simplified _phantasie_ to _fantasy_. _Charade_ like _marmalade_ rhymes
with _made_. _Brusk_ seems to be supplanting _brusque_ as _risky_ is
supplanting _risqué_. _Elite_ is spelt without the accent; and it is
frequently pronounced _ell-leet_. _Clôture_ is rarely to be discovered
in American newspapers; _closure_ is not uncommon; but the term commonly
employed is the purely English 'previous question'.

In the final quarter of the nineteenth century an American adaptation of
a French comic opera, 'La Mascotte', was for two or three seasons very
popular. The heroine of its story was believed to have the gift of
bringing luck. So it is that Americans now call any animal which has
been adopted by a racing crew or by an athletic team (or even by a
regiment) a _mascot_; and probably not one in ten thousand of those who
use the word have any knowledge of its French origin, or any suspicion
that it was transformed from the title of a musical play.

I regret, however, to be forced to confess that I have lately been
shocked by a piece of petty pedantry 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 _cañon_. 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, _chaudière_.[1]