Americanisms

V.

THE interest taken by people generally, and particularly by that nondescript person usually described as the intelligent reader, in discussions about words is one of the puzzles of my life. For this interest is not in any way an indication or an accompaniment of literary taste or acquirement, or even of habits of reading, — anything other than newspapers or perhaps magazines. Men and women who have never read, and never will read, the books of the writers who have made the literature of the English language the grandest, the richest, and the most varied the world has known, and to whom the real study of language is as foreign as the study of heraldry or of palæontology, will have long and acrimonious disputes among themselves about words, make bets, and call in an umpire; or they will eagerly seize upon an assertion or a suggestion in a magazine or newspaper article as an occasion of a letter to the writer, in which they give him the benefit of such knowledge as they have, or have not, upon the subject. Why this is, I have not been able to divine; but I hope none the less that any of my readers who are tempted to favor me in this way will yield, and that I may continue to receive such letters; for they are in some few cases valuable for the knowledge they impart or for the suggestions that they make. But I must once for all ask to be excused from the task of answering them, except as I may do so in these or other like pages.

I am led to these remarks by the fact that of the letters brought to me by the article on Americanisms in the September Atlantic, thirteen, including “ postal-cards,” were in regard to the word whisker, and particularly in regard to the Westernism “ chin-whiskers.” This phrase, which had escaped the minute research of Mr. Bartlett, and which I had never heard, is, it seems, in very common use among all the Western people, beginning at the western part of New York, and is even heard, as I am assured, “ in the barber shops in Boston.” I think that my correspondent might better have said in some of those shops; for I am sure that I know Boston and Boston people well enough to say, without fear of contradiction, that among those who give to Boston and its neighborhood their character it is not the habit to talk of “ chin-whiskers,” and that my British correspondent, whose remark upon the Western habit was the occasion of what I wrote upon it, is quite right in his belief that “ educated Americans apply the term [whisker] only to the hair growing upon the cheeks.”

Although the term “ chin-whisker ” is not to be defended, and is both a solecism and, if I may be pardoned for saying so, a barberism, yet there is something to be said upon the subject which may not be without interest of its kind. Whisker, although in the English of the present and the past generations it has been confined to the hair growing uncut on the cheek, or rather the jowl, when first applied to the beard meant the mustachios. The first recorded definition of the word (in 1727) by Bailey, who preceded Johnson, is “little tufts of hair at the corners of the mouth on the upper lip.” But a yet earlier use of the word in this sense, and I think the earliest in our language, is in the old proverb, “ Don’t leave cream within the whiskers of a cat.” Now a cat’s whiskers are mustachios, and nothing else. From Graymalkin, therefore, the word was transferred, perhaps by some gray mare, to her lord and master. The word, I believe, is not known in our language until after the Elizabethan period, the hair on any part of a man’s face being called before that time simply the beard. A whisker is— truly as well as obviously (and all obvious meanings are not true) — anything that whisks or that may whisk. That appendage without which a bull is said to stand no chance in fly-time is a whisker; and so is a small broom for dusting the clothes, which hence is called a whisk-broom. Dr. Brewer, of Cambridge (England), would derive whisker from the Welsh gwisg, meaning dress, and thus make whisker mean the dress of the face. But this is fanciful, unnecessary, and at variance with the history of the word. When the fashion in England and France was to shave the whole face clean, which prevailed about one hundred and fifty years, there was one class of men that did not generally conform to it, — soldiers. Many of them wore mustachios; and so confined to them was the use of this virile ornament that the appearance of it upon a man’s face during that period was regarded as evidence of soldierhood, as might be shown by many passages in the literature of the time. Thus the first whiskers were worn upon the upper lip; and the word when used by writers of the latter part of the seventeenth century and the first half of the eighteenth means the mustachios. When Addison wrote “ a pair of whiskers ” he meant, doubtless, a pair of mustachios; and although he and his contemporaries would not have applied the word to the whole beard, their pairs of whiskers did not mean the hair growing upon a man’s jowls. With that form of the beard they were unacquainted, the fashion of wearing it so being of later introduction. When, however, the two side tufts did appear (and at first they were shrinking little encroachments upon the smooth of the face) they were naturally also called whiskers, or very often, distinctively, side-whiskers; and then, as the beard upon the upper lip had a name peculiar to itself, adopted from the Continental languages, — mustachio, —the discriminating tendency of language soon confined whiskers to the beard left to grow on the sides of the face. This has been the usage for the last half century. Before that time, however, the word was very vaguely used, as will appear by a note written by Byron, in the assumed character of Horace Hornem, a midland county squire, upon the following couplet in The Waltz: —

Upon this the country gentleman is made to remark: “It cannot be complained now, as in the Lady Baussière’s time of the Sieur de la Croix, that there be ‘ no whiskers;’ but how far these are indications of valor in the field may still be questionable. Much may be and hath been avouched on both sides. In the olden time, philosophers had whiskers, and soldiers none. Scipio himself was shaven; Hannibal thought his one eye handsome enough, without a beard; but Adrian, the emperor, wore a beard, having warts on his chin, which neither the Empress Sabina. nor even the courtiers, could abide. Turenne had whiskers, Marlborough none; Bonaparte is unwhiskered, the regent whiskered: argal greatness of mind and whiskers may or may not go together. But certainly the different occurrences since the growth of the last mentioned go further in behalf of whiskers than the anathema of Anselm did against long hair in the reign of Henry I.”

Observe the implication that at the time when this was written (1872) whiskers were held appropriate only to those who had shown valor in the field; they were the peculiar ornament of a soldier’s face. Turenne’s whiskers, as his portrait shows us, were mustachios; but the prince regent’s were side-whiskers. The whiskers that the philosophers wore were either mustachios or the whole beard. So far Byron. Beard worn upon the chin was, however, called a “ peaked beard,” or a “ shovel beard,” or a “spade beard,” according to its form; never whiskers, I believe; so that the Westernism has not the support of English usage at any time in its favor. Hair upon the chin is called, par excellence, beard by those who speak good English.

I trust that my correspondents will agree with me that I have now quite sufficiently discussed this grave question.

Another British correspondent, known as the author of a book upon a subject kindred to that of his letter, writes me from Huddersfield, England, and takes me courteously to task for “ calling a dissenting minister a clergyman.” This, he says, is an Americanism. He adds: " No dissenting minister in England ever professed to be in ‘orders,’ and therefore never claims to be a clergyman. All dissenting ministers are by English law laymen only, and are never called clergymen.” Will my respected correspondent pardon me for saying that, although I thank him for the favor of his letter, in communicating to me the facts upon which it is founded he was bringing coals to Newcastle? What he tells me about the positions of clergymen of the Church of England who are in holy orders, and dissenting ministers, I have known from my earliest boyish memory of such things. Bred in the straitest sect of Anglican Episcopacy, I was taught by example, if not by precept, to call no ministers even here clergymen but those who were in orders in the American branch of the Anglican Church. My correspondent might have added, with equal superfluity, that the title " Reverend ” is denied by some persons in England to all but clergymen of the Church of England, and its assumption by other ministers disputed. But after I began to think for myself about such subjects, I saw that this exclusion in language was illiberal and disrespectful; and observing that there was good English authority for my conclusion, I acted accordingly in my use of clergyman and reverend. In his very positive and very exclusive assertion that dissenting ministers are “never called clergymen in England,” and that the calling them so is an Americanism, my respected correspondent has been misled as to what is fact by his strong conviction of what fact ought to be. Not so, however, Dr. Fitzedward Hall, who without any such conviction blundered into the same error, saying that in the sentence, “ The use of this adjective [divine] as a noun meaning a clergyman, a minister of the gospel, is supported by long usage and high authority,” clergyman is used in a sense “ now uncurrent in England.” (Recent Exemplifications, etc., page 73.)

In some previous remarks upon this performance of Dr. Hall’s, I, supposing that he, writing upon language, regarded the subject from a linguistic point of view, and not from that of the Court of Arches, met his assertion accordingly. But now, supposing his assertion to be the same with that of my correspondent, who has the courtesy which Dr. Hall always lacks, I shall expose the presuming ignorance which he has provoked me to expose heretofore on so many occasions. The word clergyman is applied by Englishmen of the best class to ministers of the gospel of all churches, as in the following examples: —

“He supped as usual, and even invited the provost-marshal and the clergyman [a Dutch dominie], who had been sent to see him, to join him at supper.”

(Edinburgh Review, July, 1874: Art., Life and Death of Barneveldt.)

“ In Hungary there are seven hundred and three Catholic priests; but of that number the large minority of two hundred and sixty-eight belong to the Panslav party; while out of one hundred and seventy-eight Lutheran clergymen ninety are Panslavists.” (London Spectator, March 9, 1878.)

It is specifically applied in England, in the most unexceptionable quarters, to dissenting ministers of all denominations, as in the following passages; the first from the highest of all high Tory writers : —

“ Upon this subject, in its relation not to Latin but to classical English, we have an essay in our own times from a writer of great talent, Mr. Foster, the Baptist clergyman(De Quincey, Dr. Parr, etc., Works, vol. v. p. 190).

“Most of the denominations have ceased to depend entirely on the mother country for their supply of clergymen and ministers, and have established institutions for the theological education of young men who wish to be trained for the ministry.” (Rev. John Milner, B. A., in Cruise of the Galatea, 1869, page 436.)

“ When I met with him Timbrel was a dissenting clergyman ; but he supplemented this occupation with a number of others. He was a paid temperance lecturer, and he kept a boarding-school for the children of farmers and country tradesmen of his own sect.” (Pall Mall Budget, May 18, 1878.)

Lastly, clergyman is “ currently ” used in England in a general sense as meaning the whole class of men who minister in the religious affairs of all sects and sorts, and in this sense is opposed to other general terms applied to large classes and conditions of mankind; as in the following examples:—

“ Women and clergymen have so long been in the habit of using pretty words without ever troubling themselves to understand them,” etc. (Ruskin, Fors Clavigera, April, 1876.)

— “ meaning, Is he a lawyer, a littérateur, a politician, a clergyman? ” (Frances Power Cobbe, New Quarterly, July, 1875.)

“ Christianity, says the freethinker, is very good for women, children, and clergymen.” (Leslie Stephen, FreeThinking and Plain - Speaking, 1877, chap. i.)

In such uses of the word, examples of which swarm in the “current” literature of the day, its general signification is unmistakable. As Ruskin and Leslie Stephen use it, their meaning plainly is, women and children, and that other class of our fellow-creatures who teach women and children religion, whether that religion is Romanism, Anglicanism, Presbyterianism, Methodism, or what not. In the passage from Frances Power Cobbe it is to be remarked that clergyman is not opposed to barrister, journalist, or author, or member of Parliament, but to the general terms lawyer, littérateur, and politician. In England particular members of the legal profession are not usually spoken of as lawyers, but as barristers or attorneys, those words corresponding to the technical use of clergyman. A barrister or a judge is sometimes spoken of as a good lawyer. The clergyman of the parish always means a clergyman of the Church of England, as in the following passage from John Bright: —

“All this is done under the guidance and supervision of the clergyman of the parish. The children are to be examined by the clergyman, and by inspectors appointed by the government who are also to be clergymen of the Church of England.” (Speeches, ii. 505.)

The word originally in use in England in this signification was clergion or clergioun, of which I am inclined to think that the compound clergyman is a mere corruption; as, for example, bridegroom is of brydguma, which means a newly married man, not a groom of any sort or condition. Whatever may have been the exclusive meaning of clergyman in past times in England (and I am inclined to think that the exclusiveness was never absolute), the above examples show that the sense in which it is “ now current in England” is a very general one, and includes all respectable ministers of the gospel. And so it is defined by Stormonth, himself a clergyman of the Church of England. But these examples are only the lesser part of those which I have recorded. It is just while I am writing that I have discovered that a sheaf of others has been mislaid. These, however, are enough; and I regret only the absence of one passage from a recent Liverpool newspaper, in which the word clergyman is applied successively and indiscriminately to a Roman Catholic priest, two dissenting ministers, and a clergyman of the Church of England.

This instance illustrates again the untrustworthiness of the evidence of Englishmen even of education and literary habits as to what is an Americanism or a colonialism in language. I take the occasion to remark upon an assertion in the Saturday Review, which not long ago pronounced, with much scorn, the word bosom, as applied to a man, a flagrant Americanism. One would suppose that the evidence of a writer in the Saturday Review might be taken as to what is or is not English. But here is an Englishman writing literary and verbal criticism in a London publication of the highest grade who has forgotten the Bible phrase “the wife of his bosom,” and Bacon’s “ come home to men’s business and bosoms,” and Shakespeare’s “ my bosom’s lord sits lightly on his throne,” which he puts in the mouth of Romeo. To bring an array of examples to bear upon such an assertion as this is would be like cannonading a scarecrow of straw, and would also, I am willing to believe, be quite needless for the assurance of any reader of The Atlantic in the use of this word. I shall therefore merely mention that of this denounced Americanism I have at my hand examples from Cædmon, the Anglo-Saxon translation of the Scriptures, Wycliffe, Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, Bacon, Drayton, the English Bible, Milton, Fuller, Jeremy Taylor, Steele, Fielding, Byron (who uses it with remarkable frequency), Campbell, Bulwer, Mrs. Trollope, Mrs. Gore, Carlyle, Thackeray, Anthony Trollope, Frances Power Cobbe, Edmund Yates, the London Spectator, the London Graphic, and, last, not least, the Saturday Review itself, in many instances, of which one more striking than the others is,—

“ The manly English bosom rebels at the thought of duns and proctors, of gates and chapels.” (February 23, 1878, page 238.)

Indeed, bosom is particularly appropriate, as breast is inappropriate, to man. For bosom means primarily the space which is inclosed by the folding of the arms, an action naturally uncommon with women; while breast, according to its received etymology, is connected with burst, and with the idea of swelling, and means that which swells above the adjacent surface. I have been inclined to think that it is rather connected, in all the Teutonic languages, with the idea of that which is broken, divided, — brust, brast, brest. Whichever idea it presents etymologically, it will be seen that properly woman, not man, has breast, and man, not woman, bosom. It was inevitable, however, that by long use the two words should come to be to a certain degree interchanged.

To almost any observant reader of English the mere mentioning of authorities upon such a point must have in it something of the ridiculous; and I remark upon it only to show that even writers in a journal of the standing of the Saturday Review will make assertions (honestly, I have no doubt) that words and phrases are Americanisms when they are English from the days of the Heptarchy to the days of that skeptarchy which seems to guide, without ruling, the cleverest, most brilliant, but most perverse of British journals. The Saturday Review’s English is in general notably good, although pedagogues and pedants might gratify their propensities by picking flaws in it; but sometimes remarks upon English appear in its columns which, like that just referred to, subject it to open shame, and contrast strongly with the learning and sagacity of some of its linguistic and philological articles.

Among these remarks is one made not long since, with an air of good feeling, upon the close bond that joins English and American students of art and literature on the continent of Europe. The writer says, “ Those who know how little mutual love there is between tourists of the two nations will hardly believe how naturally they amalgamate as students into one society, with crossfriendships and common interests, entirely regardless of the difference of nationality. This affinity is no doubt greatly aided by the possession of a language which, although not absolutely identical, at least serves the purposes of mutual intercourse.” A more ridiculous remark was never made; and yet the writer, in justification of it, might point with some show of reason to Mr. Bartlett’s huge Dictionary of Americanisms.

Here, as on former occasions, I have cited journals such as the Saturday Review, the Spectator, the Times, the Pall Mall Gazette, and even the Graphic. Examples taken from their columns have not such authoritative weight on the question of “best usage” as belongs to the writings of classical authors. But on the question of Americanism, or of the general cultivated English usage of the day, their evidence is the best that can be obtained. As to the thoroughly English usage of a word or phrase frequently found in the columns of the first four journals named above, there is not room for the slightest question. An individual writer, or the writers of a coterie, may affect a word or a phrase; but if it is common to these journals, it is surely the best English in general use at the present day. We have no such journals here; none even whose evidence can be taken as to the Americanism of a phrase; because so large a part of our journalism, particularly of our leader or “ editorial ” writing, is done by foreigners. On half a dozen occasions I have taken some pains to discover who were the writers of articles in which I had observed peculiarities of expression which were not English, and in all I found that the writers were Irishmen. That this is quite likely to happen in the most widely circulated of our daily newspapers is well known to those who are even a little informed as to the personal machinery of New York journalism. The like condition of things prevails elsewhere. The writing Irishman has of late years come to the front in our journalism, and the teaching Irishman and Irishwoman (in the second generation at least) in our public schools. To find what kind of English Americans born and bred speak we must skip over what is daily taught to the rising and daily printed for the just risen generation.

It is stepping aside somewhat from my intended course in treating my subject, but since I have referred to Dr. Hall, and have also recently examined memorandums in some of my books which I had not seen for some years, I am tempted to supply one of the doctor’s deficiencies. In the book which made him known he lamented that he could not establish the existence in English literature of the word musicianer. (Recent Exemplifications, etc., page 114.) Some time ago I furnished him with one example from a ballad of which I could, unfortunately, not remember the name or the author, and which therefore, although genuine, was not of the highest value. From two modern authors (he seems to suppose that it is found only in " old books”) I cite the following examples: —

“ I gave to a musicianer a letter for you some time ago. Has he presented it?” (Byron to Hoppner, May 11, 1825.)

“ I wish that I had a pocket full of sudden deaths, that I might throw one at every thief of a musicianer that comes up the street.” (Jorrock’s Jaunts, etc., 1838, vol. ii. p. 180, N. Y. ed.)

By these examples it will be seen that Mr. Bartlett is wrong in setting down musicianer as an Americanism. It is not so in any sense. True, he adds that it is vulgar here, and that it is “in use in Norfolk and in London.” So indeed it is, and also elsewhere. It is in use in English literature. Dr. Hall tells us that it is in old books; and he is very good authority as to fact in what he does know. It is only as to what he does not know that he is no authority at all. Musicianer has no proper place in a collection of Americanisms.

And now I may turn to the letter F in Mr. Bartlett’s Dictionary, and consider the more important words arranged under it. For as to the mass of slang and cant and vulgarity gathered into that volume, it is worth little attention: one reason of which is that the greater part of it is not in any proper sense a product of social development in America nor is it folk-phrase. It is not to be found among those people who have been longest under the influences, skyey and other, which have prevailed here for two centuries and a half; neither is it dialect; for we have no dialects. Like chin-whisker, the most of it is mere ephemeral fashion and transient trick of speech,—bad fashion and bad trick, but prevalent only among those who, being neither cultivated on the one hand nor on the other, the rude product of the soil on which they live, are not properly to be taken as the exponents of language in any way, — fashion and trick which will pass away, some of it before Mr. Bartlett’s book passes to another edition.

Fall. To the examples which I have already given of the use of this word for the third season of the year by English writers of repute, I now add the following from Evelyn: —

“But there is yet another benefit which this tree [the beech] presents us: its very leaves, which make a material and most agreeable canopy all the summer, being gathered about the fall, and somewhat before they are much frostbitten, afford the best and easiest mattresses in the world to lay under our quilts instead of straw.” (Sylva, Book I., chap. vi.¹)

Family. “ This word,” we are told (seriously), “ is often used to denote a man’s wife and children, especially the latter. Hence the phrases, ‘ A man of family,’ ' Have you any family? ’ and in the West, ' How is your father’s family ? ’ ” Indeed this is very true. And sad to relate the same Americanism may be found in the language of every civilized European people since the days when Latin ceased to be a living language. True, familia meant at first the whole household, including the slaves; but even among the Romans it came to imply kindred more than inmateship, as the words pater-familias and mater-familias show. Among later peoples family came to mean kindred exclusively; and a man’s own family, par excellence, is his wife and children. This is common usage in England as well as here.

Fast. Not many years ago this word, in the slang sense in which it is used in the best society, was identical in meaning in both countries. A sporting man giving evidence in a New York court was asked what he meant by a fast man. He replied that a fast man was a man who had more money to spend than he had time to spend it in; a definition which, notwithstanding its confusion of thought, is suggestive and descriptive. It still preserves in England the innoxious sense here suggested. A woman there, a gentlewoman, may be spoken of, may speak of herself, as fast. For example, in the dramatic sketch Apples, in Blackwood’s Magazine for July, 1878, a Lady R. says of herself, soliloquizing: “ I am generally slighted. No woman was ever so neglected. I am not fast enough to be a success. But to be fast in this heat! Oh, dear me, it ’s tiresome eno gh to be slow.” But here, of late years, owing to a euphemistic use of the word by abandoned women, it has come too generally when applied to their sex to signify a life of promiscuous, mercenary unchastity. This kind of verbal degradation is common in the history of language; and by it the word seduce is in danger of being purged of all its real significance. As to fast, even in respectable newspapers, it is thus used. Of one of two utterly abandoned girls it was said in one of the leading New York journals, “ She too was a member of the Ries troop, and was disposed to be as fast as her sister Lizzie.” This difference of usage was beginning to prevail when Mr. Thackeray was last here, and it came near getting him into trouble. Meeting a very gay, witty, dashing woman from the South, he said to her soon after his introduction, “ Mrs. K——, I’m told that you’re a fast woman.” The lady (she is not now living) was in truth not very squeamish, but she immediately turned her back upon him. He was puzzled, and thought her capriciously rude; she thought him insulting. But the word in the sense which Mr. Bartlett properly assigns to it, “that lives at a rapid rate, dissipated,” is no more an Americanism than swell is; and like swell it is of British origin.

Favor, as applied to the face, the expression of countenance, Mr. Bartlett says, “was once common in England, but is now obsolete.” Not so. It is, I believe, now rarely heard in either country; and only among very “plain people.” But in England it is used just as it is here; of which see example only a few weeks old: —

“ He was the very image of his poor mother,—her pretty, light, curly hair, and all; did n’t feature or favor his father even in a look, and that was a comfort.” (The Ilfracombe Boatman, The Argosy, August, 1878.)

Feel. “ To feel to do a thing is an expression commonly used by some clergymen for to feel inclined, to be disposed, to do it.” Feel to thus used is certainly not a lovely phrase; but as to its Americanism, or its being confined to the usage of clergymen, see this passage : —

“ Finally, the writer is not, nor likely to be, a member of any anti-tobacco society. He is neither a slave to a cigar, nor an utter stranger to it. When he wants one he takes it; and when ho does not feel to want one he goes without it.” (All Smoke, London Society, October, 1866.)

This is certainly not very elegant writing in any respect. But it indicates the true state of the case. The phrase is used in both countries by people who speak and write and behave inelegantly.

Female. The misuse of this word for woman or girl is pointed out and discussed in Words and their Uses. The notion that it is an Americanism is one of the most ignorant and absurd that ever was entertained upon any subject; and the citation in Bartlett of three examples, one triumphantly from Goldwin Smith, and one from Harriet Martineau, is deplorable. In the book mentioned above it was said, “ There is no lack of what is called authoritative usage during three centuries for this misuse of female. But this is one of those perversions which are justified by no example, however eminent.” The latter sentence is an opinion which any one may accept or reject at pleasure; the former is an assertion in support of which it may now be worth while for me to cite some of the memorandums upon which it was made: —

— “here came the strongest silks, the sweetest wines, the excellentest almonds, the best oils, and beautifullest females of all Spain.” (Howell’s Letters, Book I., L. 24.)

“ But this serves only for the men. Now whereas the females of this country, especially of the lower order, do associate themselves much more than those of other nations,” etc. (Fielding, Tom Jones, Book II., chap. iv.)

“ Mrs. Partridge, being one day at this assemblage of females, was asked by one of her neighbors if she had heard no news of Jenny Jones.” (Idem, same chap., a few lines below.)

“ I see no females yet that have anything to say to us.” (Vanbrugh, Provoked Wife, iv. 5.)

“ That females are too apt to be struck with images of beauty,” etc. (Richardson, Pamela, Introd.)

“ This familiar and solitary intercourse between a saint whose character required the most unblemished chastity and a female whose charms might excite the most dangerous emotions,” etc. (Gibbon, vol. ii., chap. xxi., p. 65.)

“ Bah! the men in the character of shepherds, etc.; the females likewise as shepherdesses.” (Grose, Olio, page 44.)

— “ and in the company was a young female to whom I, in my peevishness, thought Mr. Thrale superfluously attentive.” (Mrs. Piozzi, Piozziana, i. 122.)

Peter Coxe, The Social Day, canto iv., p. 256, ed 1823.)

“ Woe worth the hour that Piercie Shafton, in attention to his own safety, neglected the accommodation of any female, far less of his most beneficent liberatrice.” (Scott, The Monastery, chap. xxviii.)

— “ the power of a female in keeping a secret, sarcastically said to be impossible.” (Idem, Peveril of the Peak, Introd.)

“ At length Lady Peveril, with the ready invention of a female, sharpened by the sight of distress,” etc.² (Idem, chap, i.)

“ Noble adventurers traveled from court to court in search of employment , — not merely noble males, but noble females too; and if these latter were beauties, and obtained the favorable notice of princes, they stopped in the courts,” etc. (Thackeray, The Four Georges.)

See also Charles Reade’s The Cloister and the Hearth, pages 52, 125, 126, 132, 170, 180, Amer. ed. Thackeray’s “ males ” for men is comparatively very rare; but female for woman runs through the whole range of English literature since the Reformation, but is not, in my opinion, on that account one whit the less objectionable; for a cow or a sow is a female just as a woman is; no otherwise. But we may now hope, in any case, that it will cease to be counted among Americanisms.

A few. In support of the Americanism of this phrase, slangily and ironically used in the sense of a little, Mr. Bartlett cites one example. He might easily have cited more. But in evidence that the phrase is not unknown or unused in England see this example: —

“Yet he swore —and Doodle could swear a few — that he would never turn Donnish.” (Almæ Matres, by Megathym Splene, M. A. Oxon., page 39.)

Fire. The misuse of this word for shoot and throw which has followed the introduction of guns for bows and ordnance for slings is censurable, but not as an Americanism. I have many examples at hand from English writers. Even in Mills’s History of the Crusades we find, “ A body of more than five thousand Ethiopians, who concealed themselves among the inequalities of the ground, fired their arrows.” (Vol. i., chap. vii.) As to fire-eaters, I will merely remark that it is of Irish, not American, origin. It will be found in Barrington’s Sketches; but my memorandum of the chapter is not at hand.

First class. The Reverend Archibald C. Geikie, whose ability to impart to Americans what is and what is not English we have already seen more than once, and notably in regard to hung and hanged, is quoted by Mr. Bartlett to show that first class as applied to a man is not English. In England, he says, if a man possesses notable capacity, “ people call him capable, or able, or great; ” and he would confine first class to railway carriages and prize oxen. It is somewhat strange that Mr. Geikie should not have remembered the firstclass men and the double first-class men of Cambridge, which is probably the origin of the phrase a first-class man. Yet it may have come from a usage which it is strange that an M. A. should have forgotten. In Rome men were rated as first class, second class, or third, according to their incomes. Those of the firstclass were called par excellence, classici; whence classics, that is, writers of the first class. I find that Herbert Coleridge, of the sangre azul of Anglican purists in language, applied the phrase to newspapers: " And I may as well say that first-class newspapers, such as the Times, Saturday Review, etc., form our lowest limit of authority.” (Letter to George P. Marsh, August 29, 1859.) And in the London Literary Budget, journals and men of high grade are thus grouped together: “ We hold that the characters of first-class journals, the avowed conductors of which are first-class literary men, should be without stain or suspicion.” (November 1, 1861.) The phrase has not been in my mind as one to be remarked, or I should have many examples of it at hand.

Fix, in the sense of “ a condition, a predicament, a dilemma,” is so far from being an Americanism that it is of common use in England, both in speech and in writing, and there first came into vogue. To establish this in detail would be quite superfluous. One can hardly read an English book or newspaper without encountering the word. But I find on the margin of my Bartlett four memorandums: that the Pall Mall Gazette (October 28, 1860) calls “ the precarious position of Austria” also “the Austrian fix;” that Mr. Punch (April 9, 1864) says that a cat who has caught her head in a milk jug “ is in a tolerable fix;” that Burton, in his Scot Abroad (vol. i. p. 29), says, “ Altogether the question was indeed in a fix ; ” and that in Maxwell Drewitt (chap. vi.) it is said, “ It was a nice. fix for a man to be placed in : starvation in this world, or hell fire in the next,” — which may be accepted as a pretty clear expression of “ a dilemma.”

But it is as a verb meaning “ to put in order, to prepare, to set or place in the manner desired or most suitable,” that fix is with more reason set down as an Americanism. This use of fix rivals guess as an American shibboleth in the ordinary British mind. But while I would not deny that its use is more common here than in England, I do deny that it is of American origin and that its use is confined to Americans. Remark the meaning, the unmistakable meaning, of the word in the following passages from English authors of high repute: —

“ 1st Chambermaid. Are all things set in order? The toilet fixed, the chairs and tables put in form, and the chocolate ready ? ” (Farquhar, Sir Harry Wildair, Act II.)

“ Gibbet [going on a robbery]. Hounslow, do you and Bagshot see our arms fix'd : and I ’ll come to you presently.” (Idem, The Beaux Stratagem, Act IV., last scene.)

“ This is only to give account that I received yours, and to thank you for the pains you have been at to get me a lodging, servant, and conveniences. I hope you have fixed it for me ere this, the lodging especially.” (Shaftesbury to Farley, June 25, 1703, in Original Letters of Locke, etc., 1830.)

“ The corporal had slipped out about ten minutes before my uncle Toby in order to fix his apparatus, and just give the enemy a shot or two before my uncle Toby came.” (Sterne, Tristram Shandy, chap. clxxxviii.)

It is to be remarked that the corporal’s apparatus was already set up, in position, established: what he wished to do was to arrange it, to prepare it. The meaning “ to place in the manner most desired or most suitable ” could not have a more clear and apt illustration than in the following example: —

“ The quaker placed himself in a speaking attitude; it was the operation of some minutes. ‘ Friend,’ says he, as soon as he had fixed himself to his mind.” (I Says, Says I, vol. i. p. 156, Lond. 1812.)

In the following passages, it means “ to prepare.”

— “so far from being able to cut out

and fix plain sewing, they cannot do even the mechanical part of stitching when it is fixed tolerably.” (English Matron, 1873, page 159.)

— " and one who knows how to fix and tack her own work.” (Idem, page 191.³)

“ The king wanted me to show him how to fix the gun I had given him, and I went ashore.” (Earl Pembroke, South Sea Bubbles, chap. iv., page 119, ed. Lond. 1872.)

Here Lord Pembroke uses the word in exactly the same sense in which Farquhar used it a century and a half ago, and in regard to the very same thing, a gun. For at least one hundred and fifty years this use of the word has not been an Americanism, and as to the time before that, they may find it in American speech and writing who can. It is common enough in England colloquially; but one difference between the conditions of the two countries is that here all manner of impropriety and easy-going is seen more upon the surface than it is there.

Fleshy is scoffed at as an Americanism, not by Mr. Bartlett, but by some British censors; and Mr. Punch, by the hand of his clever servant, Du Maurier, has made himself merry over it at our expense. He did so, probably, in ignorance of such examples as the following:

(Chaucer, Troilus and Creseide, III.)

“ But an if the woman be anything grosse, fat, or fleshy,” etc. (Raynald’s Birth of Mankynde, 1565, sig. K viii, b.)

— " have yet our hearts riveted with those old opinions, and so obstructed and benumbed with the same fleshy reasonings, which in our forefathers soon melted and gave way,” etc. (Milton, Defence against Smectymnuus.)

Milton’s use of the word is metaphorical; but metaphorical use implies the literal. In the following examples the use is literal enough; and in the first of them the word is applied by a woman to a woman: —

“ This fine sunny morning, then, Mrs. Redman sat near her dining-room window. She was a large woman, but not a fleshy one: so she gave the idea of much bone.” (Mrs. Alexander, Which shall it be? Lond. 1873, chap. i.)

— “ unless this were skillfully done the face might easily be made to assume too fleshy an appearance.” (Professor Owen.)

“ The head is oval and is very fleshy ; the jaw being heavy and massive, and the cheek round and full. . . . The eyes are very full, and the nose a fleshy English nose.” (J. Hain Friswell.)

These examples appear in passages quoted in the Philadelphia Evening Telegraph of November 17, 1872. The question, be it remembered, is not as to the good taste with which the word may be used in either country, but whether such uses as those shown above are peculiarly American.

Folks. We are told by Mr. Bartlett that this “ old ” word “ is much used in New England instead of ‘ people ’ or ‘ persons,’” for “the persons in one’s family ” and for “people in general.” Indeed it is ; and so it has been used by all people of English blood since English was a language. Johnson’s dictum that the word “ is now used only in familiar or burlesque language ” is quoted by Mr. Bartlett in support of the view which he presents. But this remark of the old lexicographer reminds me of one that he made upon the following passage in King John: —

Upon this Johnson, after some formidable preluding of doubt as to meaning, and as to the understanding of previous commentators, remarked, “ Shakespeare seems to have confounded the man’s shoes with his gloves. He that is frighted or hurried may put his hand into the wrong glove, but either shoe will equally admit either foot. The author seems to be disturbed by the disorder which he describes.” This amazing comment was the consequence merely of Dr. Johnson’s ignorance that the fashion of his day in shoes was not the fashion of previous days, as it has not been of succeeding generations. By some unaccountable and cruel caprice of fashion shoes in the last century, and even in the beginning of the present, were made with straight soles; and being so, each one of a pair could of course be worn on either foot, but also without comfort on either. I have heard very old people in my boyhood speak of the comfort that accompanied the coming in of what they called “rights and lefts.” Now it is possible that in Johnson’s time folk and folks had gone out of use among the best speakers. It was a sore time for language as well as for feet. But folk is one of those words which is quite as ineradicable from a language as their difference in shape is from a man’s feet. Straight shoes might come in and folk go out for a little while; but nature would erelong in both cases assert her rights. There is no question as to the old use of the word in England. See then the following examples of its use by the best society there, literary and other, in modern days. It will be seen that they are somewhat at variance with Mr. Bartlett’s remark that “when English writers try to imitate Yankee talk they make us say folk.”

“ Comfort must not be expected by folks that go a - pleasuring.” (Byron, Letters, ed. Moore, i. 277.)

(Idem, Childe Harold, I. 26.)

(Idem, Don Juan, II. 93.)

“ In the course of time curiosity and indignation died out. The country folk subsided into their ordinary habits,” etc. (Julian Charles Young, Rector of Irvington, Journal, etc., chap. xvii.)

“ So long as there is love-making in the world, and engagements, and talk of weddings, and young folks' happy thoughts, so long will one shadow haunt this felicity.” (Essays on Social Subjects, from the Saturday Review, second series, page 225.)

“ Great folks — the very greatest, decked out in all that fine clothes and jewels can do for them, and inevitably conscious of being the centre of many thousand eyes — are not made vain by being stared at.” (Idem, page 274.)

“ But are these two young folk never to learn what everybody else knows?” (Mortimer Collins, Squire Silchester’s Whim, vol. ii., Lond. 1873.)

“ The relations between the fishing folk and their neighbors soon became friendly.” (Idem, chap. iv.)

“Lord Castlereagh and all the English gentlemen at the Hague dined with the prince. M. and Madame de Schuylenbach invited a large party to dinner to meet Lady Castlereagh, who, as well as I, appeared in orange, which vastly pleased the good folks, who took to us both extremely.” (Countess Brownlow, Reminiscences, etc., Lond. 1868, page 35.)

“ Most of the folks knew that we were going, and came up to shake hands.” (Earl Pembroke, South Sea Bubbles, chap. v., page 133, Lond. 1872.)

“ But these folks grin and laugh at whatever I do, right or wrong.' (Idem, chap. ii., page 53.)

“Seeing a mighty bustle of folk on the reef, paddled up, and found them preparing a labyrinth of fish-traps.” (Idem, chap. iii., page 88.)

“ There are poorer folks than paupers.” (James Greenwood, The Amateur Casual, Seven Curses of London, page 432.)

“ Now, looking round the world, is it a fact that old maids and old bachelors are so much more spiritually advanced than married folks ?” (Bulwer Lytton, Kenelm Chillingly, Book V., chap. viii.)

“ The people interested me at the hotel; for they were all well-meaning folks, moving in a somewhat morbid atmosphere.” (Miss Thackeray, Da Capo, chap. i.)

“Not poor human folks, however.” (Frances Power Cobbe, London Hecatombs.)

“ They made their money slowly but very surely, as all folks must do who have a tolerably large connection,” etc. (Patient Kitty, Belgravia, June, 1878.)

“ Much may be learned, indeed, with regard to the capabilities of English folk for art by keeping eyes and ears open in the different picture exhibitions. Besides the obvious use of the Academy for furnishing conversation in the summer months, it is visited by Londoners in order that they may be seen, by country folk in order that they may see.” (London Week, June 29, 1878.)

— “for although in these days beekeeping is no longer what it used to be, yet the old-fashioned folk take a deep interest in the bees still.” (Pall Mall Budget, August 31, 1878, page 13.)

—— “ the old folk, even those having a stocking or a teapot filled with guineas, thought a great deal of small sums.” (Idem, page 14.)

It seems impossible to use folk or folks in all the senses proscribed by Mr. Bartlett as American, more thoroughly and precisely than in these examples from English writers of the best social and literary position. If I have been somewhat particular and numerous in my examples, I have only to say in defense that the charge was made with particularity and supported by a great name.

Free to confess. It is right that I should say that I have not looked at all the items in Mr. Bartlett’s work, some signatures, indeed, in the copy which I have used (one of the third edition, 1859) being yet uncut. In the last edition, which I received only a short time ago, finding free to confess set down as an Americanism, I supposed that I had not observed it in the previous edition. But it is not there. The discovery of its Americanism is then new. Indeed, it is apparent only to those who see what cannot be seen. The phrase is as English as can be; but my very recent knowledge of it as an alleged Americanism prevents me from offering more than these two examples of it from a very charming and very English writer: —

“ Since it is my fate to tell my own story, I choose to tell it in my own way; and I am free to confess that the leading trait of my character had its origin in the first glimpse I caught of myself.” (Mrs. Gore, Cecil, a Coxcomb, 1841, vol i., chap. i.)

“ I am free to confess that never was I better pleased than on throwing aside the harness of war.” (Idem, vol. ii., chap. iii.)

See also Blackwood’s Magazine, June, 1827, page 786.

Funk, in the sense of sensibility to fear, cowardice, is with like error set down as an Americanism. Had I observed it earlier I should have shown more evidence to the contrary than these three examples: —

“ Spite of the public applauses, some ominous misgivings were uttered; one or two of the Boyle party began to funk: they augured no good from the dead silence of Bentley.” (De Quincey, Richard Bentley, Works, vol. vi. p. 65, Lond. 1863.)

“Come along: don’t funk it, old fellow: your cuticle can bear a little more titillation without permanent injury.” (Mortimer Collins, Squire Silchester’s Whim, vol. ii., chap. xvii.)

“ And yet no one seems funky, and we are all longing to make the attempt.” (Earl Pembroke, South Sea Bubbles, chap, ix., page 252.)

I shall be very glad to receive information or suggestions on this subject; but must beg my correspondents not to ask me questions about the meaning, the spelling, and the pronunciation of words, and above all, not about grammar.

Richard Grant White.