Dialect Notes Volume 5 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1918 Excerpt: ...EXCLAMATIONS IN AMERICAN ENGLISH Exclamations have an important part in human speech, as one may observe by listening to the talk of people whose emotions are aroused. Human beings utter both articulate and inarticulate exclamatory sounds. Some of the latter do not differ greatly from the sounds that other mammals make, and they are probably far more primitive than is articulate human speech. In the following lists of exclamations those that are inarticulate are treated first. These are followed by lists of articulate interjections and of onomatopoetie words. The objection may be made that the latter should have no place in lists of exclamations. This objection would seem well grounded in the main, and yet many of the onomatopoetie words are used as exclamations, and I have not been able to draw the line. The general list of exclamations--doubtless far from complete--includes only those that are used at the present time in American English. I have heard these exclamations or I have read them in contemporary writings. Some of them, however, are little used in conversation. Thus alas is rarely heard and I have classified it as literary" (lit.). There are also many artificial exclamations that I have never heard, but which are used to accompany the illustrations in the comic papers. These are classified as "comic" (com.). As introductory to the general list, I have given several classified lists of euphemistic substitute words, such as those for "God," for "damn," the "devil," etc. Finally, after the general list, short lists of exclamations used by Sheridan, Shakespeare, and Chaucer are appended to give some idea of the successive fashion in English exclamations. Among the exclamations I have included such exclamat...