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Updated: July 9, 2025
The majority of "Americanisms" in speech were in their origin mere provincialisms modes of expression and pronunciation which had sprung up unchecked in the isolated communities of a scattered people. They grew with the growth of the communities, until they threatened to graft themselves permanently on the speech of the nation.
"We think you a perfect dear," Daisy said at the end of the first morning, winding two fat little arms tightly round Margaret's neck, "and we like you, and we will be good to you, won't we, David?" "Sure," said David, who had picked up a few Americanisms from his father's New York chauffeur, and delighted in airing them. "You can calculate on that all the time."
Such slang passes rapidly into use and into general recognition, and passes as quickly out again. Bartlett's "Dictionary of Americanisms" is full of words of this kind locofoco, for example which lived their short lives, and then passed not only out of use, but out of memory.
For though he appreciated how ridiculous his infatuation was, he found a miserable pleasure in merely being near her. And she was pleased with her new clerk, amused at what she called his quaint Americanisms, and if she noticed his too unrepressed admiration for her, she smiled it aside.
When so many of the Americanisms of ten years ago are incorporated in the daily speech even of educated Englishmen to-day, it would be affectation to put forward such a plea nowadays. Going deeper than this, we undoubtedly find that the educated Englishman to-day speaks with more precision than the educated American.
You've quite taken him by storm, Lydia; he's in raptures about your looks. It's what I told him before you came; but I couldn't believe it till I took a look at you. I couldn't have gone to sleep without it. Did Mr. Erwin talk much with you?" "He was very pleasant. He talked as long as he was awake," said Lydia. "I suppose he was trying to pick up Americanisms from you; he's always doing it.
But is this little wet ditch here the Historical River Thames?" In America, it must be explained, Mr. Direck spoke a very good and careful English indeed, but he now found the utmost difficulty in controlling his impulse to use a high-pitched nasal drone and indulge in dry "Americanisms" and poker metaphors upon all occasions.
The French gentleman's natural use of Americanisms in speech was as surprising to us as was Lydia's knowledge of French history to him, and the ice being now fairly broken, we chatted away gaily as we passed through the handsome dining room, the ancient salle des gardes of Queen Catherine, where our new cicerone pointed out to us in the painted ceiling her own personal cipher interwoven with an arabesque.
Lilian Rosenberg said after a slight pause, during which Kelson had again seized her hand and was kissing it convulsively, "to quote one of your Americanisms I reckon I'll fix up with you. On one condition, however." "And that," Kelson murmured, still kissing her feverishly. "That we marry a week to-day!" Kelson dropped her hand as if he had been shot. "We can't!" he cried. "The Compact!"
Bartlett, in his "Dictionary of Americanisms," pronounces to be the shibboleth of Bostonians. But such differences were orthoepic, and not syntactic. We regret Mr. White's glossological excursions the more because they are utterly supererogatory, and because they seem to imply a rashness of conclusion which can very seldom be laid to his charge as respects the text.
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