its heels is bo for hobo, an altogether fit successor to bum for bummer.[1]
A parallel movement shows itself in the great multiplication of common abbreviations. " Americans, as a rule," says Farmer, "employ abbreviations to an extent unknown in Europe.… This trait of the American character is discernible in every department of the national life and thought."[2] O. K., C. O. D., N. G., G. O. P. (get out and push) and P. D. Q., are almost national hallmarks; the immigrant learns them immediately after damn and go to hell. Thornton traces N. G. to 1840; C. O. D. and P. D. Q. are probably as old. As for O. K., it was in use so early as 1790, but it apparently did not acquire its present significance until the 20's; originally it seems to have meant "ordered recorded." During the presidential campaign of 1828 Jackson 's enemies, seeking to prove his illiteracy, alleged that he used it for "oil korrect." Of late the theory has been put forward that it is derived from an Indian word, okeh, signifying "so be it," and Dr. "Woodrow Wilson is said to support this theory and to use okeh in endorsing government papers, but I am unaware of the authority upon which the etymology is based. Bartlett says that the figurative use of A No. 1, as in an A No. 1 man, also originated in America, but this may not be true. There can be little doubt, however, about T. B. (for tuberculosis}, G. B. (for grand bounce), 23, on the Q. T., and D. & D. (drunk and disorderly). The language breeds such short forms of speech prodigiously; every trade and profession has a host of them; they are innumerable in the slang of sport.[3]
What one sees under all this, account for it as one will, is a double habit, the which is, at bottom, sufficient explanation of the gap which begins to yawn between English and American, particularly on the spoken plane. On the one hand it is a habit of verbal economy- a jealous disinclination to waste two words on what can be put into one, a natural taste for the brilliant and
- ↑ For an exhaustive discussion of these formations cf. Clipped Words, by Elizabeth Wittman, Dialect Notes, vol. iv, pt. ii, 1914.
- ↑ Americanisms Old and New, p. 1.
- ↑ Cf, Semi-Secret Abbreviations, by Percy W. Long, Dialect Notes, vol. iv, pt. iii, 1915.
