No More Learning

Saint Simon uses it and confesses its usefulness. Speaking of the Abbe
Dubois, he says, 'Qui etoit en plein ce qu'un mauvais francois appelle
un _sacre_, mais qui ne se peut guere exprimer autrement. ' 'Not worth a
cuss,' though supported by 'not worth a damn,' may be a mere corruption,
since 'not worth a _cress_' is in 'Piers Ploughman. ' 'I don't see it,'
was the popular slang a year or two ago, and seemed to spring from the
soil; but no, it is in Cibber's 'Careless Husband. ' _Green sauce_ for
_vegetables_ I meet in Beaumont and Fletcher, Gayton, and elsewhere. Our
rustic pronunciation _sahce_ (for either the diphthong _au_ was
anciently pronounced _ah_, or else we have followed abundant analogy in
changing it to the latter sound, as we have in _chance, dance_, and so
many more) may be the older one, and at least gives some hint at its
ancestor _salsa_. _Warn_, in the sense of _notify_, is, I believe, now
peculiar to us, but Pecock so employs it. I find _primmer_ (_primer_, as
we pronounce it) in Beaumont and Fletcher, and a 'square eater' too
(compare our '_square_ meal'), _heft_ for _weight_, and 'muchness' in
the 'Mirror for Magistrates,' _bankbill_ in Swift and Fielding, and _as_
for _that_ I might say _passim_. _To cotton to_ is, I rather think, an
Americanism. The nearest approach to it I have found is _cotton
together_, in Congreve's 'Love for Love. ' To _cotton_ or _cotten_, in
another sense, is old and common. Our word means to _cling_, and its
origin, possibly, is to be sought in another direction, perhaps in A. S.
_cvead_, which means _mud, clay_ (both proverbially clinging), or better
yet, in the Icelandic _qvoda_ (otherwise _kod_), meaning _resin_ and
_glue_, which are [Greek: kat' exochaen], sticky substances. To _spit
cotton_ is, I think, American, and also, perhaps, to _flax_ for to
_beat_.
_To the halves_ still survives among us, though apparently
obsolete in England. It means either to let or to hire a piece of land,
receiving half the profit in money or in kind (_partibus locare_). I
mention it because in a note by some English editor, to which I have
lost my reference, I have seen it wrongly explained. The editors of
Nares cite Burton. _To put_, in the sense of _to go_, as _Put! _ for
_Begone! _ would seem our own, and yet it is strictly analogous to the
French _se mettre a la voie_, and the Italian _mettersi in via_. Indeed,
Dante has a verse,

'_Io sarei_ [for _mi sarei_] _gia messo per lo sentiero_,'

which, but for the indignity, might be translated,

'I should, ere this, have _put_ along the way,'

I deprecate in advance any share in General Banks's notions of
international law, but we may all take a just pride in his exuberant
eloquence as something distinctively American. When he spoke a few years
ago of 'letting the Union slide,' even those who, for political
purposes, reproached him with the sentiment, admired the indigenous
virtue of his phrase. Yet I find 'let the world slide' in Heywood's
Edward IV. ;' and in Beaumont and Fletcher's 'Wit without Money,'
Valentine says,

'Will you go drink,
And let the world slide? '

So also in Sidney's 'Arcadia,'

'Let his dominion slide. '

In the one case it is put into the mouth of a clown, in the other, of a
gentleman, and was evidently proverbial. It has even higher sanction,
for Chaucer writes,

'Well nigh all other cures _let he slide_. '

Mr. Bartlett gives 'above one's bend' as an Americanism; but compare
Hamlet's 'to the top of my bent.