Clapin, in 1902, [1] reduced these categories to four:
1. Genuine English words, obsolete or provincial in England, and universally used in the United States.
2. English words conveying, in the United States, a different meaning from that attached to them in England.
3. Words introduced from other languages than the English:—French, Dutch, Spanish, German, Indian, etc.
4. Americanisms proper, i.e., words coined in the country, either representing some new idea or peculiar product.
Thornton, in 1912, substituted the following:
1. Forms of speech now obsolete or provincial in England, which survive in the United States, such as allow, bureau, fall, gotten, guess, likely, professor, shoat.
2. Words and phrases of distinctly American origin, such as belittle, lengthy, lightning–rod, to darken one's doors, to bark up the wrong tree, to come out at the little end of the horn, blind tiger, cold snap, gay Quaker, gone coon, long sauce, pay dirt, small potatoes, some pumpkins.
3. Nouns which indicate quadrupeds, birds, trees, articles of food, etc., that are distinctively American, such as ground–hog, hang–bird, hominy, live–oak, locust, opossum, persimmon, pone, succotash, wampum, wig–wam.
4. Names of persons and classes of persons, and of places, such as Buckeye, Cracker, Greaser, Hoosier,Old Bullion, Old Hickory, the Little Giant, Dixie, Gotham, the Bay State, the Monumental City.
5. Words which have assumed a new meaning, such as card, clever, fork, help, penny, plunder, raise, rock, sack, ticket, windfall.
In addition, Thornton added a provisional class of "words and phrases of which I have found earlier examples in American than in English writers;…with the caveat that further research may reverse the claim"—a class offering specimens in alarmist, capitalize, eruptiveness, horse of another colour (sic!), the jig's up, nameable, omnibus bill, propaganda and whitewash.
No more than a brief glance at these classifications is needed to show that they hamper the inquiry by limiting its scope—not so much, to be sure, as the ridiculous limitations of White and Lounsbury, but still very seriously. They meet the ends of
- ↑ Sylva Clapin: A New Dictionary of Americanisms, Being a Glossary of Words Supposed to be Peculiar to the United States and the Dominion of Canada; New York, 1902.
