No More Learning

) told me that he once heard five 'wells,'
like pioneers, precede the answer to an inquiry about the price of land.
The first was the ordinary _wul_, in deference to custom; the second,
the long, perpending _ooahl_, with a falling inflection of the voice;
the third, the same, but with the voice rising, as if in despair of a
conclusion, into a plaintively nasal whine; the fourth, _wulh_, ending
in the aspirate of a sigh; and then, fifth, came a short, sharp _wal_,
showing that a conclusion had been reached. I have used this latter form
in the 'Biglow Papers,' because, if enough nasality be added, it
represents most nearly the average sound of what I may call the
interjection.

A locution prevails in the Southern and Middle States which is so
curious that, though never heard in New England, I will give a few lines
to its discussion, the more readily because it is extinct elsewhere. I
mean the use of _allow_ in the sense of _affirm_, as 'I allow that's a
good horse. ' I find the word so used in 1558 by Anthony Jenkinson in
Hakluyt: 'Corne they sowe not, neither doe eate any bread, mocking the
Christians for the same, and disabling our strengthe, saying we live by
eating the toppe of a weede, and drinke a drinke made of the same,
_allowing_ theyr great devouring of flesh and drinking of milke to be
the increase of theyr strength. ' That is, they undervalued our strength,
and affirmed their own to be the result of a certain diet. In another
passage of the same narrative the word has its more common meaning of
approving or praising: 'The said king, much allowing this declaration,
said. ' Ducange quotes Bracton _sub voce_ ADLOCARE for the meaning 'to
admit as proved,' and the transition from this to 'affirm,' is by no
means violent. Izaak Walton has 'Lebault _allows_ waterfrogs to be good
meat,' and here the word is equivalent to _affirms_. At the same time,
when we consider some of the meanings of _allow_ in old English, and of
_allouer_ in old French, and also remember that the verbs _prize_ and
_praise_ are from one root, I think we must admit _allaudare_ to a share
in the paternity of _allow_. The sentence from Hakluyt would read
equally well, 'contemning our strengthe, . . . and praising (or valuing)
their great eating of flesh as the cause of their increase in strength.
'
After all, if we confine ourselves to _allocare_, it may turn out that
the word was somewhere and somewhen used for _to bet_, analogously to
_put up, put down, post_ (cf. Spanish _apostar_), and the like. I hear
boys in the street continually saying, 'I bet that's a good horse,' or
what not, meaning by no means to risk anything beyond their opinion in
the matter.

The word _improve_, in the sense of to 'occupy, make use of, employ,' as
Dr. Pickering defines it, he long ago proved to be no neologism. He
would have done better, I think, had he substituted _profit by_ for
_employ_. He cites Dr. Franklin as saying that the word had never, so
far as he knew, been used in New England before he left it in 1723,
except in Dr. Mather's 'Bemarkable Providences,' which he oddly calls a
'very old book. ' Franklin, as Dr. Pickering goes on to show, was
mistaken.

Mr. Bartlett in his 'Dictionary' merely abridges Pickering. Both of them
should have confined the application of the word to material things, its
extension to which is all that is peculiar in the supposed American use
of it. For surely 'Complete Letter-Writers' have been '_improving_ this
opportunity' time out of mind. I will illustrate the word a little
further, because Pickering cites no English authorities.