BURGESS UNABRIDGED

A New Dictionary of Words you have always Needed By Gelett Burgess Author of “Goops,” “Are You a Bromide?” “The Maxims of Methuselah,” “The Maxims of Noah,” &c. With Cover Designs and Illustrations by HERB ROTH NEW YORK FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY {vi}PUBLISHERS

Copyright, 1914, by Gelett Burgess

{vii}

ILLUSTRATIONS

{ix}

INTRODUCTION

Yes, I have written a dictionary. Worcester and Webster are all right in their way, and Stormuth will do very well for Englishmen—but they’re not up to date. Mrs. Century’s book is a bit better and even old Dr. Standard’s Compendium of Useful Information includes my own words, “bromide” and “sulphite.” It’s good enough for last year, but “Burgess Unabridged” will give the diction of the year 1915.

For, the fact is, English is a growing language, and we have to let out the tucks so often, that no last season’s model will ever fit it. English isn’t like French, which is corseted and gloved and clad and shod and hatted strictly according to the rules of the Immortals. We have no Academy, thank Heaven, to tell what is real English and what isn’t. Our Grand Jury is that ubiquitous person, Usage, and we keep him pretty busy at his job. He’s a Progressive and what he likes, he’ll have, in spite of lexicographers, college professors and authors of “His Complete Works.” That’s the reason why English has ousted Volapük and Esperanto as a world language. It snuggles right down where you live and makes itself at home.

How does English shape itself so comfortably to the body of our thought? With a new wrinkle here and a little more breadth there, with fancy trimmings, new styles, fresh materials and a genius for adapting itself to all sorts of wear. Everybody is working at it, tailoring it, fitting it, decorating it. There is no person so humble but that he can suggest an improvement that may easily become the reigning mode.

Slang, I once defined as “The illegitimate sister of Poetry”—but slang is sometimes better than that; it often succeeds in marrying the King’s English, and at that ceremony there are dozens of guests. There’s the poker player, who con{x}tributes for his wedding present, “The limit” and “Make good” and “Four flush.” Politics hands over “Boodle,” “Mugwump” and “Gerrymander.” The thief presents his “Jimmy,” “Doss,” “Kip,” “Heeler,” “Split,” “Lag,” “Swag” and “Dope.” The horse race gives us “Neck and neck”; baseball, “Putting one over.” Even the baby offers “Goo-goo.” Illustrations, however, are boring.

But slang, strictly, consists in the adaptation of phrases; it does not often—not often enough at any rate—coin new words. Thieves’ patter or jargon or cant provides us almost with a language of itself, and words from the Underworld are continually being added to the language. Like the turkey trot, “We first endure, then pity, then embrace.” So from all sources the language recruits new phrases, new expressions, even new rules of grammar. Horrible as they are to the conservative, common usage accepts them and they become classic. Professor Lounsbury of Yale is kept busy justifying them. He, alone of all grammarians, sees that the split infinitive must come, that verbs must be constructed of nouns. He recognizes the new function of the potential mood, in “I should worry” and “Wouldn’t that jar you?”

Yes, it’s easy enough to coin a phrase, to adapt an old word to a new use, like “Chestnut” and “Lemon” and “Peach.” It’s easy to abbreviate words, like “Gent” and “Pants” and “Exam” and “Phone” and “Stylo.” It’s easier still to fill the new dictionary with new derivatives from Latin or Greek or crowd in French. The scientific word requires a little invention. “Radioactive” and “Aileron” and “Hypofenyl-tribrompropionic” need only a scholastic delving in ancient tongues. But to invent a new word right out of the air or the cigarette smoke is another thing. And that’s what I determined to do.

Yes, I know it has been tried, but it’s never been seriously and deliberately gone about. It has been haphazard work, the result of a mere accident, or vaudeville high spirits. But the way such neologisms have become quickly current shows that here’s a field for high endeavor, and a little success with{xi} “Blurb” and “Goop” encourage me to proceed in the good work. We need so many new words, and we need ’em quick. The question is: How to get ’em?

Of course, we might ransack the back numbers of the language and dig up archaic words. Many such have been dropped from the original Anglo-Saxon. There is “Dindle,” to shake, and “Foin” to thrust, and “Gree” and “Lusk” and “Sweven.” But the need for most of them has long gone by. We do not “Feutre” our spears, because we have no spears to feutre. We carry no “Glaive,” we wear no “Coif.”

So with the bright gems of Elizabethan diction. A “Bonnibel” is now a nectarine. To “Brabble” is now to “Chew the rag.” What is a “Scroyle”?—a “Cad,” a “Bad Actor”? A “Gargrism” has become “A Scream.” So the old names become mere poetic decorations. Why, the word “Fro” we dare use only in a single collocation! And as for “Welkin,” “Lush,” and “Bosky”—who dares to lead their metric feet into the prim paths of prose? Let bygones be bygones. Look elsewhere.

Samoa has an ideal language, and there it was I got my inspiration. Can’t we make English as subtle as Samoan? I wondered. There they have a single word, meaning, “A-party-is-approaching-which-contains-neither-a-clever-man-nor-a-pretty-woman.” Another beautiful word describes “A-man-who-climbs-out-on-the-limbs-of-his-own-breadfruit-tree-to-steal-the-breadfruit-of-his-neighbor.” “Suiia” means “Change-the-subject-you-are-on-dangerous-ground.” Another happy word expresses a familiar situation—“To-look-on-owl-eyed-while-others-are-getting-gifts.” Have we anything in English as charmingly tactful as this? No, our tongue is almost as crude as pidjin-English itself, where piano is “Box-you-fight-him-cry.”

But the time has come for a more scientific attempt to enlarge the language. The needs of the hour are multifarious and all unfilled. There are a thousand sensations that we can describe only by laborious phrases or metaphors, a thousand{xii} characters and circumstances, familiar to all, which shriek for description.

It has, of course, been tried before. Think what a success the scheme was when it was so long ago attempted. The first Nonsense Book containing really new words was published in 1846 by Edward Lear, but he failed to appreciate his opportunity. Of all his names, the “Jumblies” alone survive. Lewis Carroll later went about it more deliberately. His immortal poem, “Jabberwocky,” has become a classic; but even in that masterpiece, how many words are adapted to modern use? “Slithy” perhaps and “Chortle”—though no one has ever been able to pronounce it properly to this day. Oh yes, “Galumph,” I forgot that. Not even “The Hunting of the Snark” has made the title rôle popular amongst bromides. Why? His fatal rule was, “Take care of the sounds and the sense will take care of itself.”

A dozen years ago a little girl tried it with fair success. In her “Animal Land, where there are no People,” however, I can find no word I have ever heard used outside its covers, no word like “Hoodlum,” or “Flunk” or “Primp,” “Quiz,” “Cabal” or “Fad” or “Fake.”

The thing must be done, and so I did it. Slang is sporadic; its invention is crude and loose. It is a hit-or-miss method, without direction or philosophy. Our task is serious; we must make one word blossom where a dozen grew before. A myriad necessities urge us. I found myself often confronted with an idea which baffled me and forced me to talk gibberish. How, for instance, can one describe the appearance of an elderly female in plush dancing a too conscientious tango? How do you, gentle reader, portray your emotion when, on a stormy night, as you stand on the corner the trolley-car whizzes by and fails to stop for you? Where is the word that paints the mild, faint enjoyment of a family dinner with your wife’s relations?

You see how inarticulate you are, now, don’t you, when a social emergency arises?—when you want to give swift tongue to your emotions? What can you say when you’re{xiii} jilted?—how mention the feeling of a broken finger-nail on satin—your esthetic delight in green-trading-stamp furniture? How do you feel with a person whose name you cannot quite remember? Why, we need at least a gross of assorted nouns this very day! What is the name of a business enterprise that was born dead? What do you call the woman who telephones to you during business hours? What is a woman who wears dirty white gloves? What is a man who gives you advice “for your own good”? Well, behold a guide to help you;—read “Burgess Unabridged.” It is the dictionary of the Futurist language!

Yes, my modest “Unabridged” will “fill a long felt want.” It will solidify the chinks of conversation, express the inexpressible, make our English language ornamental, elegant, distinguished, accurate. Other dictionaries have recorded the words of yesterday, my lexicon will give the words of to-morrow. What matter if none of them is “derived from two Greek words”? My words will be imaginotions, penandinkumpoops, whimpusles, mere boojums rather than classic snarks, for I shall not construct “Portmanteau” words, like Lewis Carroll. I shall create them from instinctive, inarticulate emotions, hot from the depths of necessity. No “Onomatopœia,” either, for I do not hold with those who say that the origin of language is in the mere mimicry of natural sounds. No, like the intense poetic pre-Raphaelite female, who says and feels that her soul is violet, when I see a hand-embroidered necktie, I dive deep in my inner consciousness and bring up, writhing in my hand, the glad word, “Gorgule,” or “Golobrifaction” or “Diabob.”

For, as my friend, the Reverend Edward P. Foster, A.M., of Marietta, Ohio, has pointed out, in his great work on Ro, the a priori method is the only rational principle upon which to coin new words. Volapük, Esperanto, Idiom Neutral, Interlingua and Ido all have fallen by the wayside of this “philosophical” route. It is as futile to try to make the sound suggest the sense. For, investigation will show that so many senses are suggested that the word lacks definition.{xiv} Not only does “stave” seem to imply a barrel, but music. And, if you take the sound alone, we have such different meanings as wright, right, write and rite, not to speak of exactly opposite interpretations in such word as “cleave.”

What Ro, therefore, attempts so ambitiously, I do in a more humble spirit, contenting myself with the manufacture of words to explain some of the more subtle relationships and exigencies of civilized life. I confess the work is, to a great extent, subjective and personal. I have but ministered to my own direst needs.

So contriving, choosing my words from some vague sense of color, mood, an instinctive feeling of appropriateness, I trust that I have not made my method monotonous. I must confess, however, that in my experimentation, certain sounds appealed more strongly than others to my comic spirit. The frequent use of the “oo” will perhaps require an apology, and the almost equally merry “aw.” The other “long” vowels, such as “ee” and “ay” and “o” seemed inadequate to my use. Of consonants, my “G” is, no doubt, most frequent. “G” supplies spuzz to a word that can hardly be obtained elsewhere in the alphabet. “K” also has a bite, but it is frequently too suggestive for our delicate susceptibilities. “L”—what could one do in such a work, without the gentle liquid that euphonizes the most savage of consonants! Also I confess having fallen in love with the anapest.

And yet, many of these words will not, at first sound, seem appropriate. Let me remind you of Mr. Oliver Herford’s not too original discovery (most children make it earlier), than any word, when often repeated, becomes strange and barbaric, even as his favorite “looking-glass” after being pronounced several times, grows marvellously beautiful and romantic.

So, as a corollary to this principle, you will, I hope, find that even my fierce and uncouth syllables may, when iterated, grow less unusual, strangely familiar, even; and, little by little, as their sharp corners and edges are worn smooth by{xv} use, they will fit into your conversation and nestle into place, making your talk firmer, more expressive and wonderfully adequate to your daily needs.

New York, June 1st, 1914. {xvii}{xvi}

BURGESS ABRIDGED:

100 CHOICE SELECTIONS

{1}

BURGESS UNABRIDGED A NEW DICTIONARY

{2}

{3}

Ag´o-wilt, n. 1. Sickening terror, sudden, unnecessary fear. 2. The passage of the heart past the epiglottis, going up. 3. Emotional insanity.

Ag´o-wilt, v. To almost-faint.

“What’s that smell? Is it smoke?—Is it?” You throw open the door and have an agowilt; the staircase is in flames. But this is the fierce and wild variety. Agowilts tamed for domestic use, are far more common. The minute after you throw the burnt match into the waste-paper basket, the agowilt comes.

It may be but a single extra step which isn’t there and the agowilt playfully paralyzes your heart. So a sudden jerk of the elevator, the startling stopping of the train, the automobile skidding, the roller-coaster looping the loop—bring agowilts.

Vicariously you suffer as well, when the trapeze performers swing in dizzying circles or do the “death dive.”

“Good heavens! I left my bag in the train!”—an agowilt quite as painful. (See Nulkin.)

Why does your friend, reckless Robert, pause on the edge of the cliff? Merely to delight you with an agowilt.

When I taught Fanny, the flirt, to swim, and she found herself in water over her head, why did she scream and throw her arms about my neck? Was it truly an agowilt? (See Varm.)

Al´i-bosh, n. A glaringly obvious falsehood; something not meant to be actually believed; a picturesque overstatement.

A circus poster is an alibosh; so is a seed catalogue, a woman’s age and an actress’s salary. (See Blurb.)

There are verbal aliboshes too numerous to mention: “I have had such a charming time!” and “No, I don’t think you’re a bit too fat, you are just nice and plump.” (See Gubble and Wumgush.)

The saleswoman makes her living on the alibosh: “Yes, I think that hat is very becoming.” She doesn’t believe it, you don’t believe it—it’s only a part of the game—like the lies of horse-trading, the inspired notices of theatrical failures or a prospectus of a gold mine.

Bimp, n. A disappointment, a futile rage.

Bimp, v. To cut, neglect, or forsake.

Bimped, p.p. Jilted, left.

As Mrs. Ezra P. McCormick stood in the middle of Myrtle Avenue at the corner of Grandview Street the trolley car came hurtling past, ten minutes behind time. Wildly she waved her parasol, but the car would not, did not stop! Mrs. McCormick got bimped. Her bimp was the more horrible, because the conductor turned and grinned at her, and three men on the rear platform laughed, for Mrs. McCormick was very fat. (See Jurp.)

Did you get that raise in your salary on New Year’s day, or did you get bimped? Were you forgotten on Christmas? Did you draw to a flush and fail to fill? You got bimped. Did you find you had no cash in your pocket when it came time to pay the waiter? Did that firm cancel its order? Bimps.

What did Mrs. Harris’s servant girl do on the very afternoon of the dinner party? She bimped Mrs. Harris! She packed her imitation-leather suitcase, grabbed her green umbrella and walked away.

The girl who stood “Waiting at the church” got the biggest bimp of all. (See Agowilt.)

Bimp not, that ye be not bimped! (See Machizzle.)

Bleesh, n. 1. An unpleasant picture; vulgar or obscene art. 2. An offensive comic-supplement form of humor.

Bleesh, a. Revolting, disgusting, coarse.

Comic valentines are very bleesh; the newspaper “comic strip” with the impossible adventure ending in catastrophic brutality; stars, exclamation points and “Wows!” Especially a bull-dog, biting the seat of a man’s trousers and revolving like a pinwheel—this is a bleesh. (See Frowk.)

Crayon enlargements of photographs of your uncle in his Odd Fellows’ uniform are bleesh—Kodak snap-shots and flashlights of banquet groups.

Your practical-joking friend sends you bleesh foreign postcards from abroad; and your chauffeur revels in bleesh pictures of crime, with an X showing “where the body was found.”

To the Philistine of the Middle West, the nude in art is bleesh. To the eye-glassed school-ma’am of Brooklyn, the paintings of Cubists and Futurists are bleesher still. (See Ovotch.)

{7}

Blurb, n. 1. A flamboyant advertisement; an inspired testimonial. 2. Fulsome praise; a sound like a publisher.

Blurb, v. 1. To flatter from interested motives; to compliment oneself.

On the “jacket” of the “latest” fiction, we find the blurb; abounding in agile adjectives and adverbs, attesting that this book is the “sensation of the year;” the blurb tells of “thrills” and “heart-throbs,” of “vital importance” and “soul satisfying revelation.” The blurb speaks of the novel’s “grip” and “excitement.” (See Alibosh.)

The circus advertiser started the blurb, but the book publisher discovered a more poignant charm than alliterative polysyllables. “It holds you from the first page—”

Now, you take this “Burgess Unabridged”—it’s got a jump and a go to it—it’s got a hang and a dash and a swing to it that pulls you right out of the chair, dazzles your eyes, and sets your hair to curling. It’s an epoch-making, heart-tickling, gorglorious tome of joy!

So, were not my publishers old-fashioned, would this my book be blurbed.

Brip´kin, n. 1. One who half does things; not a thoroughbred. 2. A suburbanite, commuter.

Brip´kin, a. Off color; second-rate; shabby-genteel, a little out of style.

The bripkin invites a girl to the theatre, but he takes her in a street-car—on a rainy night, too! The bripkin tips the waiter less than ten per cent. of his bill. He carries a cane, but does not wear gloves. He frequents the manicure, and wears near-silk shirts, with frayed cuffs. His hat is “the latest” but his coat sleeves are shiny.

The female bripkin has a button off her shoe; she wears white gloves, but they are badly soiled. She wears a three-quarter-length grey squirrel coat.

American champagne is bripkin—Key-West cigars and domestic beer, and imitation coffee. (See Voip.)

A bripkin umbrella is made of gloria.

The second-rate suburb of a great city is a bripkin, and so is he who dwells therein. He wears a watch-chain strung across his vest. (See Mooble.)

Bripkins are the marked-down gowns and suits, at the tail end of the season; and the green hat, “reduced from $18.75.”

BRIPKIN

{11}{10}

Cow´cat, n. 1. A person whose main function is to occupy space. An insignificant, or negligible personality. 2. A guest who contributes nothing to the success of an affair; one invited to fill up, or from a sense of duty. 3. An innocent bystander.

The cowcat will not talk, but oh, how he listens! How he watches! How he criticises! But why speak of the cowcat as “he”? They usually have large, black satin, placid abdomens, or else they are thin and nervous, with acid eyes. (See Yowf.)

How describe a cowcat? There’s nothing about it to describe. It’s a jelly-fish—a heavy jelly-fish, however. It sits upon your stomach, like a nightmare.