How to Speak 19th Century

Eric Ferguson works at a living history museum and in interested in language. To that end, he took a 19th Century book, Private Yankee Doodle, by Joseph Plumb Martin, edited by George F. Scheer (originally published in 1830, Little, Brown & Co, 1962. Eastern Acorn Press, 1988), and combed it for its vocabulary. He noted words and phrases that are no longer in use.

What I have provided herein is a list of words and phrases Martin used. Some are words that are in modern dictionaries but not in common usage. There are words that have disappeared, words that have changed meanings, and a few that haven’t changed but could be mistakenly thought too modern to use. In some instances Martin himself stopped to explain a word he thought would be unfamiliar. After each word, I give a definition, a quote from the book to show the context, and the page number for those who want to look it up. Some may “cavil” with some of my choices of words and think I left some things out or got definitions wrong, but, as long as I am not the victim of any “obloquy”, such are welcome to go and look for themselves.

My favorites are:

Harrowed up; brought to the surface. “When I arrived within sight or hearing of the army…it again harrowed up my melancholy feelings that had…subsided on my journey.” P.212

Demency; wrath. Again about the mutiny—“We did not wish to have anyone in particular to command, lest he might be singled out for a court-martial to exercise its demency upon.” P.183

Pretty well over the bay; drunk? Writing about a couple Irishmen at a sutler’s tent—“…I observed one who was, to appearances, ‘pretty well over the bay.'” P.145

Be it what it would; in any case, be it as it may, whatever the case. A phrase to stop going off on a tangent. “…I know not, unless it was to see how the people would stand affected; be it what it would, it caused me a terrible fright.” P.6