American Language (48 page)

As a set-off to American sports-page jargon, the English have an ecclesiastical vocabulary with which we are almost unacquainted, and it is in daily use, for the church bulks much larger in public affairs over there than it does here. Such terms as
vicar, canon, verger, prebendary, primate, curate, nonconformist, dissenter, convocation, minster, chapter, crypt, living, presentation, glebe, benefice, locum tenens, suffragan, almoner, tithe, dean
and
pluralist
are to be met
with in the English newspapers constantly, but on this side of the water they are seldom encountered. Nor do we hear much of
mat-tins
(which has two
t’s
in England),
lauds, lay-readers, ritualism
and the
liturgy
. The English use of
holy orders
is also strange to us. They do not say that a young man aspiring to sacerdotal ease under the Establishment is
studying for the ministry
, but that he is
reading for holy orders
, though he may do the former if he is headed for the dissenting pulpit. Indeed, save he be a nonconformist, he is seldom called a
minister
at all, though the term appears in the Book of Common Prayer, and never a
pastor
; a clergyman of the Establishment is always either a
rector, vicar
or
curate
, or colloquially a
parson
. According to Horwill, the term
clergyman
is seldom applied to any other kind of preacher. In American
chapel
simply means a small church, usually the dependant of some larger one; in English it has acquired the special sense of a place of worship unconnected with the Establishment. Though three-fourths of the people of Ireland are Catholics (in Munster and Connaught, more than nine-tenths), and the Protestant Church of Ireland has been disestablished since 1871, a Catholic place of worship in that country is still legally a
chapel
and not a
church
.
⁵⁷
So is a Methodist wailing-place in England, however large it may be, or any other dissenting house of worship. But here custom begins to war with the law, and in a current issue of the London
Times
I find notices of services in Presbyterian, Congregational, Baptist, Christian Science and even Catholic
churches. Chapel
, of course, is also used to designate a small house of worship of the Establishment when it is neither a parish church nor a cathedral,
e.g.
, St. George’s
Chapel
, Windsor, and King’s College
Chapel
, Cambridge. What the English call simply a
churchman
is an
Episcopalian
in the United States, what they call the
Church
(always capitalized) is the
Protestant Episcopal
Church, what they call a
Roman Catholic
is simply a
Catholic
, and what they call a
Jew
is usually softened to a
Hebrew
. The American language, of course, knows nothing of
nonconformists
or
dissenters
. Nor of such gladiators of dissent as the
Plymouth Brethren
and the
Methodist New Connexion
,
nor of the
nonconformist conscience
, though the United States suffers from it even more damnably than England. The English, to make it even, get on without
holy-rollers, Dunkards, hard-shell Baptists, Seventh Day Adventists
and other such American alarmers of God, and they give a
mourners’-bench
the austere name of
penitent-seat
or
form
. The Salvation Army, which is of English origin uses
penitent-form
even in America.

In music the English cling to an archaic and unintelligible nomenclature, long since abandoned over here. Thus, they call a double whole note a
breve
, a whole note a
semibreve
, a half note a
minim
, a quarter note a
crotchet
, an eighth note a
quaver
, a sixteenth note a
semi-quaver
, a thirty-second note a
demisemiquaver
, a sixty-fourth note a
hemidemisemiquaver
, or
semidemisemiquaver
, and a hundred and twenty-eighth note a
quasihemidemisemiquaver
. This clumsy terminology goes back to the days of plain chant, with its
longa, brevis, semi-brevis, minima
and
semiminima
. The French and Italians cling to a system almost as confusing, but the Germans use
ganze, halbe, viertel, achtel
, etc. I have been unable to discover the beginnings of the American system, but it would seem to be borrowed from the German, for since the earliest times a great many of the music teachers in the United States have been Germans, and some of the rest have had German training. In the same way the English hold fast (though with a slacking of the grip of late) to a clumsy method of designating the sizes of printers’ types. In America the point-system makes the business easy; a line of
14-point
type occupies exactly the vertical space of two lines of 7-
point
. But the more old-fashioned English printers still indicate differences in size by such arbitrary and confusing names as
brilliant, diamond, small pearl, pearl, ruby, ruby-nonpareil, nonpareil, minion-nonpareil, emerald, minion, brevier, bourgeois, long primer, small pica, pica, English, great primer
and
double pica
. The English also cling to various archaic measures. Thus, an Englishman will commonly say that he weighs eleven
stone
instead of 154
pounds
. A
stone
, in speaking of a man, is fourteen pounds, but in speaking of beef on the hoof it is only eight pounds. Instead of saying that his
buck-yard
is fifty feet long, an Englishman will say that his
back-garden
is sixteen yards, two feet long. He employs such designations of time as
fortnight
and
twelve-month
a great deal more than we do. He says “a quarter
to
nine,” not “a quarter
of
nine.” He rarely says
fifteen minutes to
or
ten thirty
; nearly always he uses
quarter to
and
half past ten
. He never says
a quarter hour
or
a half hour
; he says
a quarter of an hour
or
half an hour
. To him, twenty-five minutes is often
five-and-twenty minutes
.

In Standard English usage
directly
is always used to signify
immediately
; “in the American language, generally speaking,” as Mark Twain once explained, “the word signifies after a little.”
⁵⁸
In England, according to the Concise Oxford Dictionary,
quite
means “completely, wholly, entirely, altogether, to the utmost extent, nothing short of, in the fullest sense, positively, absolutely”; in America it is conditional, and means only nearly, approximately, substantially, as in “He sings
quite
well.” An Englishman doesn’t say, being ill, “I am
getting
on well,” but “I am
going
on well.” He never adds the pronoun in such locutions as “It hurts
me
,” but says simply, “It hurts.” He never “
catches up
with you” on the street; he “catches
you up.
” He never
brushes off
his hat; he
brushes
it. He never says “Are you
through?
” but “Have you
finished?
” or “Are you
done?
” He never uses
gotten
as the perfect participle of
get
; he always uses plain
got
, and he is usually more careful than the American to insert it after
have
. Said Mark Twain to an Englishman encountered on a train in Germany:

In the United States
homely
always means ill-favored; in England it may also mean simple, friendly, home-loving, folksy. Drages, the furniture-dealer in Oxford street, London, advertises that his wares are for “nice, homely people.” St. John Ervine reports that on his first visit to the Republic he got into trouble by praising a gracious female as
homely.
⁶⁰
Sick
is in common use attributively in England, as in
sick-leave, sick-bed
and
sick-room
, but in the predicative situation it has acquired the special meaning of nauseated, and so
ill
is usually used in place of it. The English never apply
sick
to specific organs, as in the American
sick-nerves, sick-kidneys
and
sick-teeth
.
When an Englishman
takes
a
bath
it is in a tub (or in the dishpan that he sometimes uses for a tub); when he goes for one in a swimming-pool, a river or the ocean it is a
bathe
. The use of
of
following
all
, as in “All
of
the time,” still strikes him as American; he prefers “All the time.” He prefers, again,
behind
to
in back of
. He seldom speaks of a
warm
day; he prefers to call it
hot
. The American use of
to jibe
, in the sense of to chime in with, is unknown to him, though he knows the word (as
gibe
) in the sense of to make game of. He seldom uses
to peek
in the sense of to peep, and the Oxford Dictionary marks
peek-a-boo
as “now chiefly U. S.” The same mark is given to
to pry
in the sense of to raise or move by leverage; the Englishman always uses
to prize
or
to prise
. He knows the verb
to skimp
, but prefers
to scrimp
. He likewise knows
to slew
, but prefers
to swerve
, and is unacquainted with
slew-foot
. “The English newspapers,” says H. W. Seaman,
⁶¹
“used to be very careful to avoid such Americanisms as
lifeboat
for
ship’s-boat, life-preserver
for
lifebelt
, and
lifeguard
for the fellow on the beach who looks out for sharks, etc. Strictly, a
lifeboat
in England is a boat kept ready to go to the help of ships at sea, a
life-preserver
is a club or truncheon, and a
lifeguard
is a soldier in the Life Guards. In the last few years, however, this strictness has gone and the American usages have been generally adopted. We have only recently had
lifeguards
at beaches and pools, and since the idea came from America, we use the American name for them.”

That an Englishman calls out “
I
say!” and not simply “Say!” when he desires to attract a friend’s attention or register a protestation of incredulity — this perhaps is too familiar to need notice. The movies, however, have taught his children the American form. His
hear, hear!
and
oh, oh!
are also well known. He is much less prodigal with
good-bye
than the American; he uses
good-day
and
good-afternoon
far more often. Various very common American phrases are quite unknown to him, for example,
over his signature
. This he never uses, and he has no equivalent for it; an Englishman who issues a signed statement simply makes it
in writing
. His pet-name for a tiller of the soil is not
Rube
or
Cy
, but
Hodge
. When he goes gunning he does not call it
hunting
, but
shooting; hunting
is reserved for the chase of the fox, deer or otter. An intelligent Englishwoman,
coming to America to live, once told me that the two things which most impeded her first communications with untraveled Americans, even above the differences between English and American pronunciation and intonation, were the complete absence of the general utility adjective
jolly
from the American vocabulary, and the puzzling omnipresence and versatility of the verb
to fix
. I marveled that she did not also notice the extravagant American use of
just, right
and
good
. In American
just
is almost equivalent to the English
quite
, as in
just lovely
. Thornton shows that this use of it goes back to 1794. The word is also used in place of
exactly
in other ways, as in
just in time, just how many?
and
just what do you mean?
Thornton shows that the use of
right
in
right away, right good
and
right now
was already widespread in the United States early in the last century; his first example is dated 1818. He believes that the locution was “possibly imported from the Southwest of Ireland.” Whatever its origin, it quickly attracted the attention of English visitors. Dickens noted
right away
as an almost universal Americanism during his first American tour, in 1842, and poked fun at it in
Chapter II
of “American Notes.”
Right
is used as a synonym for
directly
, as in
right away, right off, right now
and
right on time
; for
moderately
, as in
right well, right smart, right good
and
right often
, and in place of
precisely
or
certainly
, as in
right there
and “I’ll get there
all right.
” More than a generation ago, in an article on Americanisms, an English critic called it “that most distinctively American word,” and concocted the following dialogue to instruct the English in its use: