Курсовая работа: Characteristic features of American English
poke means several different plants to us because it is our final pronunciation of several different Indian words. Poke originally was a name for the tobacco plant (from Algonquian uppoivoc) which we spelled apooke in 1618. Other poke plants get their name from a Virginian Indian word puccoon, a plant they used for dyeing. Thus we have pokeroot by 1687; pokeweed, 1751; pokeberr,. By 1778 poke also meant the skunk cabbage. Poke greens was first recorded in 1848 and poke salad in 1880.
skunk (Algonquian skekakwa, squnck, "mammal who urinates" or sprays), 1588 by explorers, 1634 by colonists. It has also been called a polecat in America since the 1600s, after a related European animal. Skunk cabbage, 1751. Skunk was used to mean a contemptible person by 1840. To skunk, to defeat completely, keep an opponent from scoring, appeared in 1843.
squash (Narragansett asquatasquash, "eaten raw"), 1642. Winter squash, summer squash, 1750s; crook-neck squash, 1818, from its shape; Hubbard squash, late 1860s, from Mrs. Elizabeth Hub-bard of Massachusetts, who first cultivated it; zucchini squashy
toboggan (via Canadian French from Algonquian tabakun, drag, hand sled), 1829; tobogganing, as a sport, 1855; toboggan slide, a playground slide for children, 1890s; toboggan cap, a stocking cap, especially with ends to wrap around the neck as a muffler, 1902.
wapiti, the North American elk, named in 1806 by the American physician and naturalist Benjamin Barton (using the Shawnee word for the animal, literally meaning "white rump"). This word never replaced the less precise word elk, which had been used in America since 1635.
whiskey-jack (Cree wisketjan), the Canadian jay. This name was first recorded by John J. Audubon, in 1839.
woodchuck (Algonquian wejack, Chippewa otchig, Cree otchek, the fisher), 1674. This is a prime example of folk etymology, of pronouncing strange words to resemble familiar words or word elements; it has nothing to do with "wood" or "chuck" except in sound. [9. p.202 ]
In addition to the above, most Americans know about 50 names for Indian tribes from Algonquin to Zuni, plus such Indian words or words associated with Indians as caucus (1773, probably from Algonqman caucauasu, counselor), mackinaw (1820s as a blanket, 1902 as a jacket, from Ojibway mitchimakinak, "great turtle," which became the name of the strait between Lake Michigan and Lake Huron, an island on this strait, and a trading post where this heavy wool, plaid blanket, was common), pemmican (1791, Cree pimikkan from pimii, fat, grease), and podunk (Mohe-gan for "neck of land," used as a place name by Indians in Connecticut and Massachusetts, as recorded in 1666, then used by Whites to mean a small or insignificant town or rural region by 1841). Such words as potato and tobacco are West Indies Indian words and tomato and chocolate are Aztec Indian words.[9. p.203]
2.7. Car
Americans thank Julius Caesar for the word car. He personally borrowed a Celtic word sounding something like "karra" to name his chariots, and from that and its Latinized carrus/carra, which came to mean wagon, cart, Americans get the English words chariot, carriage, and car. The colonists knew car only as a poetic word meaning chariot, as in the "Cars of the Gods." It wasn't until the 1820s and 30s that common people talked much about cars, by which they then meant railroad cars, horsecars and, by the 1860s, streetcars. Since about 1900, however, car has had one chief meaning to most Americans: an automobile.
The word automobile (Greek auto-, self + mobile, moving) arrived in the 1870s with the appearance of the steam automobile, also called a steamer (the British had called it a steam carriage since its beginnings in the 1830s). The Stanley Steamer, also known as the flying teapot, was manufactured from 1896 to 1925 by t