H.L. Mencken (1880–1956). The American Language. 1921.
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made by the simple process of back formation, as, to resurrect, to excurt, to resolute, to burgle18 and to enthuse.19
Some of these inventions, after flourishing for a generation or more, were retired with blushes during the period of æsthetic consciousness following the Civil War, but a large number have survived to our own day, and are in good usage. Not even the most bilious purist would think of objecting to to affiliate, to endorse, to collide, to jeopardize, to predicate, to progress, to itemize, to resurrect or to Americanize today, and yet all of them gave grief to the judicious when they first appeared in the debates of Congress, brought there by statesmen from the backwoods. Nor to such simpler verbs of the period as to corner (i. e., the market), to boss and to lynch.20 Nor perhaps to to boom, to boost, to kick (in the sense of to protest), to coast (on a sled), to engineer, to chink (i. e., logs), to feaze, to splurge, to bulldoze, to aggravate (in the sense of to anger), to yank and to crawfish. These verbs have entered into the very fibre of the American vulgate, and so have many nouns derived from them, e. g., boomer, boom-town, bouncer, kicker, kick, splurge, roller-coaster. A few of them, e. g., to collide and to feaze, were archaic English terms brought to new birth; a few others, e. g., to holler21 and to muss, were obviously mere corruptions. But a good many others, e. g., to bulldoze, to hornswoggle and to scoot, were genuine inventions, and redolent of the soil.
With the new verbs came a great swarm of verb-phrases, some of
Note 18. J. R. Ware, in Passing English of the Victorian Era, says that to burgle was introduced to London by W. S. Gilbert in The Pirates of Penzance (April 3, 1880). It was used in America 30 years before. [back]
Note 19. This process, of course, is philologically respectable, however uncouth its occasional products may be. By it we have acquired many every-day words, among them, to accept (from acceptum), to exact (from exactum), to darkle (from darkling), and pea (from pease=pois). [back]
Note 20. All authorities save one seem to agree that this verb is a pure Americanism, and that it is derived from the name of Charles Lynch, a Virginia justice of the peace, who jailed many Loyalists in 1780 without warrant in law. The dissentient, Bristed, says that to linch is in various northern English dialects, and means to beat or maltreat. [back]
Note 21. The correct form of this appears to be halloo or holloa, but in America it is pronounced holler and usually represented in print by hollo or hollow. I have often encountered holloed in the past tense. But the Public Printer frankly accepts holler. Vide the Congressional Record, May 12, 1917, p. 2309. The word, in the form of hollering, is here credited to “Hon.” John L. Burnett, of Alabama. There can be no doubt that the hon. gentleman said hollering, and not holloaing, or holloeing, or hollowing, or hallooing. Hello is apparently a variation of the same word. [back]
