The Portland daily press., 1894-11-03
USE OF WORDS.
"hiie Maine Boys Play "Tfookey." Boston
boys Hook Jack"--Different Meaning
oou In Different Places.


In no country in the world is the dietion-
airy held in such esteem. as in the United
states. Next to the ia. nily Bible, it is the
book surely found in every household pos
sessing books at all. An appeal to il is
final. The dictionary says SO. and that
settles IL" Our children trained, as
we were before them, not to use certain
words, because they are not in the diction-
airy, and to pronounce their English by the
dictionary rules,'' says the New York Sun.
~ WIZ surprise a community with such ira
oitlons TO learn that the fol emost philologists
anu phonetlcians in the country, the men
VINO make the dictionaries. casting aside
Inc accepted standards of RECOMMENDATIONS,
axe studying tho living language as, 1t is
SPOKEN not SO much by the educated as BY
chiieren and people in country or town
whose education has been little or nothing,
ana whose lives nave brought them as lit.
tie as possible into contact with books. Mod
ern philology looks on Language as an ever
changing organism, which must be watched
while 1t is growing. What is good English
In our generation may be obsolete in the
next. The slang of today may work itself
into the orthodox language OF to morrow.
Words fight their way. The idea that every
werd IN use by any portion Of the oommun-
1ty Is worthy OF attention is accepted by
students Of language throughout the world.
For twenty years past in Germany,
France, Italy, and England societies and
individuals have been collecting facts about
speech, with no pFeeonceiyed notions Of
right OF wrong usage. In 1889 the American
Dialect Society was started for this purpose
at Harvard College, rather informally and
d q mn Jl..4f II =
Sheldon. the reviser OF the etymologies in
the new Webster and the leading authority
on phonetics in this country by Profes OF
+. D. Allen. Professor George L. Kittredge
Mr.. G. II. Grandgent, Mr.. E. H. Babbitt,
and few others. The first President was
Professor F. J. Child of Harvard The So
ciety at once met with hearty reception
from scholars in all parts of the country,
| who until now have formed the greater
number OF its members. In five years it has
published about 400 pagers of valuable ma
terial, but its chief labor has been in COLLEGE
ting facts of all kinds and in systematizing
them, SO that the society can now profitably
carry out its original plan of calling on the
general public for cooperation. The shift
ing of the facts.th tracing of history Of
words and sounds, can, of course, be done
by experts only; but it requ res no special
taining and vers little trouble to write
down any strange word Or odd meaning on
countered, land send it to. the secretary Of
the .society. Co14Hntry physicians and clergy
hen. commercial travellers, persons spend
ing the summer in remote Places, can help,
all. Teachers might make lists of the words
and recommendations they correct in the
mouths Of their pupils. Some newspaper
men have unusual opportunities of meeting
with slang and dialects.
Some instances of the way in which infor-
nation reaches the society will be of inter-
est. A professor in thu University Of Mich
igan had labored all his life under the I'M
preston that to squint meant to be, CROSS
eyed,to have some irregularity in the direc-
tion of the eyeball, The dictionaries give
but that meaning and the fgurative mean.
ings derived from it. He discovered by ac-
chent that his wife understood squint to
mean Ito peer through almost closed eye
lids" He thereupon examined 12s MEM
bers Of the university on their understand.
ing of the word and found that only two
agreed to his idea. that oily eighty-fye
only knew his wife's meaning, whichis not
recognized in any dictioIsary. and to the
other thirty-fye, who knew both the die
tionary meaning was the least familiar. Het
for heated was first heard of from Louisia-
ma. but was afterward reported from so
many parts of the country that it seems
to be in universal use. The members of the
society, being largely college graduates,
went back to their boyhood for their own
reminiscences.sd0 One reportfd from Cincin-
natl that whenivhs coasted on his stomach
Jon his, sled it waf fslleds hip 60 belly grind
err That brougbtia teEms from the whole \
Union. In Maine and Massachusetts, il, was
belly bump and bellFfbqnt, in Jersey, City
pellgcwhopper and belly gutter; in the
South, belly whacker, in Missouri, belly bus
ter The game known as duck" in Maine
is duck and drake in Ghicopee: duck on the
rock in Boston and Jersey City; duck on
davy in Philadelphia and duck and davy
in western Pennsylvania. The society has
also an elaborate vocabulary of the techni-
cal terms used in playing marbles.
The historical value of some word can be
shown by an example or two. "That's no
great killlcow." from Cape Cod, meaning
no great matter, has been traced to Queen
Elizabeth's time. ''Seoggins,' butt for
ridicule, from Provincetown. is of Edward
Nv. "Tortience.' thesyoungest of the fam
lily, the baby from Cape Cod, is Eliza
abethan. ITO enjoy poor health is COM,
mon in the midland counties of England.
The vocabulary of old people, those who
grew up before the heavy foreign immis ra-
ton began. is specially valuable. Relics of |
this are fezineh, las far as KNOW, found |
In western Massachusetts,, and fortinah, |
for aught know In Connecticut, which |
are nearly extinct. MugwumI was current |
in northern Vermont in the early fiifties, |
meaning "a person who max es great pre-
tensions and whose character or ability or |
resources are not equal to his pretens.ons. |
Professor Sheldon. by the way, finds the |
evidence insufficient to connect this word |
with the mugquomp. corresponding to duke |
of E lot Bible.
Maine Boys play hockey, Boston boys |
hook jack, or hook off. jelly must tell the |
country over, though the dictionary will |
not amnit It, suck egg dog is.a very |
mean dog down in Kentucky; in. Missouri |
they used to could'': Iidiclus is detestable |
n New Engand; the wind is out, when it |
blows from the sea at Portsmouth. Gall |
means means pumgtioqsnesss in Cincinnati; in
boston and Cambridge 1t means effrontery,
anu ,S vas In use at Harvard College as early