AMERICAN INVASION

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22742, 30 November 1935, Page 28

AMERICAN INVASION

Englishmen are quite able to _ face “ O.K. ” politely, but it is not an idiom to be “ hugged to one’s breast, don’t you know.” Sir William Craigie, England’s arbiter of words, said a little crisply as he prepared to get back to his English chair at the University of, Chicago and begin hie eighth year of work on a dictionary of American English, reports the Christian Science Monitor. Sir William and Lady. Craigie arrived in New York in the Laconia after a summer at their home hear Oxford, and with customary reticence met the usual ship news reporters’ bombardment about the American idiom. The colloquialism “ 0.K.,” he said, originated in Boston, but “ whoopee ” comes straight from eighteenth and nineteenth century exclamatory English. For this man of many words fits not at all with Dr Johnson’s definition that "every other author may aspire to praise; the lexicographer can only hope to escape reproach, and even this negative recompense has been yet granted to very few.” Sir William was knighted by King George V for his 30 years’ work on the monumental Oxford English dictionary, and when lie says a word does not belong in the lexicon, it does not get into the lexicon. Now. after eight years back and fortn between Albion and its lost colony, he is seasoned indeed to the kind of queries American ship news men are apt to think up. Yes, he said, about the AmericanEnglish dictionary, the A's and B’s were ready for the printer, and he hoped to finish the rest in less than 10 years. Yes, he does change off from it now and then for that dictionary of Scottish words he has been at work on for 15 years, and which has now reached the D’s. There is no sitrn that Englishmen will ever substitute the American “elevator” for the “English “lift,” though to he sure they have come around to that “Yankee barbarism, 'lengthy,’” that somehow slipped in without anybody notic'"liefinitely they will not expand the meaning of “reservation” from something done with reserve or limitation

to the American understanding of it as a place where Indians live. No admirer of slang as such. Sir William was prefectly willing to admit “self-made" Americanisms into the aristocracy of acceptance when they have survived the test of utility as forceful or colourful instruments for expressing ideas. Expressions like “to catch on,” “ to get the hang of,” “ to pan out,” “ to strike oil,” “ to take a back seat,” “ backwards,” “ boss,” “ know nothing,” “to run for office,” “ square deal,” “ to run a blockade,” “cloudburst,” “beeline,” "lawabiding,” “graveyard,” and “doughnut” will have full' standing in the new dictionary, which, in the main, will give cursory treatment to any word aspirant that does not antedate 1000. Quoting Davey Crockett as writing, “I gave the fellow a blizzard,” meaning a sharp retort, and then its evolution to mean a heavy snowstorm, Sir William said he was quite prepared to defend the date 1820 as the beginning of a distinct American English, when American writers tried to leave off apeing the styles of the English Homeland for their own forms. James Fennimore Cooper, Washington Irving. Artemus Ward, Mark Twain, and Bret Harte were chiefly responsible for the popularity of Americanisms in England, he said. As a matter of fact. Sir William said that to-day more Americans than English words have been added to the English vocabulary in the last 50 years, and he was a little sharp with H. W. Fowler, whose “Modern English Usage” is critical of American expressions. “ Fowler,” remarked Sir William, “ represents one of the last attempts to preserve the southern English in pronunciation and meaning. The standard is rapidlv going, but it is interesting to have Fowler’s views.”