A history of the English Language

244.
Early Changes in the Vocabulary.
When colonists settle in a new country they find the resources of their language 
constantly taxed. They have no words for the many new objects on every hand or the 
constant succession of new experiences that they undergo. Accordingly in a colonial 
language changes of vocabulary take place almost from the moment the first settlers 
arrive. When the colonists from England became acquainted with the physical features of 
this continent they seem to have been impressed particularly by its mountains and forests, 
so much larger and more impressive than any in England, and the result was a whole 
series of new words like 
bluff, foothill, notch, gap, divide, watershed, clearing,
and 
underbrush
. Then there were the many living and growing things that were peculiar to 
the New World. The names for some of these the colonists learned from Native 
Americans, words like 
moose, raccoon, skunk, opossum, chipmunk, porgy, terrapin;
others they formed by a descriptive process long familiar in the language: 
mud hen, 
garter snake, bullfrog, potato bug, groundhog, reed bird
. Tree names such as the 
hickory
and 
live oak,
and the 
locust
are new to colonial English, as are 
sweet potato, eggplant, 
squash, persimmon, pecan
. Contact with Native Americans brought into English a 
number of words having particular reference to their way of life: 
wigwam, tomahawk, 
canoe, toboggan, mackinaw, moccasin, wampum, squaw, papoose
. These are Native 
American words, but we have also English words formed at the same time and out of the 
same experience: 
war path, paleface, medicine man, pipe of peace, big chief, war paint,
and the verb 
to scalp
. Native American words for Native American foods were taken 
over in the case of 
hominy, tapioca, succotash,
and 
pone
. The latter is still heard in the 
South for corn bread, the kind of bread the Native Americans made. The individual 
character of our political and administrative system required the introduction of words 
such as 
congressional,
presidential, gubernatorial, congressman, caucus, mass meeting, 
selectman, statehouse, land office
. Many other words illustrate things associated with the 
new mode of life—
back country, backwoodsman, squatter, prairie, log cabin, clapboard, 
corncrib, popcorn, hoe cake, cold snap, snow plow, bobsled, sleigh
. 
As indicated above, the colonists got a number of the words they needed ready-made 
from the languages of the Native Americans. They got some, too, from other languages. 
From the French colonists they learned
 portage, chowder, cache, caribou, bureau, bayou, 
A history of the english language 342

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levee,
and others; from the Dutch 
cruller, coleslaw, cookie, stoop, boss, scow;
from 
German 
noodle, pretzel, smearcase, sauerkraut
. More interesting, however, are the cases 
in which colonists applied an old word to a slightly different thing, as when they gave the 
name of the English 
robin
to a red-breasted thrush, applied the word 
turkey
to a 
distinctive American bird, and transferred the word 
corn
to an entirely new cereal. 
Indian 
corn
was known in England only from the accounts of travelers, and naming its various 
features seems to have taxed the ingenuity of the first Americans. 
Maize,
the West Indian 
name that came into England through the Spanish, was seldom used by the American 
settler. Henry Hudson called it 
Turkish wheat,
a designation found in French and Italian 
and among the Pennsylvania Germans. But the colonists used the common English word 
corn,
which in England is used of any kind of grain, but especially of wheat. At first they 
prefixed the distinguishing epithet “Indian,” but this was soon dropped, and consequently 
corn
means something quite different in England and in America today. There were other 
difftculties. 
Tassel
and 
silk
were natural descriptions of the flower, but the 
ear
was more 
troublesome. The 
cob
was known in Virginia as the 
husk
or 
huss,
and John Smith calls it 
the 
core
. The outer covering, which we generally call the 
husk
today, was variously 
known as the 
hose,
the 
leaves,
and the 
shuck
. The latter word survives in the sociable 
activity of 
corn-shucking,
the equivalent of the New England 
husking bee
. In an instance 
like this we catch a glimpse of the colonists in the very act of shifting and adapting their 
language to new conditions, and we find them doing the same thing with 
rabbit, lumber, 
freshet,
and other words that have a somewhat different meaning in American and 
English use. American speakers were perhaps at their best when inventing simple, 
homely words like 
apple butter, sidewalk, lightning rod, spelling bee, crazy quilt, low-
down,
and 
know-nothing,
or when striking off a terse metaphor like 
log rolling, wire 
pulling, to have an ax to grind, to be on the fence
. Americans early manifested the gift, 
which they continue to show, of the imaginative, slightly humorous phrase. To it we owe 
to bark up the wrong tree, to face the music, fly off the handle, go on the war path, bury 
the hatchet, come out at the little end
of the horn, saw wood,
and many more, with the 
breath of the country and sometimes of the frontier about them. In this way America 
began her contributions to the English language, and in this period also we see the 
beginning of such differentiation as has taken place between the American and the British 
vocabulary. Both of these matters will be dealt with in their later aspects below.