Walt Whitmans Take on Slang in America

Influenced by the 19th-century journalist and philologist William Swinton, poet Walt Whitman celebrated the emergence of a distinctively American language — one that introduced new words (and found new uses for old words) to convey the unique qualities of American life. Here, in an essay first published in 1885 in The North American Review, Whitman offers many examples of slang expressions and luxuriant place names — all representative of the wholesome fermentation or eructation of those processes eternally active in language. Slang in America was later collected in November Boughs by  David McKay (1888). Slang in America Viewd freely, the English language is the accretion and growth of every dialect, race, and range of time, and is both the free and compacted composition of all. From this point of view, it stands for Language in the largest sense, and is really the greatest of studies. It involves so much; is indeed a sort of universal absorber, combiner, and conqueror. The scope of its etymologies is the scope not only of man and civilization, but the history of Nature in all departments, and of the organic Universe, brought up to date; for all are comprehended in words, and their backgrounds. This is when words become vitaliz’d, and stand for things, as they unerringly and soon come to do, in the mind that enters on their study with fitting spirit, grasp, and appreciation. Slang, profoundly consider’d, is the lawless germinal element, below all words and sentences, and behind all poetry, and proves a certain perennial rankness and protestantism in speech. As the United States inherit by far their most precious possession — the language they talk and write — from the Old World, under and out of its feudal institutes, I will allow myself to borrow a simile, even of those forms farthest removed from American Democracy. Considering Language then as some mighty potentate, into the majestic audience-hall of the monarch ever enters a personage like one of Shakspere’s clowns, and takes position there, and plays a part even in the stateliest ceremonies. Such is Slang, or indirection, an attempt of common humanity to escape from bald literalism, and express itself illimitably, which in highest walks produces poets and poems, and doubtless in pre-historic times gave the start to, and perfected, the whole immense tangle of the old mytho logies. For, curious as it may appear, it is strictly the same impulse-source, the same thing. Slang, too, is the wholesome fermentation or eructation of those processes eternally active in language, by which froth and specks are thrown up, mostly to pass away; though occasionally to settle and permanently chrystallize. To make it plainer, it is certain that many of the oldest and solidest words we use, were originally generated from the daring and license of slang. In the processes of word-formation, myriads die, but here and there the attempt attracts superior meanings, becomes valuable and indispensable, and lives forever. Thus the term right means literally only straight. Wrong primarily meant twisted, distorted. Integrity meant oneness. Spirit meant breath, or flame. A supercilious person was one who rais’d his eyebrows. To insult was to leap against. If you influenc’d a man, you but flow’d into him. The Hebrew word which is translated prophesy meant to bubble up and pour forth as a fountain. The enthusiast bubbles up with the Spirit of God within him, and it pours forth from him like a fountain. The word prophecy is misunderstood. Many suppose that it is limited to mere prediction; that is but the lesser portion of prophecy. The greater work is to reveal God. Every true re ligious enthusiast is a prophet. Language, be it remember’d, is not an abstract construction of the learn’d, or of di ctionary-makers, but is something arising out of the work, needs, ties, joys, affections, tastes, of long generations of humanity, and has its bases broad and low, close to the ground. Its final decisions are made by the masses, people nearest the concrete, having most to do with actual land and sea. It impermeates all, the Past as well as the Present, and is the grandest triumph of the human intellect. Those mighty works of art, says Addington Symonds, which we call languages, in the construction of which whole peoples unconsciously co-operated, the forms of which were determin’d not by individual genius, but by the instincts of successive generations, acting to one end, inherent in the nature of the race — Those poems of pure thought and fancy, cadenced not in words, but in living imagery, fountainheads of inspiration, mirrors of the mind of nascent nations, which we cal l Mythologies — these surely are more marvellous in their infantine spontaneity than any more mature production of the races which evolv’d them. Yet we are utterly ignorant of their embryology; the true science of Origins is yet in its cradle. Daring as it is to say so, in the growth of Language it is certain that the retrospect of slang from the start would be the recalling from their nebulous conditions of all that is poetical in the stores of human utterance. Moreover, the honest delving, as of late years, by the German and British workers in  comparative philology, has pierc’d and dispers’d many of the falsest bubbles of centuries; and will disperse many more. It was long recorded that in Scandinavian mythology the heroes in the Norse Paradise drank out of the skulls of their slain enemies. Later investigation proves the word taken for skulls to mean  horns  of beasts slain in the hunt. And what reader had not been exercis’d over the traces of that feudal custom, by which  seigneurs  warm’d their feet in the bowels of serfs, the abdomen being open’d for the purpose? It now is made to appear that the serf was only required to submit his unharm’d abdomen as a foot cushi on while his lord supp’d, and was required to chafe the legs of the  seigneur  with his hands. It is curiously in embryons and childhood, and among the illiterate, we always find the groundwork and start, of this great science, and its noblest products. What a relief most people have in speaking of a man not by his true and formal name, with a Mister to it, but by some odd or homely appellative. The propensity to approach a meaning not directly and squarely, but by circuitous styles of expression, seems indeed a born quality of the common people everywhere, evidenced by nick-names, and the inveterate determination of the masses to bestow sub-titles, sometimes ridiculous, sometimes very apt. Always among the soldiers during the Secession War, one heard of Little Mac (Gen. McClellan), or of Uncle Billy (Gen. Sherman) The old man was, of course, very common. Among the rank and file, both armies, it was very general to speak of the different States they came from by their slang names. Those from Maine were call’d Foxes; New Hampshire, Granite Boys; Massachusetts, Bay Stater s; Vermont, Green Mountain Boys; Rhode Island, Gun Flints; Connecticut, Wooden Nutmegs; New York, Knickerbockers; New Jersey, Clam Catchers; Pennsylvania, Logher Heads; Delaware, Muskrats; Maryland, Claw Thumpers; Virginia, Beagles; North Carolina, Tar Boilers; South Carolina, Weasels; Georgia, Buzzards; Louisiana, Creoles; Alabama, Lizards; Kentucky, Corn Crackers; Ohio, Buckeyes; Michigan, Wolverines; Indiana, Hoosiers; Illinois, Suckers; Missouri, Pukes; Mississippi, Tad Poles; Florida, Fly up the Creeks; Wisconsin, Badgers; Iowa, Hawkeyes; Oregon, Hard Cases. Indeed I am not sure but slang names have more than once made Presidents. Old Hickory, (Gen. Jackson) is one case in point. Tippecanoe, and Tyler too, another. I find the same rule in the people’s conversations everywhere. I heard this among the men of the city horse-cars, where the conductor is often call’d a snatcher (i.e., because his characteristic duty is to constantly pull or snatch the bell-strap, to stop or go on). Two young fellows are having a friendly talk, amid which, says 1st conductor, What did you do before you was a snatcher? Answer of 2d conductor, Nail’d. (Translation of answer: I work’d as carpenter.) What is a boom? says one editor to another. Esteem’d contemporary, says the other, a boom is a bulge. Barefoot whiskey is the Tennessee name for the undiluted stimulant. In the slang of the New York common restaurant waiters a plate of ham and beans is known as stars and stripes, codfish balls as sleeve-buttons, and hash as mystery. The Western States of the Union are, however, as may be supposed, the special areas of slang, not only in conversation, but in names of localities, towns, rivers, etc. A late Oregon traveller says: On your way to Olympia by rail, you cross a river called the Shookum-Chuck; your train stops at places named Newaukum, Tumwater, and Toutle; and if you seek further you will hear of whole counties labell’d Wahkiakum, or Snohomish, or Kitsar, or Klikatat; and Cowlitz, Hookium, and Nenolelops greet and offend you. They complain in Olympia that Washington Territory gets but little immigration; but what wonder? What man, having the whole American continent to choose from, would willingly date his letters from the county of Snohomish or bring up his children in the city of Nenolelops? The village of Tumwater is, as I am ready to bear witness, very pretty indeed; but surely an emigrant would think twice before he establish’d himself either there or at Toutle. Seattle is sufficiently barbarous; Stelicoom is no better; and I suspect that the Northern Pacific Railroad terminus has been fixed at Tacoma because it is one of the few places on Puget Sound whose name does not inspire horror. Then a Nevada paper chronicles the departure of a mining party from Reno: The toughest set of roosters, that ever shook the dust off any town left Reno yesterday for the new mining district of Cornucopia. They came here from Virginia. Among the crowd were four New York cock-fighters, two Chicago murderers, three Baltimore  bruisers, one Philadelphia prize-fighter, four San Francisco hoodlums, three Virginia beats, two Union Pacific roughs, and two check guerrillas. Among the far-west newspapers, have been, or are,  The Fairplay  (Colorado)  Flume,  The Solid Muldoon, of Ouray,  The Tombstone Epitaph, of Nevada,  The Jimplecute, of Texas, and  The Bazoo, of Missouri. Shirttail Bend, Whiskey Flat, Puppytown, Wild Yankee Ranch, Squaw Flat, Rawhide Ranch, Loafer’s Ravine,  Squitch  Gulch, Toenail Lake, are a few of the names of places in Butte  county, Cal. Perhaps indeed no place or term gives more luxuriant illustrations of the fermentation processes I have  mention’d, and their froth and  specks, than those Mississippi and Pacific  coast  regions, at the present day. Hasty and grotesque as are some of the names, others are of an appropriateness and originality unsurpassable. This applies to the Indian words, which are often perfect. Oklahoma is proposed in Congress for the name of one of our new Territories. Hog-eye, Lick-skillet,  Rake-pocket  and Steal-easy are the names of some Texan towns. Miss Bremer found among the aborigines the following names: Men’s, Hornpoint; Round-Wind; Stand-and-look-out; The-Cloud-that-goes-aside; Iron-toe; Seek-the-sun; Iron-flash; Red-bottle; White-spindle; Black-dog; Two-feathers-of-honor; Gray-grass; Bushy-tail; Thunder-face; Go-on-the-burning-sod; Spirits-of-the-dead. Women’s, Keep-the-fire; Spiritual-woman; Second-daughter-of-the-house; Blue-bird. Certainly philologists  have not given enough attention to this element and its results, which, I repeat, can probably be found working  everywhere  to-day, amid modern conditions, with as much life and activity as in far-back Greece or India, under prehistoric ones. Then the wit — the rich flashes of humor and genius and poetry — darting out often from a gang of laborers, railroad-men, miners, drivers or boatmen! How often have I  hover’d  at the edge of a crowd of them, to hear their repartees and impromptus! You get more real fun from half an hour with them than from the books of all the American humorists. The science of language has large and close analogies in geological science, with its ceaseless evolution, its fossils, and its numberless submerged layers and hidden strata, the infinite  go-before  of the present. Or, perhaps Language is more like some vast living body, or perennial body of bodies. And slang not only brings the first feeders of  it,  but is afterward the start of fancy,  imagination  and humor, breathing into its nostrils the breath of life.