Americanisms - 24 February 1984

That gust of wind that I can hear coming up is, I am sure, an immense sigh of relief from immurable listeners when I say that I am not going to talk about the results of the Iowa caucus, whereby the eight Democrats who are aching to be president, expose themselves to a fraction of the American voters so small that they represent only a fraction of the voters of one of the 50 states.

The only thing about the Iowa caucus that I thought might interest you is the word, caucus itself, which is only one example, but a strong one, of an Americanism that crossed the ocean and came into use in Britain but with a changed, with an opposite meaning.

That happens usually because the Britons who heard it here, misunderstood its meaning. Caucus, like several other American political terms was, in turn, picked up from the Indians, what in school we called, Red Indians. Pow-wow was another which passed over to Britain, and we got that one right. On second thought, we both got it wrong but in the same way. To the Indians, a pow-wow was a doctor, and to them, the doctor was also the priest, and a sorcerer. The word got transferred to the ceremony he presided over, which was a ritual meeting called to cure a member of the tribe of some disease, attended, an early account reports, with great noise and confusion, often with dancing.

If we picked the word up today, it might have been normally used, to describe a disco bash. But to the Indians, it was the invalid's last resort', when the power of prayer, had failed. And remember they had their gods and thus one of the early elders, a mean white elder of Massachusetts. explained, upon their god, they had their first dependence for recovery from sickness, but if he failed them they applied to their pow-wows.

Well in time the whites picked it up as a bit of political slang, but always to refer to a meeting, usually an indignation meeting that failed to settle anything. For instance, at the end of the civil war, the Boston Daily Telegraph, wrote, "The abolitionists are having a great pow-wow as to whether they shall or shall not maintain their organisational now that slavery is dead". After that the word deteriorated, as all slang does into a general meaning far from its origins, and was last heard of as a synonym for any sort of discussion – what I recently heard an ardent lady call a meaningful debate.

Another important Indian word which I believe never did cross the Atlantic was Sachem. He, in all the Indian tribes of the east, was the chief, the king, and both the title and the office were hereditary and this too, passed over into American politics, first facetiously, as we might say "Ronald Reagan sachem of the Republican party", but it was institutionalised by the Democratic party machine of New York City, Tammany.

Winston Churchill’s favourite American politician, an eloquent Irish congressman named Bourke Cockran – from whom, as a young man, Churchill swore he learned all the best tricks of oratory – was officially elected in 1905, grand sachem of Tammany Hall. The word had long gone, like many another Indian borrowing, but let’s not forget the American Indian words that we borrowed and kept, and used in English currency so often that today we can scarcely remember that we owe them to the Indians, such as among animals raccoon or possum skunk, caribou and among other various other objects, moccasin, toboggan, hickory. Among the foods which Americans are eating and relishing at this moment, are hominy, succotash and the splendid fresh water tortoise which, cooked into the form of stew, was the main reason why the late David Bruce in his last days as ambassador to Britain said he longed to return to his native Maryland.

Well, how about caucus? It, too, was originally applied by the Algonquin tribe to an elder, a wise man, that you applied to for advice, and then it came to mean the meeting at which the advice was given. It went over into American politics to describe a particular type of meeting, a meeting called by the members of a political party to choose party leaders, or name candidates for public office. And that’s exactly the sense used last week in the Iowa caucus and there are 11 more state caucuses to come.

In other words, a caucus in this country is a meeting called for a special purpose. But it was popularised in England, when, as an English writer who knew America reported, when it was misapplied by Disraeli to apply to the controlling organisation of a party, in other words, the permanent policy council. What, in this country, is called a political machine.

Another political term that newly-arrived British correspondents have to watch out for is tabling. When you hear that some bill, some motion, has been tabled in Congress it means its shelved and most likely forgotten for good. In Westminster, tabling a motion means putting it down for debate without hinting at its fate, one way or another.

Outside politics there are a couple of misunderstood exports come to mind which may give you a chuckle. One has died even in this country, though it was a very active slang phrase in the 1930s. Hunky-dory is the word. When I first mingled with my peers at Yale and was very busy with my little notebook inscribing all these fascinating differences between the language of England and the language of the United States, I recall putting down two or three happy phrases that signified everything was going well.

Everything swell, we’d say, or everything is Jake. Or everything is on the up and up. And, most exotic of all, everything is hunky-dory. I still have a faded newspaper clipping, sorry, cutting, of an item written in the mid-30s by the then radio correspondent of the Evening Standard in which the man got it completely turned round. He wrote, "I should warn you that during the next ten days, because of sun spots, short wave listening is likely to be hunky-dory."

The word that's very much current in both Britain and America is the word bomb, which used to be (and still is) a favourite of the showbiz weekly variety, how often did theatre producers dread the Variety headline, "New musical bombs in New Haven". A play or movie that bombed was a play that died or flopped overnight, an explosive failure.

It was picked up in England with alarming results that many of you are well aware of, and I didn’t know this till about ten years ago when I put out a book that did, to be modest about it, alarmingly well. One morning I got a telephone call from my daughter in England, by then resident in England for a dozen years. The call was made on a generous impulse, her tone was ecstatic, "Oh daddy," she cried, "your book is an absolute bomb in England". "I hope not," I said.

Well, some other time we’ll go into this whole topic of English on both sides of the Atlantic. A talk with that actual title – I am staggered to notice from that same cutting book – I did over these airwaves or ether, just 49 years ago this spring. But while I was looking up pow-wow in an admirable book written by an Englishman nearly 50 years ago, a sort of companion to Fowler's Modern English Usage, it was called Modern American Usage, my eyes strayed along the piece and I came on a couple of earnest explanations of Americanisms that no longer need explaining in Britain. More than that, the English equivalent now seems quaint even to Englishmen.

Here, then, is the admirable HW Horwill on the strange American word parole, "Parole is a term commonly used in the United States to designate conditional lease granted to a prisoner who has served part of his sentence in a penal institution". In England, Mr Horwill says, this term is used in relation to prisoners of war only; an ordinary convict, when released conditionally before completing his term of imprisonment is said to be not on parole but on ticket of leave.

And a few pages on he comes to the even stranger word, which certainly I had never heard before I landed here – peanut. Commonly known in England, Horwill correctly says, as – guess what? Ask anybody over 60sixty, and they will tell you monkey nut. I suppose monkey nut was doomed the day the Roosevelt administration, in a moment of inspired compassion, decided to ship to Britain under Lend-Lease during the second war, peanut butter, to strengthen the loins of the besieged children. Ever since, I understand, it has been standard fodder among the youth of Britain, which leaves me aghast, because I find it is still something that you have to be brought up on, to like. To this day, there are two American institutions that give me the shivers – peanut butter and drum majorettes.

Enough of our language troubles and problems, the invasion of Americanisms into Britain is never a problem to any generation born after a particular invasion – since they don’t know they were invaded – but only to the generation that can see the invaders offshore. How many of you for instance, recoil in horror, as your great-grandfathers did, at the arrival of the abominable Americanism, "scientist", for man of science. Well, I’d say as many as the great-great-great-grandfathers did who shared Charles Lamb's distain for the word awful, as in an awful hat, an awful play, an awful meal. Too late now, I am afraid, to go back but, as I say, if the topic interests anyone at all, some time in the near future, we’ll have a pow-wow about it.

To wind up on a cheerful note, in a week when the editorial – pardon, the leader – writers are howling "Who lost Lebanon?" and "Reagan’s retreat", let me just add a couple of items that gave me hope and comfort. Phil Marr, the American skier who won a gold medal, when asked by frantic microphone pushers who or what you were skiing for – a question requiring the almost-compulsory answer, for my country, for America or for mom and apple pie – replied, as you might to an innocent child, "Why, I am skiing for myself, who else?"

Best sight of all on television in the past month was the astronaut whose camera jammed. This wizard of space science floated over to repair it. You know what he did? He lifted his fist, and banged it, just like my television repair man.

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