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 By
1720, the English colonists began to notice that their language was
quite different from that spoken in their Mother land. How did that
come to be?
The reasons are numerous, the most obvious being the
sheer distance from England. Over the years, many words were borrowed
from the
Native
Americans, as well as other immigrants from France,
Germany, Spain, and other countries. Other words that became obsolete
across the pond, continued to be utilized in the colonies. In other
cases, words simply had to be created in order to explain the
unfamiliar landscape, weather, animals, plants, and living conditions
that these early pioneers encountered.
The first "official" reference to the "American
dialect" was made in 1756 by Samuel Johnson a year after he published
his Dictionary of the English Language. Johnson's coinage
of the term "American dialect" was not meant to simply explain the
differences, but rather, was intended as an insult.
Years earlier, however; as early as 1735, the English
were calling our language "barbarous," and referred to our
"Americanisms" as barbarisms. The English sneering at our language
continued for more than a century after the Revolutionary War, as they
laughed and condemned as unnecessary, hundreds of American terms and
phrases.
However, to our newly independent Americans, they were
proud of their "new" American language, wearing it, as yet, another
badge of independence. In 1789, Noah Webster wrote in his
Dissertations on the English Language:
"The reasons for American English being different
than English English are simple: As an independent nation, our honor
requires us to have a system of our own, in language as well as
government."
Our leaders, including Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin
Rush, agreed -- it was not only good politics, it was sensible.
Early examples of words that had become obsolete in
England that continued to be used in the United States were:
-
allow, guess, reckon, meaning to think.
-
bureau, meaning a chest of drawers.
-
fall, meaning "autumn"
-
gotten, where "got" was being used as the past
participle of "get."
-
wilt
Other words that were simply "created" included such
terms as "ground hog," an animal that didn't exist in England;
"lightening rod" for whiskey; "belittle," coined by Thomas Jefferson
in 1787; "bamboozle," meaning to swindle, and hundreds of others.
Of other terms, the meaning was changed, such as:
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"Americanism" means a word or expression that originated in the
United States. The term includes outright coinages and foreign
borrowings which first became "English" in the United States, as
well as older terms used in new senses first given them in American
usage.
-- Milford
M. Mathews in his preface to A Dictionary of Americanisms,
1951.
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