The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1874-11-21 00:00:00

AMERICAN IDIOMS.

The Neter irk Times publishes the following communica-
tion : _

.---- •
"No person of observation can travel far, nor tarry
long, in different quarters of our land, peopled as it is
by the descendants of so many nationalities, without
being impressed by their diversities of speech, which
are perhaps more remarkable than the differences in
their manners and customs. I visited New Hamp-
shire while a lad, and was impressed with the oddity
of several idioms which were then, and I presume
are now, a part of the daily speech of the people.
They were certainly unlike anything that I had ever
heard in New York. Thus, a farmer, desiring to
know whether his neighbour's oxen are well broke and
draw well in the yoke invariably puts the question,
'Are they handy?' In New York the adjective
might well be applied to a useful boy, or a smart ser-
vant girl, but never to an animal. In the Granite
State, also, I have often heard the singular question
asked in regard to a particular Is he fore-
handed?' A stranger hearing such a query for the first
time would certainly need to be told that it's almost
the equivalent of the very common 'ls he well off ?' of
the Middle States. One of the strangest errorii as to
the derivation of an idiomatic word that could well be
made was that of a person who insisted that this word
was properly spelled four-handed, and that the pith of
its meaning lay in the fact that a person with two sets
of hands, if snch a monstrosity could exist, would be
able to rake in money very fast. Still another
peculiarity in New Hampshire speech is the question
How do you like?' I never heard the pronoun added;
whether the interrogation related to a book, a town, a
new song, or a human being, it invariably ended in this
abrupt fashion, as though the objective pronoun were
scarce and costly. The use of the word ' level ' for
• levy' by a sheriff or a constable is very frequent
among our common people. This, of course, is
merely a misconception of the correct word to be used;
but, in time, language becomes corrupted by just such
means. So of the outlandish baffoot ' for 'barefoot, 'and
bagnet ' for bayonet.' The use of the Americanism
'tote to signify 'carry' or bear,' is popularly sup-
posed to be confined to the West and South-West. I
heard it used during the war by a white woman of Vir-
ginia with ridiculous effect, and with a personal appli-
cation which, I believe. is not given to it in the West.
She was standing in the doorway of her house, near
Berrysrille, watching the army pass, when one of our
officers rode up and politely naked if he could buy a loaf
of bread and a canteen of milk of her. She instantly put
her arms akimbo, and delivered herself thus :—' No, you
can't. We hain't got no bread. We hain't got no milk.
We're clean done gone up a spout; so you can clean
tote yourself away from h'yar.' It is unnecessary to say
that the officer felt constrained to 'tote,' Gobble '
and skedaddle ' were peculiar to the army in war
time, and have not outlived that period, I believe, to
any extent. They were very expressive words, and gave
a significant meaning to what wouldotherwise have been
called ' plunder 'or 'capture,' and flight.' They were
used both as verbs and nouns. 'Bummer '—that per-
lectly descriptive word for a military vagabond and
plunderer—is still heard occasionally in the Press or
in common speech, and may possibly survive the war
long enough to become engrafted upon the language
with other queer additions of the last two decades. I
believe the.use of the expression ' outen 'for out of'
is not confined to any locality. I have heard it in
widely-separated places. ' Touse,' which appears as
a dictionary word, signifying a pulling, hauling, or
disturbance, has become obsolete almost everywhere in
this country, though I have heard it used in New
England as the expressions 'training' and 'carrying-
on are elsewhere used to designate the capers and
pranks of exuberant young people. I find that the
Great Unabridged contains 'forehanded,' tote,' and
skedaddle.' The latter is stated to he an importation
from Sweden and Denmark, and to have been in use
among immigrants to our North-Western country for
wveralyears. The word was certainly never known to
the nation at large till the war popularised it, and fur-
nished illustrations of its meaning. These clang and
corrupted words only crowd themselves into the lexicons
when their nse becomes so prevalent that they can no
longer be ignored; yet it may truthfully be said of
nearly each one of them, am the poet sang of Plymouth
Bock—' It lives, it lives, and it ne'er will die." Should
any person doubt the absolute truth of this assertion,
let him remember that the word "bully," that slangest
of all slang words, which we find in much wider use
to-day than it should be, had an existence in Shake-
speare's time, and was even used by Shakespeare him-
self, as in the Merry Wives of Windsor," How is my
bully rook?' And that lam.' in the sense of 'beat,
or punish,' its used by our rowdy element to-day, was
in use centuries ag.i with precisely the same signifies-
' tion, and is to be found in some of the old dramatists,
.although Webster ignores it. So 'bummer' and
'gobble,' though elbowed out by the dictionary-makers,
way very possibly go down to a remote posterity, with
numerous other kindred expressions—a legacy of doubt.
fl value."