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DICTIONARY OF AMERICANISMS.

A GLOSSARY

OF

WORDS AND PHRASES.

USUALLY REGARDED AS PECULIAR TO

THE UNITED STATES.

BY

JOHN RUSSELL BARTLETT,

CORRESPONDING SECRETARY OF THE AMERICAN ETHNOLOGICAL SOCIETY, AND FOREIGN
CORRESPONDING SECRETARY OF THE NEW YORK HISTORICAL SOCIETY

PUBLIC

NEW YORK:

BARTLETT AND WELFORD,

No. 7 Astor House.

1848.

ENTERED, According to Act of Congress, in the year 1848, by

JOHN RUSSELL BARTLETT,

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District

of New York.

EDWARD O. JENKINS, PRINTER, 114 Nassau St., New York.

INTRODUCTION.

IN venturing to lay before the public a Vocabulary of the colloquial language of the United States, some explanation may be necessary for the broad ground I have been led to occupy.

I began to make a list of such words as appeared to be, or at least such as had generally been called Americanisms, or peculiar to the United States, and, at the same time, made reference to the several authors in whose writings they appeared; not knowing whether, in reality, they were of native growth, or whether they had been introduced from England. When this list had expanded so as to embrace a large number of the words used in familiar conversation, both among the educated as well as among the uneducated and rustic classes, the next object was to examine the dialects and provincialisms of those parts of England from which the early settlers of New England and our other colonies emigrated.

The provincialisms of New England are more familiar to our ears than those of any other section of the United States, as they are not confined within the limits of those States, but have extended to New York, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and Michigan; which States have been, to a great extent, settled by emigrants from New England.

On comparing these familiar words with the provincial and colloquial language of the northern counties of England, a most striking resemblance appeared, not only in the words commonly regarded as peculiar to New England, but in the dialectical pronunciation of certain words, and in the general tone

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