PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

FOREWORD

The following pages are the development of a chapter on the same subject in the author's earlier book, "Our Common Speech," published in 1895 and long out of print, that chapter being itself the development of a paper read before the Albany Institute in 1882, printed in the Tenth Volume of the Transactions of that body, and also printed, in somewhat different form, in the North American Review for January, 1883. Several sentences relating to the early bibliography of the subject, included in the Albany Institute paper and repeated in "Our Common Speech," appear with some alterations in the preface of the Sylva Clapin "Dictionary of Americanisms"; and as they appear again in the book now in the reader's hand, it seems advisable to state the facts, lest possibly the present writer might be suspected of plagiarizing from Mr. Clapin.