How colonizers started the American language
Meriwether Lewis and William Clark gave evocative names to many animals and plants they found in the American West. Their straightforward moniker for this beast was bighorn sheep. (Library of Congress)
“The English Language started to become American as soon as the first English-speaking colonists landed. Unfamiliar landscapes, plants, and animals and ways of living called for new terms, and Americans soon were amassing a fresh vocabulary.
"Colonists borrowed from natives—raccoon, barbecue—inventively combined existing words—backcountry, pine barrens—and coined terms—demoralize, belittle. However, American speech was about more than words. Early Americans distilled vivid metaphors from everyday life. They blazed trails. They played possum. They found themselves sitting on the fence. They barked up the wrong tree.”
Article: How Americans Made English a Bodacious New Language