H. L. Mencken

“ The locutions that are more obviously merely fashionable slang have a harder time of it, and seldom gain lodgment. When certain advertisers in New York sought to appeal to snobs by using such Briticisms as swagger and topping in their advertisements, the town wits, led by the watchful Franklin P. Adams (though he serves the Tribune, which Clement K. Shorter once called “more English than we are English”) , fell upon them, and quickly routed them. To the average American of the plain people, indeed, any word or phrase of an obviously English flavor appears to be subtly offensive. ”

“ In the same way the word penny continues to flourish among us, despite the fact that there has been no American coin of that name for more than 125 years. We have nickel-in-the-slot machines, but when they take a cent we call them penny-in-the-slot machines. ”

“ The influence of the stage is largely responsible for the introduction and propagation of such Briticisms. Of plays dealing with fashionable life, most of those seen in the United States are of English origin, and many of them are played by English companies. Thus the social aspirants of the towns become familiar with the standard English pronunciation of the moment and with the current English phrases. It was by this route, I suppose, that old top and its analogues got in. The American actors, having no court to imitate, content themselves by imitating their English colleagues. ”

“ We have seen how, even so early as Webster’s time, the intransigent Loyalists of what Schele de Vere calls “Boston and the Boston dependencies” imitated the latest English fashions in pronunciation, and how this imitation continues to our own day. New York is but little behind, and with the affectation of what is regarded as English pronunciation there goes a constant borrowing of new English words and phrases, particularly of the sort currently heard in the West End of London. The small stores in the vicinity of Fifth avenue, for some years past, have all been turning themselves into shops. ”

“ It is on far higher and less earthly planes that Briticisms make their entry into American, and are esteemed and cultivated. Because the United States has failed to develop a native aristocracy of settled position and authority, there is still an almost universal tendency here, among folk of social pretensions, to defer to English usage and opinion. ”

“ As it is now used in the American cities it affords a convenient means of distinguishing between a large store offering various lines of merchandise and a small establishment specializing in one line. The old-fashioned country store remains a store and so does the department-store. To call either a shop would seem absurd. Shop is applied exclusively to smaller establishments, and almost always in combination with some word designating the sort of stock they carry. Shop, indeed, has always been good American, though its current application is borrowed from England. ”

“ Gordon Hall Gerould, of Princeton, who argues that it would be a sensible thing for Americans to adopt the English lift and tram in place of the more cumbersome elevator and trolley-car, and that the English, in their turn, would find the communication of ideas easier if they borrowed some of our American neologisms. [7] “Logophobia,” he says, “has usually been a sign, in men of our race, of a certain thinness of blood. The man of imagination and the man with something to say have never been afraid of words, even words that have rung strangely on the ear. ”

“ One encounters, too, in Fifth avenue and the streets adjacent, a multitude of gift-shops, tea-shops, haberdashery-shops, book-shops, luggage-shops, hat-shops and print-shops. Every apartment-house in New York has a trades-men’s entrance. To Let signs have become almost as common, at least in the East, as For Rent signs. Railway has begun to displace railroad. ”

“ It has been the finicking person, not very sure of himself, who has trod delicately between alternatives, and used the accepted and time-worn word in preference to the newer coinage, out of his abhorrence born of fear . ”