No More Learning

'

The contraction _more'n_ I find in the old play 'Fuimus Troes,' in a
verse where the measure is so strongly accented as to leave it beyond
doubt,--

'A golden crown whose heirs
More than half the world subdue. '

It may be, however, that the contraction is in 'th'orld. ' It is
unmistakable in the 'Second Maiden's Tragedy:'--

'It were but folly,
Dear soul, to boast of _more than_ I can perform. '

Is our _gin_ for _given_ more violent than _mar'l_ for _marvel_, which
was once common, and which I find as late as Herrick? Nay, Herrick has
_gin_ (spelling it _gen_), too, as do the Scotch, who agree with us
likewise in preferring _chimly_ to _chimney_.

I will now leave pronunciation and turn to words or phrases which have
been supposed peculiar to us, only pausing to pick up a single dropped
stitch, in the pronunciation of the word _supreme_, which I had thought
native till I found it in the well-languaged Daniel. I will begin with a
word of which I have never met with any example in any English writer of
authority. We express the first stage of withering in a green plant
suddenly cut down by the verb _to wilt_. It is, of course, own cousin of
the German _welken_, but I have never come upon it in literary use, and
my own books of reference give me faint help. Graff gives _welhen_,
_marcescere_, and refers to _weih_ (_weak_), and conjecturally to A. -S,
_hvelan_. The A. -S. _wealwian_ (_to wither_) is nearer, but not so near
as two words in the Icelandic, which perhaps put us on the track of its
ancestry,--_velgi_, _tepefacere_, (and _velki_, with the derivative)
meaning _contaminare_. _Wilt_, at any rate, is a good word, filling, as
it does, a sensible gap between drooping and withering, and the
imaginative phrase 'he wilted right down,' like 'he caved right in,' is
a true Americanism.
_Wilt_ occurs in English provincial glossaries, but
is explained by _wither_, which with us it does not mean. We have a few
words such as _cache_, _cohog_, _carry_ (_portage_), _shoot_ (_chute_),
_timber_ (_forest_), _bushwhack_ (to pull a boat along by the bushes on
the edge of a stream), _buckeye_ (a picturesque word for the
horse-chestnut); but how many can we be said to have fairly brought into
the language, as Alexander Gill, who first mentions Americanisms, meant
it when he said, '_Sed et ab Americanis nonnulla mutuamur ut_ MAIZ _et_
CANOA'? Very few, I suspect, and those mostly by borrowing from the
French, German, Spanish, or Indian. [28] 'The Dipper,' for the 'Great
Bear,' strikes me as having a native air. _Bogus_, in the sense of
_worthless_, is undoubtedly ours, but is, I more than suspect, a
corruption of the French _bagasse_ (from low Latin _bagasea_), which
travelled up the Mississippi from New Orleans, where it was used for the
refuse of the sugar-cane. It is true, we have modified the meaning of
some words. We use _freshet_ in the sense of _flood_, for which I have
not chanced upon any authority. Our New England cross between Ancient
Pistol and Dugald Dalgetty, Captain Underhill, uses the word (1638) to
mean a _current_, and I do not recollect it elsewhere in that sense. I
therefore leave it with a? for future explorers. _Crick_ for _creek_ I
find in Captain John Smith and in the dedication of Fuller's 'Holy
Warre,' and _run_, meaning a _small stream_, in Waymouth's 'Voyage'
(1605). _Humans_ for _men_, which Mr. Bartlett includes in his
'Dictionary of Americanisms,' is Chapman's habitual phrase in his
translation of Homer. I find it also in the old play of 'The Hog hath
lost his Pearl. ' _Dogs_ for _andirons_ is still current in New England,
and in Walter de Biblesworth I find _chiens_ glossed in the margin by
_andirons_. _Gunning_ for _shooting_ is in Drayton.