own.

admit that words and phrases and usages thus reinstated are not true Americanisms-however much we might like to claim them for our very We have already seen that most of the individualisms of eccentric or careless writers are also not to be received as true Americanisms. And there is yet a third group of so-called Americanisms not fairly entitled to the name. These are the terms devised in the United States to meet conditions unknown in England. Here is no divergence from the accepted usage of the language, but a development of the common tongue to satisfy a new necessity. The need for the new word or phrase was first felt in America, and here the new term had to be found to supply the immediate want. But the word itself, altho frankly of American origin, is not to be styled an Americanism. It is a new English word, that is all-a word to be used hereafter in the United Kingdom as in the United States. It is an American contribution to the English language; but it is not an Americanism-if we limit Americanism to mean a term having currency only in North America, just as Briticism means a term having currency only in the British Islands. The new thing exists now, and as it came into existence in America, we stood sponsors for it; but the name we gave it is its name once for all, to be used by the British and the Australians

and the Canadians as well as by ourselves. Telephone, for example,—both the thing and the word are of American invention,-is there any one so foolish as to call telephone an Americanism? These American contributions to the English language are not a few. Some of them are brandnew words, minted at the minute of sudden demand, and well made or ill made, as chance would have it; phonograph is one of these; dime is another; and typewriter is a third. Some of them are old words wrenched to a new use, like elevator = "storehouse for grain,” and like ticker="telegraphic printing-machine.' Some of them are taken from foreign tongues, either translated, like statehouse (from the Dutch), or unchanged, like prairie (from the French), adobe (from the Spanish), and stoop (from the Dutch). Some of them are borrowed from the rude tongues of our predecessors on this continent, like moccasin and tomahawk and wigwam. To be compared with this last group are the words adopted into English from the native languages of India-punka, for example. And I make no doubt that the Australians have taken over from the aborigines round about them more than one word needed in a hurry as a name for something until then nameless in our common language because the something itself was until then unknown or unnoticed. But these Australian con

tributions to English cannot be called Australianisms any more than telephone and prairie and wigwam can be called Americanisms.

So far the attempt has been here made to subtract from the immense and heterogeneous mass of so-called Americanisms three classes of terms falsely so called: first, the mere individualisms, for which America as a whole has a right to shirk the responsibility; second, the survivals in the United States of words and usages that happen to have fallen into abeyance in Great Britain; and, third, the American contributions to the English language. As to each of these three groups the case is clear enough; but as to a fourth group, which ought also to be deducted, one cannot speak with quite so much confidence.

This group would include the peculiarities of speech existing sporadically in this or that special locality and contributing what are often called the American dialects-the Yankee dialect first of all, then the dialect of the Appalachian mountaineers, the dialect of the Western cow-boys, etc. Are these localisms fairly to be classed as Americanisms? The question, so far as I know, has never been raised before, for it has been taken for granted that if any such things as Americanisms existed at all, they could surely be collected from the mouth of Hosea Biglow. And yet if we pause to think, we cannot but admit that the

so-called Yankee dialect is local, that it is unknown outside of New England, and that a majority of the inhabitants of the United States find it almost as strange in their ears as the broad Scotch of Burns. As for the so-called dialect of the cow-boy, it is not a true dialect at all; it is simply carelessly colloquial English with a heavy infusion of fugitive slang; and whatever it may be in itself, it is local to the cow-country. The Appalachian dialect is perhaps more like a true dialect; but it is even less wide-spread than either of the others here picked out for consideration. No one of these three alleged dialects is in any sense national; all three of them are narrowly local-altho the New England speech has spread more or less into the middle west.

Perhaps some light on this puzzle may be had by considering how they regard a similar problem in England itself. The local dialects which still abound throughout the British Isles are under investigation, each by itself. No one has ever suggested the lumping of them all together as Briticisms. Indeed, the very definition of Briticism would debar this. What is a Briticism but a term frequently used throughout Great Britain and not accepted in the United States? And if this definition is acceptable, we are forced to declare that an Americanism is a term frequently used throughout the United States and not accepted in

Great Britain. The terms of the Yankee dialect, of the Appalachian, and of the cow-boy, are localisms; they are not frequently used throughout the United States; they are not to be classed as Americanisms any more than the cockney idioms, the Wessex words, and the Yorkshire phrases are to be classed as Briticisms.

It is greatly to be regretted that Dr. Murray and Mr. Bradley and the other editors of the comprehensive Oxford Dictionary have not been so careful as they might be in identifying the locality of American dialectic peculiarities. They have taken great pains to record and circumscribe British dialectic peculiarities; but they are in the habit of appending a vague and misleading (U. S.) to such American words and usages as they may set down. It is to be hoped that they may hereafter aim at a greater exactness in their attributions, since their present practice is quite misleading, as it often suggests that a term is a true. Americanism, used freely throughout the United States, when it is perhaps merely an individualism or at best a localism.

Of true Americanisms there are not so very many left, when we have ousted from their usurped places these four groups of terms having no real title to the honorable name. And true Americanisms might be subdivided again into two groups, the one containing the American