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NEW FORMS AND NICKNAMES.

SEVERE critics are apt to place among the slang terms of America the large number of new forms, which have been made here from well-known words, and are gradually gaining ground, as they become popular with journalists, and thus familiar to a large class of intelligent persons. Grammatically, they are abominations, and æsthetically, not one of them, perhaps, can be justified. The pure well of English undefiled ought not to be contaminated by such misshapen forms, and their influence is disastrous in the extreme, by removing all landmarks in language, and accustoming the ear to the utmost license in the use of words. With all this, they are apparently suited to supply a want; at least they are largely employed, easily understood, and have, almost invariably, the one great merit of brevity. This is the feature which has led to their creation in the first place: they are, to a large extent, the offspring of the telegraph-wire and the cable. The heavy expense incurred by private correspondents, and still more by great companies, such as the leading daily papers of London or New York, and especially the "Associated Press" of the United States, engendered promptly a tendency to shorten messages, and developed great ingenuity in accomplishing this purpose. The lastnamed company, for instance, at once adopted certain well-known abbreviations: this evening and this morning, became sevening and smorning; fob, meant free on board, and swells, as well as; New York and New Orleans appeared simply as York and Orleans; Rio de Janeiro as Rio; Buenos Ayres as Bayres, and San Francisco as Frisco. Then came less pardonable forms, such as sleeting, conflagrating, incendiaried, and interviewed, and finally a whole class of violent contractions, derived from well-known and well-formed words, like burgled, injuncted, and excurted. It

is this class of words which contains the most objectionable and most dangerous terms, attractive as they have proved by their novelty and their brevity. They led to the use of other terms for which no such excuse could be made, and as their number daily increases, they threaten to corrupt American English to a mournful extent. The absence of sound criticism, and the little respect paid to the authority of good writers and sound teachers, favor the contamination, and, unless the good sense of the people, and the conscience of editors and writers for the press, come to the rescue, serious danger may be apprehended.

Among these new-fangled terms we find complected, in the sense of having a certain complexion. "The woman had evidently had chills recently; she was feeble and emaciated, and complected as I have never seen any one out of malarious regions." (Cincinnati Commercial, June 9, 1868.) The noun eruption has, in like manner, suffered violent curtailment in order to furnish a new verb, to erupt. "This person had, at the peak and tip of a gigantic volcano of infuriated scolding against everything whatever, erupted in a final blaze of fury." (Putnam's Magazine, September, 1870.) Old English writers, however, have erupt quite frequently. Excursion has been forced to produce to excurt. "President Grant has once more excurted from Washington; he has gone on a visit to Mr. Cameron's home, but will be back in time for the Cabinet-meeting on Monday." (Washington Chronicle, April 17, 1870.) An amusing evidence of the utter insecurity which such license creates in the use of the most familiar words, has been furnished by the fate of the word resurrection. A verb was apparently required, and forthwith two were manufactured to meet the demand, which now compete with each other for the supremacy; but, whichever may prove victorious, the language will be seriously damaged by its admission. "The invention described in yesterday's Times, and displayed on Saturday in Newark, by which a person who may happen to be buried alive, is enabled to resur-· rect himself from the grave, may lead some people to fancy there is actual danger of their being buried alive." (New York Times, quoted by R. G. White, Words and their Uses, p. 229.) "Mr. Butler said, he had long since learned the wisdom of the maxim, de mortuis nil nisi bonum, and if Admiral Porter only lay still in his grave, if his friends did not resurrect him to offend the nostrils

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of the House, he (Mr. Butler) would not have said a word about him." (New York Tribune, February 7, 1871.) Then there arose a formidable rival to this "amazing formation," as R. G. White justly calls it, and being a little more imposing and grandiloquent, now threatens to supersede the shorter term. Body-snatching continues to be a business in Cincinnati. The leading gentleman of the resurrectionizing profession is one Cunningham, who, with two assistants, dug up the subjects and carried them to the medical schools in an express-wagon." (Cincinnati Commercial, February 6, 1871.) In like manner the burglar's occupation has been designated as burglarizing; when caught he is custodized, and the news of his capture is promptly itemized by the penny-a-liner.

The frequency with which resolutions are spoken of in newspapers and public reports, has led, in the same way, to the formation of a new verb to take the place of resolve. "I tell you, gentlemen, you may keep this up as long as you choose, but when you have done resoluting, you will only have lost your time, because we of the majority won't stand it." (Savannah Republican, March 13, 1860.)

"You may resoloot till the cows come home,

But ef one of you teches the boy

He'll rastle his bones to-night in hell."

(John Hay, Banty Tim.)

Another class of such words is the offspring of the agitation of so-called Women's Rights, and pretends to furnish terms for the many new professions to which women claim admission. A couple of ladies having established their "Exchange Office" in that quiet and respectable neighborhood so eminently suited for persons of their sex, called Wall-street, they were at once spoken of in the New York papers as bankeresses or brokeresses. Fortunately, the word seemed to please the public as little as the new occupation, and neither term has been adopted. Doctaresses, however, abound in the land, to the utmost disgust of Miss Mary Walker, the most notorious of the class, who, like all her learned "sisters," claims the right to be called Doctor. "Miss A, the young and attractive doctoress, who yesterday appeared in Court to testify in the great will-case, made a most pleasing impression upon the bar and the jury, by her clear, intelligent answer, and her simple, modest behavior while in the witness-stand." (Phil

oress.

adelphia Inquirer, 1868.) Since Miss Hosmer began her brilliant career, the word Sculptoress has become familiar to American ears. "We all remember the time when the old doctor's charming daughter uncoupled the cars as the train ran over the mill-dam, and imperilled the lives of nearly a hundred passengers, who were left on the track at the mercy of the approaching mail-train. The young sculptoress was hardly aware of the frightful responsibility she incurred by her thoughtless prank." (Boston Bee, March 23, 1855.) Even the grave and mysterious masons have seen their sacred precincts invaded by the enemy. "We are now informed of the great secret of Miss Vinnie Ream's grand success as a sculptIt appears that she is a mason, or a masoness, as you please. She belongs to a Female Lodge, which has some sort of connection with Male Lodges-a very mysterious and recondite connection, no doubt, only we don't know what it is. The statutes of the old, original order forbid the initiation of women most emphatically, but there used to be a sort of branch kind, called the Daughters of Jerusalem. However, Miss V. Ream has taken eight degrees in something or other, and is very high in the mysteries. This accounts for the elegance, beauty, and generally fine mason-work of the Lincoln statue." (New York Tribune, February 2, 1871.) A different formation is attempted in the following notice: "Mrs. E. Tupper Wilkes, the Minnesota clergywoman, has a salary of $2000 a year, and is to get more." (Chicago Tribune, February 17, 1871.) An effort was made to vindicate the honor of the sex by having Chairwomen to preside over Women's Rights meetings, but Irish sympathizers would appeal to the chairwoman so persistently, that the association became offensive, and the new title was abandoned.

Perhaps the worst of all these malformations, and perhaps, for that very reason, the most numerous and most popular of all, is the class of new nouns made promiscuously from French and Latin, German and Saxon words, by the simple addition of the termination ist. This produces naturally most shocking hybrids, but the gain of time and exertion seems to be deemed ample compensation for the barbarous character of the process. Thus we find the following advertisement: "A nurseryman wanted, who is a thorough master of his business; one who understands taking care of a greenhouse and plants preferred; must be complete

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