American English. 



341 



(m:irk left by small-pox); quail (to shrink); ragamuffin; riffraff; rig- 

 marole; scant; seedy ("miserable looking "); shingles; sorrel (the color); 

 out of sorts; stale (" wanting freshness ") ; sutler; thill; toady; trash; 

 underpinning. All these words, with many others equally familiar in 

 the United States, are apparently regarded by Halliwell as having 

 become obsolete in England. 



It would not be difficult, on the other hand, to compile quite a list 

 of Briticisms, including words recently invented in Great Britain, 

 like totalling, or (still worse) totting, for adding up; navvy, for 

 laborer ; fad, for pastime * ; randomly, for at random ; outing, for 

 pleasure excursion ; tund, for beat \ ; and a larger class of old words 

 now used in that country in a comparatively new and in some re- 

 spects objectionable signification not generally recognized in the 

 United States. 



I remember hearing with astonishment, a dozL-n years ago, from an 

 English gentleman of culture and high social standing, that it was 

 necessary to remove the gates of Quebec, "to give more room for 

 traffic.^^ I asked no questions, but wondered inwardly whether the 

 people of the American Gibraltar were in the habit, like the ancient 

 Orientals, of resorting to the gates of the town to exchange commo- 

 dities with each other. On our arrival, next morning, the mystery 

 was solved ; it was travel, not barter, that my friend meant by traflSc. 

 The word is continually thus misused in England, and it must be 

 sorrowfully admitted that the bad habit is now slowly invading this 

 country as well, not so much among the people, however, as in a kind 

 of technical way. The New York Central Railroad, for instance, has 

 a "general traffic manager," who certainly manages no traffic, the cor- 

 poration being carriers and not traders. 



Other examples — as yet, happily, not naturalized in American 

 usage — are : KnocTced-up, for fatigued ; Famous, for excellent — " we 

 have had a famous walk," meaning an enjoyable gne ; bargain, for hag- 

 glej — Mr. Boffin, I never bargain," says Silas Wegg in Our Mutual 

 Friend ^Bookl, chapter 5) — he was bargaining at that very moment; 

 tiresome, for disagreeable ; the particularly refined and elegant expres- 

 sion rot, for nonsense ; jug, for pitcher ; good form, for in good taste ; 

 trap, for carriage ; tub, for bathe ; to wire, for to telegraph ; starved, for 

 frozen; stop, for stay — "not that she would mind, if T were to stop 

 out till midnight," says Cynthia "Walters, in Mallock's Romance of the 



* ' It is your favorite fad to draw plans " — Dorothea in Middlemarch, Book I, chap, 4. 



+ Even Spencer condescends to the use of this extraordinary vocable, though he offers 

 a sort of semi-apology by putting it in quotation marks — Study of Sociology, chap. 8. 



% Th© anonymous author of Chatto and Windus' Slang Dictionary (new edition, Lon- 

 don 1874 falls into this error, which surely cught not to be expectei of a lexicographer. 

 See page 353 of the work referred to. 



