With the new verbs came a great swarm of verb-phrases, some of them short and pithy and others extraordinarily elaborate, but all showing the true national talent for condensing a complex thought, and often a whole series of thoughts, into a vivid and arresting image. Of the first class are /to fill the bill/, /to fizzle out/, /to make tracks/, /to peter out/, /to plank down/, /to go back on/, /to keep tab/, /to light out/ and /to back water/. Side by side with them we have inherited such common coins of speech as /to make the fur fly/, /to cut a swath/, /to know him like a book/, /to keep a stiff upper lip/, /to cap the climax/, /to handle without gloves/, /to freeze on to/, /to go it blind/, /to pull wool over his eyes/, /to know the ropes/, /to get solid with/, /to spread one's self/, /to run into the ground/, /to dodge the issue/, /to paint the town red/, /to take a back seat/ and /to get ahead of/. These are so familiar that we use them and hear them without thought; they seem as authentically parts of the English idiom as /to be left at the post/. And yet, as the labors of Thornton have demonstrated, all of them are of American nativity, and the circumstances surrounding the origin of some of them have been accurately determined. Many others are palpably the products of the great movement toward the West, for example, /to pan out/, /to strike it rich/, /to jump/ or /enter a claim/, /to pull up stakes/, /to rope in/, /to die with one's boots on/, /to get the deadwood on/, /to get the drop/, /to back and fill/ (a steamboat phrase used figuratively) and /to get the bulge on/. And in many others the authentic American is no less plain, for example, in /to kick the bucket/, /to put a bug in his [Pg079] ear/, /to see the elephant/, /to crack up/, /to do up brown/, /to bark up the wrong tree/, /to jump on with both feet/, /to go the whole hog/, /to make a kick/, /to buck the tiger/, /to let it slide/ and /to come out at the little end of the horn/. /To play possum/ belongs to this list. To it Thornton adds /to knock into a cocked hat/, despite its English sound, and /to have an ax to grind/. /To go for/, both in the sense of belligerency and in that of partisanship, is also American, and so is /to go through/ (/i. e./, to plunder).