trifling; to get shut, to get rid; gums, for overshoes (eastern Pa.); horsebeast; to lift, a collection in church, to take up; once, immediately; outcry, public auction; riffles, ripples; scrapple, an article of food; slave, a fierce dog, i.e., needing to be chained (western Pa.); to smouch, to kiss; sots, common yeast; to top (a candle), to snuff; to threap, to argue; yammer, a whine or whimper.
The South has retained fully as many old English words and pronunciations as New England, and has originated some of the most expressive terms used in ordinary conversation, a number of which, by migration, have been domesticated in the West and on the Pacific coast. Among them are afeared, afraid; amber, expectoration produced by chewing tobacco (Va., Carolina); beast, horse; branch, a stream of any size; bucket, pail; brogan, a kind of boat (Chesapeake Bay); castaway, overturned; centrical, central (Va.); to chunk, to throw a missile; coppen, cow-pens; complected, having a certain kind of complexion; condeript, thrown into fits (Ky. ); corn-dodger; cracker, a poor white (Ga., Fla.); dinghy, a kind of row-boat (Fla.); dismal, a swampy tract of land (N. C.); doeious, for docile; donock, or donnock, a stone (Southwest); escalan, a kind of coin (La.); evening, afternoon (also in Illinois); feaze or feeze, an excited state; fice or phyce, a small dog, cur; French, anything distasteful (Va., Md.); grundpy, groundpea (Tenn.); gum or bee-gum, a hive made from a hollow tree; gumbo, okra, or a dish made of it; gumbo, a patois; hammock or hummock, a peculiar kind of land, often hilly (Fla., Tex.); hoe cake, a corn cake once baked on a hoe; holpen, helped (biblical); honey-fogling, for cheating or coaxing; hot, hit; howdy, how do you do?; human, for person; Jeames, James (Ind., Va.); kiver, cover; lane, any inclosed road; lightwood, pine chips or knots; marooning, picnicking or traveling by carriage; mammoxed, seriously injured; marvel, for marble; maverick, an unbranded yearling (Texas and Southwest); million, melon; needcessity, necessity; or'nary, contemptible; paint, a spotted horse; pearl, lively, brisk; pine-tag, pine needle; a polt, a blow; pone, bread of Indian meal; powerful, very; quarters, farm buildings or out-houses inhabited by negroes; rance sniffle, a malignant act (Ga.); rantankerous, quarrelsome (Ga.); to reckon, to suppose or conclude; rock, stone; roustabout; savigerous or survigrous, fierce, alert; slash, low ground or an opening in the woods; right smart, great or considerable; to scringe, to flinch (Tex.); skygodlin, obliquely (Tex.); swash, a narrow channel of water; tackey, neglected or dowdy; to tarrify, to coerce; to tote, to carry; trash, worthless or low-born persons, especially poor white trash; to up, used as a verb; used, used to; you all, of any number of persons; you-uns, for you.
The West, using the term in its old sense, which included the interior States as well as the Northwest and Southwest, in addition to words derived from the French and Spanish, some of which have already been cited, has brought into its vocabulary many peculiar words and expressions. Such are after-clap, a demand made after a bargain is closed; Arkansas toothpick, a kind of bowie-knife; bad man, a murderer; bell mare, the horse leading a drove of mules (Southwest) ; to bear off, to separate a stray “brand” by riding between it and the herd (Southwest); bodewash (bois de vache), dried cow-dung used as fuel (Southwest); to build, to make shoes (Ohio); to buss, to strike; catawampous or catawamptious, terribly or completely; country, for State or section; cowbrute (Mo.); doggery, a grogshop; drink, river; galoot, to take a gird, for to make an effort; to hustle; keener, a sharp man; lave! (lève), get up! or rise up! (Mississippi Valley); locoed, for frenzied, Sp. loco (Kansas and Southwest); long sweetening, molasses (Iowa, from New England); main traveled road, highway; naked possessor, one without title to his farm (Southwest); oldermost, oldest; plumb sure; to pull foot, to hasten; to raise, to obtain; robbilæ, pemmican boiled with flour and water (Northwest); to slosh 'round, to brag, also to frequent saloons (South and West); sugar or sugar-tree, maple; sun-up, sunrise; swinger, the middle horses in a team of six; tenderfoot, a newcomer; to trash (to cover) a trail; every whipstick, for continually, often; to want down or up (Ill.); worm (or snake) fence; to zit, to sound like a bullet striking the water. The Pacific slope is responsible for adobe, soil from which adobe bricks are made; to bach, to camp out without ladies (Cal.); Bostons, white men in general (Or. Indian); coulee, a rocky valley (Or.); claim, land to which one has a legal right; claim-jumper, one who forcibly takes another's claim; to coyote, to sink a small shaft (Cal.); diggings, a particular locality; hardpan; heeled, for armed; pay-streak, a profitable lode or vein; rusher, a person going to the mines; tanglefoot, bad liquor. Local usage differs greatly in connection with articles in common use. The Eastern paper bag is in the central West a sack; a scuttle or pail is a bucket. The British perambulator is in the East a baby carriage, and in the Central West a baby buggy or cab. A comfortable is a comfort. A distinction, furthermore, should be made between words that are used in large cities and those that are in the main confined to small communities. In the country, people hire help and keep girls; in the cities they have servants or maids; the city nurse is lengthened in the country to nurse girl. The original English folks is now a provincialism in this country. It should be noted that most of the New England words and forms used by Lowell in the Biglow Papers are provincialisms. Some Eastern provincialisms are in general use in the Central West.
Early writers on Americanisms were wont to stamp every odd or vulgar word and expression as American, with the lamentable result, as Richard Grant White complained, of creating a belief that there is a distinctive American language, “a barbarous, hybrid dialect, grafted upon English stock;” the truth being that most of the so-called Americanisms were brought to this country by its early settlers, English, Scotch-Irish, Dutch, Germans, etc., and that many of them are now used only by the unlettered. The language of the “stage Yankee,” and that of the characters in dialect-stories, Northern and Southern, are with few exceptions English, provincial or obsolete in the mother country, and not “American” in the true sense of the word. In the county of Suffolk, according to Lounsbury, the following “Americanisms” were current as recently as 1823: Apple-fritters, by gum, chaw, cute, darnation, gal, gawky, hoss, ninny-hammer, ride like blazes, sass (sauce), sappy, and tan-
