In many directions the same prodigal fancy shows itself--for example, in the free interchange of parts of speech, in the bold inflection of words not inflected in sound English, and in the invention of wholly artificial words. The first phenomenon has already concerned us. Would an English literary critic of any pretensions employ such a locution as "all by her /lonesome/"? I have a doubt of it--and yet I find that phrase in a serious book by the critic of the /New Republic/.[66] Would an English M. P. use "he has another /think/ coming" in debate? Again I doubt it--but even more anarchistic dedications of verbs and adjectives to substantival use are to be found in the /Congressional Record/ every day. /Jitney/ is an old American substantive lately [Pg165] revived; a month after its revival it was also an adjective, and before long it may also be a verb and even an adverb. /To lift up/ was turned tail first and made a substantive, and is now also an adjective and a verb. /Joy-ride/ became a verb the day after it was born as a noun. And what of /livest/? An astounding inflection, indeed--but with quite sound American usage behind it. The /Metropolitan Magazine/, of which Col. Roosevelt is an editor, announces on its letter paper that it is "the /livest/ magazine in America," and /Poetry/, the organ of the new poetry movement, prints at the head of its contents page the following encomium from the /New York Tribune/: "the /livest/ art in America today is poetry, and the /livest/ expression of that art is in this little Chicago monthly."
Now and then the spirit of American shows a transient faltering, and its inventiveness is displaced by a banal extension of meaning, so that a single noun comes to signify discrete things. Thus /laundry/, meaning originally a place where linen is washed, has come to mean also the linen itself. So, again, /gun/ has come to mean fire-arms of all sorts, and has entered into such compounds as /gun-man/ and /gun-play/. And in the same way /party/ has been borrowed from the terminology of the law and made to do colloquial duty as a synonym for /person/. But such evidences of poverty are rare and abnormal; the whole movement of the language is toward the multiplication of substantives. A new object gets a new name, and that new name enters into the common vocabulary at once. /Sundae/ and /hokum/ are late examples; their origin is dubious and disputed, but they met genuine needs and so they seem to be secure. A great many more such substantives are deliberate inventions, for example, /kodak/, /protectograph/, /conductorette/, /bevo/, /klaxon/, /vaseline/, /jap-a-lac/, /resinol/, /autocar/, /postum/, /crisco/, /electrolier/, /addressograph/, /alabastine/, /orangeade/, /pianola/, /victrola/, /dictagraph/, /kitchenette/, /crispette/, /cellarette/, /uneeda/, /triscuit/ and /peptomint/. Some of these indicate attempts at description: /oleomargarine/, /phonograph/ and /gasoline/ are older examples of that class. Others represent efforts to devise designations that will meet the conditions of advertising psychology and the trade-marks law, to wit, that they [Pg166] be (/a/) new, (/b/) easily remembered, and (/c/) not directly descriptive. Probably the most successful invention of this sort is /kodak/, which was devised by George Eastman, inventor of the portable camera so called. /Kodak/ has so far won acceptance as a common noun that Eastman is often forced to assert his proprietary right to it.[67] /Vaseline/ is in the same position. The annual crop of such inventions in the United States is enormous.[68] The majority die, but a hearty few always survive.