Page:The American Language.djvu/125

Rh nearly always uses channel in place of it. In the same way the American knows the meaning of the English bog, but rejects the English distinction between it and swamp, and almost always uses swamp, or marsh (often elided to ma'sh). The Englishman seldom, if ever, describes a severe storm as a hurricane, a cyclone, a tornado or a blizzard. He never uses cold-snap, cloudburst or under the weather. He does not say that the temperature is 29 degrees (Fahrenheit) or that the thermometer or the mercury is at 29 degrees, but that there are three degrees of frost. He calls ice water iced-water. He knows nothing of blue-grass country or of pennyr'yal. What we call the mining regions he knows as the black country. He never, of course, uses down-East or up- State. Many of our names for common fauna and flora are un- known to him save as strange Americanisms, e. g., terrapin, moose, persimmon, gumbo, egg-plant, alfalfa, sweet-corn, sweet-potato and yam. Until lately he called the grapefruit a shaddock. He still calls the beet a beet-root and the rutabaga a mangel-wurzel. He is familiar with many fish that we seldom see, e. g., the turbot. He also knows the hare, which is seldom heard of in America. But he knows nothing of devilled-crabs, crab-cocktails, clam- chowder or oyster-stews, and he never goes to oyster-suppers, clam-bakes or burgoo-picnics. He doesn't buy peanuts when he goes to the circus. He calls them monkey-nuts, and to eat them publicly is infra dig. The common American use of peanut as an adjective of disparagement, as in peanut politics, is incom- prehensible to him.

In England a hack is not a public coach, but a horse let out at hire, or one of similar quality. A life insurance policy is usually not an insurance policy at all, but an assurance policy. What we call the normal income tax is the ordinary tax ; what we call the surtax is the supertax. An Englishman never lives on a street, but always in it. He never lives in a block of houses, but in a row; it is never in a section of the city, but always in a district. Going home by train he always takes the down-train, no matter whether he be proceeding southward to Wimbleton,