BRITICISMS VERSUS AMERICANISMS 331 



What crowds of patients the town doctor kills, 

 Or how last fall he raised the weekly bills. 



In his ( Northern Farmer/ Tennyson used the offending word, but of 

 course under the cloak of a provincialism. Still Freeman did not 

 deign to employ it. Commenting on it, he remarks : " If fall as a 

 season of the year has gone out of use in Britain, it has gone out very 

 lately. At least I remember perfectly well the phrase of ' spring and 

 fall ' in my childhood." 



Another good illustration of a word still surviving in American 

 usage, but long ago discarded in England, is ' sick ' in the sense of ill. 

 British usage restricts the meaning to nausea, employing ill to describe 

 a man suffering with a disease of whatever sort. Yet ' sick ' is sup- 

 ported by the very best literary authority. The term occurs again and 

 again in Elizabethan literature. Eeference to Bartlett's concordance 

 will convince even the most skeptical that the word abounds in Shake- 

 speare, and that, too, in passages where the correct interpretation leaves 

 no doubt that ' ill ' is meant. Suffice it to cite only an example or two : 

 In 'Midsummer Night's Dream' (act 1, scene 1), Shakespeare makes 

 Helena say, 'Sickness is catching'; again in ' Cymbeline ' (act 5, 

 scene 4), we read, ' Yet am I better than one that's sick of the gout '; 

 and in ' Eomeo and Juliet ' (act 5, scene 2), we read, ' Here in this city 

 visiting the sick.' Not only so. ' Sick/ in the American acceptation, 

 has an unbroken line of the best literary authority from Chaucer, ' that 

 well of English undefiled/ down to Doctor Johnson, whose dictionary 

 defines the word in reference to a person afflicted with disease. Amer- 

 ican usage, furthermore, is supported by the King James version, in 

 which ' ill ' is nowhere found, and also by the Anglican Church ritual. 

 It is needless to multiply citations. If Americans sin in the improper 

 use of ' sick/ it may be urged in extenuation that they can at least 

 plead a long array of illustrious and unimpeachable authority and are 

 in good company. 



The use of ' well ' as an interjection is mentioned by Bartlett in his 

 dictionary as one of ' the most marked peculiarities of American speech.' 

 Moreover, he adds, ' Englishmen have told me that they could always 

 detect an American by the use of this word.' If this is an infallible 

 hall-mark of American speech, then American English is nearer the 

 tongue of Shakespeare than British English of the present day. For 

 the word ' well ' in the sense of an interjection occurs again and again 

 in Shakespeare. In ' Hamlet' (act 1, scene 1), Bernardo asks, ' Have 

 you had a quiet guard ? ' Francisco replies, ' Not a mouse stirring.' 

 Whereupon Bernardo adds, ' Well, good-night.' Again, in ' Midsum- 

 mer Night's Dream ' (act 3, scene 1) : 



Bottom. And then indeed let him name his name, and tell them plainly 

 he is Snug the joiner. 



Quince. Well, it shall be so. 



