The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey Volume II Part 17

_Widow._ Upon my word, Sir, I am at a loss to understand you: 'Kicked the bucket,' and 'hopped the twig----!'

_German._ (Perspiring with panic.) Ah, Madam! von--two--tree--ten tousand pardon: vat sad, wicket dictionary I haaf, dat alway bring me in trouble: but now you shall hear--(and then, recomposing himself solemnly for a third effort, he began as before)--Madam, since I did hear, or wash hearing, dat Mein Herr X., late your man, haaf--(with a triumphant shout) haaf, I say, _gone to Davy's locker_----

[27] What I mean is this. Vernacular (from _verna_, a slave born in his master's house). 1. The homely idiomatic language in opposition to any mixed jargon, or lingua franca, spoken by an imported slave:--2. Hence, generally, the pure mother-tongue as opposed to the same tongue corrupted by false refinement. By vernacular English, therefore, in the primary sense, and I mean, such homely English as is banished from books and polite conversation to Billingsgate and Wapping.

Further he would have gone; but the widow could stand no more: this nautical phrase, familiar to the streets of Bristol, allowed her no longer to misunderstand his meaning; and she quitted the room in a tumult of laughter, sending a servant to show her unfortunate suitor out of the house, with his false friend the dictionary; whose help he might, perhaps, invoke for the last time, on making his exit, in the curses--'Udswoggers, Boblikins, Bublikins, Splitterkins!'

N.B. As test words for trying a _modern_ German dictionary, I will advise the student to look for the words--_Beschwichtigen Kulisse_, and _Mansarde_.

The last is originally French, but the first is a true German word; and, on a question arising about its etymology, at the house of a gentleman in Edinburgh, could not be found in any one, out of five or six modern Anglo-German dictionaries.

THE END.