in the United States of America. 509 
PROFANITY. This noun is in common use here, more particularly (as a 
clerical friend once observed to me) with the clergy. It is not in the dic- 
tionaries, and I do net recollect eyer meeting with it in English authors: 
they continue to use the word frofaneness. “ We now sce them turn their 
arms with unimpaired vigour against vice and frofaneness.”? WW arburton, 
as cited in Knox on Education, vol. ii. p. 274. This word was also used 
here from the first settlement of the country till the period of the Revolu- 
tion. 
Yo PROGRESS. This obsolete English word, which (as I have been informed) 
was never heard among us before the Revolution, has had an extraordinary 
currency for the last twenty or thirty years, notwithstanding it has been con- 
demned by the English critics, and by the best American writers. The 
use of itin Judge Marshail’s Life of Washington has been censured by 
some of our eritics (see Monthly Anthology for August 1808) ; and a 
well known English Review, in noticing the same work, thus speaks of this 
verb: “ We object to the continual use of the word frogress asa verb; we 
are aware that authorities may be found for it in English writers, but such 
use had fortunately become obsolete till the American revolution revived 
it.” — Rev. vol. vii. p. 241. It is true that some authorities may be 
pees Feo, 
that the accent was forrneety placed on the first syable, and not (as’ we 
pronounce it) on the /ast : 
“Let me wipe off this honourable dew, 
That siverly doth prégress on ty cheeks.” 
Dr. Franklin condemned the word many years ago. ‘See the Vote on the 
word Improve. tr coeeety TET SE 
PROVEN; proved. This is often heard in the debates of Congres wis is 
sometimes used by writers in the Southern. States ; but. itis unknown in 
» New England, 
PROVINCIALISM. This has been censured by some American writers.gs.9n 
unauthorized word, ninly and, though 
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