Some of the tendencies visible in American—e. g., toward the facile manufacture of new compounds, toward the transfer of words from one part of speech to another, and toward the free use of suffixes and prefixes and the easy isolation of roots and pseudoroots—go back to the period of the first growth of a distinct American dialect and are heritages from the English of the time. They are the products of a movement which, reaching its height in the English of Elizabeth, was dammed up at home, so to speak, by the rise of linguistic self-consciousness toward the end of the reign of Anne, but continued almost unobstructed in the colonies.
For example, there is what philologists call the habit of clipping or back-formation—a sort of instinctive search, etymologically un-sound, for short roots in long words. This habit, in Restoration days, precipitated a quasi-English word, mobile, from the Latin mobile vulgus, and in the days of William and Mary it went a step further by precipitating mob from mobile. Mob is now sound English, but in the eighteenth century it was violently attacked by the new sect of purists, and though it survived their onslaught they undoubtedly greatly impeded the formation and adoption of other words of the same category. There are, however, many more such words in standard English, e. g., patter from paternoster, van from caravan, wig from periwig, cab from cabriolet, brandy from brandy-wine (=brandewyn), pun from pundigrion, grog from grogram, curio from curiosity, canter from Canterbury, brig from brigantine, bus from omnibus, bant from Banting and fad from fadaise. In the colonies there was no such opposition to them as came from the purists of the English universities; save for a few feeble protests from Witherspoon and Boucher they went unchallenged. As a result they multiplied enormously. Rattler for rattle-snake, pike for turnpike, draw for drawbridge, coon for raccoon, possum for opossum, cuss for customer, cute for acute, squash for askutasquashthese American back-formations are already antique; Sabbaday for Sabbath-day has actually reached the dignity of an archaism, as has the far later chromo for chromolithograph. To this day they are formed in great numbers; scarcely a new substantive of more than two syllables comes in without bringing one in its wake. We have thus witnessed, within the past few years, the genesis of scores now in wide use and fast taking on respectability: phone for telephone, gas for gasoline, co-ed for co-educational, pop for populist, frat for fraternity, gym for gymnasium, movie for moving picture, plane for air-plane, prep-school for preparatory-school, auto for automobile, aero for aeroplane and aeronautical. Some linger on the edge of vulgarity: pep for pepper, flu for influenza, plute for plutocrat, vamp for vampire, pen for penitentiary, con for confidence (as in con-man, con-game and to con), convict and consumption, defi for defiance, beaut for beauty, rep for reputation, stenog for stenographer, ambish for ambition, vag for vagrant, champ for champion, pard for partner, coke for cocaine, simp for simpleton, diff for difference, grass for asparagus, mum for chrysanthemum, mutt for muttonhead, wiz for wizard, rube for Reuben, hon for honey, barkeep for barkeeper, divvy for dividend or division, jit for jitney. Others are already in good usage: smoker for smoking-car, diner for dining-car, sleeper for sleeping-car, oleo for oleomar-garine, hypo for hyposulphite of soda, Yank for Yankee, confab for confabulation, memo for memorandum, pop-concert for popular-concert, gator for alligator, foots for footlights, ham for hamfatter (actor), sub for substitute, knicker for knickerbocker. Many back-formations originate in college slang, e. g., prof for professor, prom for promenade, soph for sophomore, grad for graduate (noun), lab for laboratory, dorm for dormitory, plebe for plebeian. Ad for advertisement is struggling hard for general recognition; some of its compounds, e. g., ad-writer, want-ad, display-ad, ad-card, ad-rate, column-ad and ad-man, are already accepted in technical terminology. Boob for booby promises to become sound American in a few years; its synonyms are no more respectable than it is. At its heels are bo for hobo, and hoak for hoakum, two altogether fit successors to bum for bummer. Try for trial, as in He made a try at it, is also making progress but perhaps try-out, a characteristically American combination of verb and preposition, will eventually displace it. This production of new words by clipping, back-formation and folk-etymology is quite as active among the verbs as among the nouns.