Page:The American Language.djvu/66

50 was denounced in the third volume of the North American Review, and other purists of the times tried to put down to legislate.

The young and tender adjectives had quite as hard a row to hoe, particularly lengthy. The British Critic attacked it in November, 1793, and it also had enemies at home, but John Adams had used it in his diary in 1759 and the authority of Jefferson and Hamilton was behind it, and so it survived. Years later James Russell Lowell spoke of it as "the excellent adjective," and boasted that American had given it to English. Dutiable also met with opposition, and moreover, it had a rival, customable; but Marshall wrote it into his historic decisions, and thus it took root. The same anonymous watchman of the North American Review who protested against to locate pronounced his anathema upon "such barbarous terms as presidential and congressional," but the plain need for them kept them in the language. Gubernatorial had come in long before this, and is to be found in the New Jersey Archives of 1734. Influential was denounced by the Rev. Jonathan Boucher and by George Canning, who argued that influent was better, but it was ardently defended by William Pinkney, of Maryland, and gradually made its way. Handy, kinky, law–abiding, chunky, solid (in the sense of well-to-do), evincive, complected, judgmatical, underpinned, blooded and cute were also already secure in revolutionary days. So with many nouns. Jefferson used breadstuffs in his Report of the Secretary of State on Commercial Restrictions, December 16, 1793. Balance, in the sense of remainder, got into the debates of the First Congress. Mileage was used by Franklin in 1754, and is now sound English. Elevator, in the sense of a storage house for grain, was used by Jefferson and by others before him. Draw, for drawbridge, comes down from Revolutionary days. So does slip, in the sense of a berth for vessels. So does addition, in the sense of a suburb. So, finally, does darkey. The history of many of these Americanisms shows how vain is the effort of grammarians to combat the normal processes of lan–