Voices in Time

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Viewed freely, the English language is the accretion and growth of every dialect, race, and range of time, and is both the free and compacted composition of all. From this point of view, it stands for language in the largest sense, and is really the greatest of studies. It involves so much, is indeed a sort of universal absorber, combiner, and conqueror. The scope of its etymologies is the scope not only of man and civilization, but the history of nature in all departments and of the organic universe, brought up to date; for all are comprehended in words, and their backgrounds. This is when words become vitalized and stand for things, as they unerringly and soon come to do, in the mind that enters on their study with fitting spirit, grasp, and appreciation.

Slang, profoundly considered, is the lawless germinal element, below all words and sentences, and behind all poetry, and proves a certain perennial rankness and protestantism in speech. As the United States inherit by far their most precious possession—the language they talk and write—from the Old World, under and out of its feudal institutes, I will allow myself to borrow a simile even of those forms furthest removed from American democracy. Considering language then as some mighty potentate, into the majestic audience hall of the monarch ever enters a personage like one of Shakespeare’s clowns, and takes position there, and plays a part even in the stateliest ceremonies. Such is slang, or indirection, an attempt of common humanity to escape from bald literalism and express itself illimitably, which in highest walks produces poets and poems, and doubtless in prehistoric times gave the start to, and perfected, the whole immense tangle of the old mythologies. For, curious as it may appear, it is strictly the same impulse source, the same thing. Slang, too, is the wholesome fermentation or eructation of those processes eternally active in language, by which froth and specks are thrown up—mostly to pass away, though occasionally to settle and permanently crystallize.

To make it plainer, it is certain that many of the oldest and solidest words we use were originally generated from the daring and license of slang. In the processes of word formation, myriads die, but here and there the attempt attracts superior meanings, becomes valuable and indispensable, and lives forever. Thus the term “right” means literally only straight. “Wrong” primarily meant twisted, distorted. “Integrity” meant oneness. “Spirit” meant breath, or flame. A “supercilious” person was one who raised his eyebrows. To “insult” was to leap against. If you “influenced” a man, you but flowed into him. The Hebrew word which is translated “prophesy” meant to bubble up and pour forth as a fountain. The enthusiast bubbles up with the spirit of God within him, and it pours forth from him like a fountain. The word prophecy is misunderstood. Many suppose that it is limited to mere prediction; that is but the lesser portion of prophecy. The greater work is to reveal God. Every true religious enthusiast is a prophet.

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