Contents
-SUBJECT INDEX -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD
H.L. Mencken (1880–1956). The American Language. 1921.
Page 54
from the French
carriole. The contributions of the Dutch during the half century of their conflicts with the English included
cruller, cold-slaw, dominie (for parson),
cookey, stoop, span (of horses),
pit (as in
peach-pit),
waffle, hook (a point of land),
scow, boss, smearcase and
Santa Claus. 16 Schele de Vere credits them with
hay-barrack, a corruption of
hooiberg. That they established the use of
bush as a designation for back-country is very probable; the word has also got into South African English and has been borrowed by Australian English from American. In American it has produced a number of familiar derivatives,
e. g., bush-whacker and
bush-town. Barrère and Leland also credit the Dutch with
dander, which is commonly assumed to be an American corruption of
dandruff. They say that it is from the Dutch word
donder (=thunder). Op donderen, in Dutch, means to burst into a sudden rage. The chief Spanish contributions to American were to come after the War of 1812, with the opening of the West, but
creole, calaboose, palmetto, peewee, key (a small island),
quadroon, octoroon, barbecue, pickaninny and
stampede had already entered the language in colonial days.
Jerked beef came from the Spanish
charqui by the law of Hobson-Jobson. The Germans who arrived in Pennysylvania in 1682 also undoubtedly gave a few words to the language, though it is often difficult to distinguish their contributions from those of the Dutch. It seems very likely, however, that
sauerkraut 17 and
noodle are to be credited to them. Finally, the negro slaves brought in
gumbo, goober, juba and
voodoo (usually corrupted to
hoodoo), and probably helped to corrupt a number of other loan-words, for example
banjo and
breakdown. Banjo seems to be derived from
bandore or
bandurria, modern French and Spanish forms of
tambour, respectively. It may, however, be an actual negro word; there is a term of like meaning,
bania, in Senegambian. Ware says that
breakdown, designating a riotous negro dance, is a corruption of the French
rigadon, but offers no evidence. The word, used in the American sense, is not in the English dictionaries. Bartlett listed it as an Americanism,