America in So Many Words: Words That Have Shaped America (review)

Reviews1 63 America in So Many Words: Words That Have Shaped America. David K. Barnhart and Allan A. Metcalf. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1997. Pp. xii + 308. $18.00. D: ? avid K. Barnhart and Allan A. Metcalf's America in So Many Words ' takes a delightful look at American history through the lens of neology . Following the idea of the whimsical "Word of the Year" exercise invented by Metcalf in 1990 for the annual meetings of the American Dialect Society , Barnhart and Metcalf assign words of the year for every year they can from 1555 (canoe) to 1998 (millennium bug). These words are generally Americanisms new for the year in question or at least newly prominent, the prominence sometimes based on informed suspicion as opposed to actual documentation . If readers expect hard-nosed science here, they come to the book with the wrong attitude and the wrong expectations. The book is aimed at a nonscholarly audience that knows little about linguistic history in general or the history of American English in particular. An appearance on C-SPAN cable television, an interview on National Public Radio, notice in national newspapers , and the early immediate sellout of the book's first printing all suggest that the authors have successfully reached their intended audience. The short introduction makes summary comments on the purposes of the authors, the history of American English, the method used by the authors to choose their words, and the origins of the words. In a smaller typeface, the introduction also includes a note on the dictionaries used as sources for the book. Although the annual entries elsewhere in the book do not acknowledge sources, the introductory note on sources nonetheless provides a convenient list of titles for the serious student of American English. The entries, which are often several paragraphs in length, contain dated citations of the headwords and discuss the origins of the words, offer histories of their use, and often list related terms. The book also has two indexes: an alphabetical listing of headwords and related words that appear in the text, and a list of headwords arranged by year. The words and the years they represent are presented in historical periods : "The English in America: 1497-1750," "These United States: 1751-1800," "Mammoth Enterprise: 1801-1865," "End of the Frontier: 1866-1900," "Modern Times: 1901-1944," and "Nearing the Millennium: 1945-1998." The periods are characterized by major national events and by the words that appeared in use during these times. It is notable that most of the words chosen by the authors are still in common use in American parlance. In "The English in America: 1497-1750," Barnhart and Metcalf sketch the beginnings of American English. The earliest words are either loans from other languages with which the early English settlers came in contact (skunk) or older English words with new meanings applicable in the New World (corn). Later words in the period reflect the new sense that the settlers have of themselves as being Americans (colonist). The words from this period are canoe (1555), skunk (1558), Indian (1602), turkey (1607), corn (1608), raccoon (1609), 1 64Reviews opossum (1610), tomahawk (1611), catfish (1612), moose (1613), Manhattan (1614), cunner (1615), New England (1616), mother country (1617), punk (1618), planter (1619), seat (1620), Thanksgiving (1621), parched corn (1622), bluefish (1623), swamp (1624), powwow (1625), breeze (1626), wampumpeag (1627), wigwam (1628), hominy (1629), ratthsnake (1630), patent (1631), clapboard (1632), buffalo (1633), squaw (1634), boss (1635), public school (1636), pull up stakes (1640), plantation (1645), cranberry (1647), pumpkin pie (1654), Pilgrim (1660), bluff (1666), scow (1669), huckkberry (1670), mush (1671), scalp (1675) , frontier (1676), tote (1677), land office (1681), backlog (1684), jimsonweed (1687), bald eagle (1688), lengthy (1689), tamale (1691), settler (1695), alumnus/alma mater (1696), apphpie (1697) , portage (1698), colonist (1701), cookie (1703), backwoods (1709), jackknife (1711), catnip (1712), classmate (1713), schooner (1716), store (1721), two bits (1730), logger (1732), barbecue (1733), awakening (1736), ten-foot pole (1738) ,johnnycake (1739), banjo (1740), groundhog (1742), ice cream (1744), covered wagon (1745), and buck (1748). Cunner is a fish unknown to this native of South Texas, although AHD3 includes it and DARE localizes it to New England and...