too often and too emphatically how fortunate it is that the care of our
language and the control of its development is not in the hands even of
the most competent scholars. In language, as in politics, the people
at large are in the long run better judges of their own needs than any
specialist can be. As Professor Whitney says, “the language would soon
be shorn of no small part of its strength if placed exclusively in the
hands of any individual or of any class.” In the hands of no class
would it be enfeebled sooner than if it were given to the guardianship
of the pedants and the pedagogs.
A sloven in speech is as offensive as a sloven in manners or in dress;
and neatness of phrase is as pleasant to the ear as neatness of attire
to the eye. A man should choose his words at least as carefully as he
chooses his clothes; a hint of the dandy even is unobjectionable, if
it is but a hint. But when a man gives his whole mind to his dress, it
is generally because he has but little mind to give; and so when a man
spends his force wholly in rejecting words and phrases, it is generally
because he lacks ideas to express with the words and phrases of which
he does approve. In most cases a man can say best what he has to say
without lapsing into slang; but then a slangy expression which actually
tells us something is better than the immaculate sentence empty of
everything but the consciousness of its own propriety.
(1893)
IX
QUESTIONS OF USAGE
If any proof were needed of the fact that an immense number of people
take an intense interest in the right and wrong use of the English
language, and also of the further fact that their interest is out
of all proportion to their knowledge of the history of our speech,
such proof could be found in the swift and unceasing eruption of
“letters to the editor” which broke out in many of the American
newspapers immediately after the publication of Mr. Rudyard Kipling’s
‘Recessional.’ The exciting cause of this rash exhibition was found in
the line which told us that
The shouting and the tumult dies.
The gross blunder in this sentence leaped to the eyes of many whose
acquaintance with the principles of English construction was confined
to what they chanced to remember of the rules learned by heart in their
grammar-school days. But there were others whose reading was a little
wider, and who were able to cite precedents in Mr. Kipling’s favor
from Milton and from Shakspere and from the King James translation
of the Bible. Yet the argument from the past failed to convince some
of the original protestants, one of whom suggested that the erring
poet should be sent to a night-school, while another objected to any
further discussion of the subject, since “a person who doesn’t know
that the plural form of the verb is used when the subject of said verb
is two or more nouns in the singular number should receive no mention
in a reputable newspaper.” It may be doubted whether the altercation
was really bloody enough to demand attention from the disreputable
newspapers, altho it was fierce and intolerant while it lasted.
The battle raged for a fortnight, and the foundations of the deep
were broken up. Yet it was really a tempest in a teapot, and oil for
the troubled waters was ready at hand had any of those in danger of
shipwreck thought to make use of it. In Professor Lounsbury’s ‘History
of the English Language’--a book from which it is a constant pleasure
to quote, since it combines sound scholarship, literary skill, and
common sense in an uncommon degree--we are told that “rules have been
and still are laid down ... which never had any existence outside of
the minds of grammarians and verbal critics. By these rules, so far
as they are observed, freedom of expression is cramped, idiomatic
peculiarity destroyed, and false tests for correctness set up, which
give the ignorant opportunity to point out supposed error in others,
while the real error lies in their own imperfect acquaintance with the
best usage.”
And then Professor Lounsbury cites in illustration the rule which was
brought up against Mr. Kipling: “There is a rule of Latin syntax that
two or more substantives joined by a copulative require the verb to
be in the plural. This has been foisted into the grammar of English,
of which it is no more true than it is of modern German.... The
grammar of English, as exhibited in the utterances of its best writers
and speakers, has from the very earliest period allowed the widest
discretion as to the use either of the singular or the plural in such
cases. The importation and imposition of rules foreign to its idiom,
like the one just mentioned, does more to hinder the free development
of the tongue, and to dwarf its freedom of expression, than the widest
prevalence of slovenliness of speech, or of affectation of style; for
these latter are always temporary in their character, and are sure to
be left behind by the advance in popular cultivation, or forgotten
through the change in popular taste.”
This is really a declaration of independence for writers of English.
It is the frank assertion that a language is made by those who use
it--made by that very use. Language is not an invention of the
grammarians and of the word-critics, whose business, indeed, is not
to make language or to prescribe rules, but more modestly to record
usage and to discover the principles which may underlie the incessant
development of our common speech. And here in discussing the syntax
Professor Lounsbury is at one with Mr. George Meredith discussing the
vocabulary of our language, when the British novelist notes his own
liking for “our blunt and racy vernacular, which a society nourished
upon Norman English and English Latin banishes from print, largely to
its impoverishment, some think.”
Those who have tried to impose a Latin syntax on the English language
are as arbitrary as those who have insisted on an English pronunciation
of the Latin language. Their attitude is as illogical as it is
dogmatic; and nowhere is dogmatism less welcome than in the attempt to
come to a just conclusion in regard to English usage; and nowhere is
the personal equation more carefully to be allowed for. A term is not
necessarily acceptable because we ourselves are accustomed to it, nor
is it necessarily to be rejected because it reaches us as a novelty.
The Americanism which a British journalist glibly denounces may be
but the ephemeral catchword of a single street-gang, or it may have
come over in the ‘Mayflower’ and be able to trace its ancestry back to
a forefather that crossed with William the Conqueror. The Briticism
which strikes some of us as uncouth and vulgar may be but a chance bit
of cockney slang, or it may be warranted by the very genius of our
language.
Most of the little manuals which pretend to regulate our use of our
own language and to declare what is and what is not good English are
grotesque in their ignorance; and the best of them are of small value,
because they are prepared on the assumption that the English language
is dead, like the Latin, and that, like Latin again, its usage is fixed
finally. Of course this assumption is as far as possible from the fact.
The English language is alive now--very much alive. And because it
is alive it is in a constant state of growth. It is developing daily
according to its needs. It is casting aside words and usages that
are no longer satisfactory; it is adding new terms as new things are
brought forward; and it is making new usages, as convenience suggests,
short-cuts across lots, and to the neglect of the five-barred gates
rigidly set up by our ancestors. It is throwing away as worn out words
which were once very fashionable; and it is giving up grammatical forms
which seem to be no longer useful. It is continually trying to keep
itself in the highest state of efficiency for work it has to do. It is
ever urging ahead in the direction of increased utility; and if any of
the so-called “rules” happens to stand in the path of its progress--so
much the worse for the rule! As Stephenson said, “It will be bad for
the coo!”
The English language is the tool of the peoples who speak English
and who have made it to fit their hands. They have fashioned it to
suit their own needs, and it is quite as characteristic as anything
else these same peoples have made--quite as characteristic as the
common law and as parliamentary government. A language cannot but be
a most important witness when we wish to inquire into the special
peculiarities of a race. The French, for instance, are dominated by the
social instinct, and they are prone to rely on logic a little too much,
and their language is therefore a marvel of transparency and precision.
In like manner we might deduce from an analysis of the German language
an opinion as to the slowness of the individual Teuton, as to his
occasional cloudiness, as to his willingness to take trouble, and as to
his ultimate thoroughness.
The peoples who speak English are very practical and very direct; they
are impatient of needless detail; and they are intolerant of mere
theory. These are some of the reasons why English is less embarrassed
with niceties of inflection than other languages, why it has cut its
syntax to the bone, why it has got rid of most of its declensions
and conjugations--why, in short, it has almost justified the critic
who called it a grammarless tongue. In every language there is a
constant tendency toward uniformity and an unceasing effort to get rid
of abnormal exceptions to the general rule; but in no language are
these endeavors more effective than in English. In the past they have
succeeded in simplifying the rules of our speech; and they are at work
now in the present on the same task of making English a more efficient
instrument for those who use it.
This effort of the language to do its duty as best it can is partly
conscious and partly unconscious; and where the word-critic can be of
service is in watching for the result of the unconscious endeavor, so
that it can be made plain, and so that it can be aided thereafter by
conscious endeavor. The tendency toward uniformity is irresistible;
and one of its results just now to be observed is an impending
disappearance of the subjunctive mood. Those who may have supposed that
the subjunctive was as firmly established in English as the indicative
can discover easily enough by paying a little attention to their own
daily speech and to the speech of their educated neighbors that “if I
_be_ not too late,” for instance, is a form now rarely heard even in
cultivated society.
And the same tendency is to be observed also in the written language.
Letters in the London _Author_ in June and July, 1897, showed that
in a few less than a million words chosen from the works of recent
authors of good repute there were only 284 instances of the subjunctive
mood, and that of these all but fifteen were in the verb “to be.”
This reveals to us that the value of this variation of form is no
longer evident, not merely to careless speakers, but even to careful
writers; and it makes it probable that it is only a question of time
how soon the subjunctive shall be no longer differentiated from the
indicative. Where our grandfathers would have taken pains to say “if I
_were_ to go away,” and “if I _be_ not misinformed,” our grandchildren
will unhesitatingly write, “if I _was_ to go away,” and “if I _am_
not misinformed.” And so posterity will not need to clog its memory
with any rule for the employment of the subjunctive; and the English
language will have cleansed itself of a barnacle.
It is this same irresistible desire for the simplest form and for the
shortest which is responsible for the increasing tendency to say “he
don’t” and “she don’t,” on the analogy of “we don’t,” “you don’t,”
and “they don’t,” instead of the more obviously grammatical “he does
n’t” and “she does n’t.” A brave attempt has been made to maintain
that “he don’t” is older than “he does n’t,” and that it has at least
the sanction of antiquity. However this may be, “he don’t” is certain
to sustain itself in the future because it calls for less effort and
because any willingness to satisfy the purist will seem less and less
worth while as time goes on. It is well that the purist should fight
for his own hand; but it is well also to know that he is fighting a
losing battle.
The purist used to insist that we should not say “the house is _being
built_,” but rather “the house is _building_.” So far as one can judge
from a survey of recent writing the purist has abandoned this combat;
and nobody nowadays hesitates to ask, “What is being done?” The purist
still objects to what he calls the Retained Object in such a sentence
as “he was given a new suit of clothes.” Here again the struggle is
vain, for this usage is very old; it is well established in English;
and whatever may be urged against it theoretically, it has the final
advantage of convenience. The purist also tells us that we should say
“come to see me” and “try to do it,” and not “come and see me” and “try
and do it.” Here once more the purist is setting up a personal standard
without any warrant. He may use whichever of these forms he likes best,
and we on our part have the same permission, with a strong preference
for the older and more idiomatic of them.
Theory is all very well, but to be of any value it must be founded
on the solid rock of fact; and even when it is so established it has
to yield to convenience. This is what the purist cannot be induced
to understand. He seems to think that the language was made once for
all, and that any deviation from the theory acted on in the past is
intolerable in the present. He is often wholly at sea in regard to his
theories and to his facts--more often than not; but no doubt as to his
own infallibility ever discourages him. He just knows that he is right
and that everybody else is wrong; and he has no sense of humor to save
him from himself. And he makes up in violence what he lacks in wisdom.
He accepts himself as a prophet verbally inspired, and he holds that
this gives him the right to call down fire from heaven on all who do
not accept his message.