It was not, however, among the verbs and adjectives that the American word-coiners of the first half of the century achieved their gaudiest innovations, but among the substantives. Here they had temptation and excuse in plenty, for innumerable new objects and relations demanded names, and here they exercised their fancy without restraint. Setting aside loan words, which will be considered later, three main varieties of new nouns were thus produced. The first consisted of English words rescued from obsolescence or changed in meaning, the second of compounds manufactured of the common materials of the mother tongue, and the third of entirely new inventions. Of the first class, good specimens are /deck/ (of cards), /gulch/, /gully/ and /billion/, the first three old English words restored to usage in America and the last a sound English word changed in meaning. Of the second class, examples are offered by /gum-shoe/, /mortgage-shark/, /dug-out/, /shot-gun/, /stag-party/, /wheat-pit/, /horse-sense/, /chipped-beef/, /oyster-supper/, /buzz-saw/, /chain-gang/ and /hell-box/. And of the third there are instances in /buncombe/, /greaser/, /conniption/, /bloomer/, /campus/, /galoot/, /maverick/, /roustabout/, /bugaboo/ and /blizzard/.
Of these coinages, perhaps those of the second class are most numerous and characteristic. In them American exhibits one of its most marked tendencies: a habit of achieving short cuts in speech by a process of agglutination. Why explain laboriously, as an Englishman might, that the notes of a new bank (in a day of innumerable new banks) are insufficiently secure? Call [Pg081] them /wild-cat/ notes and have done! Why describe a gigantic rain storm with the lame adjectives of everyday? Call it a /cloud-burst/ and immediately a vivid picture of it is conjured up. /Rough-neck/ is a capital word; it is more apposite and savory than the English /navvy/, and it is overwhelmingly more American.[18] /Square-meal/ is another. /Fire-eater/ is yet another. And the same instinct for the terse, the eloquent and the picturesque is in /boiled-shirt/, /blow-out/, /big-bug/, /claim-jumper/, /spread-eagle/, /come-down/, /back-number/, /claw-hammer/ (coat), /bottom-dollar/, /poppy-cock/, /cold-snap/, /back-talk/, /back-taxes/, /calamity-howler/, /cut-off/, /fire-bug/, /grab-bag/, /grip-sack/, /grub-stake/, /pay-dirt/, /tender-foot/, /stocking-feet/, /ticket-scalper/, /store-clothes/, /small-potatoes/, /cake-walk/, /prairie-schooner/, /round-up/, /snake-fence/, /flat-boat/, /under-the-weather/, /on-the-hoof/, and /jumping-off-place/. These compounds (there must be thousands of them) have been largely responsible for giving the language its characteristic tang and color. Such specimens as /bell-hop/, /semi-occasional/, /chair-warmer/ and /down-and-out/ are as distinctively American as baseball or the quick-lunch.