American Language (58 page)
Authors: H.L. Mencken
The Holy Name Society, which has flourished among American Catholics since the 1870’s, has hardly done more than discourage the use of
Jesus
by its members; they appear to employ
hell
and
damn
for their daily occasions quite as freely as the admittedly damned. In this they follow the example of the Father of His Country, who was extremely skillful in the use of these expletives. In 1931, writing in
American Speech
, L. W. Merryweather observed that “
hell
fills so large a part in the American vulgate that it will probably be worn out in a few years more,” and in anticipation of this catastrophe he suggested that the divines of the land be invited to propose a suitable successor to it.
224
But it continues in daily use, and there is every reason to believe that it will go on indefinitely. It is not
only employed constantly in its naked form; it is also a part of almost countless combinations, many of them unknown to the English. Mr. Merryweather printed a long list of such combinations, and others have been published since by other philologians.
Hell-bent, hell-bender, hell-roaring, hell-raiser, hellion
— all these are Americanisms, and the English dictionaries know them not. The use of
hell
in such phrases as “He ran like
hell
” is apparently an English invention, but when
like hell
is put first, as in “
Like hell
you will,” the form is American. So is “The
hell
you say.” So is the use of
hell
as a verb, as in “
to hell
around.” So is the adjective
hellishing
, as “He was in a
hellishing
hurry.” So is the general use of
hell
as an intensive, without regard to its logical meaning, as in “It was colder than
hell
,” “The pitcher was wilder than
hell
,” “What in
hell
did you say?” and “
Hell
, yes.” So is its use as a common indicator of inferiority or disagreeableness, as in “A
hell
of a drink,” “A
hell
of a note,” and “A
hell
of a Baptist.”
Hell
also appears in many familiar American phrases — for example, “till
hell
freezes over,” “from
hell
to breakfast,” “
hell-bent
for election,” “there was
hell
to pay,” “
hell
and high water,” “
hell
and red niggers,” and “like a snowbird in
hell
” I turn to Farmer and Henley’s monumental dictionary of English slang, and find only such flabby forms as
to give hell, hell-for-leather, to play
(or
kick up) hell
, and
hell and scissors
(this last, God save us all, credited falsely to the United States!). An American list would be much longer, and on it there would be a great many lovely specimens, most of them known to every American schoolboy.
Robert Graves, in his “Lars Porsena, or The Future of Swearing,” published in 1927,
225
reported sadly that there was then “a notable decline of swearing and foul language” in England. The lower classes, he said, found
bloody
sufficient for all ordinary purposes, with
bastard
and three obscene auxiliaries to help out on great occasions. One of these auxiliaries resembles
bloody
in that it is not generally considered obscene in the United States. It is
bugger
. When I was a small boy my father used it often, as an affectionate term for any young male, and if it shows any flavor of impropriety today, the fact must be due to English influence. All three auxiliaries are discussed at length in “Songs and Slang of the British Soldier, 1914–1918,” by John Brophy and Eric Partridge.
226
They say of one of them, a word of sexual significance:
From being an intensive to express strong emotion it became a merely conventional excrescence. By adding
-ing
and
-ingwell
an adjective and an adverb were formed and thrown into every sentence. It became so common that an effective way for the soldier to express emotion was to omit this word. Thus, if a sergeant said, “Get your — ing rifles!” it was understood as a matter of routine. But if he said “Get your rifles!” there was an immediate implication of urgency and danger.
All expletives tend to be similarly dephlogisticated by over-use. “Less than a generation ago, when I was at school,” says H. W. Seaman, “
blast
was accounted a most corrosive blasphemy, and I once did a hundred lines for using it vainly. Today it is as innocent as
blow
or
bother
, and only a trifle stronger.”
227
Bloody seems to be going the same way, though the English still profess to be shocked by it. There are many stories in point. One concerns two workmen who stopped before a poster set up in one of David Lloyd-George’s pre-war campaigns. It read “One Man, One Vote.” “What does that mean?” asked one workman of the other. “It means,” said the other, “one
bloody
man, one
bloody
vote.” The explanation somehow sufficed. The two
bloodys
were essentially meaningless, but they translated the sentiment into a familiar pattern, and so helped to its comprehension. There has been no revival of the old English oaths in England since Mr. Graves printed his plaint. In a former and more spacious day
Goddam
was used so freely by Englishmen that they were known as
Goddams
all over the Continent, but now the term is so rare among them that when it is heard the police take a serious view of it. It went out in Victorian days, and an English friend in the middle forties tells me that he was greatly shocked when, as a boy of ten, he heard his father use it. He says it seemed as quaint to him as
egad
or
odsblood
. The American custom of inserting
goddam
into other words, to give them forensic force, is generally believed by the learned to have been launched by the late Joseph Pulitzer, of the New York
World, a
great master of profanity in three languages. The story current is that he resorted to it in order to flabbergast the managing editor of the
World
, Foster Coates. “The trouble with you, Coates,” he is said to have roared, “is that you are too inde
goddam
pendent!” Another version makes Coates the inventor. According to it, Pulitzer sent out an unwelcome order, and Coates replied to his catchpoll: “Tell Mr. Pulitzer that
I’m under no obli
goddam
nation to do that, and I won’t.”
228
This ingenious device has been borrowed by the Australians, who are great admirers of the American language, but they use
bloody
instead of
goddam
, no doubt as a concession to Empire solidarity. Mr. David B. Dodge of San Francisco sends me this specimen: “It is imma-
bloody
material to me.” It will be observed that the
ma
is duplicated, probably for the sake of euphony. The insertion of infixes into
Jesus Christ
also seems to be an American invention. The common form is
Jesus H. Christ
, but for special emphasis
Jesus H. Particular Christ
is sometimes used.
Holy jumping Jesus
is also heard.
Swearing, of course, is not the prerogative of all men. Many lack the natural gift for it, and others are too timorous. For such toters of inferiority complexes there is a repertory of what may be called denaturized profanity. For spoken discourse there are
darn, goldarn, doggone, jiminy, gosh, golly, gee-whiz, holy gee, son-of-a-gun
and their congeners, and for written discourse
damphool, damfino, helluva
and
s.o.b.
, by the Y.W.C.A. out of the tea-shoppe.
229
All-fired
for
hell-fired, gee-whiz
for
Jesus, tarnal
for
eternal, tarnation
for
damnation, cuss
for
curse, holy gee
for
holy Jesus, goldarned
for
God-damned, by golly
for
by God, great Scott
for
great God
, and
what’ell
for
what the hell
are all Americanisms, but
by gosh
and
by gum
are English. Tornton has traced
all-fired
to 1835,
tarnation
to 1801 and
tarnal
to 1790; Tucker says that
blankety
is also American.
By golly
has been found in England so early as 1843, but it probably originated in America; down to the Civil War it was the characteristic oath of the Negro slaves — at all events in the literature of the time. The English have a number of euphemistic surrogates for
bloody —
among them,
bleeding, sanguinary
and
ruddy
. These, in their turn, have become somewhat raffish, and it would be a grave breach of etiquette to use any of them in a letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury. So long ago as 1887 W. S. Gilbert shocked the more
refined moiety of London theatre-goers by calling one of his operas “Ruddigore.”
Darn
and
doggone
are both American inventions. They came into use during the first half of the last century. The late Professor George Philip Krapp gave over a long essay to proving, as he thought, that
darn
comes from
dierne
, an early English adjective signifying secret, dark, lamentable,
230
but Dr. Louise Pound has disposed of his case in a paper that is shorter but far more convincing.
231
She shows that the origin of the term is actually to be sought in
tarnal
, a corruption of
eternal
very common at the end of the Eighteenth Century. From
tarnal
arose
tarnation
, and presently
tarnation
was wedded to
damnation
, and the offspring of the union was
darned, a
virtuous sister to
damned
. Sometimes
darned
appears as
derned
. The English form used to be
demrned
, but it survives only historically, in
deminition bow-wows
. Used today, it would sound as archaic as
zounds. Doggone
seems to be a blend form of
dog on it
; in fact, it is still often used with
it
following. It is thus a brother to the old English phrase, “a pox upon it,” but is considerably more decorous.
But
darn
and
doggone
are hardly more than proofs that profanity is not an American art. The chief national reliances are still
hell
and
damn
, both of them badly shop-worn. To support them we have nothing properly describable as a vocabulary of indecency. Our maid-of-all-work in that department is
son-of-a-bitch
, which seems as pale and ineffectual to a Slav or a Latin as
fudge
does to us. There is simply no lift in it, no shock, no sis-boom-ah. The dumbest policeman in Palermo thinks of a dozen better ones between breakfast and the noon whistle. The term, indeed, is so flat, stale and unprofitable that, when uttered with a wink or a dig in the ribs, it is actually a kind of endearment, and has been applied with every evidence of respect by one United States Senator to another. Put the second person pronoun and the adjective
old
in front of it, and scarcely enough bounce is left in it to shake up an archdeacon. Worse, it is frequently toned down to
s.o.b.
, or transmogrified into the childish
son-of-a-gun
. The latter is so lacking in punch that the Italians among us have borrowed it as a satirical name for an American:
la sanemagogna
is what they call him, and by it they indicate their contempt for his backwardness in the art that is one of their great
glories. In Standard Italian there are no less than forty congeners of
son-of-a-bitch
, and each and every one of them is more opprobrious, more brilliant, more effective. In the Neapolitan dialect there are thousands.
232
1
S.P.E. Tracts
, No. XXVII, 1927, p. 208.
2
Americanisms in England, by A. Cleveland Coxe,
Forum
, Oct., 1886.
3
Letter to Macvey Napier, April 18, 1842, printed in The Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay, by G. Otto Trevelyan; New York, 1877, Vol. II, p. 100.
4
Here, as in so many other places, I am indebted to the Oxford Dictionary for its dated quotations.
5
The Fowlers call
reliable
“an established word avoided by purists as of irregular formation.” It has actually been in good usage in England since the 60’s. In 1871, when the United States claimed a large sum from England as indemnity for the depredations of the Confederate cruiser
Alabama, Punch
suggested that the injury England had suffered through the introduction of the word was sufficient compensation.
6
See Chapter I, Section 2, for the text of its denunciation.
7
Americanisms Old and New; London, 1889, p. vii.
8
Cambridge History of American Literature; New York, 1921, Vol. III, p. 26.
9
Americanisms Old and New, above cited, p. vii.
10
London letter in the
Boulevardier
(Paris) April, 1931. In July, 1932 (
News of the World
, July 24), the Assistant Bishop of Guildford, Dr. Cyril Golding-Bird, appeared before the Farnham (Surrey) magistrates on a charge of dangerous driving. The policeman who arrested him testified that, on being overhauled, he demanded “Are you a
speed-cop?
” His Lordship, evidently in fear that the use of an Americanism by one of his exalted station would prejudice the bench against him, stoutly declared that he “was not sufficiently colloquial” to have used it. But the magistrates, taking a serious view of the matter, fined him
£
10 and costs and suspended his driving license for three months.
11
In the Spring of 1935, for example, Major Brooke Heckstall-Smith, yachting correspondent to the London
Daily Telegraph
, raised a holy war against
to debunk
in the columns of his paper, and was presently joined by other viewers with alarm. One of them, A. E. Sullivan (March 2), ascribed its origin to “the inability of an ill-educated and unintelligent democracy to assimilate long words.” But it was defended by Hubert Furst (March 2), author of a book entitled Art Debunked, and by Pearl Freeman (March 4), who called it “a full-blooded descriptive word.” On March 2
radio
was put at the head of a list of “bastard American expressions” by John C. Mellis (with
O.K., sez you, nerts, cute
and
big-fella
following), but on March 6 it was defended by Jan Stewer as a beautiful coinage,” and its English equivalent,
wireless
, denounced as “an abomination.”
12
Oxford, 1935. Horwill excludes foreign loan-words in American, and words spelled differently in American and English, and his book naturally reveals a great many omissions; nevertheless, he manages to list nearly 3000 words and phrases that differ in the two languages.
13
Academy Papers; New York, 1925, p. 150.
14
Sunderland
Echo
, Oct. 31, 1934.
15
Manchester
Guardian
, April 5.
16
For example, Gladstone’s
Midlothian campaign
of 1880.
17
The Study of American English, by W. A. Craigie,
S.P.E. Tracts
, No. XXVII, 1927, p. 208.
18
See British English and American English, by Thomas G. Tucker,
Scribner’s
, Dec., 1921.
19
Eastern
Evening News
(Norwich), March 27, 1935.
20
March 28, 1935.
21
News-Chronicle
, March 21, 1935.
22
Note the archaic spelling here. Jane Austen used it in Pride and Prejudice, and in 1756 there was a newspaper in London called the
Universal Visiter
.
23
March 6, 1935.
24
Is English Becoming Too American?, London
Evening News
, Nov. 19, 1931. It is curious to note what such bigwigs accept and reject. Dr. Onions, after accepting — or, at all events, condoning —
dope
, repudiates
witness-stand
and
to measure up to the standard
.
25
The American Language,
New Statesman and Nation
, July 27, p.131.
26
See also American Prepositions, London
Times
(Weekly Ed.), Feb. 16, 1933.
27
Harold Brighouse in the Manchester
Guardian
, April 5, 1919.
28
The London bureau of the United Press reported on April 28: “The American
O.K
. is rapidly displacing the British
righto
in everyday conversation in Great Britain, despite the opposition of educators.… One English columnist the other day made four telephone calls to different numbers and in each case the conversation ended with
O.K
. from the person at the other end.”
29
The Most Popular Songs of a Decade,
World Almanac
, 1934, p. 800.
30
In Notes on the Way,
Time and Tide
, Dec. 8, 1934, Humbert Wolfe denounced this “baboon-jargon that we have proudly borrowed from across the Atlantic.” The London
Daily Express
has lifted the whole vocabulary of the American news-weekly,
Time
, and adopted even its eccentric syntax. (See, for example, These Names Make News, Aug. 28, 1935.) I once encountered
Bible Belt
in a headline in the London
Times
, but I have unfortunately forgotten the date. For the use of
but that
in a leading article in the
Times
I point sadly to Two More Days of Pilgrimage, July 13, 1934. Other lexicographical pathologists tell me they have found
high-brow
and
the limit
in the same great newspaper.
31
The Invasion From U. S. A., by Ellis Healey, Birmingham
Gazette
, April 11, 1932.
32
To collide
is barred by many English newspapers, which prefer
to come in collision
. But the aim here is simply to avoid any direct imputation of agency, and so head off possible libel suits.
33
London, 1929, p. 79 ff.
34
Adjectives — and Other Words; London, 1930, p. 182.
35
Printed as English on Both Sides of the Atlantic,
Listener
, April, 1935.
36
Contemporary English: a Personal Speech Record; Leipzig, 1927, p. 114.
37
I am indebted here to various English acquaintances, and to a number of Americans resident in England, but most of all to Mr. H. W. Seaman, of Norwich. Mr. Seaman is an English journalist with ten years of American experience behind him, and so he is peculiarly alert to differences in usage. Moreover, he is greatly interested in linguistics, and has done some valuable writing upon the subject. My debt to his friendly patience is enormous; he has willingly answered scores of questions, some of them difficult. But I hasten to add that he is not to be held responsible for anything that follows. The inevitable errors are my own.
38
Here, almost at the start of my list, I must file a caveat against it myself, for Mr. Seaman tells me that
garbage
, in England as in the United States, is coming to be applied to all sorts of refuse.
39
In the London
Daily Mail
, June 25, 1935, I found the heading: Key to the Can. It would have cost the job of any American copy-reader who wrote it. But in England it was a proper heading for a news story dealing with Treasury regulations for the importation of
can-openers
with
canned-goods
.
40
But
drug-store
, as we have seen in Section 1, is coming in. I am informed by an English correspondent, Mr. H. R. Rutter, that “the scientific chemists of England have for some time been agitating for the withdrawal of the designation
chemist
from the pharmacist, and the substitution of
druggist.
”
41
But
living-room
appears to be coming in.
42
There are many other differences between the names of cuts of meat in the two countries. I am indebted to Mr. H. Kendall Kidds of San Francisco, who is at work on a book on the butchering craft, for what follows. Our
porterhouse
steak is the
sirloin
in England, but
porterhouse
is coming in, with the prefix
Yankee
. Our
sirloin
is the
rump
, or
middle-rump
. The
bottom-round
is called the
silverside
in England, and the
top-round
is the
top-side
. The
rump
is known as the
H-bone piece
or
shellbone
. The part that contains the shoulder-blade is the
chuck
, as it is here. A leg of mutton or lamb cut with the hip-bone attached is called a
haunch
in England. If the hip-bone is left on the loin and cut into
chops
, they are known as
chump-bone
chops. What we call the
rib
chops are the
best end of the neck
or
best end
. Under the shoulder, which is raised in England, the chops are called the
middle-neck
, while the rest is the
scrag-end
.
43
Variety
, of course, is known and understood in the United States. Indeed, the chief theatrical paper of New York is called
Variety
. But in its columns it commonly refers to the thing itself as
vaudeville
, or
vaude
, or
vaud
. Some years ago a German movie, done into English, was called
Variety
here and
Vaudeville
in England. In both countries it thus carried an exotic flavor.
44
See, for longer lists, Automobile Nomenclature,
American Speech
, Sept., 1926, p. 686; The Automobile and American English, by Theodore Hornberger, the same, April, 1930; English Theatrical Terms and Their American Equivalents, by Henry J. Heck, the same, Aug., 1930; and British and American Fishing Terms, by Frederick White,
Outdoor Life
, Aug., 1934.
45
I am indebted here to suggestions by Messrs. H. F. Rutter, P. H. Muir and J. Dwight Francis of London, Dr. Ernest Wignall of the Rockefeller Institute, and Mr. George H. Mather of Moose Jaw, Canada.
46
But it is a
bumper
on a motor-car.
47
But the commander of an omnibus is a
conductor
.
48
See The Sins of the Railroad Period, by F. Walker Pollock,
American Speech
, Feb., 1927, p. 248.
49
This title has been borrowed by some of the American universities,
e.g.
, Syracuse, but the usual title is
president
. On the Continent it is
rector
.
50
He serves for three years, and the heads of the various colleges take the office in rotation.
51
See The Yearbook of the Universities of the Empire, edited by T. S. Sterling; London, annually.
52
But
faculty
is used to designate the staff of a special school,
e.g.
, of theology, medicine or law.
53
But the London, Midland and Scottish Railway has a
president
.
54
This form survives in the American term
city-stock
, meaning the bonds of a municipality. But State and Federal securities are almost always called
bonds
.
55
A Glossary of Colloquial Slang and Technical Terms in Use in the Stock Exchange and in the Money Market, by A. J. Wilson; London, 1895.
56
“An act was passed to prohibit playing
nine-pins
; as soon as the law was put in force, it was notified everywhere, ‘Ten-pins played here.’
”—
Capt. Frederick Marryat: A Diary in America; London, 1839, Vol. Ill, p. 195.
57
“The term
chapel
” says P. W. Joyce, in English as We Speak It in Ireland, 2nd ed.; London, 1910, “has so ingrained itself in my mind that to this hour the word instinctively springs to my lips when I am about to mention a Catholic place of worship; and I always feel some sort of hesitation or reluctance in substituting the word
church
. I positively could not bring myself to say, ‘Come, it is time now to set out for
church
’ It must be either
mass
or
chapel
.”
58
Concerning the American Language, in The Stolen White Elephant; Hartford, 1882.
59
Concerning the American Language, just cited.
60
London
Observer
, Jan. 13, 1919.
61
In a private communication, April 26, 1935.
62
I Speak United States, London
Saturday Review
, Sept. 22, 1894.
63
Our Dictionaries; New York, 1890, p. 86.
64
Should Language Be Abolished? by Harold Goddard, July, 1918, p. 63.
65
Words on Trial, by T. Michael Pope, Sept., 1919, p. 151.
66
In St. Bride’s Church, Fleet Street, there is a tablet in memory of “Alfred Robbins, Kt.,
Lobbyist
in the Palace of Westminster & London; Letter Writer in the Parish of St. Bride.”
67
The American Language,
Spectator
, Sept. 6, 1935.
68
Reprinted as Litany of the Novelist in his Literary Chapters; London, 1918.
69
On July 31, 1935 the Associated Press reported that the manuscript of an American movie version of Kipling’s The Light That Failed was to be presented to the British Museum, and that it showed some corrections of Americanisms in the author’s hand. Thus he struck out
to measure
up and inserted
to match
, as better English, and substituted
private
for
personal
in “He had some important
personal
business.”