that the prevalent practice in this country agrees with the universal custom of an earlier time, from which divergence without good reason has gradually grown up in England. And this brings us to another strongly marked characteristic of our American speech -its greater permanence and steadiness, so to speak, as compared with that of the mother country. This peculiarity will appear very clearly, where it might least be expected, on close examination of any list of words supposed to have been greatly distorted in their meaning, or even manufactured out of whole cloth, by erring Yankees, a very large proportion of which will almost always be found to be good old English, grown obsolescent or obsolete at home, but preserved in the New World in their pristine vitality and force; and conversely, on examining such a book as "The Lost Beauties of the English Language," by the well known Scotch litterateur Dr. Charles Mackay, more than a hundred of the entries therein listed being perfectly familiar in the United States, however definitely they may have been "lost" in Great Britain. Here are some examples, taken almost at random: Aftermath; bilk, to defraud; blare, to cry out, as with the sound of a trumpet; blear-eyed; blurt, to cry out suddenly; burly; chaffer, to haggle; cleave, to split; clump, to walk awkwardly; croon, to hum a tune; daze; deft; delve; don, to put on; drouth; drowsy; duds, old clothes; dumps, melancholy; gall, sore place; glint; glower; gown; grip, to seize; hale, in good health;

hotfoot; laze, to idle; loathly; loon, a stupid lout; lovable; lubber; maul, a heavy hammer; mole, a spot on the skin; mother-tongue; overhopeful; raid, a predatory incursion on horseback; rift; roil; rung of a ladder; sag; slake; slick; smock; soggy; spunky; stalwart; stowaway; stubby; swelter; taut; thill; throaty; thud; tiff; toot; trig; watershed; yowl. Evidence pointing in the same direction may be found in Halliwell's Dictionary of Archaisms and Provincialisms, which contains, presumably, no word now in good use in Great Britain in the meaning given, but in which the American reader will discover a considerable number of terms-nearly three hundred, I should say which he has heard all his life. I give the following examples, not including any that are marked provincial, the implication being that all these words were once good English, but are no longer in common use in the mother country: Adze (a carpenter's tool); affectation (“a curious desire for a thing which nature hath not given "); afterclap; agape; age as a verb; air in the sense of appearance; amerce; andirons; angry, said of a wound; appellant (one who appeals); apple-pie order; baker's dozen; bamboozle; bay in a barn; bay window; bearers at a funeral; berate; between whiles; bicker; blanch (to whiten); brain as a verb; burly; cast (to tie and throw down, as a horse); catcall; cesspool; chafe (to grow angry); clodhopper; clutch (to seize); clutter; cockerel; coddle; copious; cosey; counterfeit money;

crazy in the sense of dilapidated, as applied to a building; crock (an earthen vessel); crone (an old woman); crook (a bend); croon; cross-grained in the sense of obstinate or peevish; cross-patch; cross purposes; cuddle; cuff (to beat); deft; din; dormer window; earnest, money given to bind a bargain; egg on; greenhorn; hasp; jack of all trades; jamb of a door; lintel; list (selvage of cloth); loop hole; nettled (out of temper); newel; ornate; perforce; piping hot; pit (mark left by small-pox); quail (to shrink); ragamuffin; riffraff; rigmarole; scant; seedy ("miserable looking"); shingles; sorrel (the color); out of sorts; stale ("wanting freshness"); sutler; thill; toady; trash; underpinning. All these words, with many others equally familiar in the United States, are apparently regarded by Halliwell as having become obsolete in England.

The preceding remarks on Halliwell are repeated from the present writer's earlier book, "Our Common Speech," and a curious side-light is thrown on the prevalence of dialectical diversities of speech in Great Britain by the fact that a kindly and courteous English reviewer of that book, Mr. William Archer, was amazed at anybody's supposing that the words quoted are obsolete in Great Britain. "Most of them," he says ("America Today," page 222) "are in everyday use; how Halliwell ever came to class these words as archaic I cannot imagine." He did so class them nevertheless; and as he was F. R. S., Honorary Mem

ber of the Royal Society of Literature and of the Ashmolean Society at Oxford, and connected with a dozen other associations of learned men, he certainly cannot be considered an ignorant person; and the only possible conclusion is that great numbers of words perfectly familiar to the dramatic critic never had come to the notice of a distinguished British lexicographer except in ancient writings, so that he supposed them to be entirely out of use. Find, if you can, any two American writers who entertain any such diversity of view about any list of words you can draw up.

It would not be difficult, on the other hand, to compile quite a list of Briticisms, including words, recently invented, and seemingly without necessity, in Great Britain (where the "boldness of innovation on this subject," amounting to "absolute licentiousness," which Noah Webster noted and deplored in his preface of 1847, still runs rampant)—such as navvy for laborer, randomly for at random, and bumper for enormous; and a larger list of old words now used in that country in a comparatively new and in some respects objectionable signification not generally recognized in the United States, such as knocked-up for fatigued, famous for excellent, rot for nonsense, good

1 The present writer will not assert positively that he invented this now well accepted word; but believes that his use of it in a paper read before the Albany Institute, June 6, 1882 (Transactions, Vol. 10, p 341) is the first on record, antedating by fifteen months as it does the earliest citation given by Murray.

form for in good taste, trap for carriage, tub for bathe, assist for be present, gun for gunner, whip for driver, tidy for almost anything complimentary, and most emphatically expect for suppose, with no implication of anticipation of the future, "a misuse" which Murray says "is often cited as an Americanism, but is very common in dialectical, vulgar or carelessly colloquial speech in England." It occurs multitudinously in English books, even those of good writers, as everybody knows. You will find it a dozen times, for instance, in Anthony Hope's "The Great Miss Driver" "I expect he liked the scholar and gentleman part" (chap. 2), "I don't expect Aunt Sara shaved you much" (chap. 6), and so on. This misuse is certainly the reverse of "very common" in this country; I question whether the American reader can remember ever hearing it except in Great Britain. It may be added that Mr. Hope is guilty, in the book referred to, of several gross errors in syntax, like "he's been to so many queer places" (chap. 4), "Jenny and I had been to Fillingford" (chap. 11), and, perhaps worst of all, "really it must be her."

It is not only, however, in recent coinages and anomalous assigning of new meanings to old terms that the English have made rather reckless changes in the body of our speech where the American practice adheres to the former standard. They have swung off in the opposite direction also, curtailing to no good purpose the significance of a number of words.