Talking United States

An 18-year wrestling match (in one corner, Oxford's short, spike-bearded, self-assured Sir William Alexander Craigie; in the other, American speech) reached its final bell last week. "Wullie" Craigie had at last finished his Dictionary of American English on Historial Principles, from Volume I's A (New England's brand letter for adulteresses) to the new Volume IV's ZuZu (nickname for the Civil War Zouaves).

Published by the University of Chicago Press, the DAE was a sellout: of 2,500 sets printed, all but 100 were subscribed for; even at $100 a set, the rest will hardly last until paper supplies permit a reissue.*

It is not the biggest dictionary in the world: in its 2,552 pages, the DAE defines more than 50,000 items, about one-tenth the number listed in an unabridged Webster. But the DAE is pretty comprehensive for what it is: a lexicon of words and turns of speech especially identified with the U.S. before 1900--whether or not they had once been used elsewhere.

The choice of Sir William, a Scottish expert on Anglo-Saxon and the Scandinavian tongues, as editor of the DAE, was not as illogical as it might seem. Sir William spent 31 years on the great Oxford English Dictionary, was knighted for his stupendous scholarly labor. Before the last volume of the OED was out, he settled in Chicago for a ten-year stay, to grapple with U.S. lingo. His mountainous task was to find out what Americans had done to the English language since Jamestown was settled in 1607. He brought with "him thousands of cards representing American entries in the OED. These became the basis of the DAE. Sir William's co-editor since 1936 has been Chicago's lanky Chaucerian Professor James Root Hulbert. Many U.S. experts lent their advice, and volunteers supplied thousands of samples of early U.S. usages.

Bunt Bungled. With the definitions are given the earliest recorded usage, plus examples, sometimes as recent as 1925. Sources have included books, newspapers, magazines, advertising materials, circus posters -- but not the sandlots, saloons or ball parks. That the research was some what cloistered is evident when the DAE defines to bunt as "to stop [the ball] with the bat without swinging . . ." or avers that what gets bleached in the bleachers is the bleachers rather than the fans.

More serious are the omissions: much slang (including John Hancock and limey), guides to pronunciation (especially for Englishmen) and often etymologies. The DAE's weakness in unprinted language may be connected with a reluctance to include unprintable language, for the great U.S. contributions to invective and bawdry are gravely slighted. The DAE's scholarly scope is enormous, and Editor Craigie recognizes the role of plain people in making speech. But in many vital respects Henry Louis Mencken, now at work on his fifth edition of The American Language, can still show the way to the professors.

Skunk, Squash. The DAE pudding, however, contains many a juicy plum. It shows English being enriched, from the earliest days, by borrowings from the U.S. From the Indians came possum, persimmon, punk, skunk, squash, succotash; from the Dutch, cruller, sawbuck, scow, slaw, snoop, stoop, waffle; from the Spanish, cafeteria, calaboose, lariat, mustang; from the German, cranberry.

The real American linguistic genius shows in modifications of English words and the coining of new ones, either to cover U.S. situations or to attain grandiloquence. A few language coiners cited:

> Ipswich's 17th-Century Clergyman Nathaniel Ward, who first used the word American to refer to the colonists rather than to Indians.

> George Washington, father of back country and of average (as a verb).

> Thomas Jefferson, who first said belittle.

Other items which Sir William traces far include: absquatulate, anxious seat, slam bang, cinch, lengthy, maverick, rain check, barn stormer, cowcatcher, calamity howler, greased lightning, rambunctious.

In Volume IV the dispute over the origin of Yankee floored the editors. The best they could do was to indicate the word's earliest use (1765) and its range of meanings. Thus, a Yankee is an American to a foreigner, a New Englander to an American, and a Northerner to a Southerner; as a verb the word is obsolete slang meaning "to hornswoggle."

When the first of the DAE's sections came off the press in 1936, Sir William went home to Oxfordshire with his strong-minded wife. For seven years he and Co-Editor Hulbert collaborated and quibbled from a distance. Throughout the long printing process, two sets of every proof went to Sir William. He corrected and returned both. Sometimes he did his final editing on proofs, a practice which unnerves typesetters. The mangling got so bad that the Press almost lost its staff, had to serve an ultimatum on the editors.

To keep himself sane during his long devotion to thousands of little cards, Co-Editor Hulbert refreshed himself with detective stories. But what Sir William chiefly likes to do when not defining a word is to change the subject by defining another one. Last week he was in a hillside cottage above the pretty village of Watlington, plugging away on material for his Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue, which has been in progress for twelve years. But as an old word wrestler he well knows that no lexicon is ever complete or wholly correct, and is partly out-of-date before it is even finished.

* Bringing out the red-backed, handsome DAE has put the Press about $300,000 in the red. The deficit has been met by the University, the General Education Board of New York, the Rockefeller Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies and Mrs. Ruth Swift Maguire, sister of the University's Board Chairman Harold Higgins Swift.

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