CHAPTER TWO

TEN IMPORTANT TREATISES

"Here, it is said, is a dictionary of Americanisms, compiled by an American, a large, closely printed octavo. To what a condition has the English language been brought in America! I have heard such remarks made more than once by intelligent Englishmen; I have seen them more than once in print."Richard Grant White, Atlantic Monthly, April, 1878.

"A collection of unauthorized words and phrases to be found in the pages of respectable English writers of the present day, on the plan of Pickering's Vocabulary, would be a very acceptable service rendered to our literature."-Eclectic Review, London, April, 1820.

Neither the general drift of the preceding chapter nor any allegation or argument it contains is to be taken as evincing the smallest inclination to dispute or minimize the obvious truth that a considerable number of new, and in many cases uncalled for, words and expressions have been invented and now pass current in the United States, or that the meaning of various others has been gradually warped, to the injury of the language, just as has occurred in England. This part of the subject has been laboriously investigated by a line of diligent students, so laboriously that there is little left to say about it except in the way of cor

rections and additions. Not to speak of articles in periodicals, brief essays, and single chapters, no fewer than fifteen books devoted entirely to so-called Americanisms in speech have from time to time appeared-ten of them of special importance-Pickering's "Vocabulary," published in 1816; Webster's "Letter," in 1817; Elwyn's "Glossary," in 1859; De Vere's "Americanisms," in 1872; Bartlett's "Dictionary," first edition in 1848, second in 1859, third in 1860, fourth and last in 1877; Farmer's "Americanisms," in 1889; Norton's "Political Americanisms," in 1890; Clapin's "Dictionary of Americanisms," in 1902; Thornton's "American Glossary," in 1912; and Mencken's "American Language," in 1919. It is worth noting that Norton's little compilation and Mencken's monumental treatise are the only works later than Bartlett's for which the world is indebted to a native American; for Mr. Farmer is an Englishman who had never, I believe, even visited this country before he wrote; Mr. Clapin is a Canadian, though he passed several years in the United States; and Prof. Thornton is English by birth, an American citizen however by naturalization and a resident of this country for half his life, having been a member of the faculty of the Oregon University for nearly twenty years, and being still a member of the Philadelphia bar. The student of language will find much to interest and not a little to amuse him in each of the collections of monstrosities named, for collections of

monstrosities-with the exception of Webster's "Letter"-they mainly are.

I

John Pickering's "Vocabulary, or Collection of Words and Phrases" which have been supposed to be peculiar to the United States, originated in the author's practice, while living in London during the first two years of the last century, of noting down, for the purpose of avoiding them, such of his own verbal expressions as were condemned for American errors by his British friends. After returning to this country, he communicated a paper on the subject, consisting of an essay and a list of words, to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and shortly after, having largely amplified the vocabulary, submitted the whole to the candor of his countrymen for their instruction and admonition. The poor man was deeply concerned for the future of the language in America, and very much in earnest in his work. It might indeed be a long time, he thought, before it should "be the lot of many Americans to publish works which will be read out of their own country; yet all who have the least tincture of learning will continue to feel an ardent desire to acquaint themselves with English authors. Let us then," he proceeds, "imagine the time to have arrived when Americans shall no longer be able to understand the works of Milton,

Pope, Swift, Addison and other English authors justly styled classic without the aid of a translation into a language that is to be called at some future day the American tongue! . . . Nor is this the only view in which a radical change of language would be an evil. To say nothing of the facilities afforded by a common language in the ordinary intercourse of business, it should not be forgotten that our religion and our laws are studied in the language of the nation from which we are descended; and, with the loss of the language, we should finally suffer the loss of those peculiar advantages which we now derive from the investigations of the jurists and divines of that country."

To do what lay in his power to avert a calamity so appalling, was the object that Mr. Pickering had in view; and lest his own impressions should be faulty, or his imperfect knowledge of pure English should prove inadequate to the task of properly branding all the principal American corruptions, he took the pains of submitting his list to several well-informed friends, and particularly to two English gentlemen whose authority he considered beyond question, although he admits that as they had lived some twenty years in America, "their ear had lost much of that sensibility to deviations from the pure English idiom which would once have enabled them to pronounce with decision in cases where they now felt doubts." As finally published, the "Vocabulary" contains over five

hundred words, of which not more than about fifty are really of American origin and at any time in general respectable use. As examples of these may be cited: Backwoodsman, belittle, bookstore, breadstuff, caucus, creek in the sense of brook or small stream, gubernatorial, intervale, salt-lick, portage, rapids, samp, section of the country, sleigh, and staging for scaffolding. The other nine-tenths of the book consists of mere vulgarisms and blunders, unauthorized expressions invented by eccentric writers and never generally adopted, and words really British in origin though perhaps not current in good London society.

II

Noah Webster's "Letter to the Honorable John Pickering on the subject of his Vocabulary" is a duodecimo of sixty pages, dated "Dec. 1816." The lexicographer regarded himself, or the principles that he taught, as at least indirectly attacked by the "Vocabulary" without necessity or reason. As for Mr. Pickering's apprehension that American speech might become in time so depraved that English authors could not be read in this country without translation, he says he "might oppose to this supposition another, which is nearly as probable, that the rivers in America will turn their courses, and flow from the sea to the tops of the hills." Whatever change may be taking place, moreover, he thinks it quite vain to attempt to