Charles Dickens on American English (1842)

In his American Notes for General Circulation, a travelogue of his trip to the USA in 1842, Charles Dickens is amused by American English usage. I grew up in Texas, where it seemed someone was always "fixing to leave" or "fixing to eat" or some such thing. Dickens heard this first line quoted below while crossing the Allegheny Mountains, a part of the Appalachian Range. My sense of American English is that this way of talking is not very common outside the South.

"'Will you try,' said my opposite neighbour, handing me a dish of potatoes, broken up in milk and butter, 'will you try some of these fixings?'

"There are few words which perform such various duties as this word 'fix.'  It is the Caleb Quotem [Jack-of-all-trades] of the American vocabulary.  You call upon a gentleman in a country town, and his help informs you that he is 'fixing himself' just now, but will be down directly: by which you are to understand that he is dressing.  You inquire, on board a steamboat, of a fellow-passenger, whether breakfast will be ready soon, and he tells you he should think so, for when he was last below, they were 'fixing the tables:' in other words, laying the cloth.  You beg a porter to collect your luggage, and he entreats you not to be uneasy, for he'll 'fix it presently:' and if you complain of indisposition, you are advised to have recourse to Doctor So-and-so, who will 'fix you' in no time.

"One night, I ordered a bottle of mulled wine at an hotel where I was staying, and waited a long time for it; at length it was put upon the table with an apology from the landlord that he feared it wasn't 'fixed properly.' And I recollect once, at a stage-coach dinner, overhearing a very stern gentleman demand of a waiter who presented him with a plate of underdone roast-beef, 'whether he called THAT, fixing God A'mighty's vittles?'"

 

Comments

[Lisa]

I hear "fixing to" a lot as well - and it sometimes sounds like "fittin' to". I think some of the uses he cites have faded out - fixing as dressing, for example.

[Fay]

Lisa, my childhood memories include using "fixings" as in the first example, when you refer to side dishes: BBQ dinner "with all the fixings." That example of a man getting dressed does sound archaic, although people did (do?) say things like, "She could be pretty if she would just fix herself up."

[Angela]

That is incredibly interesting. Who knew 'fix' was so confusing? But I see it now in a new light.

[Fay]

Angela, Dickens had a lot of fun with American English. He seemed to find Americans in general less amusing.