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 /breadstuffs/. 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/."[29] So with /shoe/. In English it meant (and still means) a topless article of foot-wear, 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 [Pg053] middle of the eighteenth century /shop/ continued to designate a retail establishment in America, as it does in England to this day. /Store/ was applied only to a large establishment--one showing, in some measure, the character of a warehouse. But in 1774 a Boston young man was advertising in the /Massachusetts Spy/ for "a /place/ as a /clerk/ in a /store/" (three Americanisms in a row!). Soon afterward /shop/ began to acquire its special American meaning as a factory, /e. g./, /machine-shop/. Meanwhile /store/ completely displaced /shop/ in the English sense, and it remained for a late flowering of Anglomania, as in the case of /boot/ and /shoe/, to restore, in a measure, the /status quo ante/. /Lumber/, in eighteenth century English, meant disused furniture, and this is its common meaning in England today. But the colonists early employed it to designate timber, and that use of it is now universal in America. Its familiar derivatives, /e. g./, /lumber-yard/, /lumberman/, /lumberjack/, greatly reinforce this usage. /Pie/, in English, means a meat-pie; in American it means a fruit-pie. The English call a fruit-pie a /tart/; the Americans call a meat-pie a /pot-pie/. /Dry-goods/, in England, means "non-liquid goods, as corn" (/i. e./, wheat); in the United States the term means "textile fabrics or wares."[30] The difference had appeared before 1725. /Rock/, in English, always means a large mass; in America it may mean a small stone, as in /rock-pile/ and /to throw a rock/. The Puritans were putting /rocks/ into the foundations of their meeting-houses so early as 1712.[31] /Cracker/ began to be used for /biscuit/ before the Revolution. /Tavern/ displaced /inn/ at the same time. As for /partridge/, it is cited by a late authority[32] as a salient example of changed meaning, along with /corn/ and /store/. In England the term is applied only to the true partridge (/Perdix perdix/) and its nearly related varieties, but in the United States it is also used to designate the ruffed grouse (/Bonasa umbellus/), the common quail (/Colinus virginianus/) and various [Pg054] other tetraonoid birds. This confusion goes back to colonial times. So with /rabbit/. Properly speaking, there are no native rabbits in the United States; they are all hares. But the early colonists, for some unknown reason, dropped the word /hare/ out of their vocabulary, and it is rarely heard in American speech to this day. When it appears it is almost always applied to the so-called Belgian hare, which, curiously enough, is not a hare at all, but a true rabbit.