Page:The American Language.djvu/322

306 Nice, as an adjective of all work, was once in slang use only; today no one would question "a nice day," or "a nice time" or "a nice hotel." Awful seems to be going the same route. "Aw- ful sweet" and "awfully dear" still seem slangy and school- girlish, but "awful children," "awful weather" and "an awful job" have entirely sound support, and no one save a pedant would hesitate to use them. Such insidious purifications and consecrations of slang are going on under our noses all the time. The use of some as a general adjective-adverb seems likely to make its way in the same manner. It is constantly for- gotten by purists of defective philological equipment that a great many of our most respectable words and phrases orig- inated in the plainest sort of slang. Thus, quandary, despite a fanciful etymology which would identify it with wandreth (=evil), is probably simply a composition form of the French phrase, qu'en dirai-je? Again, to turn to French itself, there is tête, a sound name for the human head for many centuries— though its origin was in the Latin testa (=pot), a favorite slang- word of the soldiers of the decaying empire, analogous to our own block, nut and conch. The word slacker, recently come into good usage in the United States as a designation for an unsuc- cessful shirker of conscription, is a substantive derived from the English verb to slack, which was born as university slang and remains so to this day. Brander Matthews, so recently as 1901, thought to hold up slang; it is now perfectly good American.

The contrary movement of words from the legitimate vocabu- lary into slang is constantly witnessed. Some one devises a new and intriguing trope or makes use of an old one under cir- cumstances arresting the public attention, and at once it is adopted into slang, given a host of remote significances, and ding-donged ad nauseam. The Rooseveltian phrases, muck- raker, Ananias Club, short and ugly word, nature-faker and big- stick, offer examples. Not one of them was new and not one of them was of much pungency, but Roosevelt's vast talent for delighting the yokelry threw about them a charming air, and so they entered into current slang and were mouthed idiotically for months. Another example is to be found in steam-roller.