It is one of the most remarkable facts of Yankee history that, go where they will, our people can never let alone the "lingo" of the country they adopt, but must adapt it, in some shape, to everyday use. The King's English, like English dominion, is never broad enough, nor sufficiently diffuse for their purposes. Change is demanded under the head of reform in everything. The older states are each peculiar in their colloquial English, and instead of breaking the thralldom of barbarous provincialism, it is a species of Yankee Doodle glory to construct a wall of words and idioms around the sectional concerns of each part of the country, making it a species of reservation, or state rights, to torture language into the most indefinable shapes and sounds. We agree with them in the propriety of establishing for each state a few distinctive features, that the national honor and glory may be variously and well represented by striking characteristics, but this barbarous perversion of the "mother tongue" is as bad as interpolating speech with French, Spanish, Italian or any other outlandish phraseology--we don't admit the right to belong anywhere. "Our is a noble and a beautiful language," says Southey, "and he who uses a Latin or French phrase, when a pure old English word does as well, ought to be hanged, drawn and quartered for high treason against the mother tongue," and so he ought!
    The provincialisms of some sections of the Atlantic States are truly alarming in their tendency, which is to deprave the use of speech in the most unpardonable manner, and if the system succeeds--and succeed it will, for what's going to stop it?--a few dozen generations more will dissolve the only existing link remaining between England and America by making it necessary to translate English into Anglo-American for "common schools." Come, this won't do. Let us have no such misfortune entailed upon us!
    But lo! the progress we are making on this "side of the land" towards such a consummation! Look at it! Already we have gulped down the best (or rather the worst) part of a mongrel dialect in Oregon, bit off a large slice of the tongue of Tonga-Wanga, king of the Kanakadom Islands, and minced up the greaser philological fragments in this country into such a carne-con-chili insufferable stew that our mouths are all ablaze whenever we open them to speak. What are we coming to! Worse than the barbecue of King's English by our Atlantic brethren, we spit the morsels of other and responsible languages to broil them over a slow fire, as dainties for our delicate and insatiable tastes. Magnificently magnanimous, we offer to teach the stern rudiments of such English as we have retained in our possession to all nations in the path of our "Westward-the-Star-of-Empire" progress, and so propitiate them to our conquest of their territory and despoliation of all the assailable portion of their vernacular. Truly what are we coming to!
    Not a newspaper do we take up nowadays, bearing the imprint of Oregon or Polynesia, but we are confronted by a jargon that completely riddles our capacity for comprehending signs, characters or sounds. In "coursing" or "sparrow-hawking" its columns for game, such as bits of news and scraps of relishable reading, we are sure to "bolt" at a big five-bar-fence of a phrase, or beat our brains against the meshes of meaning in an entanglement of words such as no mortal ever encountered in the antiquarian researches of the profoundest lore. We have "cut and dried" a few of these remarkably vigorous graftings in the family of words for the purpose of making ourselves familiar with the species. . . .
    Oregon "out-Herods Herod," however, and the "jargon" of that territory is enough to drive a mild man of nervous temperament distracted. Yet the newspapers rejoice in the proficiency which they have acquired in the refined and sententious Chinook. They treat their readers to a sputtering of jargon in the very "leaders" indicted. Now listen to an Oregon editor on the new costume:
    "As we have not seen any lady, other than a Chinook hyas klootchman, wearing the dress 'a la Turk,' of course we cannot say anything about it."
    Female costume can never be reformed among such a barbarous people.
    "Some 20 miles from the Dalles is the old farm and house of Skuloo, a sitcum tyee [subordinate chief]."
    We should like to tie-ee that phrase around the neck of the editor and cast him into the Columbia. He would never rise to the surface.
    Speaking of the Port Orford party, one of the papers says:
    "They accordingly set out, the Indians keeping a close nannitsh [good lookout] on them all the while."
    Pity 'tis that the Indians by close managing couldn't secure one of these Chinook editors, to exhibit to their people as a rara avis.
    Here is a colloquial scene between papers, all about the 4th of July:
    How was it with you, brother Schnelby--that is, your city.--Oregonian.
    Well--"so so, or cumtux."--Spectator.
    And now we have done with these precious bits of "cumtuxiana" and feel prepared to denounce this system of palaver as the most solemn of humbugs.
    To be as serious as we can with the subject, it is high time that we begin to clothe our homespun Yankee ideas in the sound, substantial fabric used by our forefathers, altogether, and to extirpate from the prolific and beautiful gardens of English language the many uncouth and tawdry weeds of foreign culture that have taken root with us. Here in California the language of the press is not at all free from graftings from the slang or jocular phrases of the Spanish. We bandy about the common nouns "hombre," "casa," "caballo" and propound "quien sabe?" with most imperturbable gravity, indifferent as to the perceptive powers of readers, or whether it sounds well to "ears polite" or not. We should say not, and we think our brethren of the quill will agree with us that however great the relief from monotonous expressions, the use of these words disturb the grace of composition and amount to vulgarisms, besides distracting and misleading those who perchance may not be "constant readers."
Daily Alta California, San Francisco, August 3, 1851, page 2

    It has seemed to us, of late years, that profanity has increased in the West. One cannot walk the streets of any of our western towns or cities without having his ears assailed by horrid oaths. It is an evil which calls for some more active efforts to repress it, but what they should be we are not able to point out.--Presbyterian Herald.
Excerpt, German Reformed Messenger, December 3, 1851


    SENTENCED.--J. H. Knox, who figured in Southern Oregon during the Indian war in the winter of 185-6, as expressman, has been sentenced to the penitentiary for five years. The Portland Times of the 23rd ult. says:
    "J. H. Knox, on Saturday, pled guilty to a soft insinuation in reference to horseflesh, and was leniently sentenced to five years in durance vile."
    Very polite journalism, that.
Oregon Sentinel, Jacksonville, February 6, 1858, page 2


    It may be doubted if there is any other state in the Union which pretends to rival Texas in the startling originality of its slang.
    In his category of persons who are "of imagination all compact," Shakespeare assigns the first place to the lunatic, above the lover and the poet. There are persons so artless as to believe that this was done simply in obedience to the necessities of the verse; but such have only once to become familiar with the vernacular of Texas to perceive that, in this matter, as in every other which he touched, Shakespeare was right, as if by intuition. Nature herself, elsewhere a dame so staid and so proper, there gives much reason for the issuance of a writ de lunatico inquirendo. The rabbits have somehow gotten the body of the hare and the ears of the ass; the frogs, the body of the toad; the horns of the stag beetle, and the tail of the lizard; the trees fall uphill, and the lightning comes out of the ground. In such a country it is not to be wondered at that their sesquipedalian adjectives get somewhat twisted in coming up out of the hard, waxy prairies. In short, Texas is one great, windy lunatic; or, if you please, a bundle of crooked and stupendous phrases, tied together with a thong of rawhide.
    As a specimen of Texan ingenuity, or rather perverseness of imagination, take its code of morals, which is embraced in two sayings. The first is, "Revolvers make all men equal"; and the second is the famous utterance of Houston, "If a man can't curse his friends, whom can he curse?"
    But it is in geography that this gift gives forth its most amazing manifestations. We all have heard some of our exquisite American names, such as Last Chance, Sorrel Horse, Righteous Ridge, Scratch Gravel, Pinchtown, Marrow Bones, etc.; but now read these from Texas: Lick Skillet, Buck Snort, Nip and Tuck, Jimtown, Rake Pocket, Hog Eye, Fair Play, Seven League, Steal Easy, Possum Trot, Flat Heel, Frog Level, Short Pone, Gourd Neck, Shake Rag, Poverty Slant, Black Ankle, Jim Ned.
    Next after such slops and parings of names as these, Texas is notable for the number of its obscure personal names, tortured into the service of municipal nomenclature. These, together with a certain absurd classical Grub Street vocabulary, make our atlases contemptible, and an object of deserved ridicule for foreigners. The preponderance of these personal names in the South, especially in Texas, is probably to be explained in this manner: Smith owned a great plantation here; Jones, another adjoining; and between their houses, which were miles apart, nobody resided, since those who would have occupied the interval in the North were all grouped about the two mansions as slaves. In these little colonies there frequently grew up smithies, groceries, etc.; and travelers found it convenient to designate distances on the road as so far to Smith's, or so far from Jones', which presently crystallized into Smithville and Jonesborough. In the North the land was divided more equally among the people, and as none was prominent enough to aspire to the honors of geography, they gratified their collective quadrivial ambition with Rome, or something else. Athens, Jonesville, Winnipesaukee, Pig Misery!
    In the course of a rather leisurely walk through Texas, and then across the continent with a company of emigrants, I noted a large number of curious words, names, and phrases not found in the current collections of Americanisms, a large moiety of which are indigenous to Texas; and they are herewith set forth, without anything more than the most superficial attempt to make out their etyma.
    Among names of revolvers I remember the following: Meat in the Pot, Blue Lightning, Peacemaker, Mr. Speaker, Black-eyed Susan, Pillbox, My Unconverted Friend.
    The occupation of the Texans as cattle-breeders has given rise to a great number of new words, and new uses of old words. To illustrate: On the Trinity prairies I met a man, with a pinched face and a yellow beard, who was mounted on a claybank horse as lank as a Green Mountain pad when it has been about a month in the horse latitudes, and so swaybacked that the rider's feet nearly dragged on the prairie. Yet it held up its pikestaff neck so high that a line drawn across from the top of its head over the rider's head would have touched its little stump tail, which stood up like an ear of corn. He had a long coil of cabestros dangling from the pommel of his saddle, and was evidently in search of strays, for he asked me if I had seen a red muley cow, with a crop and an underbit in the right and a marked crop in the left. I told him I had not; but that I had seen a brown-and-white-pied calf, with an overslope and a slit in the right, and a swallow-fork in the left; also, a black-and-white-paint horse, fifteen hands high, and an old gray mare, considerably flea-bitten, with a blazed face and a docked tail. He smiled faintly, and rode away.
    Perhaps the only interpretation here needed is that in Texas "muley" always means hornless; that a "flea-bitten" color is one dotted with minute specks of white and black, like pepper and salt; and that "claybank" is a yellowish dun.
    The brands of Texas and their descriptive names would fill all the books of the Nuremberg Cobbler. Indeed, the state is one great tangle of bovine hieroglyphics, which the Texans read better than a book; but which I could no more make out than Mr. Pickwick could the sign manual of Bill Stubbs. If, however, a Texan's reading is occasionally contested, he has a one-eyed scribe who is more infallible, as a last resort, than any Vatican manuscript.
    On the march the mighty herd sometimes strings out miles in length, and then it has "pointers," who ride abreast of the head of the column, and "siders," who keep the stragglers out of the chaparral. At night they "round up" or "corral" ("corral," in Texas, means also to herd without an enclosure, on the open prairie). The various reliefs during the day and night speak of being "on herd" or "off herd," very much as if they were performing military duty. It often happens, in a populated country--when they are honest drovers--that they are obliged to stop and "stray" the herd. While several herdsmen are stationed around it to hold it fast, another rides in, selects a stray brand, and "cuts it out," by chasing it out with his horse. At other times they "bear off" a single animal, by riding between it and the herd, when in motion. Sometimes, too, when they have made a march through a dense chaparral, they halt, go back, and "drive" it, by riding systematically through it, in search of stragglers. Two men often "bunch" on the march, i.e., unite their herds for convenience in driving.
    The statute of Texas once was (and may yet be) that all cattle which were allowed to pass the age of one year unbranded became the property of him whose brand was first put upon them.
    One Maverick formerly owned such immense herds that many of his animals unavoidably escaped his rouanne [sic] in the spring, were taken up by his neighbors, branded and called "mavericks." The term eventually spread over the whole state, and is in use now, not only to denote a waif thus acquired, but any young animal. No great drove can sweep through this mighty unfenced state without drawing a wake of these "mavericks"--these boves per dolum amotas--and the temptation to let them remain has ruined the herdsman's character. Go to Texas and begin to speak of an honest drover, and you shall be rewarded with a smile.
    With the Texan driver all oxen are "steers," and he has his "wheel-steers," his "swing-steers," and his "lead steers." He never uses the former word in the singular, and very seldom in the plural, when it is almost invariably "oxens." He never says to oxen, "gee," but "back"; never "haw," but "whoa, come." The "cow-whip" is a very long lash with a very short stock, and is used only in driving the herd, which is often called "the cows"; but the "ox-whip" has both parts as long as they can be managed. I have seen a poor fellow from Ohio, totally unused to this enormous affair, swing it around his head in many an awkward twirl, while the Texans stood by and laughed to see him knock off his hat and "bat" his eyes at every twitch, to avoid cutting them out. [cf. Italian, batter d'occhio--twinkling of an eye.]
    After a long desert journey the oxen become much "petered"; indeed, I may say they become altogether "petered." Hence, on the first good grass which they "strike" they halt a few days, and allow the teams to graze undisturbed, which makes them "all a-setting" again. They have queer names for their oxen. In the North each farmer owns a single yoke, and from Maine to Indiana they have pretty much the same names; but in Texas many men own many yoke, and you might fill a book with their grotesque names, such as Presbyterian and Methodist, Rock and Brandy, Benjamin and Filibuster.
    Toward the last, when the teams are terribly thinned out, and their poor old bones lie all along the road quite back to Texas, then the emigrants begin to yoke in the cows. Like women, they are the "contrariest" things in creation to manage. They run like the wind, then jump right up and down, and shake their heads, and twist themselves in a manner which is wonderful to behold. Sometimes an infuriated old muley gets loose, and chases a man for rods, with her horns just missing an important portion of his trousers at every plunge. After an incredible amount of pulling and "jiggering" about they are gotten into the team, and then comes the driver's turn, and the refractory Nancy and Susan are severely fustigated.
    For horses they use still another kind of whip, the "quirt" [from the Spanish]. A trig, smirk little horse is a "lace-horse," and he often has to "june," or "quill," or "get up and quill," or "get up and dust." [There is a large colony of Germans in Western Texas, and "june" is said to be corrupted from their gehen.] All over the South they feed a horse "roughness," (any kind of fodder, as distinguished from grain) but in Texas they "stake him out," and he gets nothing else but "roughness." I have even heard a Texan speak of land which he had "lariated out," meaning thereby that he had just bought it from government, but not occupied it yet. It is amusing to hear one ask of another, when about to purchase a horse: "Is he religious?" Query: Do they have in mind the Egyptian Ibis religiosa? A mustang is generally anything in the world but "religious," for he will both "sull" (have the sulks) and "buck." This latter operation consists in plunging forward, and throwing the head to the ground, in an effort to unseat the rider--a motion of which probably no domesticated beast is capable, aside from this miserable and treacherous species of horse. In fact, a mustang is not "worth shucks." He will run "skygodlin"' (obliquely); lie down and roll over; then "get up and scallyhoot" a short distance; then stop so "suddent," and "rare up" behind, that the rider continues his travels a little distance on his own account, and alights upon his pate. [With "scallyhoot" cf. scat, scateran; and Welsh hwt, hoot.] Several persons in our "lay-out" (i.e., our company) in New Mexico "swapped" good American horses for mustangs, for some little boot of onions or "sech-like truck," and made about as good bargains as Moses Primrose did when he exchanged a horse for a lot of old green spectacles.
    In addition to the usual methods of hobbling a horse, the Texans often "sideline" him, by tying a fore to a hind leg. "Better count ribs than tracks," is a proverbial expression of caution which may be heard on the frontiers, and which originated from this practice of picketing animals, When a horse is kept thus close for a long time, "his bones, that were not seen, stick out," but this is considered better than to have him stolen, and be obliged to go in pursuit.
    The war originated a great many new phrases in the imaginative South--far more, if they were all recorded, than in the North. "Cousin Sal" is pretty generally lamented throughout the South as the deceased and only daughter of our very worthy and revered "Uncle Sam"--the same having been begotten by him in the bonds of lawful wedlock with "Aunty Extension." You may hear the word "Confederate" singularly used. For instance, when a Texan wishes to express the strongest possible approval of some sentiment, he will exclaim, "You're mighty Confederate!" The Rebels had their "bluebacks" for money; but in Texas, where they have always clung tenaciously to their silver, they made slow progress, and were received with much reluctance. $100 bills were there called "Williams," and $50 bills "Blue Williams." Nevertheless, a Texan once told me, with a fierce glitter of satisfaction in his eye, that "he had $100,000 in 'Williams' laid up against that day, which was certain to come, when he could exchange it, dollar with dollar, for greenbacks." The poor fellow! I should much prefer a draft for ten cents on the Old Lady of California Street. Neither did greenbacks succeed well at first in invading the state. In March, 1868, they had gotten no farther west than Marshall, and everywhere west of that, when a man named a price, he meant "spizzerinctums" (corrupted from specie).
    The fierce military spirit of the South is shown in the scorn and contempt which they heaped on men who refused to go out to battle. In Texas they were called, with a play on the word women (in the South often pronounced weemen) and a hint at their former gasconade as to what "we" could do--"we men." Some boasted that one Southerner could "whale" ten Yankees. Lieutenant J. W. Boothe, of the Seventh Texas Battalion, I am told, first applied to this sort the phrase "ten-strikers," which became immensely popular in that state. In the cis-Mississippi states they were generally dubbed "bomb-proofs."
    A story is related of a brigade of North Carolinians, who, in one of the great battles (Chancellorsville, if I remember correctly) failed to hold a certain hill, and were laughed at by the Mississippians for having forgotten to tar their heels that morning. Hence originated their cant name, "Tar-heels."
    For a very obvious reason, the South Carolinians are called "Rice-birds." Wherever in the South you see a man take boiled rice on his plate and eat it heartily without condiments, you may know he is a South Carolinian as infallibly as you may that a man is plebeian-bred when he picks his teeth in the horsecar without holding his hand before his mouth. On the other hand, when you see a man, at the traditional hour sacred in New England to mince pie, get a cold, boiled sweet potato a little smaller than his calf, quarter it lengthways, take a quarter in one hand, and a piece of canebrake cheese in the other, and eat them by the light of a pine fire, you may be certain he is a North Carolinian.
    A Georgian is popularly known in the South as a "goober-grabbler" ["goober" for gopher, peanut--a nut which is exceedingly abundant in that state].
    For no particular reason that I am aware of, a Virginian is styled a "clover-eater."
    The cant designation in the Rebel army for a man of Arkansas was "Josh." This is said to have originated in a jocular attempt to compare Arkansas, Texas, and part of Louisiana to the two tribes and a half who had their possessions beyond Jordan, but went over with Joshua to assist the remaining tribes. Just before the battle of Murfreesboro (the story hath it) the Tennesseans, seeing a regiment from Arkansas approach, cried out, a little confused in their Biblical recollections: "Here come the tribes of Joshua, to fight with their brethren!" .
    For the Texan sobriquet "Chub" I know of no explanation, unless it be found in the size of the Eastern Texans. It is related of the Fifteenth Texas Infantry, for instance, that at the mustering-in no member was of a lighter weight than a hundred and eighty pounds, while a large number made the scale-beam kick at two hundred.
    On account of the great number of gophers in that state, and the former use of their skins for money, a Floridian is called a "gopher."
    This inexhaustible fertility of imagination was occasionally useful to the Rebel soldiers, in enabling them to eke out and variegate their lean commissary. A hog clandestinely killed outside of camp and smuggled in under cover of darkness was called a "slow bear." Despite their strategy they were often detected, but then, so lax was Confederate discipline, they generally escaped by inviting in their officers to dine off the "bear." "Mudlark" signified the same thing. In an attempt to vary their everlasting pork and cornbread, when the latter waxed old, they crumbled it fine and fried it in grease--a mess which they called "cush." Many a Rebel cavalryman has told me that he had often received in the morning, as his day's ration, an ear of corn on the cob, and had sometimes gone forty-eight hours without a "snook" of anything. When he munched a piece of crust, or any unmoistened provisions, as he sat in his saddle, he was eating his "dry Mike."
    Southern smoke-cured pork, in distinction from the Northern salted article, in allusion to the famous negro song, was termed "Old Ned," from its sable appearance. North Carolinians call skim milk "blue John." This is entirely gratuitous, and therefore an insult to old muley, in a land where cream rises as thin as the oil on boarding-house soup. It shows, however, the fondness which the Southerners have for good milk and its corollaries. In no other place in the Union can you find the genuine Irish bonnyclabber, sung by Dean Swift: that is, sour, thick buttermilk. Let it get old, and rich, and a little turned, then take selected, red sweet potatoes, and steam them moist and treacle-like, and you have the best eating in thirty-seven states. My memory waters in the mouth while I write thereof.
    In most of the Atlantic Southern states there is a dish to be found about hog-slaughtering time, named "puddings." It consists of swine's flesh, bread, sage, and other matters of nourishment and seasoning, chopped fine, and then squirted out into links from the end of a sausage-gun. It is well worth eating, when neatly prepared. Then there are the delusive "kettlings," among the "low-down" people. Not to harrow the reader's stomach by a minute description, I will simply say that it is fried sausages, minus all the unhealthy and absurd meat which most people insist on stuffing into the intestinal integuments. "Collard" [probably corrupted from colewort] is the kind of cabbage found everywhere in the South, whose leaves, not heads, furnish the greens for the inevitable dish of bacon and greens. The word is so common that it is singular it has not found its way into the dictionaries. "Pinetop" is a kind of mean turpentine whiskey of North Carolina.
    As for diseases, "Bronze John" is pretty well known for yellow fever. It is amusing to hear the people of the South speak in such a matter-of-fact way of fever and ague as their regular occupation: "Jones, are you chilling it much this winter?" "Well (chatter--chatter), Smith (shiver--chatter), right (chatter--shiver--chatter) smart." Of course, this only happens in "chilly" countries. Then in Texas they have the "higulcion flips," which is what the French would call a sort of maladie sans maladie; about equivalent, perhaps, to our "conniption fits," which the ladies can best define.
    Of terms used by agriculturists there are several not recorded. Planters everywhere in the South say they have a good "stand" when the corn or cotton plants come up thick enough in the rows to ensure an ordinary harvest; and in that case, if the cotton or other worms do not molest them, they will "make" a good crop. Texas is notable for the number of its soils. In Montgomery County there is what they call a "peach-bud."
    Then there is the "chocolate" prairie, and the "mulatto," and the "mesquite" (producing chiefly mesquite, both bush and grass) and the "hummock," (yielding principally small honey-locusts) and the "wire grass." A "tank" in Texas is a pond of fresh water, and a "swag" is a kind of hollow which seems to be peculiar to its prairies --narrow, shallow, and marshy and rush-grown at the bottom.
    When a Texan driver wishes to mend any part of his wagon underneath, he often has to "cut" it, i.e., throw the fore wheels out of alignment with the others.
    But the Rawhide State particularly excels in that fusty savagery of idioms peculiar to the swaggering drawcansirs of the Southwest. When two roughs fall to quarreling about any matter, one of them usually administers to the other some species of a "snifter," or, more commonly, "curries him down with a six-shooter." When he wishes to express a peculiarly fierce and inexorable resolve, he avows his dreadful purpose to be "essentially jumped-up" before he will permit such or such a thing; or "dog my cats if you shall," or "dad-snatched if you can." When one of the fellows is a "gyascutus," and the other is a "kiamuck," you may look for some rare sport. You need apprehend nothing dreadful, for boobies seldom "John Brown" each other. Neither of them will, like De Quincey's unfortunate Aroar, fall into an "almighty fix," though he may get into a "doggoned fixment"; or he may, in a very extreme case, become seriously "golumgumptiated." [Since this word means befooled or obfuscated, it is possible that it is compounded of gull and gumption.| "To have the drop on," i.e., to have the advantage of, appears to refer to a cowardly state of things. The figure presented is that of one man prostrate under another, who is about to drop some jagged piece of stone or wood which may impinge upon and bruise his eyes.
    If there be one thing more than another which disgusted a Northern man in the South, it is the fondness which they had for speculating as to the fate of Booth. In certain circles in Texas a young rough had no more certain means of raising a laugh than to ejaculate, at every absurdest cranny of the conversation, a travesty of his famous (reputed) exclamation--sic semper tyrannis--in this shape, "Six serpents and a tarantula."
    When a Texan goes forth on a sparking errand, he does not go to pay his devoirs to his Amaryllis, his Lalage, his Dulcinea, or other such antiquated object of affection, but (employing a word worthy of a place in the pasilaly of mankind) his "jimpsecute." She, on the other hand, is said to receive attention from her "juicy-spicy." I knew a man in Texas once who had no more sense than to have a "jimpsecute," and this was all her name: Dionysia Boadicea Jeffalinda Jacobina Christiana Buckiana Caledonia Susannah Emily Wyatt Wilkinson Moore Wynne!
    A Texan never has a great quantity of anything, but he has "scads" of it, or "oodles," or "dead oodles," or "scadoodles," or "swads."
    In Texas you never have things in your house, or baggage on your journey, but "tricks."
    "Moke," a negro (seemingly derived from Icelandic möckvi, darkness) is a word chiefly in use among the Regulars stationed in Texas and in the Territories. The word also has Cymric affinities, and was probably brought into currency by Welsh recruits, who have occasionally drifted into the army from New York City.
    "Fide on the jeck," for confident on the subject, is a singular instance of the barbarous corruptions of the Southwest.
    Then there is another phrase, "human scabs," for money; as, "I'd like to strike somebody that I could blister, and raise some human scabs." There is more philosophy than poetry in that phrase, "human scabs."
    "Rance sniffle" is a strange combination of words to express a mean and dastardly piece of malignity. I have never heard it outside of Georgia.
    In Texas "scringe" means to flinch.
    Soon is used adjectively all over the South; as, "If I get a soon start in the morning, I'll be thar before sunup."
    During the war we all heard enough of "we-uns" and "you-uns," but "you-alls" was to me something fresh.
"Socrates Hyacinth," Overland Monthly, August 1869, pages 125-131  Square brackets are in the original.


    I preached the first sermon delivered at Roseburg [circa 1851], and it was in Aaron Rose's saloon. . . . At the close of the prayer a stranger arose and exclaimed, "By h--l, that is the first prayer I've heard in a dog's age; hit 'em again, stranger." The remark coming at the time might have disconcerted some of our ministers today, but we pioneers had become used to such things, and I started in on my sermon.
Rev. J. W. Miller, "Founding a Great Church," Sunday Oregonian, Portland, December 9, 1900, page 10


James H. Twogood, "Bear Stories and Other Early-Day Narratives," Boise, Idaho Evening Capital News, March 24, 1908, page 5

    We were rather surprised to find that Sir Edward [Bulwer Lytton], to whom we accorded the character of a citizen of the world, has not yet emancipated himself from the idea that all Americans talk western slang. Richard Avenel, who has lived and made his money in New York, when he returns talks about being "Catawampously chawed up," and being "knocked into almighty smash," with a number of tarnations, &c., &c. Now this is all very foolish. Such dialect is not to be met with here, and seldom even in the far West. Its principal abiding place is in the brains of such young gentlemen as Mr. Howard Paul, who with a very limited knowledge of their own country, go over to England and write these American stories, in which, to atone for their deficiencies in real knowledge of national character, they take occasion to blazon forth all the vulgar slang they are master of, which the poor blind public, who believe that everything eccentric must be true, cry to this wretched balderdash, "How very characteristic!"
"Bulwer's Novel," New York Times, February 22, 1853, page 2


    HABIT.--How imperceptibly we acquire bad habits is seen by the aptness with which some adopt slang phrases.
    It is not uncommon to hear a young lady, in her mother's parlor, surrounded by all the appliances of wealth and elegance, reply to a friendly interrogatory by the expressive phrase, "You bet."
    If you ask her to accompany you to a concert, she may refuse by that laconic expression, "Over the left," or, should she choose to accept your invitation, she will signify her intention by saying, "Oh, course I will, sir." Should the way prove tough and uneven, she will inform you that "Jordan am a hard road to trabel." Should she wish to advance any of her friends in your good opinion, she will tell you that she is "a perfect brick."
    The mother tells her babe to "dry up," and her boys to "go it while you're young," and even the little children catch the taint, and defy parental authority by saying, "You can't come it."
    Like a deluge of unclean water are slang phrases, sweeping over the land, debasing and degrading that power which distinguishes man from the brute, and in this connection may be mentioned profanity. The woman who in levity exclaims, "Good Lord!" thinks, perhaps, that she would not swear for the world. Yet she forgets that the Lord hath said, "I will not hold him guiltless that taketh my name in vain." The breath of man, tainted with blasphemy, is a disgrace to a civilized and an enlightened community.--Hesperian.
Weekly California Express, Marysville, December 11, 1858, page 4


    I shall endeavor to accustom myself to Oregonian habits as fast as possible. I have several words of the "Chinook jargon" already in memory. There's a slang phrase, the continual use of which is strictly essential to happiness and long life. Never were two words in English so arranged as to brilliantly and forcibly embellish any and every sentence uttered by old and young (it is within the easy grasp of the very young, I perceive), as "You bet." To use it with elegance and precision, in every sentence, requires great care and practice; hence I shall not attempt it in this, as it might not appear well in print. As Don Quixote says: "It is by such innovations that language is enriched." 
T. I. Poe, "An Unfortunate Typo," Oregon Statesman, Salem, December 1, 1862, page 3


    PROFANITY IN THE PULPIT.--A writer in San Francisco Evangel (religious paper) remarks:
    Clergymen using profane language! Yes, that is what I mean. And I have heard it (i.e., according to my views of profanity), often, and in various pulpits--until I can forbear no longer. If the natural order is from the pulpit to the pew, then when the former becomes unnatural, an echo should not offend. My friends of the cloth may sneer at my unsophisticated scruples, or condemn my presumption, or affect to ignore my voice, yet I must speak. I heard a man the other day, in one of the prominent churches in this state--a man educated in one of the best seminaries in the land--a man whose whole record, through a score of years (more or less) has been that of a "good minister of Jesus Christ"--a man whose devoted piety, whose arduous zeal, whose fine talents, whose ripe erudition, whose "power in the pulpit" have made him prominent among those of the first rank, use these expressions: "Nothing in God's earth," "Nothing in God's world," "What in God's name," "Nowhere in God's universe." I felt, and I believe that the whole congregation felt, a thrill of horror every time one of these expressions was used; for the connections in which they were uttered were very similar to those in which the licentious and profane swearer would use them when in a riotous rout. And I wish the truth did not compel me to refer to the swearing and irreverent manner of the utterances.
    This custom of semi-profanity is a growing evil. I have heard it often, and with increasing frequency, in various pulpits, from several preachers within the last few months. I have not repeated, nor even referred to all, nor the worst forms of expression, but have only given enough to indicate what I mean, and to arrest the attention of those good men (for I regard them as in error without intent) and enable them to correct so pernicious a custom. Every one of those ministers to whom I have thus painfully listened is a man of learning and ability, a man whom I delight to hear preach, and I would fain hope a man who will apprehend and appreciate this friendly caution.
Oregonian, Portland, March 14, 1864, page 4

Far Western Lawgivers and Preachers