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.
the German _welken_, but I have never come upon it in literary use, and
my own books of reference give me faint help.
James Russell Lowell
Yet our
old dramatists are full of such obscurations (elisions they can hardly
be called) of the _th_, making _whe'r_ of _whether_, _where_ of
_whither_, _here_ of _hither_, _bro'r_ of _brother_, _smo'r_ of
_smother_, _mo'r_ of _mother_, and so on. And dear Brer Rabbit, can I
forget him? Indeed, it is this that explains the word _rare_ (which has
Dryden's support), and which we say of meat where an Englishman would
use _underdone_. I do not believe, with the dictionaries, that it had
ever anything to do with the Icelandic _hrar_ (_raw_), as it plainly has
not in _rareripe_, which means earlier ripe,--President Lincoln said of
a precocious boy that 'he was a _rareripe_. ' And I do not believe it,
for this reason, that the earliest form of the word with us was, and the
commoner now in the inland parts still is, so far as I can discover,
_raredone_. Golding has 'egs reere-rosted,' which, whatever else it
mean, cannot mean _raw_-roasted, I find _rather_ as a monosyllable in
Donne, and still better, as giving the sound, rhyming with _fair_ in
Warner. There is an epigram of Sir Thomas Browne in which the words
_rather than_ make a monosyllable;--
'What furie is't to take Death's part
And rather than by Nature, die by Art! '
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?
old dramatists are full of such obscurations (elisions they can hardly
be called) of the _th_, making _whe'r_ of _whether_, _where_ of
_whither_, _here_ of _hither_, _bro'r_ of _brother_, _smo'r_ of
_smother_, _mo'r_ of _mother_, and so on. And dear Brer Rabbit, can I
forget him? Indeed, it is this that explains the word _rare_ (which has
Dryden's support), and which we say of meat where an Englishman would
use _underdone_. I do not believe, with the dictionaries, that it had
ever anything to do with the Icelandic _hrar_ (_raw_), as it plainly has
not in _rareripe_, which means earlier ripe,--President Lincoln said of
a precocious boy that 'he was a _rareripe_. ' And I do not believe it,
for this reason, that the earliest form of the word with us was, and the
commoner now in the inland parts still is, so far as I can discover,
_raredone_. Golding has 'egs reere-rosted,' which, whatever else it
mean, cannot mean _raw_-roasted, I find _rather_ as a monosyllable in
Donne, and still better, as giving the sound, rhyming with _fair_ in
Warner. There is an epigram of Sir Thomas Browne in which the words
_rather than_ make a monosyllable;--
'What furie is't to take Death's part
And rather than by Nature, die by Art! '
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?
