Linguistic Patriot

The American Language: Supplement One by H. L. Mencken. Knopf. $5.00

The last few months have given us several works of popular linguistic importance. First came the Hogben-Bodmer Loom of Language; then, Joseph Shipley’s Dictionary of Word Origins cheek by jowl with G. B. Stewart’s Words on the Land. Now comes the long-expected Mencken volume—by intention, the first of two supplements to The American Language (4th edition), but actually a book to be read in its own right and on its own merits. Such is the intrinsic interest of the subject that even the dullest philological drudge cannot make words uninteresting. But Mencken is the first American writer since Sapir to make them dramatic.