Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Current Americanisms: A Dictionary of Words and Phrases in Common Use
There are, of course, many other ways in which Americanisms have been evolved, and I have not even hoped to do more than indicate roughly how such expressions arise. Innumerable words, phrases, and proverbs which obtain a temporary currency originate in newspapers (as distinguished from other periodicals, which are far less frequent sinners in this regard). It would be a fruitless task to record these ephemeral neologisms. Mr. Farmer has collected a large number of those individualisms which chanced to be in use when he constructed his glossary of Americanisms, Old and New. I have endeavoured to exclude both ephemeral, individualistic, and local words, except where the last have been expressions of exceptional permanence or interest. While I have not scrupled to defend the use of expressions which appeared to me defensible on grounds of convenience, antiquity, or precision, and certainly have aimed at avoiding that certain condescension in foreigners deprecated by Mr. Lowell, I hope that I may not have appeared wanting in reverence for the standard of correct English. It is hardly needful, perhaps, as a plea for the defence, to remark that the object has been to record rather than to criticize; I am not bound to take up the cudgels for every or any word defined.
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