i62 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



cynically minded that uphold and hold up (in the colloquial sense of 

 robbing on the highway) are just about opposite in their significations. 

 A similar perversity of meaning attaches to the suffix use in such expres- 

 sions, in colloquial use, as take in, do up, and some others. But it is 

 such flexibility, nevertheless, that gives the language a powerful advan- 

 tage over all other modern or ancient forms of speech. In English, too, 

 a prefix or a suffix can, upon occasion, become an independent word. 

 Thus we may speak of " isms " and " ologies " ; and of " ana," derived 

 from the termination of Shakespeariana, etc. 



4. "Reduced" Words. — Another noteworthy characteristic of modern 

 English is its capacity to " reduce " words of inordinate or unnecessary 

 length — a sort of evolutional monosyllabism, as it were, in many cases. 

 The phone and bike of the street to-day are kin of the dictionary terms 

 cab (for French cabriolet) and mob (for Latin mobile vulgiis), bus (for 

 omnibus), etc. In America Jap, for Japanese, seems common to news- 

 paperdom and occurs sometimes elsewhere. Slang and the special 

 jargons of classes, professions, etc., of course, count such " reduced " 

 words by the score. One place where the process is clearly seen at work 

 is in the case of words and place-names adopted from American Indian 

 languages. Thus, if Dr. J. H. Trumbull be right, the Algonkian 

 toboggan has, by way of Tom pung, produced pung, the name of a well- 

 known vehicle in New England; and the Indian Quaquanantuck in 

 Long Island has been " reduced " to Quag; Sagaponack to Sag, etc. 

 More than one "Hog Island" on the New England coast is perhaps 

 all that represents, by way of quahog, the Indian word seen in the Nar- 

 ragansett name of the round or hard clam, poquauhock. Other " re- 

 ductions" of words of Indian origin are: Cisco or sisco, which is all 

 that is left of the Ojibwa name of this fish of the Great Lakes, pemite- 

 wiskawet, corrupted by way of Canadian-French ; longe, or lunge, from 

 Ojibwa maskinonge — the longer term being also in use; coon, via 

 raccoon, from a Virginian Indian arakunem, or as Captain John Smith 

 spelled it, aroughcoun; etc. In most of these cases the " reduction " 

 has occurred at the beginning of the original word. Examples of 

 " reduction " in which the terminal part in more or less mutilated form 

 has survived are: Squash, which represents the Narragansett askuia- 

 squash, the name of this vegetable, of which we meet also another early 

 form, squontersquash, keeping nearer the original; hickory, from the 

 pawcohiccora (as the old writers give it) of the Virginian Indians. 

 It sometimes has happened that in one part of the country the first part 

 of an Indian word has survived in " reduction," and in another the last. 

 The Narragansett-Massachusetts scuppaiig has produced in Ehode 

 Island, etc., scup, and in some other places, perhaps pogie or paugie; 

 and poquauhock has given in Nantucket, etc., pooquaw, and elsewhere 

 quahog, cohog, or even hog. Some of the words in our English die- 



