American English. 



353 



in some of our southern cities." " Bowie," and " bowie-knife " are 

 separately entered. " Breakbone " is " a species of fever," and then 

 follows " breakbone fever," with full definition. " Bulldoze " is " to 

 intimidate," and on the next page we have to bulldoze," "to intimi- 

 date by violent means." " Filibuster " is a freebooter; " filibustering^ " 

 is " freebooting ; " and " to filibuster" is *^ to aquire by freebooting ; " 

 three separate entries. **A loafer" is an idle lounger, and. "to loaf" 

 is " to lounge." " To lynch," " lyncher " and '-lynch law " are sepa- 

 rately explained. *'Muss," a corruption of "mess," is first elaborately 

 defined as a noun, with examples, and then as a verb. A " pony " is 

 a translation, and " to pony " is to use a translation. " To post " a 

 person is to inform him, and then we are told that "posted" means 

 informed. " To red up," meaning to set in order, is twice defined — 

 once on page 517 and again on page 520. " To run" is " to cause to 

 run," with the phrase "to run a church" as an example; and just 

 below we find another entry — " to run a church," " to have the charge 

 of a church." To spin street yarn" (page 636) is "to go gadding 

 about the streets ; " and on page 798, under the heading " street 

 yarn," we learn that to spin street yarn " is " to frequent the streets 

 without any definite object." A stove pipe " is a tall hat ; and then 

 follows a second entry, "stovepipe hat, a tall hat." A **suck in" is 

 "a cheat," and "to suck in" is "to take in, to cheat." Many more 

 instances might be mentioned; but it is hardly necessary to go further 

 than this, in order to show how the book is filled up and expanded, 

 without rhyme or reason. Mr. Bartlett would have done better to take 

 pattern from Halliwell's admirable dictionary, a work that contains 

 . nearly ten times as many entries as the Dictionary of Americanisms, 

 but fills less than fifty more pages. 



Coming now to genuine Americanisms, words and phrases really 

 peculiar to this country, or used here in a sense never recognized in 

 England — it is needless to take note of any that are correctly defined 

 by Bartlett, his book being, as has been said, notwithstanding all its 

 faults, indisputably the standard work of reference on this subject. 

 Among those that he has either omitted, or about which his state- 

 ments seem to invite remark, are the following : 



Blizzard. — This remarkable word Mr, Bartlett defines as " a poser," 

 having noticed, apparently, only a single instance of its use, and 

 jumped at the conclusion that this is the meaning intended. He adds 

 the comment, ''not known in the Eastern States," which was gener- 

 ally true, no doubt, until the sharp winter of 1880-81 familiarized the 

 term — as well as the thing itself, in a greatly modified form — to the 

 ^residents of the East. I suppose I need not say that a real blizzard, 

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