H. L. Mencken

“ In English colloquial usage jolly means almost anything; it intensifies all other adjectives, even including miserable and homesick. An Englishman is jolly bored, jolly hungry or jolly well tired; his wife is jolly sensible; his dog is jolly keen; the prices he pays for things are jolly dear (never steep or stiff or high: all Americanisms) . But he has no noun to match the American proposition, meaning proposal, business, affair, case, consideration, plan, theory, solution and what not: only the German zug can be ranged beside it. [25] And he has no verb in such wide practise as to fix. ”

“ In England there is a rigid distinction between a broker and a stock-broker. A broker means, not a dealer in securities, as in our Wall Street broker, but a dealer in second-hand furniture. To have the brokers [10] in the house means to be bankrupt, with one’s very household goods in the hands of one’s creditors. For a City man to swindle a competitor in England is not to do him up or to do him, but to do him in. When any English business man retires he does not actually retire ”

“ The common American use of peanut as an adjective of disparagement, as in peanut politics, is incomprehensible to him.
In England a hack is not a public coach, but a horse let out at hire, or one of similar quality. A life insurance policy is usually not an insurance policy at all, but an assurance policy. What we call the normal income tax is the ordinary tax; what we call the surtax is the supertax. [15] An Englishman never lives on a street, but always in it. ”

“ In the United States a lawyer tries a case and the judge hears it; in England the judge tries it. In the United States the court hands down a decision; in England the court hands it out. In the United States a lawyer probates a will; in England he proves it, or has it admitted to probate.
The common objects and phenomena of nature are often differently named in England and America. As we saw in a previous chapter, such Americanisms as creek and run, for small streams, are practically unknown in England, and the English moor and downs early disappeared from American. ”

“ An Englishman never goes to a dentist to have his teeth fixed. He does not fix the fire; he makes it up, or mends it. He is never well-fixed, either in money or by liquor. [26] The American use of to run is also unfamiliar to Englishmen. They never run can hotel, or a railroad; they always keep it or manage it.
The English use quite a great deal more than we do, and, as we have seen, in a different sense. Quite rich, in American, means tolerably rich, richer than most; quite so, in English, is identical in meaning with exactly so. ”

“ The American language, as we have seen, has begun to take in the English boot and shop, and it is showing hospitality to head-master, haberdasher and week-end, but subaltern, civil servant, porridge, moor, draper, treacle, tram and mufti are still rather strangers in the United States, as bleachers, picayune, air-line, campus, chore, stogic and hoodoo are in England. A subaltern is a commissioned officer in the army, under the rank of captain. A civil servant is a public servant in the national civil service; if he is of high rank, he is usually called a permanent official. ”

“ What we call simply football is Rugby or Rugger to the Englishman. The word soccer is derived from association; the rules of the game were established by the London Football Association. Soccer is one of the relatively few English experiments in portmanteau words. Another is to be found in Bakerloo, the name of one of the London underground lines, from Baker-street and Waterloo, its termini.
But though the English talk of racing, football, cricket and golf a great deal, they have developed nothing comparable to the sporting argot used by all American sporting reporters. ”

“ Various very common American phrases are quite unknown to him, for example, over his signature, on time and planted to corn. The first-named he never uses, and he has no equivalent for it; an Englishman who issues a signed statement simply makes it in writing. He knows nothing of our common terms of disparagement, such as kike, wop, yap and rube. His pet-name for a tiller of the soil is not Rube or Cy, but Hodge. When he goes gunning he does not call it hunting, but shooting; hunting is reserved for the chase of the fox. When he goes to a dentist he does not have his teeth filled, but stopped. ”

“ He does not ask his servant, “Is there any mail for me?” but “Are there any letters for me?” for mail, in the American sense, is a word that he seldom uses, save in such compounds as mail-van, mail-train and mail-order. He alwaus speaks of it as the post. The man who brings it is not a letter-carrier but a postman. ”

“ And the white-clad young gentlemen who make love to them are not studying medicine but walking the hospitals. Similarly, an English law student does not study law, but reads the law.
If an English boy goes to a public school, it is not a sign that he is getting his education free, but that his father is paying a good round sum for it and is accepted as a gentleman. A public school over there corresponds to our prep school; it is a place maintained chiefly by endowments, wherein boys of the upper classes are prepared for the universities. ”

“ The English use of holy orders is also strange to us. They do not say that a young man is studying for the ministry, but that he is reading for holy orders. They do not say that he is ordained, but that he takes orders. Save he be in the United Free Church of Scotland, he is never a minister, though the term appears in the Book of Common Prayer; save he be a nonconformist, he is never a pastor; a clergyman of the Establishment is always either a rector, a vicar or a curate, and colloquially a parson. [20]
In American chapel simply means a small church, usually the branch of some larger one ”

“ A member of Parliament does not run for re-election; he stands. He does not make a campaign, but a canvass. [12] He does not represent a district, but a division or constituency. He never makes a stumping trip, but always a speaking tour. When he looks after his fences he calls it nursing the constituency. At a political meeting (they are often rough in England) the bouncers are called stewards; the suffragettes used to delight in stabbing them with hatpins. A member of Parliament is not afflicted by the numerous bugaboos that menace an American congressman. ”

“ In England a corporation is a public company or limited liability company. The term corporation, over there, is commonly applied only to the mayor, aldermen and sheriffs of a city, as in the London corporation. ”

“ An English boy whose father is unable to pay for his education goes first into a babies’ class (a kindergarten is always a private school) in a primary or infants’ school. He moves thence to class one, class two, class three and class four, and then into the junior school or public elementary school, where he enters the first standard. Until now boys and girls have sat together in class, but hereafter they are separated, the boy going to a boys’ school and the girl to a girls’. He goes up a standard a year. ”

“ A train headed toward London is always an up-train, and the track it runs on is the up-line. Eastbound and westbound tracks and trains are unknown in England, and in general the Englishman has a much less keen sense of the points of the compass than the American. ”

“ He never lives in a block of houses, but in a row; it is never in a section of the city, but always in a district. The business-blocks that are so proudly exhibited in all small American towns are quite unknown to him. ”

“ A backyard is a garden. A subway is always a tube, or the underground. But an underground passage for pedestrians is a subway. English streets have no sidewalks; they always call them pavements or foot-paths or simply paths. An automobile is always a motor-car or motor. ”

“ In the United States a pressman is a man who runs a printing press; in England he is a newspaper reporter, or, as the English usually say, a journalist. [13] This journalist works, not at space rates, but at lineage rates. A printing press is a machine. An editorial in a newspaper is a leading article or leader. An editorial paragraph is a leaderette, or par. A newspaper clipping is a cutting. A pass to the theatre is an order. ”

“ And the grave of the tin, once it is emptied, is not the ash-can, but the dust-bin, and the man who carries it away is not the garbage-man or the ash-man or the white-wings, but the dustman.
An Englishman, entering his home, does not walk in upon the first floor, but upon the ground floor. ”

“ A Methodist, in Great Britain, is not ordinarily a Methodist, but a Wesleyan. Contrariwise, what the English call simply a churchman is an Episcopalian in the United States, what they call the Church (always capitalized!) ”

“ He never uses to notify as a transitive verb; an official act may be notified, but not a person. He never uses gotten as the perfect participle of get; he always uses plain got. [24] An English servant never washes the dishes; she always washes the dinner or tea things. She doesn’t live out, but goes into service. Her beau is not her fellow, but her young man. She does not keep company with him but walks out with him. She is never hired, but always engaged; only inanimate things, such as a hall or cab, are hired. When her wages are increased she does not get a raise, but a rise. ”

“ It concerns a young American woman living in a region of prolific orchards who is asked by a visiting Englishman what the residents do with so much frut. Her reply is a pun: “We eat all we can, and what we can’t we can.” This answer would mystify most Englishmen, for in the first place it involves the use of the flat American a in can’t and in the second place it applies an unfamiliar name to the vessel that the Englishman knows as a tin, and then adds to the confusion by deriving a verb from the substantive. There are no such tings as canned-goods in England ”

“ Those who fail in their matriculation for universities or who wish to study for the civil service or pupil teachers’ examinations go into a thing called the remove, which is less a class than a state of mind. Here are the Brahmins, the contemplative Olympians, the prefects, the lab. monitors. The term public elementary school is recent. It was invented when the old board school system was abolished about 1906. But the term standard is ancient.” The principal of an English public (i. e., private) school is a head-master or head-mistress, but in a council school he or she may be a principal. ”

“ The functionaries who collect and spend money are not office-holders, but public-servants. The head of the local police is not a chief of police, but a chief constable. The fire department is the fire brigade. The street-cleaner is a crossing-sweeper. ”

“ Open-shop is another. It means, in England, what an American union man (English: trades-unionist) calls a closed-shop. And closed-shop, in England, means what an American calls an open-shop! Finally, there is the verb-phrase, to carry on. In the United States it means to make a great pother; in England it means to persevere. ”

“ When an Englishman boards a ’bus, in fact, it is not at a corner at all, but at a crossing, though he is familiar with such forms as Hyde Park Corner. The place he is bound for is not three squares or blocks away, but three turnings. Square, in England, always means a small park. ”

“ Tariff reform, in England, does not mean a movement toward free trade, but one toward protection. The word Government, meaning what we call the administration, is always capitalized and plural, e. g., “The Government are considering the advisability, etc.” Vestry, committee, council, ministry and even company are also plural, though sometimes not capitalized. ”

“ He is much less prodigal with good-bye than the American; he uses good-day and good-afternoon far more often. A shop-assistant would never say good-bye to a customer. To an Englishman it would have a subtly offensive smack ”

“ The titular head of a university is a chancellor or rector. [6] He is always some eminent public man, and a vice-chancellor or vice-rector performs his duties. The head of a mere college may be a president, principal, master, warden, rector, dean or provost.
At the universities the students are not divided into freshmen, sophomores, juniors and seniors, as with us, but are simply first-year-men, second-year-men, and so on, though a first-year-man is sometimes a fresher. ”

“ When he gets home, he doesn’t find his wife waiting for him in the parlor or living-room, [2] but in the drawing-room or in her sitting-room, and the tale of domestic disaster that she has to tell does not concern the hired-girl but the scullery-maid. He doesn’t bring her a box of candy, but a box of sweets. He doesn’t leave a derby hat in the hall, but a bowler. ”

“ So, by the way, is a trained nurse in a hospital, whose full style is not Miss Jones, but Nurse Jones or Sister. And the hospital itself, if private, is not a hospital at all, but a nursing-home, and its trained nurses are plain nurses, or hospital nurses, or maybe nursing sisters. ”

“ The room-clerk of a hotel is the secretary. A real-estate agent or dealer is an estate-agent. The English keep up most of the old distinctions between physicians and surgeons, barristers and solicitors. ”