332 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



In Beaumont and Fletcher's 'Captain' (act 3, scene 3), we find an 

 excellent example in the line, ' Well, I shall live to see your husbands 

 beat you.' No one, of course, would think of charging Tennyson with 

 using unidiomatic English. Yet, in ' Locksley Hall,' you read : 



'Well— 't is well that I should bluster.' 

 Surely it is superfluous to cite further examples from English authors 

 showing that American usage in the case of ' well ' as an interjection 

 is perfectly good English, even if the locution is censured by British 

 pedantry and never heard on British lips. 



The trite and hard-worked 'guess,' as characteristic of American 

 speech as the much-abused ' fancy ' is of British speech, furnishes an- 

 other conspicuous example of a reputable word in Elizabethan English 

 which has become obsolete in England, but is still preserved on this 

 side of the Atlantic. There is no doubt that our constant employment 

 of this good old Saxon word to do service on every occasion and to 

 express every shade of thought from mild conjecture to positive asser- 

 tion is somewhat inelegant; and this circumstance has perhaps con- 

 tributed to bring the overtaxed phrase into disrepute with our kin 

 across the sea. Yet there is abundant warrant in Elizabethan usage 

 for the familiar notation we give ' guess ' in our every-day speech, 

 although it is generally confined to its strict meaning of conjecture in 

 that period of the language. We find it used in the familiar sense of 

 1 think ' in several passages in Shakespeare, notably in ' I. Henry VI.' 

 (act 2, scene 1) : 



Not altogether; better far, I guess, 



That we do make our entrance several ways. 



Likewise, in 'Measure for Measure' (act 4, scene 4) : 



Angela. And why meet him at the gates and redeliver our authorities 

 there ? 



Escahis. I guess not. 



So, again, in the 'Winter's Tale' (act 4, scene 3) : 



Camillo. Which, I do guess, you do not purpose to him. 

 But this meaning of ' guess ' is common throughout the entire his- 

 tory of English literature, for the word has always borne the sense of 

 think, cheek by jowl with its specific meaning of conjecture. It is so 

 employed by Chaucer and Gower in early times and in the last century 

 by Sheridan and Wordsworth, certainly good literary authority enough. 

 However, this meaning of the term appears to have died out in the 

 present-day British speech, and the word is there employed strictly in 

 the sense of conjecture, its lost sense being supplied by ' fancy.' Now, 

 as between the Briton's ' fancy ' and the American's ' guess,' there may 

 not be much choice. But certainly the employment of ' guess ' which 

 our British cousins claim to be a shibboleth of American nationality 



