'Right here,' a favorite
phrase with our orators and with a certain class of our editors, turns
up _passim_ in the Chester and Coventry plays. Mr. Dickens found
something very ludicrous in what he considered our neologism _right
away_. But I find a phrase very like it, and which I would gladly
suspect to be a misprint for it, in 'Gammer Gurton:'--
'Lyght it and bring it _tite away_.'
But _tite_ is the true word in this case. After all, what is it but
another form of _straightway_? _Cussedness_, meaning _wickedness,
malignity_, and _cuss_, a sneaking, ill-natured fellow, in such phrases
as 'He done it out o' pure cussedness,' and 'He is a nateral cuss,' have
been commonly thought Yankeeisms. To vent certain contemptuously
indignant moods they are admirable in their rough-and-ready way. But
neither is our own. _Cursydnesse_, in the same sense of malignant
wickedness, occurs in the Coventry Plays, and _cuss_ may perhaps claim
to have come in with the Conqueror. At least the term is also French.
Saint Simon uses it and confesses its usefulness.
Pages:
1152
1153
1154
1155
1156
1157
1158
1159
1160
1161
1162
1163
1164
1165
1166
1167
1168
1169
1170
1171
1172
1173
1174
1175
1176