"No, sir, I do not mean _tantamount_; I am not so ignorant of our language, not to be aware that catamount and tantamount are anonymous."
The Americans dwell upon their words when they speak--a custom arising, I presume, from their cautious, calculating habits; and they have always more or less of a nasal twang. I once said to a lady, "Why do you drawl out your words in that way?"
"Well," replied she, "I'd drawl all the way from Maine to Georgia, rather than _clip_ my words as you English people do."
Many English words are used in a very different sense from that which we attach to them; for instance: a _clever_ person in America means an amiable, good-tempered person, and the Americans make the distinction by saying, I mean English clever.
Our _clever_ is represented by the word _smart_.
The verb _to admire_ is also used in the East, instead of the verb _to like_.
A Yankee description of a clever woman:--
"Well, now, she'll walk right into you, and talk to you like a book;" or, as I have heard them say, "she'll talk you out of sight."
The word ugly is used for cross, ill-tempered. "I did feel so _ugly_ when he said that."
_Bad_ is used in an odd sense: it is employed for awkward, uncomfortable: sorry:--
"I did feel so _bad_ when I read that"--awkward.
"I have felt quite _bad_ about it ever since"--uncomfortable.
"She was so _bad_, I thought she would cry"--sorry.
And as bad is tantamount to not _good_, I have heard a lady say, "I don't feel _at all good_ this morning."
"We reckon this very handsome scenery, sir," said an American to me, pointing to the landscape.
"I consider him very truthful," is another expression.
And they are very fond of using the noun as a verb, as--"I _suspicion_ that's a fact."
The word _considerable_ is in considerable demand in the United States. In a work in which the letters of the party had been given to the public as specimens of good style and polite literature, it is used as follows:--
"My dear sister, I have taken up the pen early this morning, as I intend to write _considerable_." (Life and Remains of Charles Pont.)
The word great is oddly used for fine, splendid.
"She's the _greatest_ gal in the whole Union."
But there is one word which we must surrender up to the Americans as their _very own_, as the children say. I will quote a passage from one of their papers:--