ences between England and American pronunciation and intonation, were the complete absence of the general utility adjective jolly from the American vocabulary, and the puzzling omnipresence and versatility of the American verb to fix. In English colloquial usage jolly means almost anything; it intensifies all other adjectives, even including miserable and homesick. An Englishman is jolly tired, jolly hungry or jolly well tired; his wife is jolly sensible ; his dog is jolly keen ; the prices he pays for things are jolly dear (never steep or stiff or high: all American- isms) . But he has no noun to match the American proposition, meaning proposal, business, affair, case, consideration, plan, theory, solution and what not: only the German zug can be ranged beside it.[1] And he has no verb in such wide practise as to fix. In his speech it means only to make fast or to determine. In American it may mean to repair, as in "the plumber fixed the pipe"; to dress, as in "Mary fixed her hair"; to prepare, as in "the cook is fixing the gravy"; to bribe, as in "the judge was fixed"; to settle, as in "the quarrel was fixed up"; to heal, as in "the doctor fixed his boil"; to finish, as in "Murphy fixed Sweeney in the third round"; to be well-to-do, as in "John is well-fixed"; to arrange, as in "I fixed up the quarrel"; to be drunk, as in "the whiskey fixed him"; to punish, as in "I'll fix him"; and to correct, as in "he fixed my bad Latin." More- over, it is used in all its English senses. An Englishman never goes to a dentist to have his teeth fixed. He does not fix the fire ; he makes it up, or mends it. He is never well- fixed, either in money or by liquor.[2]
The English use quite a great deal more than we do, and, as we have seen, in a different sense. Quite rich, in American,
- ↑ This specimen is from the Congressional Record of Dec. 11, 1917: "I do not like to be butting into this proposition, but I look upon this post-office business as a purely business proposition." The speaker was "Hon" Homer P. Snyder, of New York. In the Record of Jan. 12, 1918, p. 8294, proposition is used as a synonym for state of affairs.
- ↑ Already in 1855 Bristed was protesting that to fix was having "more than its legitimate share of work all over the Union." "In English conversation," he said, "the panegyrical adjective of all work is nice; in America it is fine." This was before the adoption of jolly and its analogues, ripping, stunning, rattling, etc.
