antry which seems to show that we
Americans are falling from grace--at least so far as one word is
concerned. Probably because many of our architects and decorators have
studied in Paris there is a pernicious tendency to call a 'grill' a
_grille_. And I have seen with my own eyes, painted on a door in an
hotel _grille_-room; surely the ultimate abomination of verbal
desolation!

I may, however, record to our credit one righteous act--the perfect
and satisfactory anglicizing of a Spanish word, whereby we have made
'canyon' out of _canon_. And I cannot forbear to adduce another word for
a fish soup, _chowder_, which the early settlers derived from the French
name of the pot in which it was cooked, _chaudiere_.[1]

[Footnote 1: No doubt all these variations of American from British
usage will be duly discussed in Professor George Philip Krapp's
forthcoming _History of the English Language in America_.]

IV

As the military vocabulary of English is testimony to the former
leadership of the French in the art of war, so the vocabulary of fashion
and of gastronomy is evidence of the cosmopolitan primacy of French
millinery and French cookery. But most of the military terms were
absorbed before the middle of the seventeenth century and were therefore
assimilated, whereas the terms of the French dressmaker and of the
French cook, chef, or _cordon bleu_, are being for ever multiplied in
France and are very rarely being naturalized in English-speaking lands.
So far as these two sets of words are concerned the case is probably
hopeless, because, if for no other reason, they are more or less in the
domain of the gentler sex and we all know that

'A woman, convinced against her will,
Is of the same opinion still.'

The terms of the motor-car, however, and those of the airplane, are in
the control of men; and there may be still a chance of bringing about a
better state of affairs than now exists. While the war correspondents
were actually in France, and while they were often forced to write at
topmost speed, there was excuse for _avion_ and _camion, vrille_ and
_escadrille_, and all the other French words which bespattered the
columns of British and American, Canadian and Australian newspapers.
I doubt if there was ever any necessity for _hangar_, the shed which
sheltered the airplane or the airship. _Hangar_ is simply the French
word for 'shed', no more and no less; it does not indicate specifically
a shed for a