Bartlett says that he cannot say whether the word was used in Bacon's time or not.' It certainly was, and with the accent we give to it. Ben Jonson, in the Alchemist,' had this verse, 'Progress so from extreme unto extreme,' and Sir Philip Sidney, 'Progressing then from fair Turias' Surely we may now sleep in peace, me. So harde an herte was none oute,' and That such merveile was none oute."' He also, by the way, says 'a sighte of flowres' as naturally as our upcountry folk would say it. Poor for lean, thirds for dower, and dry for thirsty I find in Middleton's plays. Dry is also in Skelton and in the 'World' (1754). In a note on Middleton, Mr. Dyce thinks it needful to explain the phrase I can't tell (universal in America) by the gloss I could not say. common with us) and match. Long on for occasioned by (who is this 'long on?') occurs constantly in Gower and likewise in Middleton. 'Cause why is in Chaucer. Raising (an English version of the French leaven) for yeast is em ployed by Gayton in his' Festivous Notes on Don Quixote.' I have never seen an instance of our New England word emptins in the same sense, nor can I divine its original. Gayton has limekill; also shuts for shutters, and the latter is used by Mrs. Hutchinson in her 'Life of Colonel Hutchinson.' Bishop Hall, and Purchas in his 'Pilgrims,' have chist for chest, and it is cer tainly nearer cista, as well as to its form in the Teutonic languages, whence probably we got it. We retain the old sound from cist, but chest is as old as Chaucer. Lovelace says wropt for wrapt. Musicianer' I had always associated with the militia -musters of my boyhood, and too hastily concluded it an abomination of our own, but Mr. Wright calls it a Norfolk word, and I find it to be as old as 1642 by an extract in Collier. Not worth the time of day,' had passed with me for native till I saw it in Shakespeare's Pericles.' For slick (which is only a shorter sound of sleek, like crick and the now universal britches for breeches) I will only call Chapman and Jonson. That's a sure card!' and' That's a stinger!' both sound like modern slang, but you will find the one in the old interlude of Thersytes' (1537), and the other in Middleton. Mid-Right here,' a favorite phrase dleton also uses snecked, which I had believed an Americanism till I saw it there. It is, of course, only another form of snatch, analogous to theek and thatch (cf. the proper names Dekker and Thacher), break (brack) and breach, make (still with our orators and with a certain class of our editors, turns up passim in the Chester and Coventry plays. Mr. Dickens found something very ludicrous in what he considered our neologism right away. But I find a phrase very like it, and which I would gladly suspect to be a misprint for it, in 6 Gammer Gurton: ' 'Lyght it and bring it tite away.' But tite is the true word in this case. After all, what is it but another form of straightway? Cussedness, meaning wickedness, malignity, and cuss, a sneaking, ill-natured fellow, in such phrases as 'He done it out o' pure cussedness,' and' He is a nateral cuss,' have been commonly thought Yankeeisms. To vent certain contemptuously indignant moods they are admirable in their rough-andready way. But neither is our own. Cursydnesse, in the same sense of malignant wickedness, occurs in the Coventry Plays, and cuss may perhaps claim to have come in with the Conqueror. At least the term is also French. Saint Simon uses it and confesses its usefulness. Speaking of the Abbé Dubois, he says, 'Qui étoit en plein ce qu'un mauvais françois appelle un sacre, mais qui ne se peut guère exprimer autrement.' Not worth a cuss,' though supported by 'not worth a damn,' may be a mere corruption, since 'not worth a cress' is in 'Piers Plough man.' I don't see it,' was the popular slang a year or two ago, and seemed to spring from the soil; but no, it is in Cibber's 'Careless Husband.' Green sauce for vegetables I meet in Beaumont and Fletcher, Gayton, and elsewhere. Our rustic pronunciation sahce (for either the diphthong au was anciently pronounced ah, or else we have followed abundant analogy in changing it to the latter sound, as we have in chance, dance, and so many more) may be the older one, and at least gives some hint at its ancestor salsa. Warn, in the sense of notify, is, I 6 believe, now peculiar to us, but Pecock so employs it. I find primmer (primer, as we pronounce it) in Beaumont and Fletcher, and a square eater' too (compare our square meal'), heft for weight, and 'muchness' in the 'Mirror for Magistrates,' bankbill in Swift and Fielding, and as for that I might say passim. To cotton to is, I rather think, an Americanism. The nearest approach to it I have found is cotton together, in Congreve's' Love for Love.' To cotton or cotten, in another sense, is old and common. Our word means to cling, and its origin, possibly, is to be sought in another direction, perhaps in A.-S. cvead, which means mud, clay (both proverbially clinging), or better yet, in the Icelandic quoda (otherwise kód), meaning resin and glue, which are κατ' ἐξοχήν, sticky substances. To spit cotton is, I think, American, and also, perhaps, to flax for to beat. To the halves still survives among us, though apparently obsolete in England. It means either to let or to hire a piece of land, receiving half the profit in money or in kind (partibus locare). I mention it because in a note by some English editor, to which I have lost my reference, I have seen it wrongly explained. The editors of Nares cite Burton. To put, in the sense of to go, as Put! for Begone! would seem our own, and yet it is strictly analogous to the French se mettre à la voie, and the Italian mettersi in via. Indeed, Dante has a verse, 'Io sarei [for mi sarei] già messo per lo sentiero,' which, but for the indignity, might be translated, 'I should, ere this, have put along the way,' I deprecate in advance any Them was used as a nominative by the majesty of Edward VI., by Sir P. Hoby, and by Lord Paget (in Froude's 'History'). I have never seen any passage adduced where guess was used as the Yankee uses it. The word was familiar in the mouths of our ancestors, but with a different shade of meaning from that we have given it, which is something like rather think, though the Yankee implies a confident certainty by it when he says, 'I guess I du!' There are two examples in Otway, one of which (So in the struggle, I guess the note was lost') perhaps might serve our purpose, and Coleridge's But 'I guess 't was fearful there to see ' certainly comes very near. I have a higher authority than either in Selden, who, in one of his notes to the Polyolbion,' writes, 'The first inventor of them (I guess you dislike not the addition) was one Berthold Swartz.' Here he must mean by it, I take it for granted.' Robert Greene, in his 'Well nigh all other curës let he slide.' Mr. Bartlett gives 'above one's bend' as an Americanism; but compare Hamlet's 'to the top of my bent.' In his tracks for imme-Quip for an Upstart Courtier,' diately has acquired an American accent, and passes where he can for a native, but is an importation nevertheless; for what is he but the Latin e vestigio, or at best the Norman French eneslespas, both which have the same meaning? Hotfoot (provincial also in Eng land), I find in the old romance of 'Tristan,' 'Si s'en parti CHAUT PAS ' Like for as is never used in New England, but is universal in the South and West. It has on its side the authority of two kings (ego sum rex Romanorum et supra grammaticam), Henry VIII. and Charles I. This were ample, without throwing into the scale the scholar and poet Daniel. makes Cloth-breeches say, 'but I gesse your maistership never tried what true honor meant.' In this case the word seems to be used with a meaning precisely like that which we give it. Another pecul iarity almost as prominent is the beginning sentences, especially in answer to questions, with 'well.' Put before such a phrase as' How d'e do?' it is commonly short, and has the sound of wul, but in reply it is deliberative, and the various shades of meaning which can be conveyed by difference of intonation, and by prolonging or abbre viating, I should vainly attempt to describe. I have heard ooa-ahl, wahl, ahl, wal, and something nearly approaching the sound of the le in able. Sometimes before 'I'it dwindles to a mere 1, as ''l I dunno.' A friend of mine (why should I not please myself, though displease him, by brightening my page with the initials of the most exquisite of humorists, J. H. ?) told me that he once heard five 'wells,' like pioneers, precede the answer to an inquiry about the price of land. The first was the ordinary wul, in deference to custom; the second, the long, perpending ooahl, with a falling inflection of the voice; the third, the same, but with the voice rising, as if in despair of a conclusion, into a plaintively nasal whine; the fourth, wulh, ending in the aspirate of a sigh; and then, fifth, came a short, sharp wal, show. ing that a conclusion had been reached. I have used this latter form in the 'Biglow Papers,' because, if enough nasality be added, it represents most nearly the average sound of what I may call the interjection. A locution prevails in the Southern and Middle States which is so curious that, though never heard in New England, I will give a few lines to its discussion, the more readily because it is extinct elsewhere. I mean the use of allow in the sense of affirm, as I allow that's a good horse.' I find the word so used in 1558 by Anthony Jenkinson in Hakluyt: 'Corne they sowe not, neither doe eate any bread, mocking the Christians for the same, and disabling our strengthe, saying we live beating the toppe of a weede, and drinke a drinke made of the same, allowing theyr great devouring of flesh and drinking of milke to be the increase of theyr strength.' That is, they undervalued our strength, and affirmed their own to be the result of a certain diet. In another pas sage of the same narrative the word has its more common meaning of approving or praising: 'The said king, much allowing this declaration, said.' Ducange quotes Bracton sub voce ADLOCARE for the meaning 'to admit as proved,' and the transition from this to affirm,' is by no means violent. Izaak Walton has Lebault allows waterfrogs to be good meat,' and here the word is equivalent to affirms. At the same time, when we consider some of the meanings of allow in old English, and of allouer in old French, and also remember that the verbs prize and praise are from one root, I think we must admit allaudare to a share in the paternity of allow. The sentence from Hakluyt would read equally well, 'contemning our strengthe,. and praising (or valuing) their great eating of flesh as the cause of their increase in strength.' After all, if we confine ourselves to allocare, it may turn out that the word was somewhere and somewhen used for to bet, analogously to put up, put down, post (cf. Spanish apostar), and the like. I hear boys in the street continually saying, I bet that's a good horse,' or what not, meaning by no means to risk anything beyond their opinion in the matter. ... The word improve, in the sense of to occupy, make use of, employ,' as Dr. Pickering defines it, he long ago proved to be no neologism. He would have done better, I think, had he substituted profit by for employ. He cites Dr. Franklin as saying that the word had never, so far as he knew, been used in New England before he left it in 1723, except in Dr. Mather's Remarkable Providences,' which he oddly calls a very old book.' Franklin, as Dr. Pickering goes on to show, was mistaken. Mr. Bartlett in his 'Dictionary' merely abridges Pickering. Both of them should have confined the application of the word to material things, its extension to which is all that is peculiar in the supposed American use of it. For surely Complete Letter-Writers' have been improving this opportunity' time out of mind. I will illustrate the word a little further, because Pickering cites no English authorities. Skelton has a passage in his Phyllyp Sparowe,' which I quote the rather as it contains also the word allowed, and as it distinguishes improve from employ: those delightful folios for this reference, I find a note which re. minds me of another word, for our abuse of which we have been deservedly ridiculed. I mean lady. It is true I might cite the example of the Italian donna1 (dom. ina), which has been treated in the same way by a whole nation, and not, as lady among us, by the uncultivated only. It perhaps grew into use in the half-democratic republics of Italy in the same way and for the same rea sons as with us. But I admit that our abuse of the word is villanous. I know of an orator who once said in a public meeting His [Chaucer's] Englysh well alowed, where bonnets preponderated, So as it is emprowed, For as it is employd, There is no English voyd.' Here Here the meaning is to profit by. 6 There is not an acre of land in Ireland turned to half its advantage; yet it is better improved than the people.' I find it also in 'Strength out of Weakness' (1652), and Plutarch's Morals' (1714), but I know of only one example of its use in the purely American sense, and that is a very good improvement for a mill' in the State Trials' (Speech of the AttorneyGeneral in the Lady Ivy's case, 1684). In the sense of employ, I could cite a dozen old English authorities. that the ladies were last at the cross and first at the tomb '! But similar sins were committed be fore our day and in the mother country. In the Harleian Miscellany ' (vol. v. p. 455) I find this lady is my servant; the hedger's daughter Ioan.' In the State Trials' I learn of 'a gentlewoman that lives cook with' such a one, and I hear the Lord High Steward speaking of the wife of a waiter at a bagnio as a gentlewoman! From the same authority, by the way, I can state that our vile habit of chewing tobacco had the somewhat unsavory example of Titus Oates, and I know by tradition from an eye-witness that the elegant General Burgoyne partook of the same vice. Howell, in one of his letters (dated 26 August, 1623), speaks thus of another institution' which many have thought American: 'They speak much of that boisterous Bishop of Halverstadt (for so they term him here), that, having taken a place wher ther were two Monasteries of Nuns and Friers, he caus'd 1 Dame, in English, is a decayed genIn running over the fly-leaves of tlewoman of the same family. |