"The editor of the _Philadelphia Gazette_ is wrong in calling absquatiated a Kentucky _phrase_ (he may well say phrase instead of _word_.) It may prevail there, but its origin was in South Carolina, where it was a few years since regularly derived from the Latin, as we can prove from undoubted authority. By the way, there is a little _corruption_ is the word as the _Gazette_ uses it, _absquatalized_ is the true reading."
Certainly a word worth quarrelling about!
"Are you cold, miss?" said I to a young lady, who pulled the shawl closer over her shoulders.
The English _what_? implying that you did not hear what was said to you, is changed in America to the word _how_?
"I reckon", "I calculate", "I guess," are all used as the common English phrase, "I suppose." Each term is said to be peculiar to different states, but I found them used everywhere, one as often as the other. _I opine_, is not so common.
A specimen of Yankee dialect and conversation:--
"Well now, I'll tell you--you know Marble Head?"
"Not know Sally Hackett? Why she lives at Marble Head."
"And you really don't know Sally Hackett?"
"Well, that's considerable odd. Now, I'll tell you--Ephraim Bagg, he that has the farm three miles from Marble Head--just as--but now, are you sure you don't know Sally Hackett?"
"Well, he's a pretty substantial man, and no mistake. He has got a heart as big as an ox, and everything else in proportion, I've a notion. He loves Sal, the worst kind; and if she gets up there, she'll think she has got to Palestine (Paradise); ain't she a screamer? I were thinking of Sal myself, for I feel lonesome, and when I am thrown into my store promiscuous alone, I can tell you I have the blues, the worst kind, no mistake--I can tell you that. I always feel a kind o' queer when I sees Sal, but when I meet any of the other gals I am as calm and cool as the milky way," etcetera, etcetera.
The verb "to fix" is universal. It means to do anything.
"Shall I _fix_ your coat or your breakfast first?" That is--"Shall I brush your coat, or _get ready_ your breakfast first!"
_Right away_, for immediately or at once, is very general.
"Shall I fix it right away?"--i.e. "Shall I do it immediately?"
In the West, when you stop at an inn, they say--