But the imprimatur of the Yankee Johnson was not potent enough to stay the course of nature, and, save in New England, the flat a swept the country. He himself allowed it in stamp and vase. His successor and rival, Lyman Cobb, decided for it in pass, draft, stamp and dance, though he kept to the ah-sound in laugh, path, daunt and saunter. By 1850 the flat a was dominant everywhere West of the Berkshires and South of New Haven, and had even got into such proper names as Lafayette and Nevada.[41]

Webster failed in a number of his other attempts to influence American pronunciation. His advocacy of deef for deaf had popular support while he lived, and he dredged up authority for it out of Chaucer and Sir William Temple, but the present pronunciation gradually prevailed, though deef remains familiar in the common speech. Joseph E. Worcester and other rival lexicographers stood against many of his pronunciations, and he took the field against them in the prefaces to the successive editions of his spelling-books. Thus, in that to "The Elementary Spelling [Pg096] Book," dated 1829, he denounced the "affectation" of inserting a y-sound before the u in such words as gradual and nature, with its compensatory change of d into a French j and of t into ch. The English lexicographer, John Walker, had argued for this "affectation" in 1791, but Webster's prestige, while he lived, remained so high in some quarters that he carried the day, and the older professors at Yale, it is said, continued to use natur down to 1839.[42] He favored the pronunciation of either and neither as ee-ther and nee-ther, and so did most of the English authorities of his time. The original pronunciation of the first syllable, in England, probably made it rhyme with bay, but the ee-sound was firmly established by the end of the eighteenth century. Toward the middle of the following century, however, there arose a fashion of an ai-sound, and this affectation was borrowed by certain Americans. Gould, in the 50's, put the question, "Why do you say i-ther and ni-ther?" to various Americans. The reply he got was: "The words are so pronounced by the best-educated people in England." This imitation still prevails in the cities of the East. "All of us," says Lounsbury, "are privileged in these latter days frequently to witness painful struggles put forth to give to the first syllable of these words the sound of i by those who have been brought up to give it the sound of e. There is apparently an impression on the part of some that such a pronunciation establishes on a firm foundation an otherwise doubtful social standing."[43] But the vast majority of Americans continue to say ee-ther and not eye-ther. White and Vizetelly, like Lounsbury, argue that they are quite correct in so doing. The use of eye-ther, says White, is no more than "a copy of a second-rate British affectation."

IV
American and English Today

§ 1

[Pg102]

An Englishman, entering his home, does not walk in upon the [Pg103] first floor, but upon the ground floor. What he calls the first floor (or, more commonly, first storey, not forgetting the penultimate e!) is what we call the second floor, and so on up to the roof—which is covered not with tin, but with slate, tiles or leads. He does not take a paper; he takes in a paper. He does not ask his servant, "is there any mail for me?" but, "are there any letters for me?" for mail, in the American sense, is a word that he seldom uses, save in such compounds as mail-van and mail-train. He always speaks of it as the post. The man who brings it is not a letter-carrier, but a postman. It is posted, not mailed, at a pillar-box, not at a mail-box. It never includes postal-cards, but only post-cards; never money-orders, but only postal-orders. The Englishman dictates his answers, not to a typewriter, but to a typist; a typewriter is merely the machine. If he desires the recipient to call him by telephone he doesn't say, "phone me at a quarter of eight," but "ring me up at a quarter to eight." And when the call comes he says "are you there?" When he gets home, he doesn't find his wife waiting for him in the parlor or living-room,[4] but in the drawing-room or in her sitting-room, and the tale of domestic disaster that she has to tell does not concern the hired-girl but the slavey and the scullery-maid. He doesn't bring her a box of candy, but a box of sweets. He doesn't leave a derby hat in the hall, but a bowler. His wife doesn't wear shirtwaists but blouses. When she buys one she doesn't say "charge it" but "put it down." When she orders a tailor-made suit, she calls it a coat-and-skirt. When she wants a spool of thread she asks for a reel of cotton. Such things are bought, not in the department-stores, but at the stores, which are substantially the same thing. In these stores calico means a plain cotton cloth; in the United States it means a printed cotton cloth. Things bought on the instalment plan in England are said to be bought on the hire-purchase plan or system; the instalment business itself is the credit-trade. Goods ordered by post (not mail) on which the dealer pays the cost of transportation are said to be sent, not postpaid or prepaid, but post-free or carriage-paid. [Pg104]

If an English boy goes to a public school, it is not a sign that he is getting his education free, but that his father is paying a good round sum for it and is accepted as a gentleman. A public school over there corresponds to our prep school; it is a place maintained chiefly by endowments, wherein boys of the upper classes are prepared for the universities. What we know as a public school is called a board school in England, not because the pupils are boarded but because it is managed by a school board. English school-boys are divided, not into classes, or grades, but into forms, which are numbered, the lowest being the first form. The benches they sit on are also called forms. The principal of an English school is a head-master or head-mistress; the lower pedagogues used to be ushers, but are now assistant masters (or mistresses). The head of a university is a chancellor. He is always some eminent public man, and a vice-chancellor performs his duties. The head of a mere college may be a president, principal, rector, dean or provost. At the universities the students are not divided into freshmen, sophomores, juniors and seniors, as with us, but are simply first-year men, second-year men, and so on. Such distinctions, however, are not as important in England as in America; members of the university (they are called [Pg105] members, not students) do not flock together according to seniority. An English university man does not study; he reads. He knows nothing of frats, class-days, senior-proms and such things; save at Cambridge and Dublin he does not even have a commencement. On the other hand his daily speech is full of terms unintelligible to an American student, for example, wrangler, tripos, head, pass-degree and don.

The American language, as we have seen, has begun to take in the English boot and shop, and it is showing hospitality to head-master, haberdasher and week-end, but subaltern, civil servant, porridge, moor, draper, treacle, tram and mufti are still strangers in the United States, as bleachers, picayune, air-line, campus, chore, scoot, stogie and hoodoo are in England. A subaltern is a commissioned officer in the army, under the rank of [Pg106] captain. A civil servant is a public servant in the national civil service; if he is of high rank, he is usually called a permanent official. Porridge, moor, scullery, draper, treacle and tram, though unfamiliar, still need no explanation. Mufti means ordinary male clothing; an army officer out of uniform is said to be in mufti. To this officer a sack-suit or business-suit is a lounge-suit. He carries his clothes, not in a trunk or grip or suit-case, but in a box. He does not miss a train; he loses it. He does not ask for a round-trip ticket, but for a return ticket. If he proposes to go to the theatre he does not reserve or engage seats; he books them, and not at the box-office, but at the booking-office. If he sits downstairs, it is not in the orchestra, but in the stalls. If he likes vaudeville, he goes to a music-hall, where the head-liners are top-liners. If he has to stand in line, he does it, not in a line, but in a queue.

In England a corporation is a public company or limited liability company. The term corporation, over there, is applied to the mayor, aldermen and sheriffs of a city, as in the London corporation. An Englishman writes Ltd. after the name of an incorporated bank or trading company as we write Inc. He calls its president its chairman or managing director. Its stockholders are its shareholders, and hold shares instead of stock in it. Its bonds are debentures. The place wherein such companies are floated and looted—the Wall Street of England—is called the City, with a capital C. Bankers, stock-jobbers, promoters, directors and other such leaders of its business are called City men. The financial editor of a newspaper is its City editor. Government bonds are consols, or stocks, or the funds.[5] To have money in the stocks is to own such bonds. Promissory notes are bills. An Englishman hasn't a bank-account, but a banking-account. He draws cheques (not checks), not on his bank, but on his bankers.[6] In England there is a rigid distinction between a broker and a stock-broker. A broker means, not a dealer in [Pg107] securities, as in our Wall Street broker, but a dealer in second-hand furniture. To have the brokers[7] in the house means to be bankrupt, with one's very household goods in the hands of one's creditors.

Tariff reform, in England, does not mean a movement toward free trade, but one toward protection. The word Government, meaning what we call the administration, is always capitalized and plural, e. g., "The Government are considering the advisability, etc." Vestry, committee, council, ministry and even company are also plural, though sometimes not capitalized. A member of Parliament does not run for office; he stands.[8] He does not make a campaign, but a canvass. He does not represent a district, but a division or constituency. He never makes a stumping trip, but always a speaking tour. When he looks after his fences he calls it nursing the constituency. At a political meeting (they are often rough in England) the bouncers are called stewards; the suffragettes used to delight in stabbing them with hatpins. A member of Parliament is not afflicted by the numerous bugaboos that menace an American congressman. He knows nothing of lame ducks, pork barrels, gag-rule, junkets, gerrymanders, omnibus bills, snakes, niggers in the woodpile, Salt river, crow, bosses, ward heelers, men higher up, silk-stockings, repeaters, ballot-box stuffers and straight and split tickets (he always calls them ballots or voting papers). He has never heard of direct primaries, the recall or the initiative and referendum. A roll-call in Parliament is a division. A member speaking is said to be up or on his legs. When the house adjourns it is said to rise. A member referring to another in the course of a debate does not say "the gentleman from Manchester," but "the honorable gentleman" (written hon. gentleman) or, if he happens to be a privy councillor, "the right honorable gentleman," or, if he is a member for one of the universities, "the honorable and learned gentleman." If the speaker chooses to be intimate or facetious, he may say "my honorable friend." [Pg108]

In the United States a pressman is a man who runs a printing press; in England he is a newspaper reporter, or, as the English usually say, a journalist.[9] This journalist works, not at space rates, but at lineage rates. A printing press is a machine. An editorial in a newspaper is a leading article or leader. An editorial paragraph is a leaderette. A newspaper clipping is a cutting. A proof-reader is a corrector of the press. A pass to the theatre is an order. The room-clerk of a hotel is the secretary. A real-estate agent or dealer is an estate-agent. The English keep up most of the old distinctions between physicians and surgeons, barristers and solicitors. A surgeon is often plain Mr., and not Dr. Neither he nor a doctor has an office, but always a surgery or consulting room. A barrister is greatly superior to a solicitor. He alone can address the higher courts and the parliamentary committees; a solicitor must keep to office work and the courts of first instance. A man with a grievance goes first to his solicitor, who then instructs or briefs a barrister for him. If that barrister, in the course of the trial, wants certain evidence removed from the record, he moves that it be struck out, not stricken out, as an American lawyer would say. Only barristers may become judges. An English barrister, like his American brother, takes a retainer when he is engaged. But the rest of his fee does not wait upon the termination of the case: he expects and receives a refresher from time to time. A barrister is never admitted to the bar, but is always called. If he becomes a King's Counsel, or K. C. (a purely honorary appointment), he is said to have taken silk.

The common objects and phenomena of nature are often differently named in English and American. As we saw in a previous chapter, such Americanisms as creek and run, for small streams, are practically unknown in England, and the English moor and downs early disappeared from American. The Englishman knows the meaning of sound (e. g., Long Island Sound), but he [Pg109] nearly always uses channel in place of it. In the same way the American knows the meaning of the English bog, but rejects the English distinction between it and swamp, and almost always uses swamp, or marsh (often elided to ma'sh). The Englishman seldom, if ever, describes a severe storm as a hurricane, a cyclone, a tornado or a blizzard. He never uses cold-snap, cloudburst or under the weather. He does not say that the temperature is 29 degrees (Fahrenheit) or that the thermometer or the mercury is at 29 degrees, but that there are three degrees of frost. He calls ice water iced-water. He knows nothing of blue-grass country or of pennyr'yal. What we call the mining regions he knows as the black country. He never, of course, uses down-East or up-State. Many of our names for common fauna and flora are unknown to him save as strange Americanisms, e. g., terrapin, moose, persimmon, gumbo, egg-plant, alfalfa, sweet-corn, sweet-potato and yam. Until lately he called the grapefruit a shaddock. He still calls the beet a beet-root and the rutabaga a mangel-wurzel. He is familiar with many fish that we seldom see, e. g., the turbot. He also knows the hare, which is seldom heard of in America. But he knows nothing of devilled-crabs, crab-cocktails, clam-chowder or oyster-stews, and he never goes to oyster-suppers, clam-bakes or burgoo-picnics. He doesn't buy peanuts when he goes to the circus. He calls them monkey-nuts, and to eat them publicly is infra dig. The common American use of peanut as an adjective of disparagement, as in peanut politics, is incomprehensible to him.

In England a hack is not a public coach, but a horse let out at hire, or one of similar quality. A life insurance policy is usually not an insurance policy at all, but an assurance policy. What we call the normal income tax is the ordinary tax; what we call the surtax is the supertax.[10] An Englishman never lives on a street, but always in it. He never lives in a block of houses, but in a row; it is never in a section of the city, but always in a district. Going home by train he always takes the down-train, no matter whether he be proceeding southward to Wimbleton, [Pg110] westward to Shepherd's Bush, northward to Tottenham or eastward to Noak's Hill. A train headed toward London is always an up-train, and the track it runs on is the up-line. Eastbound and westbound tracks and trains are unknown in England. When an Englishman boards a bus it is not at a street-corner, but at a crossing, though he is familiar with such forms as Hyde Park Corner. The place he is bound for is not three squares or blocks away, but three turnings. Square, in England, always means a small park. A backyard is a garden. A subway is always a tube, or the underground, or the Metro. But an underground passage for pedestrians is a subway. English streets have no sidewalks; they always call them pavements or footways. An automobile is always a motor-car or motor. Auto is almost unknown, and with it the verb to auto. So is machine. So is joy-ride.

An Englishman always calls russet, yellow or tan shoes brown shoes (or, if they cover the ankle, boots). He calls a pocketbook a purse, and gives the name of pocketbook to what we call a memorandum-book. His walking-stick is always a stick, never a cane. By cord he means something strong, almost what we call twine; a thin cord he always calls a string; his twine is the lightest sort of string. When he applies the adjective homely to a woman he means that she is simple and home-loving, not necessarily that she is plain. He uses dessert, not to indicate the whole last course at dinner, but to designate the fruit only; the rest is ices or sweets. He uses vest, not in place of waistcoat, but in place of undershirt. Similarly, he applies pants, not to his trousers, but to his drawers. An Englishman who inhabits bachelor quarters is said to live in chambers; if he has a flat he calls it a flat, and not an apartment;[11] flat-houses are often mansions. The janitor or superintendent thereof is a care-taker. The scoundrels who snoop around in search of divorce evidence are not private detectives, but private enquiry agents. [Pg111]

The Englishman is naturally unfamiliar with baseball, and in consequence his language is bare of the countless phrases and metaphors that it has supplied to American. Many of these phrases and metaphors are in daily use among us, for example, fan, rooter, bleachers, batting-average, double-header, pennant-winner, gate-money, busher, minor-leaguer, glass-arm, to strike out, to foul, to be shut out, to coach, to play ball, on the bench, on to his curves and three strikes and out. The national game of draw-poker has also greatly enriched American with terms that are either quite unknown to the Englishman, or known to him only as somewhat dubious Americanisms, among them cold-deck, kitty, full-house, divvy, a card up his sleeve, three-of-a-kind, to ante up, to pony up, to hold out, to cash in, to go it one better, to chip in and for keeps. But the Englishman uses many more racing terms and metaphors than we do, and he has got a good many phrases from other games, particularly cricket. The word cricket itself has a definite figurative meaning. It indicates, in general, good sportsmanship. To take unfair advantage of an opponent is not cricket. The sport of boating, so popular on the Thames, has also given colloquial English some familiar terms, almost unknown in the United States, e. g., punt and weir. Contrariwise, pungy, batteau and scow are unheard of in England, and canoe is not long emerged from the estate of an Americanism.[12] The game known as ten-pins in America is called nine-pins in England, and once had that name over here. The Puritans forbade it, and its devotees changed its name in order to evade the prohibition.[13] Finally, there is soccer, a form of football quite unknown in the United States. What we call simply football is Rugby or Rugger to the Englishman. The word soccer is derived from association; the rules of the game were [Pg112] established by the London Football Association. Soccer is one of the relatively few English experiments in ellipsis. Another is to be found in Bakerloo, the name of one of the London underground lines, from Baker-street and Waterloo, its termini.

In American chapel simply means a small church, usually the branch of some larger one; in English it has the special sense of a place of worship unconnected with the establishment. Though three-fourths of the people of Ireland are Catholics (in Munster and Connaught, more than nine-tenths), and the Protestant Church of Ireland has been disestablished since 1871, a Catholic place of worship in the country is still a chapel and not a church.[14] So is a Methodist wailing-place in England, however large it may be, though now and then tabernacle is substituted. In the same way the English Catholics sometimes vary chapel with oratory, as in Brompton Oratory. A Methodist, in Great [Pg113] Britain, is not a Methodist, but a Wesleyan. Contrariwise, what the English call simply a churchman is an Episcopalian in the United States, what they call the Church (always capitalized!) is the Protestant Episcopal Church,[15] what they call a Roman Catholic is simply a Catholic, and what they call a Jew is usually softened (if he happens to be an advertiser) to a Hebrew. The English Jews have no such idiotic fear of the plain name as that which afflicts the more pushing and obnoxious of the race in America.[16] "News of Jewry" is a common head-line in the London Daily Telegraph, which is owned by Lord Burnham, a Jew, and has had many Jews on its staff, including Judah P. Benjamin, the American. The American language, of course, knows nothing of dissenters. Nor of such gladiators of dissent as the Plymouth Brethren, nor of the nonconformist conscience, though the United States suffers from it even more damnably than England. The English, to make it even, get on without circuit-riders, holy-rollers, Dunkards, Seventh Day Adventists and other such American ferae naturae, and are born, live, die and go to heaven without the aid of either the uplift or the chautauqua.

In music the English cling to an archaic and unintelligible nomenclature, long since abandoned in America. Thus they call a double whole note a breve, a whole note a semibreve, a half note a minim, a quarter note a crotchet, an eighth note a quaver, a sixteenth note a semi-quaver, a thirty-second note a demisemiquaver, and a sixty-fourth note a hemidemisemiquaver, or semidemisemiquaver. If, by any chance, an English musician should write a one-hundred-and-twenty-eighth note he probably wouldn't know what to call it. This clumsy terminology goes back to the days of plain chant, with its longa, brevis, semi-brevis, minima and semiminima. The French and Italians cling to a system almost as confusing, but the Germans use ganze, halbe, viertel, [Pg114] achtel, etc. I have been unable to discover the beginnings of the American system, but it would seem to be borrowed from the German. Since the earliest times the majority of music teachers in the United States have been Germans, and most of the rest have had German training.

In English usage, to proceed, the word directly is always used to signify immediately; in American a contingency gets into it, and it may mean no more than soon. In England quite means "completely, wholly, entirely, altogether, to the utmost extent, nothing short of, in the fullest sense, positively, absolutely"; in America it is conditional, and means only nearly, approximately, substantially, as in "he sings quite well." An Englishman does not say "I will pay you up" for an injury, but "I will pay you back." He doesn't look up a definition in a dictionary; he looks it out. He doesn't say, being ill, "I am getting on well," but [Pg115] "I am going on well." He doesn't use the American "different from" or "different than"; he uses "different to." He never adds the pronoun in such locutions as "it hurts me," but says simply "it hurts." He never "catches up with you" on the street; he "catches you up." He never says "are you through?" but "have you finished?" He never uses to notify as a transitive verb; an official act may be notified, but not a person. He never uses gotten as the perfect participle of get; he always uses plain got.[17] An English servant never washes the dishes; she always washes the dinner or tea things. She doesn't live out, but goes into service. She smashes, not the mirror, but the looking-glass. Her beau is not her fellow, but her young man. She does not keep company with him but walks out with him.

That an Englishman always calls out "I say!", and not simply "say!" when he desires to attract a friend's attention or register a protestation of incredulity—this perhaps is too familiar to need notice. His "hear, hear!" and "oh, oh!" are also well known. He is much less prodigal with good-bye than the American; he uses good-day and good-afternoon far more often. A shop-assistant would never say good-bye to a customer. To an Englishman it would have a subtly offensive smack; good-afternoon would be more respectful. Another word that makes him flinch is dirt. He never uses it, as we do, to describe the soil in the garden; he always says earth. Various very common American phrases are quite unknown to him, for example, over his signature, on time and planted to corn. The first-named he never uses, and he has no equivalent for it; an Englishman who issues a signed statement simply makes it in writing. He knows nothing of our common terms of disparagement, such as kike, wop, yap and rube. His pet-name for a tiller of the soil is not Rube or Cy, but Hodge. When he goes gunning he does not call it hunting, but shooting; hunting is reserved for the chase of the fox.

An intelligent Englishwoman, coming to America to live, told me that the two things which most impeded her first communications with untravelled Americans, even above the gross differences [Pg116] between England and American pronunciation and intonation, were the complete absence of the general utility adjective jolly from the American vocabulary, and the puzzling omnipresence and versatility of the American verb to fix. In English colloquial usage jolly means almost anything; it intensifies all other adjectives, even including miserable and homesick. An Englishman is jolly tired, jolly hungry or jolly well tired; his wife is jolly sensible; his dog is jolly keen; the prices he pays for things are jolly dear (never steep or stiff or high: all Americanisms). But he has no noun to match the American proposition, meaning proposal, business, affair, case, consideration, plan, theory, solution and what not: only the German zug can be ranged beside it.[18] And he has no verb in such wide practise as to fix. In his speech it means only to make fast or to determine. In American it may mean to repair, as in "the plumber fixed the pipe"; to dress, as in "Mary fixed her hair"; to prepare, as in "the cook is fixing the gravy"; to bribe, as in "the judge was fixed"; to settle, as in "the quarrel was fixed up"; to heal, as in "the doctor fixed his boil"; to finish, as in "Murphy fixed Sweeney in the third round"; to be well-to-do, as in "John is well-fixed"; to arrange, as in "I fixed up the quarrel"; to be drunk, as in "the whiskey fixed him"; to punish, as in "I'll fix him"; and to correct, as in "he fixed my bad Latin." Moreover, it is used in all its English senses. An Englishman never goes to a dentist to have his teeth fixed. He does not fix the fire; he makes it up, or mends it. He is never well-fixed, either in money or by liquor.[19]

The English use quite a great deal more than we do, and, as we have seen, in a different sense. Quite rich, in American, [Pg117] means tolerably rich, richer than most; quite so, in English, is identical in meaning with exactly so. In American just is almost equivalent to the English quite, as in just lovely. Thornton shows that this use of just goes back to 1794. The word is also used in place of exactly in other ways, as in just in time, just how many and just what do you mean?