An intelligent Englishwoman, coming to America to live, told me that the two things which most impeded her first communications with untravelled Americans, even above the gross differences [Pg116] 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 Americanisms). 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.[18] 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." Moreover, 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.[19]
The English use /quite/ a great deal more than we do, and, as we have seen, in a different sense. /Quite rich/, in American, [Pg117] means tolerably rich, richer than most; /quite so/, in English, is identical in meaning with /exactly so/. In American /just/ is almost equivalent to the English /quite/, as in /just lovely/. Thornton shows that this use of /just/ goes back to 1794. The word is also used in place of /exactly/ in other ways, as in /just in time/, /just how many/ and /just what do you mean?/