H. L. Mencken

“ Joy-ride became a verb the day after it was born as a noun. So did auto and phone. So did the adjective, a. w. o. l. Immediately the Workmen’s Compensation Act began to appear on the statute-books of the States, the adjective compensable was born. Other adjectives are made by the simple process of adding -y to nouns, e. g., classy, tasty, tony. And what of livest? An astounding inflection, indeed—but with quite sound American usage behind it. ”

“ The rapidity with which new verbs are made in the United States is really quite amazing. Two days after the first regulations of the Food Administration were announced, to hooverize appeared spontaneously in scores of newspapers, and a week later it was employed without any visible sense of its novelty in the debates of Congress and had taken on a respectability equal to that of to bryanize, to fletcherize and to oslerize. ”

“ The rapidity with which words move through the parts of speech must be observed by every student of American. The case of bum I have already cited: it is noun, adjective, verb and adverb. The adjective lonesome, in “all by her lonesome,” becomes a sort of pronoun. The verb to think, in “he had another think coming,” becomes a noun. Jitney is an old American noun lately revived; a month after its revival it was also an adjective, and before long it will be a verb. To lift up was turned tail first and made a substantive, and is now also an adjective and a verb. ”

“ Many clipped verbs have noun parallels, while some are simply clipped nouns used as verbs.” [5] Miss Wittmann calls attention to the curious fact that very few adjectives are clipped in American; there are actually more of them in British English. Sesech (from secessionist, really a noun, but often used as an adjective) is one of the few familiar examples. Adjectives are made copiously in American, but most of them are made by other processes.
Another popular sort of neologism is the blend- or portmanteau- word. ”

“ Every American, traveling on the railways which converge upon London, must have experienced a difficulty in discovering whether the station at which his train has paused is Stoke Pogis or Bovril, Chipping Norton or Mazzawattee. ”

“ He never uses a long word when a short one will answer, and he never uses articles when they can be avoided. Possibly the omission of the article in such American phrases as up street, all year and all Sunday (the Englishman would probably say all day on Sunday) is largely due to his influence. Certainly, he is an eager merchant of all such neologisms as sub-deb, stand-pat, try-out, co-ed, gym, auto, defi and phone. ”

“ To this day they are formed in great numbers; scarcely a new substantive of more than two syllables comes in without bringing one in its wake. We have thus witnessed, within the past few years, the genesis of scores now in wide use and fast taking on respectability: phone for telephone, gas for gasoline, co-ed for co-educational, pop for populist, frat for fraternity, gym for gymnasium, movie for moving picture, plane for air-plane, prep-school for preparatory-school, auto for automobile, aero for aeroplane and aeronautical. ”

“ Roosevelt was an editor, announces on its letter paper that it is “the livest magazine in America,” and Poetry, the organ of the new poetry movement, used to print at the head of its contents page the following encomium from the New York Tribune: “the livest art in America today is poetry, and the livest expression of that art is in this little Chicago monthly.”
We have seen how readily new prefixes and affixes are adopted in America. Often a whole word is thus put to service, and such amalgamations produce many new words. ”

“ Boost (boom+hoist) is a typical American blend. I have a notion that blurb is a blend also. So, perhaps, is flunk; Dr. Louise Pound says that it may be from fail and funk. [7] Aframerican, which is now very commonly used in the Negro press, is not American, but was devised by Sir Harry Johnston. [8] Allied with the portmanteau words are many blends of a somewhat different sort, in which long compounds are displaced by forms devised by analogy with existing words. ”

“ To hurry up is so commonplace in America that everyone uses it and no one notices it, but it remains rare in England. Up seems to be essential to many of these latter-day verbs, e. g., to pony up, to doll up, to ball up ”

“ If some enterprising shoe-repairer began calling himself a shoe-smith tomorrow no one would think to protest against the neologism, and if some new game were introduced from abroad, say the German Skat, the corresponding fiend would come with it. Always the effort is to dispose of a long explanatory phrase by substituting a succinct and concrete term. This effort is responsible for many whole classes of compounds, e. ”

“ A large number of characteristic Americanisms are deliberate inventions, devised to designate new objects or to clothe old objects with a special character. The American advertiser is an extraordinarily diligent manufacturer of such terms, and many of his coinages, e. ”

“ Such forms seem to make an irresistible appeal to the American; he is constantly experimenting with new ones. “There is a much greater percentage of humorous shortenings among verbs,” says Miss Wittmann, “than among other parts of speech. ”

“ Wer von einem Kodak spricht und nur allgemein eine photographische Kamera meint, bedenkt nicht, dass er mit der Weiterverbreitung dieses Wortes die deutsche Industrie zugunsten der amerikanischenglischen scha ̈digt.” In American there are a number of familiar derivatives, e. g., to kodak, kodaker, kodak-fiend.↑ Word-Coinage and Modern Trade Names, Dialect Notes, vol. ”