To materialize, to burglarize, to enthuse, to suicide, to wire, to
jump upon, to sit upon, to take in, are a few of the many examples of
slang that should be avoided.
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24

PROVINCIALISMS

A word that is used only in a limited part of the country is called a
provincialism. It must be known and recognized for what it is worth,
but not obtruded where it does not belong.

Whatever may be said of the faults of speech of the American people,
it is doubtful if any other nation, whether it covers a large
territory or is limited in area, speaks the language native to the
country with the uniformity that we do. Yet, there are peculiarities
that mark the expression of most of our people, even among the best
informed. The words calculate, reckon, and guess are not the only
words that betray the locality of the speaker. Any person who has been
five hundred miles from home cannot fail to have observed words that
were used differently from the way in which he had been accustomed to
use them, and he probably heard terms of expression that seemed
strange to him. In like manner, his own expressions sounded strange to
those who heard him. That which distinguished his speech from theirs
and theirs from his would, in large part, be covered by the word
"provincialism."

Not only do we have local and sectional peculiarities of speech, but