"
One of the most remarkable paragraphs in Mr. Tucker's book is that in
which he proves "the greater permanence and steadiness of our American
speech as compared with that of the mother country" by going through
Halliwell's _Dictionary of Archaisms and Provincialisms_, and picking
out 76 words which Halliwell regards as obsolete, but which in America
are all alive and kicking. (The vulgarism is mine, not Mr. Tucker's.)
Now as a matter of fact not one of these words is really obsolete in
England, and most of them are in everyday use; for instance, adze,
affectation, agape, to age, air (appearance), appellant, apple-pie
order, baker's dozen, bamboozle, bay window, between whiles, bicker,
blanch, to brain, burly, catcall, clodhopper, clutch, coddle, copious,
cosy, counterfeit money, crazy (dilapidated), crone, crook, croon,
cross-grained, cross-patch, cross purposes, cuddle, to cuff (to strike),
cleft, din, earnest money, egg on, greenhorn, jack-of-all-trades,
loophole, settled, ornate, to quail, ragamuffin, riff-raff, rigmarole,
scant, seedy, out of sorts, stale, tardy, trash. How Halliwell ever came
to class these words as archaic I cannot imagine; but I submit that any
one who sets forth to write about the English of England ought to have
sufficient acquaintance with the language to check and reject
Halliwell's amazing classification.
Pages:
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216