to this day, is in almost universal use in the United States, though rare in England. Our conveyancers, in describing real property, always speak of ' ' all that lot or parcel of land." [1] Other examples of the application of old words to new purposes are afforded by freshet, barn and team. A freshet, in eighteenth century English, meant any stream of fresh water; the colonists made it signify an inundation. A barn was a house or shed for storing crops ; in the colonies the word came to mean a place for keeping cattle also. A team, in English, was a pair of draft horses; in the colonies it came to mean both horses and vehicle.
The process is even more clearly shown in the history of such words as corn and shoe. Corn, in orthodox English, means grain for human consumption, and especially wheat, e. g., the Corn Laws. The earliest settlers, following this usage, gave the name of Indian corn to what the Spaniards, following the Indians themselves, had called maíz. But gradually the adjective fell off, and by the middle of the eighteenth century maize was called simply corn, and grains in general were called breadstuff's. Thomas Hutchinson, discoursing to George III in 1774, used, corn in this restricted sense, speaking of "rye and corn mixed." "What corn?" asked George. "Indian corn," explained Hutchinson, "or, as it is called in authors, maize." [2] So with shoe. In English it meant (and still means) a topless article of footwear, but the colonists extended its meaning to varieties covering the ankle, thus displacing the English boot, which they reserved for foot coverings reaching at least to the knee. To designate the English shoe they began to use the word slipper. This distinction between English and American usage still prevails, despite the affectation which has lately sought to revive boot, and with it its derivatives, boot–shop and bootmaker.
Store, shop, lumber, pie, dry–goods, cracker, rock and partridge among nouns and to haul, to jew, to notify and to heft among verbs offer further examples of changed meanings. Down to the
