Words and their uses, past and present : a study of the English language

WORDS AND THEIR USES,

PAST AND PRESENT.

A STUDY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE

RICHARD GRANT WHITE.

NINETEENTH EDITION, REVISED AND CORRECTED.

BOSTON:
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY.

New York- 11 East Seventeenth Street.

Protf,

1800.

Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1870,

BY RICHARD GRANT WHITE,
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington,

AFTERTHOUGHTS AND FOREWORDS

TO THE PRESENT EDITION.

IN preparing a new edition of this book I have sought
help and taken hints from every criticism of it that I
have seen ; and I heard of none that I did not try to find if
it was not at hand. Whoever attempts to correct the faults
of others in any respect, may expect severe treatment at the
hands of the very men whom he would serve ; and if his
efforts are directed to their use of language, he may reason-
ably look forward to walking, sitting, and sleeping upon pen-
points for a while. Wherefore I have been very pleasantly
surprised that of the much that has been written about this
book, so little, comparatively, was disparaging. In only one
quarter have I found reason to complain of unfairness, 01
even of a captious spirit, while the general tone of my
critics, public and private, has been that of thankfulness
for a real service. But I have tried not to allow myself to
be led by the favorable judgement of my critics into the
belief that I could disregard the strictures of my censors.

In many passages of the book slight changes have been
made ; upon matters of fact and of opinion a few important
modifications will be found ; one new chapter has been
added. The sum of these alterations and corrections will,
I hope, be regarded as such an improvement of the book as
will make it more worthy of the attention which it has re-
ceived. The most of these changes would have been made

ii AFTERTHOUGHTS

of my own motion ; but for some of them my readers are
indebted to the suggestions of others.

To the strictures of my censors I have not replied, either
n general or in detail, preferring to regard them rather as
instructors than even as enemies by whom fas est doceri.
As to whether my book has any value, let time determine.
If what I have written cannot bear criticism, it is worthless
and ought to die. It will soon disappear into the limbo of
things forgotten ; and the less that is said about it the
better. Any disparagement of the " scholarship " of the
book gives me little concern. It is altogether from the
purpose. Whatever value I hoped these desultory studies
would have, depends in the least that is possible upon the
learning, real or supposed, of the author. If I have any
reputation of that sort, it is not of my seeking. Nor do I
claim the consideration due to a philologist. For a real
philologist is a man who, horsed upon Grimm's law, chases
the evasive syllable over umlauts and ablauts into the faintly
echoing recesses of the Himalayas ; and I confess that I am no
•iuch linguistic Nimrod. I have joined a little in that hunt ;
but like the Frenchman who, after one day of " /<? sport "
upon the soil of perfide Albion, being summoned next morn-
ing for another run, cried "Vot, do they make him two
times?" and turned his aching bones to rest, I soon retired,
and left the field to bolder spirits and harder riders. This
is said now because, having been said before, I have been
udged as if I had made the pretensions which were then
and which are now again disclaimed. I therefore repeat
from the preface of the previous edition that "the po'nta
from which I have regarded words are in general rathe'
those of taste and reason than of history ; and my discus-
sions are philological only as all study of words must tx

AND FOREWORDS. Ill

philological. The few suggestions which I have made in
etymology I put forth with no affectation of timidity, but
with little concern as to their fate." It is upon this ground,
humbler or higher, that in good faith I take my stand, and
it is only this that I profess to be able to maintain.

Besides the topics of taste and reason in the use of lan-
guage, there are two to which I have ventured direct atten-
tion. Upon one of these my position (as to which I have
no vague notion, but a settled conviction) is that in the devel-
opment of language, and in particular of the English lan-
guage, reason always wins against formal grammar or illog-
ical usage, and that the " authority " of eminent writers,
conforming to, or forming, the usage of their day, while it
does absolve from the charge of solecism those who follow
such example, does not completely justify or establish a use
of words inconsistent with reason, or out of the direction of
the normal growth of language. In other words, I believe,
assert, and endeavor to maintain that in language, as in
morals, there is a higher law than mere usage, which, in
morals as in language, makes that acceptable, tolerable,
and even proper in one age, which becomes intolerable and
improper in another j that this law is the law of reason,
toward a conformity to which usage itself is always strug-
gling, and, although constantly hindered and often diverted,
winning its way, little by little, not reaching, yet ever near-
ing an ever-receding goal. To assault any position of
mine, which is not itself taken upon the ground of usage, by
bringing up the " authority," that is the mere example, of
eminent writers, is at once to beg the question at issue. It
may be said, and is said, that in language usage is both ir
fact and of right the final law and the ground of law. But
with any one who takes that for granted I cannot argue, W«

U AFTERTHOUGHTS

of my own motion ; but for some of them my readers are
indebted to the suggestions of others.

To the strictures of my censors I have not replied, either
n general or in detail, preferring to regard them rather as
instructors than even as enemies by whom fas est doceri.
As to whether my book has any value, let time determine.
If what I have written cannot bear criticism, it is worthless
and ought to die. It will soon disappear into the limbo of
things forgotten ; and the less that is said about it the
better. Any disparagement of the " scholarship " of the
book gives me little concern. It is altogether from the
purpose. Whatever value I hoped these desultory studies
would have, depends in the least that is possible upon the
learning, real or supposed, of the author. If I have any
reputation of that sort, it is not of my seeking. Nor do I
claim the consideration due to a philologist. For a real
philologist is a man who, horsed upon Grimm's law, chases
the evasive syllable over umlauts and ablauts into the faintly
echoing recesses of the Himalayas ; and I confess that I am no
such linguistic Nimrod. I have joined a little in that hunt ;
but like the Frenchman who, after one day of " /<? sport "
upon the soil of perfide Albion, being summoned next morn-
ing for another run, cried "Vot, do they make him two
times?" and turned his aching bones to rest, I soon retired,
and left the field to bolder spirits and harder riders. This
is said now because, having been said before, I have been
udged as if I had made the pretensions which were then
and which are now again disclaimed. I therefore repeat
from the preface of the previous edition that "the po'nta
from which I have regarded words are in general rathe'
those of taste and reason than of history ; and my discus-
lions are philological only as all study of words must b<

AND FOREWORDS. Ill

philological. The few suggestions which I have made in
etymology I put forth with no affectation of timidity, but
with little concern as to their fate." It is upon this ground,
humbler or higher, that in good faith I take my stand, and
it is only this that I profess to be able to maintain.

Besides the topics of taste and reason in the use of lan-
guage, there are two to which I have ventured direct atten-
tion. Upon one of these my position (as to which I have
no vague notion, but a settled conviction) is that in the devel-
opment of language, and in particular of the English lan-
guage, reason always wins against formal grammar or illog-
ical usage, and that the " authority " of eminent writers,
conforming to, or forming, the usage of their day, while it
does absolve from the charge of solecism those who follow
such example, does not completely justify or establish a use
of words inconsistent with reason, or out of the direction of
the normal growth of language. In other words, I believe,
assert, and endeavor to maintain that in language, as in
morals, there is a higher law than mere usage, which, in
morals as in language, makes that acceptable, tolerable,
and even proper in one age, which becomes intolerable and
improper in another ; that this law is the law of reason,
toward a conformity to which usage itself is always strug-
gling, and, although constantly hindered and often diverted,
winning its way, little by little, not reaching, yet ever near-
ing an ever-receding goal. To assault any position of
mine, which is not itself taken upon the ground of usage, by
bringing up the " authority," that is the mere example, of
eminent writers, is at once to beg the question at issue. It
may be said, and is said, that in language usage is both ir
fact and of right the final law and the ground of law. But
with any one who takes that for granted I cannot argue. We

Iv AFTERTHOUGHTS

do not approach each other near enough for collision. We
are as widely separated as two theological disputants would
be, one of whom was a Protestant, and the other a Papist
who set up as an axiom the divine establishment and per-
petual infallibility of the Romish Church. He assumes and
starts from the very point that I dispute.

That language has in all respects a normal growth, and
that passing deviations from that normality are not to be
defended and accepted without question on the ground that
mere eminent usage justifies such irregularities, I do verily
believe. And upon this point of so-called irregularity, it
seems to me that the remarks made by Helfenstein in the
introduction to his examination of the anomalous verbs, are
of even wider application :

" Under this head we range all those verbs which in their
inflexional forms show certain peculiarities so as to require
separate treatment as a class of their own. We avoid the
term irregular, for it is high time that this designation,
which cannot but convey erroneous notions, should disap-
pear from the terminology of grammarians. There is noth-
ing irregular in these verbs, and nothing irregular in lan-
guage generally. Every phenomenon is founded upon a
law ; it is not the product of haphazard or of an arbitrary
will. Where the law has not yet been discovered, it remains
the noblest task of linguists to strive after its discovery and
elucidation. What as yet evades explanation may be left
Standing over as a fact which is sure to find some day suffi-
cient illustration from other corollary facts grouped around.
But we must do away once and for all with all notions of
irregularity, and therefore drop the term which keeps such
notions alive." — Comparative Grammar of the Teutonic Lan
499

AND FOREWORDS. T

I cannot believe that the arbitrary and capricious usage
df a clique or a mere generation of writers is such a " phe
nomenon " as Helfenstein regards as " founded upon a law,
when he declares that there is nothing irregular in language
generally.

And as to the weight of authority which is claimed for
eminent writers, I cannot see why the endowment of cre-
ative genius should, or that it does, insure to its possessor
a greater certainty of correctness in the use of language
than may go with the possession of inferior powers. To
admit that would oblige us to accept Chaucer as a higher
authority than Gower, Spenser as higher than Sidney, Lyl}
than Ascham, Shakespeare than Jonson, Pope than Addi-
son, Scott than Hallam, Byron than Southey, Carlyle than
Landor or Macaulay, Dickens than Helps.

Upon the second of the topics to which I have referred,
that English is to all intents and purposes a grammarless
tongue, and therefore has a superiority over all others, I
shall let what I have said stand without further argument,
only calling to my support this passage from Sidney's
" Apologie for Poetrie," which when I wrote before I had
utterly forgotten. Speaking of English, he says :

" I know some will say it is a mingled language. And
why not so much the better, taking the best of both the
other? Another'will say that it wanteth Grammer. Nay
truly it hath that praise that it wanteth not [/. e., does not
need] Grammer : for Grammer it might have, but it needes
it not ; being so easie of it selfe, and so voyd of those cum-
bersome differences of Cases, Gr nders, Moodes, and Tenses,
«vhich I think was a peece of the Tower of Babilon's curse,
that a man should be pat to schoole to learne his mother
tongue. But for the uttering sweetly and properly the con-

VI AFTERTHOUGHTS

ceits of the minde, which is the end of speech, that hath ij
equally with any other tongue in the world : and is parti-
culerly happy in compositions of two or three words togethei
neere the Greeke, far beyond the Latine : which is on*1, oi
the greatest beauties can be in a language."

What Sidney saw, and thus with sweet dogmatism sei
forth, I have but endeavored to illustrate and to establish.

Why I have been called upon to write this book is still
not easy for me to understand. For it is the result of
questions submitted to me from correspondents in all parts
of the country upon the subject of which it treats, although
I can hardly pretend to have made a special study of lan-
guage— nc other, in fact, than was part and parcel of
studies in English literature generally, and particularly that
of the Elizabethan period. But as these questions were
•peered at me, I thought it would be pleasant and profitable
to answer them in the articles which have been gathered into
this volume. Let me say to my correspondents and readers
that if any of them hope to acquire a good style, or to
' learn to write," by reading such books as this, or even by
Jie study of grammar and rhetoric, as I have reason to fear
that some of them do, they will be grievously disappointed.
That acquisition comes only through native ability and gen-
eral culture. No man ever learned to win the ear of the
public by studies of this nature. Those. who write what is
read with pleasure and profit, do not get their power or
learn their craft from dictionaries, grammars, or books on
rhetoric. The study of language must be pursued for its
own sake. It has only a place, although a high one, in that
general culture which gives mental discipline and makes the
accomplished man. He who cannot write with clearness
and force without troubling his soul about pronouns and

AND FOREWORDS. Vll

prepositions, syntax and defi litions, may better change his
pen for a hoe and his inkstand for a watering-pot, and give
his days and nights to market-gardening ; an occupation
equally honorable with literature, and, I can assure him, far
mote profitable, no less to the world at large than to the
individual With which counsel I bid my leaders farewell

To JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.

MX DEAR SIR:

When your forefather met mine, as he probably did, some
two hundred and thirty or forty years ago, in the newly laid
out street of Cambridge (and there is reason for believing that
the meeting was likely to be about where Gore Hall now stands),
yours might have been somewhat more grimly courteous than
he doubtless was, had he known that he saw the man one of
whose children in the eighth generation was to pay one of his,
at the same remove, even this small tribute of mere words; and
mine might have lost some of his reputation for inflexibility had
he known that he was keeping on his steeple-crown before him
without whom there would be no " Legend of Brittany," no
"Sir Launfal," no " Commemoration Ode," no "Cathedral,"
no " Biglow Papers," — without whom our idea of the New
England these men helped to found would lack, in these latter
days, some of the strength and the beauty which make it
worthy of our respect, our admiration, and our love, — and
without whom the great school that was soon set up where
they were standing, to be the first and ever the brightest light
of learning in the land, would miss one of its most shining
ornaments.

We may be sure that both these honored men spoke English
in the strong and simple manner of their time, of which you
htve well said that it was " a cMction which we should be glaJ
to buy back frcm desretude at almost any cost," and whicb

CO

TO JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.

fou have done so much to illustrate, to perpetuate, and to en-
nch. I have as little faith as I believe you have in the worth
of a school -bred language. Strong, clear, healthy, Mving
speech springs, like most strong, living things, from the soil,
and grows according to the law of life within its seed. But
pruning and training may do something for a nursery -bred
weakling, and even for that which springs up unbidden, and
grows with native vigor into sturdy shapeliness. It is because
you have shown this in a manner which makes all men of New
England stock your debtors, and proud of their indebtedness,
that at the beginning of a book which seeks to do in the weak-
ness of precept what you have done by the strength of example,
I acknowledge, in so far as I may presume to do so, what is
owing to you by all your countrymen, and also record the
high respect and warm regard with which I am, and hope ever
to be,

Faithfully your friend,

RICHARD GRANT WHITE

New York, A ugust 3, 1870.

(*)

PREFACE.

THE following pages contain the substance ol the
articles which appeared in The Galaxy in the years
1867, 1 868, and 1869, under the title now borne by
this volume. Some changes in the arrangement of
the subjects of those articles, some excisions, and a few
additions, have been made ; but after reading, with a
willingness to learn, nearly all the criticisms with which
I was favored, I have found reason for abandoning
or modifying very few of my previously expressed
opinions.

The purpose of the book is the consideration of the
right use and the abuse of words and idioms, with an
occasional examination of their origin and their history.
It is occupied almost exclusively with the correctness
and fitness of verbal expression, and any excursion into
higher walks of philology is transient and incidental.

Soon after taking up this subject I heard a story
of a professor at Oxford, who, being about to address
a miscellaneous audience at that seat of learning, illus-
hated some of his positions by quotations in the original
fvora Ara >ic writers. A friend venturing to hint that thii

3

4 PREFACE.

might be caviare to his audience, he replied, " O, every-
body knows a little Arabic." Now, I have discovered
that everybody does not know a little Arabic ; and more,
that there are men all around me, of intelligence and
character, who, although they cannot be called illiterate,
— as peasants are illiterate, — know so very little of
lie right use of English, that, without venturing beyond
he limits of my own yet imperfect knowledge of my
mother tongue, I might undertake to give the instruc-
tion that I find many of them not only need, but
desire.

The need is particularly great in this country ; of
which fact I have not only set forth the reasons, but
have endeavored to explain them with such detail as
would enable my readers to see them for themselves, and
take diem to heart, instead of merely accepting or reject-
ing my assertion. Since I first gave these reasons in The
Galaxy, they have been incidentally, but earnestly and
impressively, presented by Professor Whitney in his
book on Language and the Study of Language.
Summing up his judgment on this point, that eminent
philologist says, " The low-toned party newspaper is
too much the type of the prevailing literary influence
by which the style of speech of our rising generation
is moulding. A tendency to slang, to colloquial in-
elegances, and even vulgarities, is the besetting sin
against which we, as Americans, have especially to
guard and to struggle."

What Professoi Whitney thus succinctly declares, 1
have enJeavored to set forth at large and to illustiate.
Usage in the end makes language ; determining nof

PREFACE. 5

oni, he meaning of words, but their suggestiveness,
and also their influence. For the influence of man
upon language is reciprocated by the influence of lan-
guage upon man ; and the mental tone of a community
may be vitiated by a yielding to the use of loose, coarse,
low, and frivolous phraseology. Into this people fal)
hy the mere thoughtless imitation of slovenly exem-
plars. A case in point — trifling and amusing, but not,
therefore, less suggestive — recently attracted my atten
tion. Professor Whitney mentions, as one of his many
illustrations of the historical character of word-making,
that we put on a " pair of rubbers" because, when
caoutchouc was first brought to us, we could find no
better use for it than the rubbing out of pencil-marks.
But overshoes of this material are not universally called
" rubbers." In Philadelphia, with a reference to the
nature of the substance of which they are made, they
are called " gums." A Philadelphia gentleman and
his wife going to make a visit at a house in New
York, where they wei'e very much at home, he entered
the parlor alone; and to the question, ''Why, where
is Emily?" answered, " O, Emily is outside cleaning
her gums upon the mat ; " whereupon there was a
momentary look of astonishment, and then a peal of
laughter. Now, there is no need whatever of the use
of either of the poor words rubbers or gums in this
sense. The proper word is simply overshoes, which
expresses all that there is occasion to tell, except to
A manufacturer or a salesman. There is neither neces-
sity nor propriety in our going into the question of the
fabric of what we wear for the protection of our feet,

5 PREFACE.

and of saying that a lady is either rubbing her rubbers
or cleaning her gums on the mat ; no more than
there is in our saying that a gentleman is brushing his
wool (meaning his coat), or a lady drying her eyes
with her linen (meaning her handkerchief). Lan-
guage is generally formed by indirect and unconscious
effort ; but when a language is subjected to the constant
action of such degrading influences as those -which
threaten ours, it may be well to introduce into its devel-
opment a little consciousness. The difference between
saying, He donated the balance of the lumber, and He
gave the rest of the timber, is perhaps trifling; but man's
language, like man himself, grows by a gradual accre-
tion of trifles, and the sum of these, in our case, is
on the one hand good English, and on the other bad.
Therefore they are not unworthy of any man's serious
attention.

Language is rarely corrupted, and is often enriched,
by the simple, unpretending, ignorant man, who takes
no thought of his parts of speech. It is from the mai
who knows just enough to be anxious to square hi*
sentences by the line and plummet of grammar and
dictionary that his mother tongue suffers most grievous
injury. It is his influence chiefly which is resisted in
this book. I have little hope, I must confess, of un-
doing any of the harm that he has done, or of pluck-
ing up any monstrosity which, planted by him, has struck
root into the popular speech ; particularly if it seerai
Gne, and is not quite understood by those who use it.

Transpire and predicate — worthy pair — will be used,
i fear, the one to mean happen, and the other found

PREFACE. 7

lhing& will continue to be being1 done, and the gentle-
•nanly barkeeper of the period will call his grog-shop a
sample-room^ notwithstanding all that I have said, and
all that abler men and better scholars than I am may
say, to the contrary. But, although I do not expect to
purge away corruption, I do hope to arrest it in some
measure by giving hints that help toward wholesome-
ness.

This book may possibly correct some of the pre
vailing evils against which it is directed ; but I shall
be satisfied if it awakens an attention to its subject that
will prevent evil in the future. Scholars and philolo-
gists need not be told that it is not addressed to them ;
but neither is it written for the unintelligent and entirely
uninstructed. It is intended to be of some service to
intelligent, thoughtful, educated persons, who are in-
terested in the study of the English language, and in
the protection of it against pedants on the one side and
coarse libertines in language on the other.

On the etymology of words I have said little, because
little was needed. The points from which I have re-
garded words are in general rather those of taste and
reason than of histoiy ; and my discussions are philo-
logical only as all study of words must be philological.
The few suggestions which I have made in etymology
I put forth with no affectation of timidity, but with
little concern as to their fate. Etymology, which, as
it is now practised, is a product of the last thirty
years, fulfils toward language the function which the
antiquarian and the genealogist discharge in the making
»f the world's history. The etymologist of the present

8 PREFACE.

day follows, as he should follow, his word up step "by
step through the written records of past years, until
he finds its origin in the fixed form of a parent language.
The disappearance of every letter, the modification
of every sound, the introduction of every new letter,
must be accounted for in accordance with the analogy
of the language at the period when the change, real
or supposed, took place. Thus etymology has at last
been placed upon its only safe bases, — research and
comparison, — and the origin of most words in modern
languages is as surely determinable as that of a mem-
ber of any family which has a recorded history.

I have only to add here that in my remarks on what
I have unavoidably called, by way of distinction, British
English and " American " English, and in my criticism
of the style of some eminent British authors, no insin-
uation of a superiority in the use of their mother tongue
by men of English race in " America " is intended, no
right to set up an independent standard is implied.
Of the latter, indeed, there is no fear. When that new
" American " thing, so eagerly sought, and hitherto
so vainly, does appear, if it ever do appear, it will not
be a language, or even a literature.

This book was prepared for the press in the autumn of 1869.
A.n unavoidable and unexpected delay in its appearance has
enabled me to add a few examples in illustration of my views,
which I have met with since that time: but it has received no
>ihcr additions.

R. G. W.

NEW YOEK fuly 8 jSja

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I. ,AG.

INTRODUCTION 13

CHAPTER II.

NEWSPAPER ENGLISH. BIG WORDS FOR SMALL

THOUGHTS 28

CHAPTER III.
BRITISH ENGLISH AND "AMERICAN" ENGLISH 44

CHAPTER IV.
STYLE 63

CHAPTER V.
MISUSED WORDS 80

CHAPTER VI.
SOME BRITICISMS 183

CHAPTER VII.

WORDS THAT ARE NOT WORDS *99

(9)

rO CONTENTS.

CHAPTER VIII.

FORMATION OF PRONOUNS. — SOME. — ADJECTIVES IN EN.

— EITHER AND NEITHER. — SHALL AND WILL. . . 239

CHAPTER IX.
GRAMMAR, ENGLISH AND LATIN .......... 374

CHAPTER X.
THE GRAMMARLESS TONGUE ........... 295

CHAPTER XI.
Is BEING DONE ............. . . • 334

CHAPTER XII.

A DESULTORY DENUNCIATION OF ENGLISH DICTIONA-

RIES ............... ... 364

CHAPTER XIII.

"JUS ET NORMA LOQUENDI." ... ........ 3gJ

CONCLUSION

423

APPENDIX.

I How THE EXCEPTION PROVES THE RULE. 433

II. CONTROVERSY , 442

IWVKX.

'457

WORDS AND THEIR USES.

" They be not wise, tnerelore that say, what care I for man's wordes and utterance,
if hys matter and reasons be good ? Such men, say so, not so much of ignorance, ai
eyther of some singular pride in themselves, or some special! malice of other, or foi
tome private and parciall matter, either in Religion or other kynde of learning. Foi
good and choice meates, be no more requisite for helthy bodyes, than proper and apt
wrrdes be for good matters, and also playne and sensible utterance for the best and
deepest reasons ; in which two poyntes standeth perfect eloquence, one of the fayrest
and rarest giftes that God doth geve to man."

ASCHAM'S SCHOLEMASTKR, foi. 46, ed. 1571

" Seeing that truth consisteth in the right ordering of names in our affirmations, a
man that seeketh precise truth had need to remember what every name he useth standi
for, and to place it accordingly, or else he will find himselfe entangled in words as a
bird in lime-twiecs. The more he struggles the more belimed."

HOBBKS'S LKVIATHAN, I. 4.

14 P. Must we always be seeking after the meaning of words?

" H. Of important words we must, if we wish to avoid important »rror. Th«
meaning of these words especially is of the greatest consequence to aiankind, and
items to have been strangely neglected by those who have made most use of them."
TOOKE, DIVERSIONS or PURLIY, Part II., ch. i.

" Mankind in general are so little in the habit of looking steadily at their own mean-
ing, or of weighing the words by which they express it, that the writer who is careful
to do both will sometimes mislead his readers through the very excellence which qual-
ifies him to be their instructor ; and this with no other fault on his part than the mod-
est mistake on his pan of supposing in those to whom he addresses himself an mtel
led as watchful as his own "

COLBKIDCB, TUB FRIKND, II., zd Landing Place

CHAPTER I.

INTRODUCTION.

ONE of the last judgments pronounced in philo-
logy is, that words are merely arbitrary sounds
for the expression and communication of ideas;
that, for instance, a man calls the source of light
and heat the sun, because his mother taught him
so to call it, and that is the name by which it is
known to the people around him, and that if he
had been taught in his childhood, and by example
afterwards, to call it the moon, he would have done so
without question. But this truth was declared more
than two hundred years ago by Oliver Cromwell in
his reply to the committee that waited upon him
from Parliament to ask him to take the title of king.
In the course of his refusal to yield to their request,
he said, —

" Words have not their import from the natural power of
particular combinations of characters, or from the real efficacy
of certain sounds, but from the consent of those that use them,
and arbitrarily annex certain ideas to them, which might have
been signified with equal propriety by any other."

Thus mother wit < forestalled philological de-
luction ; but the reasoning would be weak that
ound in the fact that language is formed, on the
whole, by consent and custom, an argument in favor

14 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

of indifference as to the right or wrong of usage,
For, although he was so earnestly entreated thereto,
and although it would have obviated some difficulty
in the administration of the government, Crom-
well, notwithstanding his opinion as to the arbitrary
meaning of words, refused to be called a king, be-
cause king meant something that he was not, and
had associations which he wished not to bring up.
And although to the individual words are arbitrary
to the race or the nation, they are growths, and are
themselves the fruit and the sign of the growth of
the race or the nation itself. So words have, like
men, a history, and alliances, and rights of birth
and inherent powers which endure as long as they
live, and which they can transmit, although some-
what modified, to their rightful successors.

But although most words are more immutable,
as well as more enduring, than men are, some of
them within the memory of one generation vary
both in their forms and in the uses which they serve,
doing so according to the needs and even the
neglect of the users. And thus it is that living
languages are always changing. Spoken words
acquire, by use and from the varying circumstances
of those who use them, other and wider significa-
tions than those which they had originally ; inflec-
tions are dropped, and construction is modified,
its tendency being generally towards simplicity.
Changes in inflection and construction are found not
to be casual or capricious, but processes according
to laws of development; which, however, as in the
case of all laws, physical or moral, are deduced from
the processes themselves. The apparent operation

INTRODUCTION. 15

of these laws is recognized so submissively by some
philologists that Dr. Latham has propounded the
dogma that in language whatever is, is right; to
which he adds another, as a corollary to the for-
mer, that whatever was, was wrong. But even
if we admit that in language whatever is — that is,
whatever usage obtains generally among the people
who speak a language as their mother tongue — is
right, that is, fulfils the true function of language,
which is to serve as a communication between man
and man, it certainly therefore follows that, what-
ever was, was also right ; because it did, at one
time, obtain generally, and did fulfil the function of
language.

The truth is, that, although usage may be com-
pulsory in its behests, and thus establish a govern-
ment de factO) which men have found that they
must recognize whether they will or no, in lan-
guage, as in all other human affairs, that which is
may be wrong. There Is some other law in lan-
guage than the mere arbitrary will of the users.
Language is made for man, and not man for
language ; but yet no man, no number of men, how-
ever great, can of purpose change the meaning of
one monosyllable. For, unless the meaning of w ords
is fixed during a generation, language will fail to
impart ideas, and even to communicate facts. Unless
it -is traceable through the writings of many gen-
erations in a connected course of normal develop-
ment, language becomes a mere temporary and
arbitrary mode of intercourse ; it fails to be an ex-
ponent of a people's intellectual growth ; and the
speech of our immediate forefathers dies upon theil

l6 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

lips, and is forgotten. Of such misfortune there is.,
however, not the remotest probability.

The recognition of the changes which the English
language has been undergoing from the time when
our Anglo-Saxon, or rather our English forefathers,
took possession of the southern part of Britain, is
no discovery of modern philology. The changes,
and the inconvenience which follows them, were
noticed four hundred years ago by William Caxton,
our first printer — a "simple person," as he de-
scribes himself, but an observant, a thoughtful, and
a very intelligent man, and one to whom English
literature is much indebted. He was not only a
printer, but a writer ; and as a part of his literary
labor he translated into English a French version of
the y£neid, and published it in the year 1490. In
Caxton's preface to that book is a passage which
is interesting in itself, and also germane to our sub-
ject. I will give the passage entire, and in our
modern orthography : —

" And when I had advised me in this said book, I deliberated
and concluded to translate it into English, and forthwith took a
pen and ink and wrote a leaf or twain, which I oversaw again to
correct it ; and when I saw the fair and strange terms therein, I
doubted that it should not please some gentlemen which late
blamed me, saying, that in my translations I had over-curious
terms which could not be understonden of common people, and
desired me to use old and homely terms in my translations; ana
fain would I satisfy every man ; and so to do, took an old book
and read therein ; and certainly the English was so rude and
broad that I could not well understand it. And also my Lord
Abbot of Westminster did shew to me of late certain evidences
written in old English, for to reduce it into our English now
tsed, and certainly it was written in such wise that it was more
like Dutch than English. I could net reduce ne bring it to b?
«nierstonden. And certainly our language now used varyetk

INTRODUCTION. . 1 7

far from what was used and spoken when I was bom. For we
Englishmen ben born under the domination of the Moon, which
is never steadfast, but ever wavering, waxynge one season and
waneth and decreaseth another season, and that common Eng-
lish that is spoken in one Shire varieth from another. Inso-
much that in my days it happened that certain merchants were
in a ship in Tamis [Thames] fcr to have sailed over the sea into
Zealand, and for lack of wind they tarried at Forland, and went
to land fcr to refresh them. And one of them named Sheffield,
a mercer, came into an house and axed for meat, and specially
he axed for eggs. And the good wife answered that she could
speak no French; and the merchant was angry; for he also
could speak no French, but would have had the eggs, and she
understood him not. And then at last another said that he would
have eyren ; then the good wife said that she understood him
well. Lo, what should a man in these days write? eggs or
eyren f Certainly it is hard to please every man, because of
diversity and change of language. For in these days every man
that is in any reputation in this country will utter his communi-
cation and matters in such manner and terms that few men shall
understand them ; and some honest and great clerks have been
with me and desired me to write the most curious terms that I
could find. And thus between plain, rude, and curious, I stand
abashed."

My chief purpose in giving this passage in our
regulated spelling is, that the reader may notice
how entirely it is written in the English of to-day.
Except axed, which we have heard used ourselves,
and eyren, which Caxton himself notices as obso-
lete, &en, ne, and under stonden, are the only words
in it which have not just the form and the meaning
that we now give to them ; and but for these five
Words and a little quaintness of style, the passage
ill its construction and its idiom might have been
written yesterday. And yet the writer was born in
the reign of Henry IV., and died a hundred years
Before Shakespeare wrote his first play. He says.
too, in another part of his preface, that he wrote in
a

l8 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

the idiom and with the vocabulary in use among
educated people of his day, in " Englishe not over
rude," on the one hand, "ne curyous," that is,
affected and elaborately fine, on the other. If the
Changes in language which took place during hi?
ll\-. were as great as he seems to have thought them,
if iney were as great as those with which in the
preseu day we seem to be threatened, certainly
the peii&d intervening between the time which saw
him a middle-aged man and now — four hundred
years — se ^ms by contrast to have been one of
almost absolute linguistic stagnation. This, how-
ever, is mere Deeming. The period of which Cax-
ton speaks was one in which the language was
crystallizing into its present form, and becoming
the English known to literature ; and changes then
were rapid and noticeable. The changes of our
day are mostly the result of the very superficial
instruction of a large body of people, who read
much and without discrimination, whose reading is
chiefly confined to newspapers hastily written by
men also very insufficiently educated, and who are
careless of accuracy in their ordinary speaking and
writing, and ambitious of literary excellence when
they make any extraordinary effort. The tendency
of this intellectual condition of a great and active
race is to the degradation of language, the utter
abolition of simple, clear, and manly speech.
Against this tendency it behooves all men who have
means and opportunity to strive, almost as if ii
were a question of morals. For there is a kind
of dishonesty in the careless and incorrect use of
language.

INTRODUCTION. 19

Purity, however, is not a quality which can
b« accurately predicated of language. What the
phrase so often heard, " pure English," really means,
it would, probably, puzzle those who use it to
explain. For our modern tongues are like many
buildings that stand upon sites long swept over by
the ever-advancing, though backward and forward
shifting tide of civilization. They are built out of
the ruins of the work of previous generations, to
which we and our immediate predecessors have
added something of our own. This process has
been going on since the disappearance of the first
generation of speaking men ; and it will never cease.
But there will be a change in its mode and rate.
The change has begun already. The invention of
printing, the instruction of the mass of the people,
and the ease of popular intercommunication, will
surely prevent any such corruption and detrition of
language as that which has resulted in the modern
English, German, French, Spanish, and Italian
tongues. Phonetic degradation will play a less
important part than it has heretofore played in the
history of language. Changes in the forms, and
variation in the meanings of words will be slow,
and if not deliberate, at least half conscious ; and
the corruptions that we have to guard against are
chiefly those consequent upon pretentious ignorance
and aggressive vulgarity.

It may be reasonably doubted whether there ever
was a pure language two generations old ; that is, a
•anguage homogeneous, of but one element. All
tongues known to philology show, if not the min-
gling in considerable and nearly determinable pro

EO WORDS AND THEIR USES.

portions of two or three linguistic elements, at least
the adoption and adaptation oi numerous foreign
words. English has for many centuries been far
from being a simple language. Chaucer's "well
of English undefiled" is very pleasant and whole-
some drinking; but, pronouns, prepositions, conjunc-
tions, and " auxiliary " verbs aside, it is a mixture
in which Normanized, Gallicized Latin is mingled
in large proportion with a base of degraded Anglo-
Saxon. And yet the result of this hybridity and
degradation is the tongue in which Shakespeare
wrote, and the translators of the Bible, and Milton,
and Bunyan, and Burke, and Goldsmith, and Irving,
and Hawthorne ; making in a language without a
superior a literature without an equal.

But the presence in our language of two ele-
ments, both of which are essential to its present
fulness and force, no less than to its fineness and
flexibilit}', does not make it sure that these are of
equal or of nearly equal importance. Valuable as
the Latin adjuncts to our language are, in the
appreciation of their value it should never be for-
gotten that they are adjuncts. The frame, the
sinews, the nerves, the heart's blood, in brief, the
body and soul of our language is English ; Latin
and Greek furnish only its limbs and outward
flourishes. If what has come to us through the
Normans, and since their time from France and
Ital}' and the Latin lexicon, were turned out of our
vocabulary, we could live, and love, and work, ^nd
,alk, and sing, and have a folk-lore and a highei
literature. But take out the former, the movemen
of our lives wouM be clogged, and the language

INTRODUCTION. 21

iv'ould fall to pieces for lack of framework and
foundauon, and we could do none of those things.
We might teach in the lecture-room, and formulate
the results of our work in the laboratory, but we
should be almost mute at home, and our language
and our literature would be no more ours than it
would be France's, or Spain's, or Italy's.

To the Latin we owe, as the most cursory stu*
dent of our language must have observe d, a great
proportion of the vocabulary of philosophy, of art,
of science, and of morals ; and by means of words
derived from the Latin we express, as it is assumed,
shades of thought and of feeling finer than those of
«vhich our simple mother tongue is capable. But,
it may at least be doubted whether we do not tmn
too quickly to the Latin lexicon when we wish a
name for a new thought cr a new thing, and whether
out of the simples of our ancient English, or Anglo-
Saxon, so called, we might not have formed a lan-
guage copious enough for all the needs of the high-
est civilization, and subtle enough for all the requi-
sitions of philosophy. For instance, what we call,
in Latinish phrase, remorse of conscience, our fore-
fathers called againbite of inwit ; and in using the
former we express exactly the same ideas as arc
expressed by the latter. As the corresponding
compounds and the corresponding elements have
the same meaning, what more do we gain by put-
ting together re and morse, con and science, than
by doing the same with again and bite, in and
wit ? The English words now sound uncouth,
and provoke a smile, but they do so only be-
cause we are accustomed to the Latin derivativea

12 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

No advantage seems likely to be pleaded for the use
of the latter other than that they produce a single
impression on the mind of the English-speaking
man, causing him to accept remorse and conscience
as simple words, expressing simple things, without
the suggestion of a biting again and an inner wit-
ting. But it may first be doubted whether this
thoughtless, unanalytic acceptance of a word is
without some drawback of dissipating and enfee-
bling disadvantage ; and next, and chiefly, it may
be safely asserted that the English compounds
would produce, if in common use, as single and as
strong an impression as the Latin do. Who that
does not stop to think and take to pieces, receives
other than a single impression from such words as
insight (bereaved twin of inivit}, gospel, falsehood,
•worship, homely, breakfast, truthful, boyhood, house-
hold, brimstone, tivilight, acorn, chestnut, instead,
homestead, and the like, of which our common cur-
rent English would furnish numberless examples?

In no way is our language more wronged than
by the weak readiness with which many of those
who, having neither a hearty love nor a ready mas-
tery of it, or lacking both, fly to the Latin tongue
or to the Greek for help in the naming of a new
thought or thing, or the partial concealment of an
old one, calling, for instance, nakedness nudity, and
a bathing-tub a lavatory. By so doing they help to
deface the characteristic traits of our mother tongue,
and to mar and stunt its kindly growth.

No one denies — certainly I do not deny — the val-
ue of the Latin element of our modern English in
the expression of abstract ideas and general notions,

INTRODUCTION. 23

It also gives amplitude, and ease, and grace to a
language which without it might be admirable only
for compact and rugged strength. All which being
granted, it still remains to be shown that there is
not in simple English — that is, Anglo-Saxon with-
out inflections — the power of developing a vocabu-
lary competent to all the requirements of philosophy,
cf science, of art, no less than of society and of
sentiment. I believe that pure English has, in this
respect at least, the full capacity of the German
language. Nevertheless, one of the advantages of
English over German, in form and euphony, is in
this very introduction of Anglicized Latin and Greek
words for the expression of abstract ideas, which re
lieves us of such quintuple compounds, for instance,
as sprackwisscnschaftsctnkeit. With the expression
of abstract ideas and scientific facts, however, the
Latinization of our language should stop, or it will
lose its home character, and kin traits, and become
weak, flabby, and inflated, and thus, ridiculous.

One of the changes to which language is subject
during the healthy intellectual condition of a peo-
ple, and in its progress from rudeness to refine-
ment, is the casting off of rude, clumsy, and in-
sufficiently worked-out forms of speech, sometimes
iristakenly honored under the name of idioms.
Speech, the product of reason, tends more and
more to conform itself to reason ; and when gramr-
mar, which is the formulation of usage, is opposed
to reason, there arises, sooner or later, a conflict
between logic, or the law of reason, and grammar,
the law of precedent, in which the former is always
victorious. And this has been notably the case in

*4 WORDS ANL> THEIR USES.

the history of the English language. Usage, there-
fore, is not, as it is often claimed to be, the absolute
law of language ; and it never has been so with any
people — could not be, or we should have an ex-
ample of a language which had not changed from
what it was in its first stage, if indeed under such a
law tiiere could be a first stage in language. Hor->
ace, indeed, in a passage often quoted, seems to
have accepted usage as the supreme authority in

speech : —

" si volet usus,
Quern penes arbitrium est, et jus, et nonna loquena;."

But if this dictum were unconditional, and common
usage were the absolute and rightful arbiter in all
questions of language, there would be no hope of
improvement in the speech of an ignorant and
degraded society, no rightful protest against its mean
and monstrous colloquial phrases, which, indeed,
would then be neither mean nor monstrous; the
fact that they were in use being their full justifica-
tion. The truth is, however, that the authority of
general usage, or even of the usage of great wri-
ters, is not absolute in language. There is a misuse
of words which can be justified by no authority,
however great, by no usage, however general.

And, as usage does not justify that which is es-
sentially unreasonable, so in the fact that a word or
phrase is an innovation, a neologism, there is noth-
ing whatever to deter a bold, clear-headed thinker
from its use. Otherwise language would not grow.
New words, when they are needed, and are rightly
formed, and so clearly discriminated that they have
a meaning peculiarly their own, enrich a, language

INTRODUCTION. 25

while the use of one word to mean many things,
more or less unlike, is the sign of poverty in speech,
and the source of ambiguity, the mother of confusion.
For these reasons the objection on the part of a
writer upon language to a word or a phrase should
not be that it is new, but that it is inconsistent with
reason, incongruous in itself, or opposed to the
genius of the tongue into which it has been irtfro-
duced. Something must and surely will be sacri-
ficed in language to convenience ; but too much
may be sacrificed to brevity. A periphrasis which
is clear and forcible is not to be abandoned for a
shorter phrase, or even a single word, which is am-
biguous, barbarous, grotesque, or illogical. Unless
much is at stake, it is always better to go clean and
dry-shod a little way about than to soil our feet by
taking a short cut.

For two centuries and a half, since the time when
King Lear was written and our revised trans-
lation of the Bible made, the English language has
suffered little change, either by loss or gain. Ex-
cepting that which was slang, or cant, or loose col-
loquialism in his day, there is little in Shakespeare's
plays which is not heard now, more or less, from
the lips of English-speaking men ; and to his vo-
cabulary they have added little except words which
are names for new things. The language has not
sensibly improved, nor has it deteriorated. In the
latter part of the last century it was in some peril.
We ran the risk, then, of the introduction of a schol-
arly diction and a formal style into our literature,
and of a separation of our colloquial speech, the
language of common folk and common needs

l6 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

from that of literary people and grand occasions,
That danger we happily escaped, and we still speak
and write a common, if not a homogeneous lan-
guage, in which there is no word which is excluded
by its commonness or its meanness from the highest
strain of poetry.

Criticism, however, is now much needed to keep
our language from deterioration, to defend it against
the assaults of presuming half-knowledge, always
bolder than wisdom, always more perniciously in-
trusive than conscious ignorance. Language must
always be made by the mass of those who use
it ; but when that mass is misled by a little learn-
ing, — a dangerous thing only as edge tools are
dangerous to those who will handle them with-
out understanding their use, — and undertakes to
make language according to knowledge rather than
by instinct, confusion and disaster can be warded
off only by criticism. Criticism is the child and
handmaid of reflection. It works by censure; and
censure implies a standard. As to words and the use
of words, the standard is either reason, whose laws
are absolute, or analogy, whose milder sway hinders
anomalous, barbarous, and solecistic changes, and
helps those which are in harmony with the genius oi
a language. Criticism, setting at nought the as-
oiimption of any absolute authority in language,
may check bad usage and reform degraded cus-
tom. It may not only resist the introduction of that
which is debasing or enfeebling, but it may thrus*
out vicious words and phrases which through care-
lessness or perverted taste may have obtained a
footing. It is only by such criticism that our Ian

INTRODUCTION. 2?

can no\v be restrained from license and pre-
served from corruption. Criticism cannot at once
with absolute and omnipotent voice, banish the bad
and establish or introduce the good ; but by watch-
fulness and reason it may gradually form such a
laste in those who are, if not the framers, at least
the arbiters, of linguistic law, that thus, by indirec-
tion rinding direction out, it may insure the effec-
tual condemnation of that which itself could not
exclude.

Until comparatively late years language was
formed by the intuitive sense of those who spoke
it; but now, among highly civilized peoples, the
element of consciousness is entering into its pro-
duction. If consciousness must be present, it
should be, at least in the last resort, the conscious-
ness of trained and cultivated minds : and such con-
sciousness is critical, indeed is criticism. And
those who feel the need of support in giving them-
selves to the study of verbal criticism may find it
in the comfortable words of Scaliger the younger,
who says, "The sifting of these subtleties, although
it is of no use to machines for grinding corn, frees
the mind from the rust of ignorance, and sharpens
it for other matters." * And it may reassure us to
remember that, in the crisis of the great struggle
between Caesar and Pompey, Cicero, being then in
the zenith of his power, turned aside, in a letter to
Atticus upon weighty affairs of state, to discuss a
point of grammar with that eminent critic.

* Harum indagatio subtilitatum, etsi non est utilis ad machi-
nas farinarias conficiendas, exuif animum tamen inscitiae rubi
gine, acuit-que ad alia

l8 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

CHAPTER II.

NEWSPAPER ENGLISH. BIG WORDS FOR SMALI*
THOUGHTS.

SIMPLE and unpretending ignorance is always
respectable, and sometimes charming ; but there
is little that more deserves contempt than the pre-
tence of ignorance to knowledge. The curse and
the peril of language in this day, and particularly in
this country, is, that it is at the mercy of men who,
instead of being content to use it well according to
their honest ignorance, use it ill according to their
affected knowledge ; who, being vulgar, would
seem elegant ; who, being empty, would seem full ;
who make up in pretence what they lack in real-
ity ; and whose little thoughts, let off in enormous
pli rases, sound like fire-crackers in an empty barrel.

How I detest the vain parade

Of big-mouthed words of large pretence!
And shall they thus thy soul degrade,

O tongue so dear to common sense!
Shouldst thou accept the pompous laws

By which our blustering tyros prate,
Soon Shakespeare's songs and Bunyan's s»ws

Some tumid trickster must translate

Our language like our daily lite,

Accords the homely and sublime,
And jars with phrases that are rife

With pedantry of every clime.

NEWSPAPER ENGLISH. 2p

For eloquence it clangs like arms,

For love it touches tender chords,
But he to whom the world's heart warms

Must speak in wholesome, home-bred words.

To the reader who is familiar with Beranger'ss
" Derniers Chansons " these lines will bring to mind
two stanzas in the poet's "Tambour Major," in
which he compares pretentious phrases to a big,
bedizened drum-major, and simple language to the
little gray-coated Napoleon at Austerlitz — a com-
parison which has been brought to my mind very
frequently during the writing of this book.

It will be well for us to examine some examples
of this vice of language in its various kinds ; and
for them we must go to the newspaper press, which
reflects so truly the surface of modern life, although
its surface only.

There is, first, the style which has rightly come
to be called newspaper English, and in which we
are told, for instance, of an attack upon a fortified
position on the Potomac, that " the thousand-toned
artillery duel progresses magnificently at this hour,
the howling shell bursting in wild profusion in camp
and battery, and among the trembling pines." I
quote this from the columns of a first-rate New
York newspaper, because the real thing is so much
mo~e characteristic than any imitation could be, arid
is quite as ridiculous. This style has been in use
so long, and has, day after day, been impressed
upon the minds of so many persons to whom news-
papers are authority, as to language no less than
as to facts, that it is actually coming into vogue in
daily life with some of our people. Not long ago

JO WORDS AND THEIR USES.

my attention was attracted by a building which 1
had not noticed before, ind, stepping up to a police-
man who stood hard oy, I asked him what it was.
He promptly replied (I wrote down his answer
within the minute), "That is an institootion inau-
gurated under the auspices of the Sisters of Mercy,
for the reformation of them young females what
has deviated from the paths of rectitood." It was
in fact an asylum for women of the town ; but my
informant would surely have regarded such a de-
scription of it as inelegant, and perhaps as indel-
icate. True, there was a glaring incongruity be-
tween the pompousness of his phraseology and his
use of those simple and common parts of speech,
the pronouns ; but I confess that, in his dispensa-
tion of language, "them" and "what" were the
only crumbs from which I received any comfort.
But could I find fault with my civil and obliging
informant, when I knew that every day he might
read in the leading articles of our best newspapers
such sentences, for instance, as the following? —

" There is, without doubt, some subtle essence permeating
the elementary constitution of crime which so operates that
men and women become its involuntary followers by sheer force
of attraction, as it were."

I am sure, at least, that the policeman knew bet-
ter what he meant when he spoke than the journal-
ist did what he meant when he wrote. Policeman
and journalist both wished not merely to tell what
they knew and thought in the simplest, clearest
way they wished to say. something elegant, and
to use fine language ; and both made themselves
ridiculous. Neither this fault nor this complaint ia

BIG WORDS FOR SMALL THOUGHTS. 3!

new ; but the censure seems not to have diminished
the fault, either in frequency or in degree. Our
every-day writing is infested with this silly bom-
bast, this stilted nonsense. One journalist, reflect-
ing upon the increase of violence, and wishing to
say that ruffians should not be allowed to go armed,
writes, "We cannot, however, allow the opportu-
nity to pass without expressing our surprise that the
law should allow such abandoned and despetate
characters to remain in possession of lethal weap-
ons." Lethal means deadly, neither more nor less ;
but it would be very tame and unsatisfying to use
an expression so common and so easily understood.
Another journalist, in the course of an article upon
a murder, says of the murderer that " a policeman
went to his residence, and there secured the clothes
that he wore when he committed the murderous
deed ; " and that, being found in a tub of water,
K they were so smeared by blood as to incarnadine
the water of the tub in which they were deposited."
To say that " the policeman went to the house or
room of the murderer, and there found the clothes
he wore when he did the murder, which were so
bloody that they reddened the water into which
they had been thrown," would have been far too
homely.

But not only are our journals and our speeches
to Buncombe infested with this big-worded style,
the very preambles to our acts of legislature, and
the official reports upon the dryest and most matter-
of-fact subjects, are bloated with it. It appears in
the full flower of absurdity in the following sentence,
which I find in the report of a committee of the

Jl WORDS AND THEIR USES.

legislature of New York on street railways. The
committee wished to say that the public looked upon
all plans for the running of fast trains at a height
of fifteen or twenty feet as fraught with needless
danger; and the committee man who wrote for
them made them say it in this amazing fashion : —

" It is not to be denied that any system which demands the
propulsion of cars at a rapid rate, at an elevation of fifteen or
twenty feet, is not entirely consistent, in public estimation, with
the greatest attainable immunity from the dangers of transpor-
tation."

Such a use of words as this indicates only the
lack as well of mental vigor as of good taste and
of education on the part of the user. " O," said
a charming, highly-cultivated, and thorough-bred
woman, speaking, in my hearing, of one of ner
own sex of inferior breeding and position, but who
was making literary pretensions, and with some
success so far as notoriety and money were con-
cerned,— "O, save me from talking with that wo-
man ! If you ask her to come and see you, she
never says she's sorry she can't come, but that
she regrets that the multiplicity of her engage-
ments precludes her from accepting your polite
invitation."

The foregoing instances are examples merely of
a pretentious and ridiculous use of words which is
now very common. They are not remarkable for
incorrectness. But the freedom with which per-
sons who have neither the knowledge of language
which comes of culture, nor that which springs
spontaneously from an inborn perception and mas-
tery, are allowed to address the public and to speali

BIG WORDS FOR SMALL THOUGHTS. 33

for it, produces a class of writers who fill, as it is
unavoidable that they should fill, our newspapers
and public documents with words which are ridicu-
lous, not only from their pretentiousness, but from
their preposterous unfitness for the uses to which
they are put. These persons not only write abom*
inably in point of style, but they do not say what
they mean. When, for instance, a member of
Congress is spoken of in a leading journal as " a
sturdy republican of progressive integrity," no very
great acquaintance with language is necessary to
the discovery that the writer is ignorant of the
meaning either of progress or of integrity. When
in the same columns another man is described as
being "endowed with an impassionable nature,"
people of common sense and education see that
here is a man not only writing for the public, but
actually attempting to coin words, who, so far as
his knowledge of language goes, needs the instruc-
tion to be had in a good common school. So, again,
when another journal of position, discoursing upon
convent discipline, tells us that a. young woman is
not fitted for " the stern amenities of religious life,"
and we see it laid down in a report to an important
public body that, under certain circumstances, "the
criminality of an act is heightened, and reflects a
very turgid morality indeed," it is, according to our
knowledge, whether we find in the phrases " stern
amenities " and " turgid morality " occasion for study
or food for laughter.

Writing like this is a fruit of a pitiful desire to
seem elegant when one is not so, which troubles
many people, and which manifests itself in the use
3

34 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

of words as well as in the wearing of clothes, the
buying of furniture, and the giving of entertain-
ments ; and which in language takes form in worcb
which sound large, and seem to the person who
uses them to give him the air of a cultivated man,
because he does not know exactly what they mean.
Such words sometimes become a fashion among
such people, who are numerous enough to set and
keep up a fashion ; and they go on using them to
each other, each afraid to admit to the other that
he does not know what the new word means, and
equally afraid to avoid its use, as a British snob is
said never to admit that he is entirely unacquainted
with a duke. Our newspapers and reviews are
haunted now by two words of this sort — normal
and inaugurate. In the North American Review
itself (I name this review because of its very high
literary position — a position higher now than ever
before) a writer is permitted to say that, " This idea
[that of a ship without a bowsprit] was doubtless
a copy of the model inaugurated by Mr. E. K.
Collins, founder, of the Collins line of American
Ocean Steamships." The writer meant invented
or introduced ; and he might as \vell have written
about the President of the United States being in-
vented on the 4th of March, as of inaugurating
the model of a ship. But ere long we shall prob-
ably have the milliners inaugurating their bonnets,
and the cooks making for us normal plum-puddings
and pumpkin pies. But normal and inaugurate,
and a crowd of such big words, are now used as
liardolph uses accommodated, which, being ap-
proved by Mr. Justice Shallow as a good phrase

BIG WORDS FOR SMALL, THOUGHTS. 35

he replies, "By this day I know not the phrase ; bui
I will maintain the word with my sword to be a
soldier-like word, and a word of exceeding good
command. Accommodated ; that is, when a man
is, as they say — accommodated; or, when a man
is — being — whereby — he maybe thought to be
accommodated; which is an excellent thing."

There is no telling to what lengths this desire to
speak fine will lead. It breaks out very strongly
with som« people in the use of have and were.
They have taken into their heads a hazy notion
of the superior elegance of those words — as to the
latter from having heard it used by persons who are
precise as to their subjunctive mood ; how as to the
former I cannot conjecture. So, some of them,
when they wish to be very fine indeed, say, " I were
going to Europe last Tall, but were prevented by
the multiplicity of my engagements," leaving was
in the company of plain and simple folk. I was
witness to a characteristic exhibition of this kind of
pretence. With two or three friends I called on
business at the house of a very wealthy man in/the"}
Fifth Avenue, whom I had never met before, and
who has since gone to the place where "all good
Americans go when they die." He proposed that /
we should ride with him to the place to visit which
was the object of our gathering, and he stepped out
to give some orders. As the carriage came to the
door, he reentered the parlor, and approaching our
gioup, revolving his hands within each other, as if
troubled by a consciousness, partly reminiscence,
that they needed washing, he said with a little
rtnirk, "Gentlemen, the carriage have arrived."

36 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

We stood it, as sober as judges ; but one of us soon
made an execrable pun, which afforded opportunity
for laughter, in which our host, as ignorant of a
play upon words as of the use of them, heartily
joined. Now, that man, if he had been speaking to
his wife, would have called out, " Sairy Ann, the
carriage has come," and have rivalled Thackeray
or Hawthorne in the correctness of his English.

We are suffering now, and shall suffer more
hereafter, from the improper use of words, in
a very important point, to wit, the drafting of
our laws. When the Constitution of the United
States was framed, the language of the instru-
ment was considered with great care. Each para-
graph, after having been discussed in committee
and in full convention, and its purport clearly de-
termined, was submitted to the revision of a com-
mittee on style, and it was not adopted until it had
received the sanction of that committee. Hence
it is that there is hardly a passage in the whole
Constitution the meaning of which can be doubted ;
the disputes about the Constitution being, almost
without exception, not as to what it provides, but
as to the effects of its provisions. But as to most
of the law.» passed nowadays, both in the State
and naliona. legislatures, it would puzzle those
who do not know the purpose of their framers,
to discover it from their language ; and when the
present generation of politicians has passed away,
these laws, if they last until that time, will bear
any construction that any court, or any majority of
any Congress, chooses to put upon them ; which
perhaps, in the view of the latter, will be an

BIG WORDS FCR SMALL THOUGHTS. 37

advantage. Some of the laws passed in the last
two sessions of Congress have little more coherence
or consistency than some of MotherGoose's rhymes.
But passing by such laws as touch great questions
af public policy, and as to which, therefore, it might
be unreasonable to expect our present legislators to
express themselves with clearness and propriety,
take, for example, the following section of a bill
brought into the legislature of New York in regard
to the metropolitan police : —

" SECTION 16. The Board of Metropolitan Police is herebjr
authorized, in their discretion, to pay out of the Police Life In-
surance Fund an amount, not exceeding three hundred dollars,
to the members of the force who may be disabled while in the
discharge of their duties. In cases of death by injuries received
while discharging their duties, the annuities shall be continued
to the widow, or children, or both, as the Board may deern best
The Board of Metropolitan Police is hereby constituted Trustee*
of the Life Insurance Fund."

Laying no stress upon such English as "the
board is authorized in their discretion," and "the
board is constituted trustees? let us try to find out
what it is that the board is authorized to do. It is
"to pay an amount not exceeding three hundred
dollars to the members of the force who may be
disabled while in the discharge of their duties."
That is, unmistakably, according to the language
used, to pay three hundred dollars to all the mem-
bers of the force who may be so injured. This
seems rather a small provision for the purpose in
view; as to which there is still further uncertainty.
For who are all the members of the force, for whom
this provision is made ? All who are injured during
the existence of the board? So the law says, and

38 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

there is not a word, expressed or implied, to the
contran And how much is to be paid to each
member: There is not a word definitely to show.
But in the next sentence, which oddly says that,
w In case of death by injuries received while dis-
charging their duties', the annuities shall be con-
tinued to the widows or children or both," the word
annuities gives us a hint as to the meaning of the
law, but no more. Yet it is safe to say that this
section, which so completely fails to express a
simple intention as to the payment of money that
any construction of it might be plausibly disputed,
was supposed by its framers to mean what it does
mean in the corrected form following ; in which it
would have been written by any tolerably well-
instructed person — any person of sufficient intelli-
gence and education to be intrusted with the writing
of an official letter — much more the drafting of
a law.

" Th e Board of Police is hereby authorized in its discretion to
pay out of the Police Life Insurance Fund an amount not ex-
ceeding three hundred dollars, annually, to every member of the
force who may be disabled while in the discharge of his duties.
In cases of death from injuries received in the discharge of duty,
the annuities shall be paid to the widow or the children of the
deceased member, or to both, as the Board may deem best. The
board of Metropolitan Police is hereby constituted the Tiustct
of the Police Life Insurance Fund."

There are laws of the United States, enacted
within the last four years, and which must come up
before the courts, and finally before the Supreme
Couit, as the ground of the decision of important
questions, which are not a whit more explicit or
coherent than this example of the style of late Nevf
York legislation.

BIG WORDS FOR SMALL THOUGHTS. 39

Language being perverted in this country chiefly
in consequence of the wide diffusion of very super
ficial instruction among a restless, money-getting,
and self-confident people, although the daily press
is the chief visible corrupter of our speech, it must
be admitted that the latter cause of degradation
is itself the consequence of the former. Our news-
papers do the harm in question through their ad-
vertisements as well as through their reports, their
correspondence, and their leading articles ; and it
would seem as if, in most cases, the same degree
of knowledge of the meaning of words and of their
use prevailed in all these departments. The style
and the language of their advertisements and
their reading matter generally indicate the careless
confidence of a people among whom there is little
deference, or reference, to standards of authority.
Competent as some of our editors are, none of our
newspapers receive thorough editorial supervision.
What is sent to them for publication would be gen-
erally judged by a low standard ; and of even that
judgement the public too frequently has not the
benefit. As to advertisements, every man of us
deems himself able to write them, with what reason
we shall soon see ; while in England the writing of
even these is generally committed to persons who
have some knowledge of English and some sense,
of decorum. But here, the free, independent, and
ntdligent American citizen produces advertise-
ments in which sense and decorum are set at naught
with an absoluteness that speaks more for his free-
dom and his independence than for his intelligence.
Tc pass his ordinary performances under censure

<fO WORDS AND THEIR USES.

would be trivial, if not superiluous ; there is, how-
ever, a variety of his species, who is not unworthy
of attention, because he is doing much to debauch
the public mind — injuring it morally as well as in-
tellectually. This is the sensation advertiser, who
sometimes is a publisher, sometimes a perfumer ; at
others he sells fire-safes, bitters, sewing-machines,
buchu, houses and lands, piano-fortes, or clothes-
wringers. But whatever his wares, his English is
generally vile, and his tone always nauseous. Here
follows a specimen of the sort of rifF-rafF of lan-
guage that he produces. It is actually a part of a
long advertisement of a "real estate agent," which
appeared in a leading paper in the interior of New
York: —

" I am happy to inform my friends especially and the
public generally, that I have entered upon the new year " as
sound as a nut." My ambition is at bulkhead ; my best ef-
forts shall be devoted to the public. I am willing to live on
crumbs and small fishes, and let others take the loaves and
sturgeon. I am still dealing largely in Real Estate. Encour-
aged by success in the past, I shall buckle on the harness in the
future. Therefore "come unto me" and I will "see" what I
can do for you. I am too modest to speak, even in a whisper,
in my own behalf, but * am willing the public'should speak in
" thunder tones." . . . Any man who really wants to buy a
farm, small 01 large, I can suit him; also cheap houses and lots;
also cheap * ucant lots. ... I am also looking after the
boldier's int?rest Let their widows, orphans, parents, etc., also
the poor maimed soldiers, "come unto me" for pensions, boun-
ties, etc., for they have my deep-bosomed sympathies. I have a
very cheap house, barn and very large lot, with trees, and splen-
did garden land, some ten rods deep, to sell at a low figure
" Come and see."

This gentleman, whose "ambition is at bulk
head," by which, if he meant an}' thing, he possibly
meant at flood-tide, who tells any man who wanti

BIG WORDS FOR SMALL, THOUGHTS. 41

to buy a farm that he can suit him, also cheap
houses and lots, who advertises his deep-bosomed
sympathies, who calls garden-land splendid, and
who interlards his hideous attempt at humorous
humbug with phrases quoted from the tenderest
and most impressive passages of the Gospels, may,
nevertheless, be a decent sort of person outwardly,
and a shrewd man of business. Still, although we
may be obliged to put a murderer out of the way as
we would a wild beast, the murderer might be a
much more tolerable sort of person in daily life, and
work less diffusive evil than this advertiser. He is?
sure to do some harm, and if he should be a successful
man, as he probably will be, he can hardly fail to do
a great deal. For he will then have the more imita-
tors. He is even now the representative of a class
of men which increases* among us year by year —
men whose chief traits are greed and vulgarity,
who often get riches, and whose traits, when riches
come, are still greed and vulgarity, with the ad-
dition of purse-pride and vanity. Such advertis-
.ng as his is a positive injury to public morals and
public taste ; and it is much to be desired that it
could be excluded from all respectable newspapers.
But of course this is as impossible as it would be to
pxclude rude, ill-mannered people from a hotel.
Our only remedy is in the diffusion of a knowledge
?f the decencies of language and of intercourse.

As a general rule, the higher the culture, the
simpler the style and the plainer the speech. But
it is equally true that, for rudeness and positive
coarseness in the use of language, as well as for
Affectation and pretence, we must look to our public

\1 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

representatives, to the press, and to the members cl
our various legislative bodies. Here, for instance,
is a paragraph from a grave and very earnest
leading article upon the currency, which recently
appeared in one of the foremost newspapers in
the country. The subject of the paragraph is a
Treasury note.

" The United States paid it out as money, and received for it
nearly or quite as much value as though it had been a half
eagle. We came honestly by it and we want it paid. Yet, if
we were to call on Mr. Sub-Treasurer Van Dyke and ask him to
fork over a half eagle and take up the rag, he would politely but
firmly decline."

A little racy slang may well be used in the course
of one's daily talk ; it sometimes expresses that
which otherwise would be difficult, if not impossi-
ble, of expression. But what is gained in this case
by the use of the very coarse slang "fork over"
and "take up the rag"? What do these phrases
express that is not quite as well conveyed in the
words cash the note, and pay the note in gold? It
is quite impossible to believe that this offence was
committed in ignorance, and equally so, I hope,
that it was affected with the purpose of writing down
;o the level of a certain class of readers — a trick
tfhich may win their present favor, but which, in
the end, they are sure to resent. It is rather to be
Issmned that this phraseology was used only with
that careless indifference to the decencies of life and
of language which some journalists mistake for
smartness.

Such a use of language as that which has just
been made the subject of remark, although commor

BIG WORDS FOR SMALL, THOUGHTS. 43

in our newspapers, in Congress, in our State legis-
latures, and even in the pulpits of certain religious
denominations, is not a national peculiarity. On
the contrary, there are, probably, more people
in this country than in any other to whom such a
style of writing and speaking is a positive offence.
But the wide diffusion of just so much instruction
as enables men to read their newspapers, write their
advertisements, and keep their accounts, and the
utter lack of deference to any one, or of doubt in
themselves, which political equality and material
prosperity beget in people having no more than
such education, and no less, combine to produce a
condition of society which brings their style of
speech, as well as their manners, much more to
the front, not to say to the top, than is the case in
other countries.

44 WORDS AND THEIR USES

CHAPTER III.
i

BRITISH ENGLISH AND "AMERICAN" ENGLISH.

IT has been frequently asserted by British critics
that even among the best educated people and
the very men of letters in the United States, the Eng-
lish language is neither written nor spoken with the
clearness and strength and the mastery of idiom that
are common among the people of Great Britain.
Boucher, in his " Glossary," speaks of " Americans"
as w making all the haste they can to rid themselves
of the [English] language ; " * and Dean Alford
makes a like charge in a passage of his " Queen's
English," which, no less for its reasoning than for
its assertions, deserves entire reproduction. It
would be ruthless to mar so complete and so ex-
quisite a whole.

"Look, to take one familar example, at the process of deterio-
ration which our Queen's English has undergone at the hands
of the Americans. Look at those phrases which so amuse ue in
their speech and in their books; at their reckless exaggeration
and contempt for congruity; and then compare the character
mid history of the nation — its blunted sense of moral obligation
and duty to man, its open disregard of conventional right, where
Eggrandizement is to be obtained; and I may now say its reck-
less and fruitless maintenance of the most cruel and unprin-
cipled war in the history of the world."

* Quoted from Scbele de Vere. Boucher's "Glossary " which was designed a» I
tuppiunent to Johnson's Dictionary. I hive not read

BRITISH ENGLISH ANE AMERICAN ENGLISH. 45

Some of our own writers, blindly following, 1
Lhink, blind British guides, have been misled into
the expression of like opinions. Mr. Lowell, in
the preface to his second series of the "Biglow
Papers," makes this damaging admission : —

"Whether it be want of culture, for the highest outcome of
culture is simplicity, or for whatever reason, it is certain that
very few American writers and speakers wield their native lan-
guage with the directness, precision, and force that are as com-
mon as the day in the mother country."

Speaking upon the careful observation of several
years, I cannot admit the justice of this self-accusa-
tion ; and I must express no little surprise at the
lack of qualification and reserve in Mr. Lowell's
language, which I can account for only by suppos-
ing that his opinion was formed upon an insufficient
examination of this subject. It is true that the
writers and speakers of that very large class among
us who are neither learned nor unlearned, and who
are, therefore, on the one hand without the sim-
plicity that comes of culture, and on the other
incapable of that unconscious, intuitive use of idiom
which gives life and strength to the simple speech
of very humble people, do, most of them, use lan-
guage awkwardly, and as if they did not feel at
home in their own mother tongue. If it were not
so this book would lack one reason of its being.
But I do not hesitate to say that British writers, not
of the highest grade, but of lespectable rank, are
open to the same charge ; and, moreover, that it is
more generally true with legard to them than with
regard to writers of the sar.ie position in the United
States.

4-t> WORDS AND THEIR USES.

Mr. Marsh, in the last of his admirable "Lec-
tures on the English Language," expresses an
opinion which, on the whole, is more nearly like
that which I have formed than Mr. Lowell's, not
to say Dean Alford's. But Mr. Marsh himself has
tin's passage : —

" In general, I think we may say that, in point of naked syn-
lactical accuracy, the English of America is not at all inferior to
that of England; but we do not discriminate so precisely in the
meaning of words ; nor do we habitually, either in conversation
or in writing, express ourselves so gracefully or employ so
classic a diction as the English. Our taste in language is less
fastidious, and our licenses and inaccuracies are more frequently
of a character indicative of a want of refinement and elegant
culture than those we hear in educated society in England."

But here Mr. Marsh himself indicates the point
of my objection to all these criticisms. He com-
pares our average speech with that of educated
society in the mother country. By such a com-
parison it would be strange if we did not suffer.
The just and proper comparison would be between
the average speech of both countries, or between
that of people of equal culture in both.

Among living writers few have easier mastery of
idiomatic English than Mr. Lowell himself; and
setting aside peculiar gifts, as imagination, fancy,
humor, many New England men of the present
generation and of that which is passing away
are of his school, if not of his form. There have
jeen abler statesmen and more accomplished law-
yers, but has this century produced anywhere a
greater rhetorical master of English than Daniel
Webster? While Hawthorne lived, — and his grav<
is not yet as green as his memory, — was there a

BRITISH ENGLISH AND AMERICAN ENGLISH. 47

British writer who used with greater purity or more
plastic power the language that we brought with
us from the old home? Our very kinsmen them-
selves, proud in their possession of the old home-
stead, the plate, the books, and the portraits, made
n u such pretension ; but they settled the question
ibr their own minds, by saying that Hawthorne
K was not really an American writer." And Haw-
thorne's case is not singular in this respect. The
" Saturday Review," in an article upon what it calls
"American Literature," recently said, —

" There is very little that is American about American books,
Jf we except certain blemishes of style and a certain slovenliness
of grammar and clumsiness of expression derived from the colo-
nial idioms of the country; and these are -wanting in the best
American writers. Longfellow, Motley, Prescott, Washington
Irving are only English -writers 'who happen to print in America.
Poe's eccentricities are rather individual than national. Cooper
is American in little but his choice of subjects." *

And not long ago the London " Spectator," which
ought to have known better, declared that it is not
among the eminent historians, poets, and essay-
ists of America that we must look for American
style, but to the journalists, politicians, and pam-
phleteers. A more ingenious way of establishing a
point to one's own satisfaction than that adopted by
both these British critics could not be devised.
Proposition : The " American " style is full of blem-
ishes ; it is slovenly in grammar and clumsy in
expression. Reply: But here are certain histori-
ans, novelists, poets, and essayists, who are the;
standard writers of " Ameiica," and in whose ttyle

* I am glad to read this about Cooper. I shall fight with no ens for possessor ft
«<* 'iterarv fpmc.

48 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

the blemishes in question, as you yourself admit,
"are wanting." Rejoinder: But these are not
"American" writers. They are English writers
who happen to print in "America." The "Ameri-
can" writers in "America" are those only who
have the blemishes in question. Q^ E. D. What
a bewitching merry-go-round such reasoning is !
And so perfect ! It stops exactly at the point from
v\ hich it started.

Without picking out my examplars, I will take
up the last two books by British authors that I have
read for pleasure — both by men of note — Mr.
John Forster's "Arrest of the Five Members," and
Mr. Froude's " History of England," and turning to
passages which I remember noticing amid all my
interest in the narratives themselves, I quote ; and
first from Forster : —

" Since his coming to town he had been greatly pleased to
observe a very great alteration of the affections of the city fa
•what they had been when he went away." — p. 21.

This is not English, or at least it is English
wretchedly deformed and crippled. If the affec-
tions of the city were altered to what they were
when the person spoken of went away, it is implied
that there had been two changes during his absence ,
one from the condition in which he left the city, and
one again to that in which he left it. We have tc
guess that the writer meant that the person in ques-
tion observed a very great change in the affection?
of the city since he went away. The blunder in
the bungling phrase " alteration of the affections tc
what they had been," which is a variety of the
phrase "different to" is peculiarly British.

BRITISH ENGLISH AND AMERICAN ENGLISH. 49

The faults in the t\vo following passages are
such as are found in the writings of natives of both
countries : —

" Nor was it possible that Charles himself should have drawn
any other construction from it. [Anglice, put any other con-
struction upon it.]" — p. 23.

" Capta>*i Slingsby wrote, with an alarm which he hardly
attempt}: \_AngL, attempted] to conceal, of the displays of man
ifestations of feeling from the city." — p. 28.

Could the reverse of directness and precision, to
say nothing of force, have more striking example
than such a phrase as " the displays of manifesta-
tions of feeling from the city"? which we may be
sure any intelligent and passably educated Yankee
lad would change into " manifestations of feeling by
[or in] the city." Now let us turn to Froude, whose
slips will be pointed out almost without remark : —

" She [Elizabeth] gave him to understand that her course
was chosen at last; she would accept the Archduke, and would
be all tukic/t [Angl., that] the Emperor could desire." — Vol.
VIII., c. 10.

"The English Admiral was scarcely in the Channel than he
was driven \_Angl-, before he was driven] by a gale into Low-
estoft Roads, and was left there for a fortnight motionless." —
Vol. VII., c. 3.

" A husband, on receiving news of the sudden and violent
death of a lady in whom he had so near an interest, might have
keen expected to have at least gone [Angl., might have been ex-
pected at least to go] in person to the spot." — Vol. VII,, c. 4.

" The Pope might succeed, and most likely would succeed at
last in reconciling Spain; and experience proved that England
lay formidably open [Angl., perilously or alarmingly open] to
attack." — Vol. III., c. 14.

" At eight o'clock the advance began to move, each division
being attended by one hundred and twenty outriders to keep
fctragglcrs into line [Angl., in line.]" — Vol. III., c. 15.

"If the tragedy of Kirk a Field had possessed a claim for
notice [Atigl., to notice] on the first of these grounds," etc.
Voi- IX., c. 13, p. i.
4

5O WORDS AND THEIR USES.

*' Elizabeth regarded this unfortunate woman with a detesta
lion and contempt beyond -what she had felt at the woifet time*
for Mary Stuart. [Angl., with far greater detestation ind con-
tempt than she had ever felt for Mary Stuart. J" — Ibid., p. 11.

" — and those who were apparently as guilty as Bothv;eil
himself were yet assuming an attitude to him \_Angl., to-,\&ij
him] at one moment of cringing subserviency [a writer of Mr.
Froude's grade should have said "subservience"], and at the
next of the fiercest indignation." — Ibid., p. 26.

" — and had Darnley proved the useful Catholic -which t?,e
Queen intended him to be, they would have sent him to his
account with as small compunction 05 Jael sent the Canaanite
captain, or they would have blessed the arm that did it with as
much eloquence as Deborah." — Ibid., c. 14, p. 127.

Here, to get at the writer's meaning from what
he has written, we must ask, How small com-
punction did Jael send the Canaanite captain? and,
What degree of eloquence did the arm attain that
did it with as much as Deborah? What was it?
and how much eloquence is Deborah? The sen-
tence is so marked with slovenliness of grammar
and clumsiness of expression, it is so lacking in
directness, precision, and force, that it can be bet-
tered only by being almost wholly re-written. We
are all able to guess, but only to guess, that what
Mr. Froude means is, that the persons of whom he
speaks would have sent Darnley to his account with
as little compunction as Jael felt when she sent the
Canaanite captain to his, or would have blessed with
the eloquence of Deborah the arm that did their
pleasure. The blundering construction of which
this last passage furnishes such a striking example
is of a kind frequently met with in British writers
of a rank inferior to Mr. Froude's; but it is rarely
found in "American" books or even in "American*
newspapers. From Air. Froude I shall furthef

BRITISH ENGLISH AND AMERICAN ENGLISH. 5!

Belect only the three following passages ; the first
containing a misuse of would and -which — test
words as to the mastery of idiom — the second a
specimen of French EngHsh, and the third com-
bining a misapplication of words with a miscon-
struction of the sentence : —

"The Bishop of Ross undertook that his mistress -would do
anything which [Angl., should do anything that] the Queen
of England and the nobility desired." — Chap. XVII., p. 432.

" Hepburn of Bolton, one of the last of Bothwell's servants
who had been brought to trial, spoke distinctly to have seen
[Angl., of having seen] one of them." — Chap. XV., p. 199.

"Edward IV., when he landed at Ravenspurg, and Elizabeth's
grandfather before Bosworth Field had fainter grounds to antici~
pate success than the party -who -was now preparing to snatch
England out of the hands of revolution, and restore the ancient
order in Church and State." — Chap. XVII., p. 73.

A man may be said to have grounds on which to
rest iiope of success, or anticipation of success ; or
even, perhaps, grounds of anticipating success ; and
those grounds may be strong or weak, sufficient or
insufficient ; but such a phrase as " fainter grounds
to anticipate success," in its misuse of the infinitive,
must be pronounced slovenly, and in its vague,
groping way of handling a metaphor so common
as to be almost an idiom, clumsy. But how much
worse than this is the succeeding phrase, " the party
who was now preparing, etc." ! It would have
been easy, it seems, to write "the party which was
now preparing," or, " the party who were now pre-
paring," and to one of these forms Mr. Froude
must change his sentence if he wishes it to be Eng-
lish ; unless, indeed, he means to speak of the
Duke of Norfolk (the head of the revolution in
question) as a very dangerous "party."

52 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

Turning to the books and papers lying on my
table, I find two novels by British authors of well-
deserved repute.

Mr. Trollope's " Phineas Finn " is full of examples
of the following affected and inverted construc-
tion : —

" lie felt that she moved him — that she made him ac-
knowledge to himself how great would be the pity of sucn a
failure as -would be his." — Chap. LXIX.

" — one who had received so many of her smiles as had
Phineas." — Chap. LXXII.

The same writer, in the following sentence, falls
in with a vulgar perversion of aggravate^ using it
in the sense of irritate, worry : —

"This arose partly from a belief that the quarrel was final,
and that therefore there vould be no danger in aggravating
Violet by this expression of pity." — Chap. LXXIII.

Mr. Charles Reade's last novel furnishes in
only one of its monthly parts the following sen-
tences : —

" Well, farmer, then let's you and / go [Angl., let's go, or
let you and me go] by ourselves." — Put • Yourself in his Plaa;
Chap. X.

"And while he hesitated, the lady asked him was he come
[Angl., if he was, or, if he had, come] to finish the bust." — Ibid.

" Ere he thoroughly recovered the sfiock \_Angl., recovered frort
the shock] a wild cry arose." — Ibid.

Mr. Reade is one of the most vivid and dramatic
of modern novelists ; but are these examples of the
directness, precision, and force, and the mastery
of idiom, which are "as common as the day in the
mother country"?

Taking up the last London "Spectator," — a paper
of the very highest rank. — I find this sentence it

BRITISH ENGLISH AND AMERICAN ENGLISH. 53

a careful, critical review of Lightfoot's w Saint Paul's
Epistle to the Galatians : " —

"But we must return to the Galatians. We are called on to
believe that the inspiration of this letter derives fron: a wholi/
different source than does that of the apostles. [Angl.^ .:s de-
rived from a source wholly different from that of the apostles )*"

In the same copy of the "Spectator," I also find the
following amazing sentences among the quotations
from " Select Biographical Sketches," by William
Heath Bennett. The passage relates to the last
known instance of the infliction of ecclesiastical
penance in England, which took place in 1812.

" She was herself a pauper, and her father also, but who had
managed to contribute to her maintenance in jail from the
charity of others. This sentence of penance, although pro-
nounced in general terms, her friends could never obtain from
the ecclesiastical authorities how it was to be complied with, ex-
cept that she was to appear in a white sheet in the church with
a burning candle in her hand, and repeat some formula pre-
scribed by the old law."

The reviewer quotes other passages which sup-
port his opinion that the style of this book is slip-
shod and often ungrammatical. But the author
is a barrister at law, and might reasonably be
expected to write intelligibly, if not elegantly. Had
he been, however, not a British, but an "American"
lawyer, the "Spectator" and the "Saturday Re-
new," the Dean of Canterbury (and shall we say
Mr. Lowell?) would have pronounced his style not
slipshod and ungrammatical, but "American" — in
a certain slovenliness of manner and clumsiness of
expression, and in a lack of precision, distinctness,
and force, that are as common as the day in the
mother country. How common they are the reader

54 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

is now, perhaps, better prepared to say than he \vas
before he began to read this chapter. For the pas-
sages above quoted are selected from many thai
\vere open to like censure ; and they were chosen
less because of the gravity of their offences against
the laws of the English language than because tney
were impressive examples of the lack of the very
qualities which, Mr. Lowell tells us, are so common
in England, and the lack of which the w Saturday
Review," Dean Alford, and all of their sort will
have it, are the peculiar, the distinguishing traits
of those writers whom they call "American." And
these passages were not sought out, it should be
remembered; nor are they, most of them, taken,
from the writings of inferior men. They lay in the
way of every-day reading, and are from books and
papers of high rank in contemporary British litera-
ture. Yet I venture to say that it would be difficult
to find in the writings of " American " authors and
journalists of corresponding position passages in
which mastery of idiom, directness, precision, and
force are as conspicuously absent. Let us, for one
more example in point, turn to a British author of
less repute than Mr. Forster, or Mr. Froude, or Mr.
Charles Reade, but of respectable standing, and
turn to him merely because he may reasonably be
taken as a fair example of the British writer of
average literary ability and culture, and because
the passage which I shall quote is one of two or
three which I noticed while consulting the work
from which it is taken — the well-known Natural
History by the Rev. J. G. Wood, M. A., F. L. S.,
etc , etc.

BRITISH ENGLISH AND AMERICAN ENGLISH. 55

"All external objects are, in their truest sense, visible em-
bodiments or incarnations of divine ideas, which are roughly
sculptured in the hard granite that underlies the living and
breathing surface of the world above; pencilled in delicate tra-
cery upon each bark-flake that encompasses the trunk-tree, eacli
leaf that trembles in the breeze, each petal that fill; the air with
fragrant effluence; assuming a living and breathing existence in
the rhythmic throbbings of the heart-pulse that urges the life-
stream through the body of every animated being; and attaining
their greatest perfection in man, who is thereby bound by the
very fact of his existence to outspeak and outact the divine
ideas, which are the true instincts of humanity, before they are
crushed or paralyzed by outward circumstances. . . . Until
man has learned to realize his own microcosmal being, and will
himself develop and manifest the god-thoughts that are con-
tinually inbreathed into his very essential nature, it needs that
the creative ideas should be incarnated and embodied in every
possible form, so that they may retain a living existence upon
earth."

Any Yankee of ordinary sense and moderately
cultivated taste would set this passage down as a
fine specimen of stilted feebleness — in its style a
very travesty of English. But it was written by a
clergyman of the English church, a graduate of one
of the universities, a man who has attained some
distinction as a naturalist, and who has half a score
of letters after his name. The truth is, that when
the English of British authors is spoken of, it is
not that of such writers as Mr. Wood, but that
of — well, of such as Forster and Froude? — let us
rather say of such as Macaulay, Thackeray, Heips»
and George Eliot, as Johnson, Burke, Hume, Gib-
bon, Goldsmith and Cobbett. But when British
critics speak of the English of "American" writers,
they leave out Irving, Prescott and Motley, Haw-
thorne, Poe and Longfellow, as we have seen, and
Dthers less known, like Lowell, ^tory, and Howells,

56 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

who write in the same idiom ; and they look for
"American" writers, not even among our thorough-
ly-educated men of letters of the second or third
rank, but to newspapers, v/ritten generally by men
of average common-school education, little training,
and no gift of language, and for the heterogeneous
public of the large cities of a country in which every
other Irish hackman and hodman keeps not only
his police justice, but his editor. That there are
journalists in this country whose English is irre-
proachable, no one competent to speak upon this
subject will deny. But they are they who will
admit most readily the justice of these strictures.

Upon the vexed question whether, on the whole,
English is better spoken throughout the United
States than throughout Great Britain, I do not deem
myself competent to express a decided opinion ; but
of this I feel sure — that of the mother tongue com
mon to the people of both countries, no purer form is
known to the Old England than to the New. If in
an assemblage of a hundred educated, well-bred
people, one half of them from London, Oxford, and
Liverpool, and the other from Boston, New York,
and Philadelphia (and I have more than once been
one of a company so composed, although not so
large), a ready and accurate phonographer were to
take down every word spoken during an evening's
entertainment, I feel quite sure that it would be im-
possible to distinguish in his printed report the speech
of the Britons from that of the "Americans," except
by the possible occurrence of acknowledged local
slang, 01 by the greater prevalence among the for-
mer or the latter of peculiar words, or words used is

BRITISH ENGLISH AND AMERICAN ENGLISH. 57

peculiar senses, which would be acknowledged to
be incorrect as well by the authorities of the party
using them as by those of the other party. In brief,
their spoken language, reproduced instantly in writ-
ing, could be distinguished only by some confessed
ticense or defect, peculiar to one country > Jr -more
prevalent there than in the other. And I am strong-
\y inclined to the opinion that, the assemblage being
made up of educated and well-bred persons, there
would be somewhat more slang heard from the Brit-
ish than from the " American " half of the company,
ind also a greater number of free and easy devia-
•ions from correct English speech, according to
British as well as "American" authority. The
standard in both countries is the same.

But although the written speech of these people
would be to this degree indistinguishable, an ear at
all nice in its hearing would be able to separate the
sheep from the goats by their bleat. The difference
would be one not of pronunciation (for the standard
of pronunciation is also the same in both countries,
and well-educated people in both conform to it with
like habitual and unconscious ease), but of pitch
of voice, and of inflection. Among those of both
countries who had been from their birth accustomed
to the society of cultivated people, even this dis-
tinction would be made with difficulty, and would,
in many cases, be impossible. But the majority of
one half hundred could thus be distinguished from
the majority of the other ; and the superiority would
be greatly on the side of the British fifty. The
pitch of the British Englishman's voice is higher
and more penetrating than the American English-

$0 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

man's, and his inflections are more varied than the
other's, because they more frequently rise. The
voice of the former is generally formed higher in
the throat than that of the latter, who speaks from
the chest with a graver monotone. Thackeray and
Goldvvin Smith are characteristic examples on the
one side, Daniel Webster and Henry Ward Beecher
on the other. The distinction to a delicate ear is
very marked ; but other difference than this of pitch
and inflection there is none whatever. Pronuncia-
tion is exactly the same. And even in regard to
pitch and inflection, there is not so much difference
between the average British Englishman of culture
and the average American Englishman of like train-
ing, as there is between the Yorkshireman and the
Norfolkman ; and there is very much more difference
between the pronunciation and the idiom of the
two latter than there is between the speech of any
two men of the same race born and bred, however
remotely from each other, in this country.

In imagining my assemblage by which to test
speech and language, I have left altogether out of
mind those people who, in one country, would, for
instance, deal hardly with the letter h^ or turn the
g- in "nothing" to £, and the v in "veal" to iu*
although this class includes, as I have noticed, and
as Dean Alford confesses, some clergymen of the
Church of England ; and, in the other, those who
speak with a nasal twang, although this class in

* Tlicodore Hook thus wittily illustrated this pecuhar mispronunciation : —

"With Cockney gourmands great's the difference whetLer

At home th;.-y stay or forth to Paris go;
For as they linger here or wander thither,
The fle»h of calves to them is -eital or VXOH."

BRITISH ENGLISH AND AMERICAN ENGLISH. 59

eludes, as we all know, some persons of similar
position in "America." The point is, that those who
would be regarded, in their own country, as among
the best speakers and writers, conform to precisely
the same standard of language in all particulars.
From the speech of these the variations in both
countries, but chiefly in England, are manifold. It
is in these variations, degraded or dialectic, that
local, or what may be called national, peculiarities
appear. But, in judging of the degree of purity in
which our mother tongue is preserved by our British
kinsmen, we must judge only by those among them
whose speech they themselves regard as pure. To
do otherwise would be manifestly unfair. And in
trying ourselves upon this point we must be careful
to form our opinion by a like rule of evidence ;
otherwise we may find ourselves condemning the
nation upon the language of a man who, fifteen
or twenty years ago, was an oysterman or a bar-
tender, and who, since that time, has added mucn
to his possessions, but nothing to his general knowl-
edge or his right use of language — a change which,
jiowever profitable and pleasant it may be to his
children, seems in him deplorable.

Dean Alford makes merry over a story of an
"American friend" who ventured to speak, in Eng-
land, of the " strong English accent " which he heard
around him. The dean evidently thinks that this
is quite as if an Englishman were to go to France,
and tell the people there, in the " French of Strat-
ford at Bow," that they spoke with a strong French
acrent. It is nothing of the sort. An educated
Genevan Frenchman, for instance, visiting Paris,

6O WORDS AND THEIR USES.

and offended, — as well he might be, — by the ac-
cent of the mass of the people around him, might
complain of the strong Parisian accent with which
they spoke ; and this case would correspond to that
which the Dean of Canterbury has cited. Should it
happen, however, I doubt if a French dignitary of
the church would flout the objection on the ground
that Paris is in France and Geneva in Switzerland ;
for he would know, as a general truth, that lan-
guage belongs to race, not to place, and as a par-
ticular fact, that the best French is spoken at
Geneva.

The English accent which Dean Alford's " Amer-
ican " friend noticed with implied disapproval, —
although common, and even general, among South
Britons (it rarely taints North British speech), — in
not heard among cultivated people, or approved by
any authority on either side of the water. It can
be described, I think, so that Dean Alford himself,
and most of his friends and neighbors, — certainly
the best bred and educated among them, — would
recognize it in the description. ' One of the persons
in question asking, for instance, for a glass of ale,
would pronounce glass with the broad ah sound of
a, to rhyme with pass, and ale as one syllable with
the first or name sound of #, so as to rhyme with
male and sail. So would every Yankee of like
culture. But let our Very Reverend and accom-
plished censor kindly take a well-bred mouthful of
finely-mashed potato, and after chewing it a deco-
rous while, say, just as he is about swallowing it,
Ka gloss of ayull ';" he and the friends around hiro
will then hear a striking example of what his

BRITISH ENGLISH AND AMERICAN ENGLISH. 6 1

' American " friend called English spoken with an
English accent, but which he should have called
English with a South British accent. Now, accord-
ing to my observation, no man whom the Dean ot
Canterbury would accept as a speaker of pure Eng-
lish says, with thick utterance, " a gloss of ayull ; "
and yet thousands of his countrymen do speak
thus. But with social refinement and mental cul-
cure this peculiarity of British English passes grad-
ually away, until among the best bred and best
educated people it vanishes, and is heard no more
than it, or a nasal twang, is heard under similar
circumstances here.

One trait of English spoken with a South British
accent was thus whimsically contrasted with the
pure English accent by " Punch," a few years ago.
The value of the illustration is not affected by the
fact that the pronunciation in question was that of a
foreign word. The true pronunciation of the name
of the Italian hero of the day was mooted, and
" Punch " decided that it should be, —

" Garibaldi when duchesses gave him a bal,
Garibawldi when up goes the shout of the people."

The distinction thus so daintily and humorously
drawn is one that, with opportunity, no quick and
sensitive ear could fail to notice. The strong ten-
dency of the uncultivated South Briton is to give
^o the broad a, not the souni of ah from the chest,
which is heard in the mouths of educated persons in
Old and in New England, but a thick azc>, formed
.n the upper part of the throat. The low and
lower-middle class London man calls Garibaldi
or, rather, Gorribcrwldi. But if the

62 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

Yankee, in a similar condition of life, deviates from
the true Gahiibahldi, he will make the vowel shortei
and thinner, pronouncing it as in "palace" — Garry-
bdld.\. The thick, throaty pronunciation of the
broad a is a British peculiarity ; but while it is
heard in the mouths of so many persons that it
divides with the " exhasperated " h the honor of
the chief distinction of English spoken with a British
accent, it is as little prevalent as the extinction or
superfluous utterance of the latter letter is among
the best speakers in England, or as a nasal twang,
aout for " out," and tew for " too " are among cul-
tivated people in New England. Among British
Englishmen few but those who to a good education
unite the very highest social culture are perfectly
free from both these traits of English as spoken
with a British accent.

It may here be pertinently remarked that the
pronunciation of a in such words as glass, last,
father > and pastor is a test of high culture. The
tendency among uncultivated persons is to give a
cither the thick, throaty sound of aw which I have
endeavored to describe, or, oftenest, to give it the
thin, flat sound which it has in "an," "at," and
"anatomy." Next to that tone of voice which, it
would seem, is not to be acquired by any striving
in adult years, and which indicates breeding rather
than education, the full, free, unconscious utterance
of the broad ah sound of a is the surest indication
in speech of social culture which began at th<?
cradle.

STYLE.

CHAPTER IV.

STYLE.

A CCURACY of expression is the most essen-
,/JL tial element of a good style ; and inaccurate
writing is generally the expression of inaccurate
thinking. But when men have shown that their
thought is important, it is ungracious and super-
fluous to hunt down their ifs and ands, and arraign
their pronouns and prepositions. This remark
would apply to some of the criticisms in the pre-
vious chapter, if their special purpose were left
out of consideration.

Style, according to my observation, cannot be
taught, and can hardly be acquired. Any person
of moderate ability may, by study and practice,
learn to use a language according to its grammar.
But such a use of language, although necessary to
a good style, has no more direct relation to it than
her daily dinner has to the blush of a blooming
beauty. Without dinner, no bloom ; without gram-
mar, no style. The same viand which one }7oung
woman, digesting it healthily and sleeping upon it
soundly, is able to present to us again in but a very
unattractive form, Gloriana, assimilating it not more
perfectly in slumbers no sounder, transmutes into
charms that make her a delight to the eyes of every

64 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

beholder. That proceeding is Glon ana's physio-
logical style. It is a gift to her. .Such a gift is
style in the use of language. It is mere clearness
of outline, beauty of form and expression, and has
no relation whatever to the soundness or the value
of the thought which it embodies, or to the im-
portance or the interest of the fact which it records.
Learned men, strong and subtle thinkers, and
scholars of wide and critical acquaintance with
literature, are often unable to acquire even an ac-
ceptably good, not to say an admirable, style ; and,
on the other hand, men who can read only their
own language, and who have received very little
instruction even in that, write and speak in a style
that wins or commands attention, and in itself gives
pleasure. Of these men John Buryan is, perhaps,
the most marked example. Better English there
could hardly be, or a style more admirable for every
excellence, than appears throughout the writings
of that tinker. No person who has read "The
Pilgrim's Progress" can have forgotten the fight
of Christian with Apollyon, which, for vividness of
description and dramatic interest, puts to shame all
the combats between knights and giants, and men
and dragons, that can be found elsewhere in ro-
mance or poetry ; but there are probably many who
do not remember, and not a few perhaps who, in
the very enjoyment of it, did not notice, the clear-
ness, the spirit, the strength, and the simple beauty
of the style in which that passage 'is written. Foi
example, take the sentence which tells of the be-
ginning of the fight : —

STYLE. 65

•' Then Apollyon straddled quite over the whole breadth of the
way, and said, I am void of fear in this matter : prepare thyself
to die ; for I swear by my infernal Den that thou shalt go no
further : here will I spill thy soul."

A man cannot be taught to write like that ; nor
can he by any study learn the mystery of such a
style.

Style, however, although it cannot be taught, is,
to a certain extent, the result of mental training. A
man who would write well without training, would
write, not more clearly or with more strength, but
with more elegance, if he were educated. But
he will profit little in this respect by the study of
rhetoric. It is general culture — above all, it is the
constant submission of a teachable, apprehensive
mind to the influence of minds of the highest class,
in daily life and in books, that brings out upon
language its daintiest bloom and its richest fruitage.
So in the making of a fine singer : after the voice
has been developed, and the rudiments of vocaliza-
lion have been learned, further instruction is of little
avail. But the frequent hearing of the best music,
given by the best performers, the living in an at-
mosphere of art and literature, will develop and
perfect a vocal style in one who has the gift of
song ; and for any other, all the instruction of all
the musical professors that ever came out of Italy
could do no more than teach an avoidance of posi-
tive errors in musical elocution. But, after all, the
student's style may profit little by his acquirements.

Unconsciousness is one of the most important
conditions of a good style in speaking or in writing,
There are persons who write well and speak ill'

5

66 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

others who write ill and sj eak well ; and a few who
are equally excellent as writers and speakers. As
both writing and speaking are the expression of
thought through language, this capacity for the one,
joined to an incapacity for the other, is naturally the
occasion of remark, and has, I believe, never been
accounted for. I think that it will be found that
consciousness, which generally causes more or less
embarrassment of one kind or another, is at the
bottom of this apparent incongruity. The man who
writes in a clear and fluent style, but who, when he
undertakes to speak, more than to say yes or no,
or what he would like for dinner, hesitates, and
utters confusion, does so because he is made self-
conscious by the presence of others when he speaks,
but gives himself unconsciously to the expression
of his thought when he looks only upon the paper
on which he is writing. He who speaks with ease
and grace, but who writes in a crabbed, involved
style, forgets himself when he looks at others, and
is occupied by himself when he is alone. His con-
sciousness, and the effort that he makes, on the one
.aand to throw it off, and on the other to meet its
demands upon him, confuse his thoughts, which
throng, and jostle, and clash, instead of moving
steadily onward with one consent together.

Mere unconsciousness has much to do with the
charming style of many women's letters. Women's
style, when they write books, is generally bad with
All the varieties of badness ; but their epistolary
style is as generally excellent in all the ways of ex-
cellence. A letter written by a bright, cultivated
woman, — and she need not be a highly educated.

STYLE. 67

»r a much instructed woman, but merely one whose
intercourse is with cultivated people, — and written
meiely to tell you something that interests her and
that she wishes you to know, with much care aboU
what she says, and no care as to how she says it,
will, in twelve cases out of the baker's dozen, be
not only irreproachably correct in expression, bill
very charming. Some literary women, though few,
are able to carry this clear, fluent, idiomatic English
style into their books. Mrs. Jameson, Charlotte
Bront6, and perhaps George Eliot (Miss Evans),
are prominent instances in point. Mrs. Trollope's
book, "The Domestic Manners of the Americans,"
which made her name known, and caused it to be
detested, unjustly, in this country,* is written in
this delightful style — easy-flowing and clear, like
a beautiful stream, reflecting from its placid surface
whatever it passes by, adding in the reflection a
charm to the image which is not in the object, and
distorting only when it is dimpled by gayety or
crisped by a flaw of satire or a ripple of humor.
It is worth reading only for its style. It may be
studied to advantage and emulated, but not imitated ;
for all about it that is worthy of emulation is in-
.rnitable. Mr. Anthony Trollope's mastery of our
language is inherited ; but he has not come into
possession of quite all the maternal estate.

For at least a hundred years the highest reputa-

* Unjustly, because all of Mrs. Trollope's descriptions were true to life, and were
evidently taken from life. She, however, described only that which stnick her as
peculiar ; and her acquaintance with the country was made among the most unculti-
vated people, and chiefly in the extreme South-west and West, thirty-five years ago;
which was much like going into "the bush" of Australia ten years ago. Wit!
locictyin Now York, Boston, and Philadelphia Mrs. Trollope was charmed ; but of
i »he, apparently (ft that reason, say* comparatively little.

68 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

tion for purity of style in the writing of English
prose has been Addison's. Whether or not he
deserves, or ever did deserve, the eminence upon
which he has been placed, he certainly is one of
the most elegant and correct writers of the last cen-
tury. Johnson's formal and didactic laudation, with
which he rounds off his criticism of this author,
"whoever wishes to attain an English style, familiar
but not coarse, and elegant but not ostentatious,
must give his days and nights to the volumes of
Addison," has been worth a great deal to the book-
sellers, and has stimulated the purchase of countless
copies of "The Spectator," and, let us hope, the
perusal of not a few. But in the face of so weighty
a judgment, let us test Addison, not merely by
comparison with other writers, but by the well-
established rules of the language, and by those laws
of thought the governing power of which is admitted
in every sound and educated intellect, and to which
every master of style unconsciously conforms. See-
ing thus what manner of man he is who has been
held up to three generations as -the bright exemplar
of purity, correctness, and grace in English style,
we may intelligently determine what we can rea-
sonably expect of the great mass of unpretending
writers in our hard-working days.

I have been led to this examination by recently
leading, for the first time, the " Essay upon the
Pleasures of the Imagination," which runs through
ten numbers of the "Spectator,"* and which is one
of Addison's most elaborate performances. Bishop
Hurd says of it, in his edition of this author's writ

• No*. 411 to 4*1.

STYLE. Op

ings, that it is "by far the most masterly of all Mr.
Addison's critical works," and that "the style is
finished with so much care as to merit the best
attention of the reader."

The first number of the Essay appeared on Satur-
day, June 21, 1712, with a motto from Lucretius,
which intimates that Mr. Addison broke his own
path across a trackless country to drink from an
untasted spring.* This should excuse some devia-
tion from the line of our now well-beaten road of
criticism ; but there are other errors for which it is
no apology. The first sentence tells us that "our
sight is the most perfect and delightful of all our
senses." A careless use of language, to begin with ;
for sight is not more perfect than any other sense.
Perfect hearing is just as perfect as perfect sight ;
that is, it is simply perfect. But passing by this as
a venial error, we find the third sentence beginning
thus : —

" The sense of feeling can indeed give us a notion of extension,
shape, and all other ideas that enter at the eye, except colours."

Now, we may be sure that Addison did not mean
to say what he does say — that the sense of feeling
can give us the notion of ideas, and that colors are
an idea. His meaning, we may be equally sure
tt'a,s this : The sense of feeling can indeed give us
A notion of extension and of shape, and every other
idea that can enter at the eye, except that of color.
A. little farther on we find this explanation of the
subject ( >f his Essay : —

• "Avia Pieridum peragere loca, nullius ante
Trita solo: juvat integros accedere foctcia,
Atque hauriru "

7O WORDS AND THEIR USES.

" — so tliat by the pleasures of imagination or of fancy (wnich
I shall use promiscuously), I here mean such ae arise from visi-
ble objects."

Here the strange confounding of imagination
with fancy — faculties which had been clearly dis-
tinguished a hundred years before the time of Addi»
son — first attracts attention. But not insisting upon
that mistake, let us pass on to learn immediately that
he means to use the pleasures of those faculties
promiscuously. But he manifestly intended to say
that he would use the words imagination and fancy
promiscuously. The confusion in his sentence is
produced by his first mentioning the faculties, and
then using " ivhich " to refer, not to the faculties,
but to the words which are their names. Again
he says, —

" — but we have the power of retaining, altering, and com-
pounding those images which we have once received into all
the varieties of picture and vision that are most agreeable to the
imagination."

Did Addison mean that we have the power of
" retaining images into " all the varieties of picture,
and so forth ? Certainly not ; although that is what
he says. Here again is confusion of thought. He
groups together and connects by a conjunction
three verbs, — retain, alter ^ and compound, — only
two of which can be united to the same preposition.
This fault is often committed by writers who do not
think clearly, or who will not take the trouble to
perfect and balance their sentences by repeating a
word or two, and by looking after the fitness of theii
particles. What Addison meant to say was, — but
we have the power of retaining those images which

STYLE. 71

we have once received, and of altering and com-
pounding them into all the varieties of picture,
and so forth. A few lines below we find this
sentence : —

" There are few words in the English language which ate em-
ployed in a more loose and uncircumscribed sense than those of
the fancy and imagination."

The confusion here is great and of a very vulgar
kind. It is produced by the superfluous words
"those of the." Addison meant to say — in a more
loose and uncircumscribed sense, not than the words
of the fancy and imagination, but than fancy and
imagination. In the same paragraph which fur-
nishes the foregoing example, the writer says, "I
divide these pleasures in two kinds." It is English
to say, I divide these pleasures into two kinds. The
next paragraph opens thus : —

"The pleasures of the imagination, taken in their full extent,
are not so gross as those of sense, nor so refined as those of the
understanding."

Here again is confusion produced by a careless
use of language — careless even to blundering.
Addison did not mean to speak of taking -pleasures ,
either of the imagination, the sense, or the under-
standing. If he had written — The pleasures of
imagination, regarded, or considered, in their full
extent, are not so gross, and so forth — he would
\iave uttered what the whole context shows to have
been his thought. The next paragraph makes the
following assertions in regard to what is called a
man "of polite imagination : " —

" He meets with a secret refresr.meiit in a description, and
ofien feels a greater satisfaction in the prospect of fields and

f2 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

meadows than another does in the possession. It gives him,
indeed, a kind of property in everything he sres, and makes the
most rude and uncultivated parts of Nature administer to hi«
pleasuies; so that he looks upon the world, as it were, in
another light, and discovers in it a multitude of charms that
conceal themselves from the generality of mankind."

The first of these sentences is imperfect. We
may be sure that the writer means that his man of
polite imagination feels a greater satisfaction in the
prospect of fields and meadows than another does
in the possession of them. But he does not say so.
Nor by any rule or usage of the English language
are the preposition and pronoun implied 01 under-
stood; for the sentence might just as well end —
" than another does in the possession of great
riches" And what does the author mean by say-
ing that his politely imaginative man looks upon
the world "in another light"? Another than what?
No other is mentioned or implied. The writer was
referring to an idea which he had in mind, but
which he had not expressed ; and we can only
guess that he meant — another light than that in
which the world is regarded by men of impolite
imagination. The same sort of confusion appears
in the first sentence of the very next paragraph : —

" There are, indeed, but very few who know how to be idle
*nd innocent, or have a relish of pleasures that are not criminal;
every diversion they take is at the expense of some one virtus
or another."

Here, in the first place, by neglecting to repeat
wh:, Addison says that there are very few men who
know how to have a relish of pleasures that are not
criminal ; whereas, he manifestly meant to say tha?
there are very few who know how to be idle and

STYLE. 73

innocent, or who have a relish of pleasures that are
not criminal. But the chief blunder of the sentence
is in its next clause. Who are " they " who are said
to take every diversion at the expense of some vir-
tue? According to the writer's purpose, "they" has
really no antecedent. Its antecedent, as the sen-
tence stands, is, "very few who know how to be idle
and innocent; " but these, the writer plainly means
to say, are they who do not take their diversion at the
expense of some virtue. By " they " Addison meant
the many from whom he had in his own mind sep-
arated the ver}' few of whom only he spoke ; and
he thus involved himself and his readers in a con-
fusion which is irremediable without a recasting of
his sentence. All these marked faults of style —
faults which are not examples of mere inelegance,
but of positively bad English and confused thought
— occur within three duodecimo pages. It might
possibly be suggested that perhaps Addison wrote
this particular number of "The Spectator" when
the usual mellowness of his style had been spirited
into his brain.* But, on the contrary, similar ex-
amples of slovenly writing may be found all through
those charming "Spectators" to which Johnson
refers us as models of English style. Let us see.
Here is the third sentence in "Spectator" 405, a
musical criticism apropos of Signer Nicolini's sing-
ing ; for Addison, as well as Guizot, wrote art
:riticisms tor the dai.'y press

* Bibhop Kurd says of this Essay, ';Som. inaccuracies of expression have, how-
»v;r, escaped the elegant writer ; and these, as we go along, shall be pointed out"
But it is important to our purpose to mention that not one of the inaccurate an 1 coo
iis^-d passages not'ced above is pointed ovt ^y th. editor, who calls attention lo hul
»nc or two trifiing lapses iu inure e.cgance of expressioc

74 WORDS AND THEIR USES

" I could heartily wish there was the same application and
endeavours to cultivate and improve our church-musick as ha\t
been lately bestowed on that of the stage."

It would not be easy to construct an intelligible
sentence, without burlesque, that would be more
blundering than this one is. To begin : " I could
heartily wish" is nonsense. A man wishes, or he
does not wish. But to pass by this feeble and
affected phrase, which is too commonly used, the
writer wishes that there w was the same application
and endeavors," etc., "as have been" etc. He says
neither "was" and "has been," nor "were" and
* have been." He should have used the plural form
of each verb, of course ; but he contrived to get into
his sentence all the errors of which it was capable.
Besides, the use of the pronoun "that" is extremely
awkward, even if, indeed, it be correct. For,
as the sentence stands, "that" refers to "church
music," and the writer really speaks of the endeavors
which have been bestowed " on the church music of
the stage." He should have written either — church
music and stage music, or music of the church and
that of the stage ; of which constructions the latter
*s the better. The sentence may, therefore, be
correctly written (it cannot be made graceful or
elegant) thus : I heartily wish that there were the
same application and endeavors to cultivate and im-
prove the music of the church as have lately been
bestowed on that of the stage.

In "Spectator" No. 381 is the following sen-
tence : —

" The tossing of a tempest does not discompose him, whicl
be is sure will bring him to a joyful harbour."

STYLE. 75

The use of which m this sentence is like that
which Mr. Dickens has so humorously caricatured
in the speech of Mrs. Gamp ; indeed, the sentence
is almost in her style, or that of her invisible gossip,
Mrs. Harris. Acldison meant to say — The tossing
of a tempest does not discompose him who is sure
that it will bring him to a joyful harbor.

In this sentence, from "Spectator" No. 21, ven-
ture is used for allow : —

" — as a man would be well enough pleabed to buy silks of
one whom he would not venture to feel his pulse."

And what shall be said of the correctness of a
writer who couples the separative each with the
plural arc, as Addison does in the following passage
from " Spectator " No. 21 ?

" When I consider how each of these professions are crowded
with multitudes that seek their livelihoods in them," etc.

That slovenly writing is the birth-form of careless
thinking, could hardly be more clearly shown than
by the following example, from "Spectator" No.
ill : —

" That cherubim which now appears as a god to a human
BOU! knows very well that the period will come above in eternity,
when the human soul shall be as perfect as he himself now is;
nay, when she shall look down upon that degree of perfection as
much as she now falls short of it."

If Addison did not know that cherubim was the
plural of cherub, and that he should have used the
latter word, there is at least no excuse for the last
clause of the sentence, which is chaotic. He would
nave expressed his meaning if he had written — >
Nay, when she shall look down upon that degree

7O WORDS AND THEIR USES.

of perfection as much as she now looks up to it ; 01,
better — Nay, when she shail fnd herself as much
above that degree of perfection as she now falls
short of it.

With two more examples I must finish this ar-
ray. Speaking of Sir Andrew Freeport, Addison
says, —

" — but In the temper of mind he -was then, he termed them
mercies, favours of Providence, and blessings upon honest in-_
dustry." — Spectator, No. 549.

Explaining a pasquinade, he writes, —

" This was a reflection upon the Pope's sister, who, before the
prpmotion of her brother, was in those circumstances that Pas-
quin represented her." — Spectator, No. 23.

It would be superfluous either to point out or to
correct the gross errors in these passages — errors
which are worthy of notice as examples of blunders
peculiarly British in character. Errors of this kind
are not unfrequently met with in the writing or
the speech of the middling folk among our British
cousins at the present day ; but on this side of the
water they seldom occur, if ever. Our faults are
of another sort ; and they appear in the casual
writings of inferior journalists, who produce at night
what must be printed before morning, or in those
of authors who attain not even to local reputa-
tion. It would be difficult to match with examples
from American writers of even moderate distinc-
tion such sentences as the following, which appear
;n Brougham's appreciation of Talleyrand : —

" Amon£ the eminent men who figured in the eventful histoij
&f the French revolution was M. Talleyrand ; and whether is
that scene, OT in any portion of modern annals, we snail it

STYLE. 77

rain look for one who represents a more interesting subject of
history."

What a muddle of thoughts and words is here 1
Talleyrand figured in the French revolution, not in
the history of that event. It may be correctly said
of him that he figures in the history of the French
revolution; but whether this is what Brougham
meant to say, the latter clause of the sentence makes
it impossible to discover. For there "scene" which
refers to the event itself, and " annals" which refers
to the record of events, are confounded ; and we are
finally told that a man who figured in an eventful
history represents an interesting subject of history I
Within a few lines of this sentence we have the one
here following : —

" He sided with the revolution, and continued to act with
them, joining those patriotic members of the clerical body who
gave up their revenues to the demand of the country, and sacri-
ficed their exclusive privileges to the rights of the community."

With whom did Talleyrand continue to act?
What is the antecedent of ™ them""* It has none.
It refers to what is not expressed, and, except in
the mind of the writer, not understood — the revo-
lutionary clergy ; and I have quoted the whole of
the sentence, that this might appear from its second
clause. And yet Henry Brougham was one of the
men who achieved the splendid early reputation of
the "Edinburgh Review."

But to what conclusion are we tending? If not
only Brougham's but Addison's sentences thus break
down under such criticism as we apply to the ex-
ercises of a school-boy, — Addison, of whose style
We are told by Johnson, in Johnsonian phrase, that

78 WORDS AND TliEIR USES.

it is " pure without scrupulosity and exact without
apparent elaboration," — to whom shall we look as a
model writer of prose, who can be our standard and
authority as to a pure English style ? Clearly not
to the principal writer of "The Spectator." For,
although he may have been without either scrupu-
losity or elaboration, he was also quite as plainly
often without both purity and exactness. Such
faults of style as those which are above pointed out
in the writings of Addison are not to be found, I
believe, in Shakespeare's prose, in Bacon's, or in
Milton's ; but they do appear in Dryden's. They
will be looked for in vain, if I may trust my mem-
ory, in the works of Goldsmith, Johnson, Hume,
Gibbon, Hallam, Jeffrey, Macaulay, Irving, Pres-
cott, Ruskin, Motley, and Hawthorne. Addison,
appearing at a time when English literature was at
a very low ebb, made an impression which his
writings would not now produce, and won a repu-
tation which was then his due, but which has long
survived his comparative excellence. Charmed by
the gentle flow of his thought, — which, neither deep
nor strong, neither subtle nor struggling with the
obstacles of argument, might well flow easily, —
by his lambent humor, his playful fancy (he was
very slenderly endowed with imagination), and the
healthy tone of his mind, the writers of his own
generation and those of the succeeding half century
placed him upon a pedestal, in his right to which
there has since been almost unquestioning acqui-
escence. He certainly did much for English litera-
ture, and more foi English morals and manners
which, in his day, were sadly in need of elevatio*

STYLE. 79

and refinement. But, as a writer of English, he is
not to be compared, except witu great peril to his
reputation, to at least a score of men who have
flourished in the present century, and some of whom
are now living. And from this slight examination
of the writings of him whom the world has for so
long accepted as the acknowledged master of Eng-
lish prose, and who attained his eminence more by
the beauty of his style than the value of the thought
of which it was the vehicle, we may learn the true
worth and place of such criticisms as those which
have preceded these remarks. Their value is in
their fitness for mental discipline. Their place ia
the class-room.

BO WORDS AND THEIR USES.

CHAPTER V.

MISUSED WORDS.

THE right use of words is not a matter to be
left to pedants and pedagogues. It belong?
to the daily life of every man. The misuse of
words confuses ideas, and impairs the value of lan-
guage as a medium of communication. Hence loss
of time, of money, and sore trial of patience. It is
significant that we call a quarrel a misunderstand-
ing. How many lawsuits have ruined both plaintiff
and defendant, how many business connections have
been severed, how many friendships broken, be-
cause two men gave to one word different mean-
ings ! The power of language to convey one man's
thoughts and purposes to another, is in direct pro-
portion to a common consent as to the meaning of
words. The moment divergence begins, the value
of language is impaired ; and it is impaired just in
proportion to the divergence, or to the uncertainty
:>f consent. It has been told, as evidence of the
richness of certain Eastern languages, that they
have one thousand words, more or less, for the sword,
and at least one hundred for the horse. But this,
unless the people who use these languages have a
thousand kinds of swords and a hundred kinds of
horses, is no proof of wealth in that which makes

MISUSED WORDS. 8l

the real worth of language. A highly civilized
and cultivated people having a language adequate,
to their wants will be rich in words, because they
will need names for many thoughts, and many
acts, and many things. Parsimony in this respect
is a sign, not of prudence, but of poverty. Juli-
ana, passing her honeymoon in the cottage lo
which her ducal bridegroom leads her, flouts his
assurance that the furniture is useful, with the re-
ply, conveying a sneer at his supposed poverty,
" Exceeding useful ; there's not a piece on't but
Serves twenty purposes." So, when we find in a lan-
guage one word serving many needs, we may be
sure that that language is the mental furniture of
an intellectually rude and poverty-stricken people.
The Feejee islanders ate usually pig, but the}1
much preferred man, both for his flavor and his
rarity ; and as we call pig prepared for table pork,
and deer in a like condition venison, so those pool
people called their loin or ham "short pig," and
their daintier human haunch or saddle " long pig."
Archbishop Trench, assuming that there was in the
latter name an attempt at a humorous concealment
of the nature of the viand to which it was applied,
finds in this attempt evidence of a consciousness of
the revolting character of cannibalism. But this
seems to be one of those pieces of fanciful and over-
subtle moral reflection which, coming gracefully
enough from a clergyman, have added to the popu-
larity of Trench's books, although hardly to their
real value. The poor Feejeeans called all meat
pig, distinguishing two sorts only by the form of the
animal from which it was taken, merely because of
6

82 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

the rude and embryotic condition of their language,
just as a little child calls all fur and velvet " pussy-
cat." The child knows as well as its mother that
her muff or her gown has not four legs, claws,
whiskers, and a tail ; and it has no purpose of
concealing that knowledge. But its poverty of
language enables it to speak of the muff and the
velvet gown only by a name which expresses (to
the child) the quality which the muff, the gown,
and the animal have in common.

A neglect to preserve any well-drawn distinction
in words between thoughts or things is, just so far,
a return toward barbarism in language. In the
London " Times's " report of the revolting scene in
front of the gallows on which Muller (he who killed
a fellow-passenger in a railway carriage) was
hanged, it was said that many of the spectators,
knowing that if they would get a good place they
must wait a long while to see the show, came pro-
vided with "jars of beer." Now, we may be sure
that there was not a jar in all that crowd. A jar,
which is a wide-mouthed earthen vessel without a
handle, would be a very unsuitable and cumbrous
vessel on such an occasion and in such a place ;
and besides, beer is neither kept in jars, nor drunk
from them. The "Times's" reporter, who is said
to have been, on this occasion, a man of letters of
some reputation, meant, doubtless, tankards, pots,
jugs, or pitchers. Of household vessels for con-
'aining fluids we have in English good store of
names nicely distinctive of various forms and uses
and there seems to be a, chance that we shall lose
some of them, through either the ignorance or lh«

MISUSED WORHS. 83

indolence of writers and speakers like the Times's
reporter. It is not long since every lady in the
land had, as Gremio said that Bianca should have,
K basins and ewers to lave her dainty hands,"
although not of gold, as that glib-tongued lover
promised. But now we are all, with few excep-
tions, content, to use a bowl and pitcher. The
things are the same, only they are handsomer ; but
we have, many of us at least, given up the distinc-
tion between bowl and basin, and common pitcher
and ewer, and so far we have retrograded in civil-
ity. Some British writers and speakers say " a
basin of bread and milk." We may be sure they
mean a bowl, for a basin is an uncomfortable vessel
to eat from. But if they mean a bowl, they should
say a bowl ; for although we have dropped por-
ringer except in poetry (yet there are men living
who, in their childhood, have talked of porringers
as well as eaten out of them), we may as well try
to preserve some distinction between the names of
our domestic utensils, unless, emulating the sim-
plicity of the Feejeeans in their short pig and long
pig, we call them all, for example, cup, and say
short cup, long cup, high cup, low cup. big cup,
little cup, deep cup, shallow cup.

Our British kinsmen have, during the last fifty
or perhaps hundred years, fallen into the use of a
peculiar misnomer in this respect. They, without
exception, I believe, talk of the water jug and the
milk -jug, meaning the vessels in which water and
milk are served at table. Now, those vessels are
not jugs, but pitchers. A jug is a vessel having a
small mouth, a swelling belly, and a small ear 01

84 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

handle near the mouth ; and this, we know, is never
used at table : a pitcher is a vessel with a wide
mouth, a protruding lip, and a large ear; and
this we know that they, as well as we, do use al
table for milk and for water. The thing has had
the name for centuries. Hence the old saying that
Little pitchers (not little jugs) have great ears
Little pitchers, from the physical necessity of their
shape and proportion, must have great ears ; little
jugs may have ears in proportion to their size.
This word, by the by, is the best test, if indeed
it is not the only sure test, of the nationality
of a cultivated man of English blood, — for as tc
the uncultivated, no nice test is needed. Been
and bin, sick and /'//, drive and ride, a quarter
to twelve and a quarter of twelve o'clock, railway
station and railroad despot, even pitch and inflec-
tion of voice, may fail to mark the distinction ; but
if a man asks for the milk -jug, be sure that he is
British bred; if for the milk -pitcher, be equally
sure that he is American.* But perhaps some peo-
ple are quite indifferent whether or no it is said that
they sip their coffee out of a jar, drink their beer
from a vase, and put their flowers into a jug. Such
readers will not be at all interested in the following
remarks upon the misuse of certain English words.
It is not my purpose in these remarks to notice

• As to the use of SI for sick, and drive for ride, see pages 192, 196. Since this
passage was written, I have had a remarkable confirmation of its truth in the language
of a lady born and bred in London, who spoke, with entire unconsciousness of her ex-
cellence, the most beautiful English I ever heard even among her countrywomen,
However high their breeding or their culture — beautiful in idiom, in pronunciation, it
enunciation, and in quality and inflection of voice. She, being entirely ignorant of an)
question upon these points, and thoughtless about her speech, said, " I have been sic!
with a cold ; " "I have enjoyed the ride " (in a carriage) ; but even the isked th«
•errant to bring "a jug of water."

MISUSED WORDS. 85

slang, but I shall notice cant. Between the two,
although they are often confounded, there is a clear
distinction.

Slang is a vocabulary of genuine words or un-
meaning jargon, used always with an arbitrary and
conventional signification, and generally with hu-
morous intent. It is mostly coarse, low, and fool-
ish, although in some cases, owing to circumstances
of the time, it is racy, pungent, and pregnant of
meaning. Cant is a phraseology composed of gen-
uine words soberly used by some sect, profession,
or sort of men, in one legitimate sense, which they
adopt to the exclusion of others as having peculiar
virtue, and which thereby becomes peculiar to them-
selves. Cant is more or less enduring, its use
continuing, with no variation of meaning, through
generations. Slang is very evanescent. It gen-
erally passes out of use and out of mind in the course
of a few years, and often in a few months.

ABORTIVE. — A ridiculous perversion of this word
is creeping into use through the newspapers. For
example, I read in one, of large circulation and
high position, that "a young Spaniard yesterday
abortively seized two pieces of alpaca." That is
abortive which is untimely in its birth, which has
not been borne its full time ; and, by figure of
speech, anything is abortive which is brought out
before it is well matured. A plan may be abortive,
but an act cannot. It would be a great waste of
time to notice such ludicrous writing as that above
quoted, were there not among journalists, and gen-
erally among that vast multitude who think it fine
to use a word which they do not quite understand,

86 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

a tendency to the use of abortion to mean failui e in
all its kinds and all its stages.

ADOPT. — A very strange perversion of this \vcrd
from its true meaning prevails among some un-
lettered folk, generally of Irish birth, whose misuse
of it is daily seen in the Personal Advertisements
in the New York "Herald." Thus, "Wanted to
Adopt — A beautiful and healthy female infant."
The advertisers mean that they wish to have the
children mentioned in their advertisements adopted.
In speaking of the transaction, their phrase is that
the child is " adopted out," or, that such and such a
woman " adopted out" her child. The perversion,
it may be said inversion, of this word, is worth no-
ticing because upon the misuse of adopt in these
advertisements, travellers and foreign writers have
founded an argument against the reproductive pow-
er of the European races in this country. From
the many advertisements "Wanted to Adopt," it
has been inferred that the advertisers were childless
and hopeless of children ; how unjustifiably will
appear by the following example, which appeared
a few days ago : —

" A lady having two boys would like to adopt one. Inqiiire
for two days at 228 Sullivan Street."

This lady, quite surely an Irish emigrant peasnnf
woman, wished to rid herself of one of her children.

AFFABLE. — A use of this word, which has a
very ludicrous effect to those for whom it has the
signification given to it by the best English usage,
is becoming somewhat common in newspaper cor-
respondence and accounts of what are therein called
"receptions" and "ovations." It means, literally

MISUSED WORDS. 87

ready to speak, easily approachable in conversation.
But by the usage of the best writers and speakers,
and by common consent, it has been limited to the
expression of an easy, courteous, and considerate
manner on the part of persons of superior position
to their inferiors. A king may be affable, as Charles
II. was to his attendants; and so may a nobleman
be to a laborer. Dr. Johnson at the height of his
career might have been affable to a penny-a-liner,
but he wasn't. General Washington was not affa-
ble, but Aaron Burr was. Milton calls Raphael
Mthe affable archangel," and makes Adam say to
him, as he is about departing heavenward, —

" Gentle to me and affable hath been
Thy condescension, and shall be honored ever
With grateful memory."

But in "American" newspapers we now read of
affable hotel-keepers and affable steamboat cap-
tains ; and we are told that Mrs. Bullions, at her
"elegant and recherche reception," although mov-
ing in a blaze of diamonds, tempered by a cloud
of •point de Venise lace, was "very affable to her
guests." Far be it from me to suppose that there
mav be a difference between a hotel-keeper and an
archangel, or to hint that the true sense of this word
may be preserved in this usage by there being the
same distance between a steamboat captain and a
reporter that there was between Raphael and Adam.
That suggestion is made by the reporters themselves.
Perhaps this usage is one of the signs of the level-
ling power of democracy, and affability is aboul
passing away among the vanished graces.

AGGRAVATE is misused by many persons ig-

88 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

norantly, and, in consequence, by many others
thoughtlessly, in the sense of provoke, irritate,
anger. Thus : He aggravates me by his impu-
dence— meaning he angers me: Her martyr-like
airs were very aggravating — the right word being
irritating. The following example is from an
elaborate article in the critical columns of a news-
paper of high pretensions : " This lovely girl, so
different in her naive ways and lady-like carriage
from all her homely surroundings, puzzles Felix,
aggravates him, and finally leads him into attempt-
ing to infuse more of seriousness into her nature."
The writer meant that Esther provoked or irritated
Felix. Her conduct and bearing called forth, *'. <?.,
pro-voked, certain action on his part. Aggravate
means merely to add weight to. Injury is aggra-
vated by the addition of insult. Thus, in Ilowell's
Letters (sec. V. 12) : "This [opposition] aggra-
vates a grudge the French king hath to the duke
for siding with the Imperialists." An insult may
be aggravated by being offered to a man who is
courteous and kindly, as it may be palliated by
being offered to a brute and a bully. But it is no
more proper to say in the one case that the person
is aggravated, than in the other to say that he is
palliated.

ALIKE is very commonly coupled with both in a
manner so unjustifiable and so inconsistent with
reason as to make the resulting phrase as gross
a bi.ll as was ever perpetrated. For example:
* Those two pearls are both alike." This is equal
lo the story of Sam and Jem's resembling each othe»
very much, particularly Sam. When we say o

MISUSED WORDS. 89

two objects that they are alike, we say that they are
like each other — that is, simply, that one is like the
other. For the purpose of comparing one with the
other, they must be kept in mind separate ; but by
using both, we compare them as two together, not
separately one with the other. Both means merely,
and only, the two together. Etymologically it
means the two two, and it corresponds to the French
phrase tous les deux. Of two objects we may say
that both are good, and that they are equally good ;
but not that both are equally good, which we do
say if we say that both alike are good. The au-
thority of very long and very eminent usage can be
brought in support of both alike; but this is one
of those points upon which such authority is of no
weight; for the phrase is not an idiom, and it is at
variance with reason. The error is more and other
than pleonastic or than tautological. It is quite like
that which I heard from a little girl, — a poor street
waif, — who told a companion that she "had two
weenie little puppy-dogs at home, and they were
both brothers."

ALLUDE is in danger of losing its peculiar signifi-
cation, which is delicate and serviceable, by being
used as a fine-sounding synonyme of say or mention.
The honorable gentleman from the State of Ko-
teeko, speaking of the honorable gentleman from
the same State, denounces him as a drunken vaga-
bond and a traitor to his party. The latter rises
and says that his colleague has alluded to htm in
terms just fit for such a scoundrelly son of a poor-
louse drab to use, but that he hurls back the hon-
orable gentleman's allusions, and so forth, and so

90 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

forth. The spectacle is a sad one to gods and men,
and also to all who have respect for the English
language. For whatever may have been the case
with the other words, allude and allusion were used
in their Kokeekokian, certainly not in their English,
sense. Allude (from ludo, ludere, to play) means
to indicate jocosely, to hint at playfully, and so to
hint a* in a slight, passing manner. Allusion is
the by-play of language. "The Round Table"
having said, some months ago, that a certain arti-
cle in " The Galaxy " was " respectably dull," the
writer thereof amused himself by turning off for
the next number the following epigram : —

" Some knight of King Arthur's, Sir Void or Sir Null,
Swears a trifle I wrote is respectably dull.
He is honest for once through his weakness of wit,
And he censures a fault that he does not commit ;
For he shows by example — proof quite unrejectable —
That a man may be dull without being respectable."

Here the journal in question is not mentioned, but
it is alluded to in the first line in such a manner that
any person acquainted with the press of New York
could not doubt as to the one intended.

ALLOW. — A western misuse of this \vord is creep-
ing eastward ; and sometimes, owing to the elevat-
ng effect of suddenly acquired wealth, is heard in
lashionable if not cultivated circles. It is used to
mean say, assert, express the opinion. E.g. " He
was mightily took with her, and allowed she was
the handsomest lady in Muzzouruh." We may
allow, or admit, that which we have disputed, but
of which we nave been convinced ; or we may
allow certain premises as the basis of argument
but we assert, not allow, our own opinions.

MISUSED WORDS 91

ANIMAL. — It would seem that man is about to
be deprived of the rank to which he is assigned by
riamlet — that of being the paragon of animals.
Man, like the meanest worm that crawls, is an ani-
mal. His grade in the scale of organic life makes
him neither the more nor the less an animal. And
yet many people affect to call only brutes animals^
Is this because they are ashamed of the bond which
binds them to all living creatures? Do they scorn
their poor relations? On this supposition Mr. Bergh
might account for that lack of sympathy, the absence
of which causes the cruelty of some men to their
dumb fellow-beings, were it not that in past days,
when no one had thought of taking man out of the
animal kingdom, brutes were more hardly treated
than they are now. Mr. Bergh's society — like
that in London, of which it is a copy — is called The
Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.
It is in reality a society for the prevention of cruelty
to brutes; for the animal that suffers most from
cruelty — man — appears not to be under the shield
of its protection.

ANTECEDENTS. — The use of this word as in the
question, What do you know of that man's ante-
cedents? is not defensible, except upon the bare
plea of mutual agreement. For in meaning it is
Awkward perversion, and in convenience it has no
advantage. Antecedent, an adjective, meaning go-
ng before, might logically be used as a substantive,
lo mean those persons or things which have pre-
ceded any person or thing of the same kind in a
certain position. Thus the antecedents of General
Sherman in the generalship of the army of the

p2 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

United States are General Washington, General
Scott, and General Grant. There are also the
substantive uses of the word in grammar, logic, and
mathematics. But to call the course of a man's life
until the present moment his antecedents is nearly as
absurd a misuse of language as can be compassed.
And it is a needless absurdity. For if, instead of,
What do j'ou know of his antecedents? it is asked,
What do you know of his previous life? or, better,
What do you know of his past? there is sense in-
stead of nonsense, and the purpose of the question
is fully conveyed.

APT. — This little word, the proper meaning of
which it is almost impossible to express by definition
or periphrasis, is in danger of losing its fine sense,
and of being degraded into a servant of general
utility for the range of thought between liable and
likely. I have before me a letter published by a
woman of some note, who, asking for contributions
lo her means of nursing sick and wounded soldiers,
says that anything directed to her at a certain place
"will be apt to come." The blunder is amusing. I
have no doubt it provoked many smiles ; and yet
how delicate is the line which divides this use of the
word from the correct one ! To say that a package
will be apt to come, is inadmissible ; but to say that
it would be apt to miscarry, would provoke no re-
mark. This lady meant that the packages would
be likely to come. Her error was of the same sort
as that of the member from the rural districts, who,
driving into a village, called- out to a person whom
he met, " I say, mister, kin yer tell me where I'd
be liable to buy some beans?" A man is liable to

MISUSED WORDS. 93

that to which he is exposed, or obliged, or subject;
but he is not liable to act. He is liable to take cold,
to pay another man's debts, or to incur his wife's
displeasure. He is liable to fall in love ; but, un-
less he is a very weak brother, he is not liable to be
marry. Aptness and liability both express con-
ditions— one of fitness and readiness, the other of
exposure — inherent in the person or thing of which
they are predicated. A man may be liable to catch
the plague or to fall in love, and yet not be apt to
do either. For manhood's sake we would not say
of any man that he is liable to be married ; yet,
under certain circumstances, most men are apt to
be married ; and having done so, a man is liable,
and may be apt, to have a family of children.
Shakespeare makes Julius Caesar say of Cassius, —

" I fear him not;

Yet if my name were liable to fear,
I do not know the man I should avoid
So soon as that spare Cassius."

Caesar might have said, "if I were liable to fear"
as well as "if my name were liable." He could
have said, "if I were apt to fear," but not, "if my
name were apt to fear."

ARTIST is a much abused word, and one class of
men misuse it to their own injury, — the painters, —
who seem to think that artist is a more dignified
name than painter. But artist has been beaten
out so thin that it covers almost the whole field of
human endeavor. A woman who turns herself
upside down upon the stage is an artist ; a cook is
an artist ; so is a barber ; and Goldsmith soberly
calls a cobbler an artist. The word has been so

P4 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

pulled and hauled that it is shapeless, and has no
peculiar fitness to any craft or profession ; its vague-
ness deprives it of any special meaning. Its only
value now is in the acknowledgment of the ex-
pression of an aesthetic purpose, or, rather, of any
excellence beyond that which is merely utilitarian.
The painters say that they assume it lest they should
be confounded with house-painters. The excuse is
as weak as water. If they are liable to such con-
fusion, or fear it, so much the worse for them.
Leonardo, Raphael, Michael Angelo, Correggio,
Titian, were content to be called painters. True,
they iverc decorative house-painters. But the same
name satisfied Rubens, Vandyke, Reynolds, and
Stuart, who did not paint houses.

BALANCE, in the sense of rest, remainder, resi-
due, remnant, is an abomination. Balance is met-
aphorically the diiierence between two sides of an
account — the amount which is necessary to make
one equal to the ether. It is not the rest, the re-
mainder. And yet we continually hear of the
balance of this or that thing, even the balance of a
congregation or of an army ! This use of the word
has been called an Americanism. But it is not so :
witness this passage from "Once a Week : " —

"'Whoso wishes to rob the night to the best advantage, 1*1
him sleep ibr two or three hours, then get up and work foi tw-»
lours, and then sleep out the bafance of the night. Doing this
he will not feel the loss of the sleep he has surrendered."

BOUNTIFUL. — This word is very generally mis-
used both in speech and in writing. The phrase,
a bountiful dinner, a bountiful breakfast, or, to be
One, a bountiful repast, is continually met with ic

MISUSED WORDS. 95

newspapers, wherein we also read of bountiful re-
ceipts at the box-offices of theatres, and even, in a
leading article of a journal of the first class now
before me, of " bountifully filled hourly trains. "

This use of the word altogether perverts and
degrades it from its true meaning, which is too val-
uable to be lost without an effort for its preservation.
Bountiful applies to persons, not to things, and
has no reference to quantity ; although quantity in
benefits received is often the consequence of bounti-
fulness in the giver. Lady Bountiful was so named
because of the benefits she conferred. But the
things that she gave — the food and clothing —
were not bountiful. A breakfast or dinner which
is paid for by those who eat it, has no relations of
any kind to bounty ; but it may be plentiful ; and
if it is given in alms or in compliment, it will be
plentiful because the giver is bountiful. The re-
pasts, collations, and banquets, above referred to,
were plentiful ; the receipts at the theatres large ;
and the trains well filled or crowded.

BRING, FETCH. — The misuse and confusion of
these two words, which are so common, so rooted
"or centuries in the deep soil of our vernacular,
would indicate a very great unsettling of the foun-
dations of our language, were it not that the per-
version is confined almost entirely to cities. You
will hardly find an English or a Yankee farmer
who is content to speak his mother tongue as his
mother spoke it, who, without taking thought about
it, does not use these words as correctly as persons
bred in the most cultivated society. But people
ailed Aith the consciousness of fine apparel are

p WORDS AND THEIR USES.

heard saying to their shop boys, "Go to such 01
such H place, and bring this parcel with you ; and,
say ! you may fetch that other one along." Now,
bring expresses motion toward, not away. A
boy is properly told to take his books to school,
and to bring them home. But at school he may
correctly say, I did not bring my books. Fetch
expresses a double motion — first from and then
toward the speaker. Thus, a gardener may say
lo his helper, " Go and bring me yonder rake ; "
but he might better say, "Fetch me yonder rake,"
*'. £., go and bring it. And so we find in our
English Bible (Acts xxviii. 13), " and from thence
we fetched a compass ; " j. £., we went out, around,
and back, making a circuit. The distinction be-
twe :n bring and fetch is very sharply drawn in the
following passage, (i Kings xvii. u.) "And as
she was going to fetch it, he called to her and said,
Bring me, I pray thee, a morsel of bread." From
this usage of these words there is no justifiable vari-
ation. The slang phrase — "a fetch" — is hardly
slang, for it expresses a venture, /'. e., a metaphor-
ical going out to bring something in.

CALCULATE. — A very common misuse of this
word should be corrected. I do not mean that of
which the gentleman from the rural districts is
guilty when he cahlc'lates he kin do a pooty good
stroke of work for himself when he gets into the
Legislatur, but that which prevails much more
widely, and among people who think no evil of
their English, and who wouM say, for instance,
Jiat the nomination of Mr. Greeley to the Pl•es^
iency was calculated to deprive the Democrats

MISUSED WORDS. 97

of the votes of the Free Traders. It was calculated
to do no such thing. Who needs to be told that no
such object entered into the calculations of the lead-
ing Democrats ? But this use of the word has even
the very high authority of Goldsmith to support it : —

" The only danger that attends the multiplicity of publica-
tions is, that some of them may be calculated to injure rather
than benefit society."— Citizen of the World, Letter XXTV.

Now, calculate means to compute, to reckon, to
work out by figures, and, hence, to project for any
certain purpose, the essential thought expressed by
it, in any case, being the careful adjustment of means
to an end. But Goldsmith did not mean that the au-
thors of the books he had in mind intenued to injure
society, and wrote >with that end in view. He did
mean that these books might contain something that
would do society an injury. Calculate, used in this
sense, is only a big, wrongful pretender to the place
of two much better words — likely and apt. Gold-
smith meant to express a fear that the books in
question were likely to injure society ; and whether
Mr. Greeley's nomination was likely to cost his
party the Free trade vote, is matter of opinion ;
out whether it was calculated to do so, is not.

CALIBRE is used with a radical perversion of its
meaning by many persons who should know better.
As, for instance, —

" She has several other little poems of a much higher calibre
than that." — London Spectator, February 20, 1869.

The writer of this sentence might as well have
said, a broader altitude, a bulkier range, or a thinner
circumference. Calibre is the measure of the mass
contained or containable in a cavity; e. g., the

7

1)8 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

calibre of a bullet or a brain, and hence of a gun 01
a skull. Therefore its metaphorical use is for the
expression of capacity, and its proper.augmentativeg
are of expansion, not of height or depth.

CAPTION. — The affectation of fine, big-sounding
words which have a flavor of classical learning hat.
had few more laughable or absurd manifestations
than the use of caption (which means seizure, act
of taking), in the sense, and in the rightful place,
of heading. In our newspapers, even in the best
of them, it is too common. This monstrous blunder
was first made by some person who knew that cap-
tain and capital expressed the idea of headship,
but who was sufficiently ignorant to suppose that
caption, from its similarity in sound to those words,
had a kindred meaning. But captain and capital
are from the Latin caput, a head ; and caption is
from capio, I seize, captum, seized. Language
rarely suffers at the hands of simple ignorance ; by
which indeed it is often enriched and strengthened ;
but this absurd misuse of caption is an example of
the way in which it is made mere empty sound, by
the pretentious efforts of presuming half-knowledge*
Captivate — a word closely connected with cap-
tion— once, indeed, its relative verb — is, on the
other hand, an interesting example of the perfectly
legitimate change, or limitation, which may be
made by common consent in a word's meaning.
Captivate means primarily to seize, to take captive,
and, until within a few years, comparatively, it was
used in that sense. But within the last two genera
lions it has been so closely limited to the metaphor*
sal expression of the act of charming by beauty ol

MISUSED WORDS. 99

person and insnaring by wiles and winning ways,
that it seems very strange to read in one of Wash-
ington's letters that "our citizens are frequently
captivated by Algerine pirates."

CATCH is very generally misused for reach, get
to, overtake. Many persons speak of catching a
car. If they reach the car, or get to it, it being at
the station, or if, it being in motion, they overtake
it or catch up with it, they may catch some person
who is in it, or they may catch scarlet fever from
some one who has been in it. But they will not
catch the car.

CHARACTER, REPUTATION. — These words are
not synonymes ; but they are too generally used as
such. How commonly do we hear it said that such
or such a man " bore a very bad character in his
vicinity," the speaker meaning that the man was of
bad repute in his neighborhood ! We know very
little of each other's characters ; but reputations are
well known to us, except our own. Character,
Iheaning first a figure or letter engraved, means
secondarily those traits which are peculiar to any
person or thing. Reputation is, or should be, the
result of character. Character is the sum of in-
dividual qualities: reputation, what is generally
thought of character, so far as it is known. Charac-
ter is like an inward and spiritual grace, of which
reputation is, or should be, the outward and visible
•sign. A man may have a good character and a
bad reputation, or a bad character and a good repu-
lation ; although, to the credit of human nature,
which, with all its weakness, is not ignoble, the
latter is more common than the former. Coleridge

IOO WORDS AND THEIR USES.

uses character incorrectly when he says (Friend
I. 16), "Brissot, the leader of the Gironde party, is
entitled to the character of a virtuous man." Sheri-
dan errs in like manner in making Sir Peter Teazle
say, as he leaves Lady Sneerwell's scandalous
coterie, "I leave my character behind me." His
reputation he left, but his character was always in
his own keeping.

CHASTITY. — Priestcraft and asceticism have
caused a confusion of this word with continence —
a confusion which has lasted for centuries, and may
yet last for many generations. Even such a priest-
hater as Froude says of Queen Catharine that she
was invited to take the vows, and enter what was
called the rcligio laxa — a state, he adds, " in which
she might live unencumbered by obligation, except
the easy one of chastity." Does Mr. Froude mean
that Catharine would have been more chaste as a
secular nun than she was as Henry's wife? that a
man is to look upon his mother or his wife as less
chaste than his maiden aunt? He, of course, meant
no such absurdity ; he merely fell in with a bad
asage. He should have said, except the easy obli-
gation of continence. Chastity is a virtue. Con-
tinence, under some circumstances, is a duty, but
is never a virtue, it being without any moral quality
whatever.

CITIZEN is used by some writers for newspapers
with what seems like an affectation of the French
usage Qicitoyen in the first Republic. For instance :
"General A is a well-known citizen, and responsi-
ble for these grave charges ; " or, " Several citizens
carried the sufferer to a drug store on the nexj

MISUSED WORDS. IO1

block." A citizen is a person who has certain po-
litical rights, and the word is properly used only to
imply or suggest the possession of these rights. The
sufferer was cared for by several persons, by-stand-
ers, or passengers, some or all of whom might have
been aliens. The writer might as well have said
that the sufferer was carried off by several church
members or several Free Masons.

CLARIONET and VIOLINCELLO are constantly used
for clarinet and violoncello. There was a stringed
instrument which has long been disused, and
which was called the violone. It was large, arid
very different from the violino. A small instru-
ment of the kind was made, and called the violon-
cello (cello being an Italian diminutive) ; and this,
somewhat modified, is the modern instrument of
that name. Violinccllo would be the name of a
little violin ; whereas a violoncello is four times as
large as a violin. A similar contraction of word
and thing has given us clarinet (clarinctto) from
clarino.

CONSIDER is perverted from its true meaning by
most of those who use it. Men will say that they
do not consider a certain course of conduct right 01
politic — that they do not consider Mr. So-and-So
a gentleman — and even that they do not consider
gooseberry tart equal to strawberry short-cake.
Now, considcre (the infinitive of consido) on which
consider is formed, means to sit down deliberately,
to dwell upon, to hold a sitting, to sit in judgement ;
and hence consider, by natural process came to
n'.ean, to ponder, to contemplate. And there seems
to have been more than a mere happy fancy in the

IO2 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

notion, now abandoned, that consider was from con*
with, and sidera, the stars, and meant to take coun-
sel with the stars, to peer into the future by watch-
ing the heavens. A court reserves its opinion
that it may consider a question which it sometimes
has for weeks under consideration. A business
man asks until to-morrow to consider your proposi-
tion, and meantime he ponders it, i. e., weighs it
carefully, ruminates upon it. A man whose ability,
character, or position gives weight to his opinion, is
a man of consideration, because what he says is
worthy to be considered ; and whatever is large
enough or strong enough to deserve serious atten-
tion is considerable. All this fine and useful sense
of the word is lost by making it a mere synonyme
of think, suppose, or regard.

CONSUMMATE. — Of all the queer uses of big
words which are creeping into vogue, the use of
this word, both in speech and in the newspapers, to
express the performance of the marriage ceremony,
is the queerest. For instance, I heard a gentleman
gravely say to two ladies, "The marriage was con-
summated at Paris last April." Now, consumma-
tion is necessary to a complete marriage ; but it is
not usually talked about openly in general society.
The gentleman meant that the ceremony took place
at Paris.

COUPLE. — Although the misuse of this word is
very common, and of long standing, the perversion
of meaning in the misuse is so great that it cannot
be justified, even by time and custom. It is used
to mean simply two; as, for instance, "A couple
of ladies fell upon the ice yesterday afternoon.

MISUSED WORDS. I<>3

"Five workingmen, stimulated by the prospect of a
couple of small money prizes, offered by an enter-
prising local firm, delivered speeches, "etc. — "Pall
Mall Gazette," March 6, 1869. Why people should
use thess three syllables, couple of, to say incorrectly
that v;hich one syllable, two, expresses correctly, it
is hard to tell. It would be quite as correct in the
above examples to say, a brace of ladies, and more
surely correct to say a pair of prizes. For a couple
is not only two individuals who are in a certain
degree, at least, equal or like, *'. e., a pair, but two
that are bound together by some close tie or inti-
mate relationship ; who, in brief, are coupled. Two
railway cars are bound together by the coupling;
a man and a woman are made a couple by the bond
of sexual love, which even the legal bond of mar-
riage cannot accomplish ; for a man and his wife may
be separated, and be no longer a couple. Twins,
even, are not a couple, but a pair. In couple, which
is merely the Latin copula Anglicized, this idea of
copulative conjunction is inherent. So William
Lilly, in his " Short Introduction of Grammar,"
defines jugum as " a yoke, or a yoke of oxen, that
is, a couple." It is as incorrect and as absurd to
speak of a couple of ladies, or a couple of prizes,
as of a couple of earthquakes or a couple of
comets.

CONVENE is much perverted from its true mean-
ing by many people who cannot be called illiterate.
Thus : The President convened Congress. Con-
vene (from con and venio} means to come together.
The right word in this case is convoke, which (from
con and TOCO} means to call together. The Presi-

IO4 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

dent convokes Congress in special session, and then
Congress convenes. Convene is misused in the
Constitution of the United States itself, which is sin-
gularly free from errors in the use of language.

CRIME. — The common confusion of the words
crime, vice, and sin, is probably due, in a great
measure, to a failure to distinguish the things. The
distinction was long ago made, although hardly
with sufficient exactness. Crime is a violation of
the law of a particular country. What is crime in
one country may not be crime in another ; what is
crime in one country at one time may not be crime
in the same country at another time. Sin is the
violation of a religious law, which may be common
to many countries, and yet be acknowledged by only
a part of the inhabitants of any one. What is sin
among Jews or Mohammedans is, in some cases,
not sin among Christians, and vice versa. Vice
has been defined as a violation of the moral law ;
but to make this definition exact in terms and
universal in application, a consent as to the require-
ments of the moral law is necessary. Vice is a
course of action or habit of life which is harmful to
tne actor or wrongful to others. The viciousness
of an act is quite irrespective of the country, or the
creed of the person who commits it, or of the people
among whom it is committed. That which is crim-
inal may be neither sinful nor vicious ; that which is
sinful, neither criminal nor vicious ; and that which
is vicious, neither criminal nor sinful. Thus, smug-
gling is a crime, but neither a sin nor a vice ; cov-
etoasness and blasphemy are sins and vices, but nol
crimes ; gambling is a crime and a vice, but not a

MISUSED WORDS. 105

sin ; idleness is vice, but, in itself, neither sin nor
crime ; while theft is criminal, sinful, and vicious.
The magnitude of the wrong in some acts raises
them above or sinks them below the level of vice.
Murder is not a vice. It would not be well to speak
of Herod's slaughter of the innocents as a vicious
or even a very vicious act. The idea of continuity,
or of possible continuity, of a habit of action is
conveyed in the word vice. Filial disrespect is vi-
cious ; but the same cannot be said of parricide ; for
although parricide is filial disrespect carried to the
extreme, it cannot become a habit, because a man
can have but one father and one mother.

DECIMATED. — The learned style of that eminent
and ambitious writer, the War Correspondent, has
brought this word into vogue since the Rebellion,
but with a sense somewhat different from that in
which it was used by his guide and model, Caiua
Julius Csesar. After the battle on the Rapidan, or
the Chattanooga, he — I do not mean the greater of
the two eminent persons, and probably the formei
will admit that C. J. Caesar was the more dis-
tinguished even as a writer upon military affairs —
used to say, in his fine Roman style, that the arm}
was "awfully decimated," as in one of the man}
instances before me: "The troops, although fight-
ing bravely, were terribly decimated, and gave
way " Old Veni-vidi-vici would tell him that he
might as well have written that the troops were
terribly halved or frightfully quartered. When a
Roman cohort revolted, and the revolt was put
iown, a common punishment was to decimate the
cohort — that is, select ever}- tenth man, decimust

IO6 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

by lot, and put him to death. If a cohort suffered
in battle so that about one man in ten was killed, it
was consequently said to be decimated. But to use
decimation as a general phrase for great slaughter is
simply ridiculous. The exact equivalent of this
usage would be to say, The troops were terribly
tithed.

DEFALCATION is misused on all sides and every
day in the sense of default or defaulting. Defalca-
tion is the noun of the verb defalcate, which means
to lop off, and so to detract from. Congress might
defalcate the tariff, and the defalcation might be
large or small ; but it would not be a default. A
default might be made by any officer intrusted with
the collections of the customs duties. If he should
not pay these into the treasury, he would default,
/. £., fail in his duty, and be a defaulter ; but he would
not defalcate, or would his act be a defalcation.

DIRT means filth, and primarily filth of the most
offensive kind. A thing that is dirty is foul. The
word has properly no other meaning. And yet
some women, intelligent and well educated, say
that they like to ride on " a dirt road." They mean
a ground road, an earth road, a gravel road, or,
in general terms, an unpaved road. Dirt is used
by some persons as if it meant earth, loam, gravel,
or sand; and we sometimes hear "clean dirt"
spoken of. There is no such thing.

DIVINE. — The use of this adjective as a noun,
meaning a clergyman, a minister of the gospel, ij
supported by long usage and high authority. In
* Richard III." Buckingham points out to the Mayor
of London the hypocritical Gloster " meditating witk

MISUSED WORDS. IO7

two deep divines." Chaucer calls the piiest Cal-
chas a divine. Yet I cannot but regard this use
of the word as at variance with reason, as fantastic
and extravagant. Think it over a little, and say it
over a few times — a divine, a divine — meaning a
sort of man ! It might be more blasphemous to
leave out the article, and call the man divine ; but
would it be quite as absurd? This use of this ad-
jective as a noun has a parallel in the calling
philosopher " a philosophic," which is done in a
newspaper article before me ; in the more common
designation of a child as "juvenile," and even of
books for children as "juveniles;" in the phrase
"an obituary," meaning an obituary article ; and in
the name " monthly," which is sometimes given to a
literary magazine ; all of which are equally at vari-
ance with reason and with good taste. In either case
the thing is deprived of its substantive name, and
designated by an unessential, accidental quality.

DOCK is by many persons used to mean a wharf or
pier ; thus : He fell off the dock, and was drowned.
A dock is an open place without a roof, into which
anything is received, and where it is enclosed for
safety. A prisoner stands, or used to stand, in the
dock at his trial. A ship is taken into a dock for
repairs. The Atlantic Dock is properly named.
The shipping around a city lies at wharfs and piers,
but goes into docks. A man might fall into a dock j
but to say that he fell off a dock is no better than to
say that he fell off a hole.

DRESS has the singular fortune of being misused
by one sex only. By town-bred women, both in
Great Britain and the United States, and by that

IO8 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

very large and wide-spread rural class who affect
town-bred airs, dress is used for gown; and thus
woman, in a very unhousewifely way, takes from
one good servant half his rights, and throws another
out of place entirely, thereby leaving herself short-
handed. The radical idea expressed in the word
dress is, right; and dress, the verb, means, simply,
to set right, to put in order. A captain of infantry
orders his company to dress to the right — that is,
to bring themselves into order, into line, by looking
to the right. The kitchen dresser is so called be-
cause upon it dishes are put in order. As to the
body, dress is that which puts it in order, in a con-
dition comfortable and suitable to the circumstances
in which it is placed. Dress is a general term, in-
cluding the entire apparel, the under garments as
well as the outer. No man thinks of calling his
coat or his waistcoat his dress, more than of so call-
ing his shirt or his stockings. But women do so
call the gown ; and thus they use a word which is
a vague, general term, and is applicable to all ap-
parel, and belongs to men as much as to women,
instead of one which means exactly that which they
wish to express — a long outer garment, extending
from the shoulder below the knee. Frock^ some-
times used for go-wn^ is properly of more limited
application, although it belongs both to masculine
and feminine attire. The origin of the perversion
is probably untraceable, except by the aid of some
\voman of close observation and reflection, whc
is old enough to have been brought up to sa}'
gown. Such a person might be able to tell us
how and why, in a little more than a generation

MISUSED WORDS.

this word has come to be thus perverted by her sex
only.

EDITORIAL. — An unpleasant Americanism for
leader or leading article^ which name is given to
the articles in newspapers upon the leading topics
of the day. These articles are not generally written
by the editor of the paper, although he is responsi-
ble for them ; but so is he for the other articles, and
for the correspondence. And even were the case
otherwise, leader or leading article would, none the
less, be a good descriptive name for them, and
editorial would be poor, both for its meagre signifi-
cance, and for its conversion of an adjective, not
signifying a quality, as good or ///, into a noun.

ESQUIRE. — An attempt to deprive any citizen of
this democratic republic of his right to be called
an esquire by his friends and all his correspondents,
would be an outrage upon our free institutions, and
perhaps treason to the natural rights of man, what-
ever they may be. Upon this subject I confess
myself fit only to be a learner ; but I have yet to dis-
cover what a man means when he addresses a letter
to John Dash, Esq. (who is in no manner distin-
guished or distinguishable from other Dashes), ex-
cept that Mr. Dash shall think he means to be polite.

EVACUATE. — This word is often subjected to the
same kind of ill treatment from which leave suffers.
Thus : General Pemberton expects to evacuate to-
morrow about nine A. M. ; or, The enemy evacu«=
ited last night. Evacuate does not mean to go
away, but to make empty ; and when the word ia
<?ed in regard to military movements, evacuation
is a mere consequence, result, or, at most, con-

WORDS AND THEIR USES.

comitant of the going away of the garrison. For
obvious reasons the mention of the place departed
from is in this case particularly necessary.

EVERY. — A gross misuse of this word has been
brought into vogue within the last few years on both
sides of the water — the first offenders having been
people who wished to be elegant, but who did not
know enough to be correct ; the others being their
thoughtless followers. Thus, General Napier, writ-
ing to Disraeli from Abyssinia, said, "The men
deserve every praise ; " " The Tribune " says that
M Congress has exercised every charity in its treat-
ment of the President ; " a manager is reported as
having said that as a certain actor has recovered
his health, he, the manager, " has every confidence
in announcing him " ; and we see grateful people
acknowledging, in testimonials, that in their trouble
such or such a captain, or landlord, "rendered them
every assistance." This is absurdly wrong. Every
is separative, and can be applied only to a whole
composed of many individuals. Composed origin-
ally of the Anglo-Saxon cefcr, ever, and ale, each,
its course of descent has been evercBlc., everiJk^
evcrich, every. It means each of all, not all in
mass. It cannot, therefore, be applied to that which
is in its very nature inseparable. The manager
inight as well have said that he had multitudinous
confidence, as that he had every confidence. He
meant perfect or entire confidence ; and the grateful
people, that the captain rendered them all possible
assistance. Such a sentence, too, as the following,
from the work of an admired British novelist, is
absurd : w Every human being has this in common.*

MISUSED WORDS. Ill

A.11 human beings might have something in com-
mon ; but what every man has, he has individually
for himself,

EXECUTED. — A vicious use of this word has pre-
vailed so long, become so common, that, although
it produces sheer nonsense, there is little hope of
its reformation, except in case of that rare occur-
rence in the history of language, a vigorous and
persistent effort on the part of the best speakers and
writers and professional teachers toward the ac-
complishment of a special purpose. The perversion
referred to is the use of executed to mean hanged,
beheaded, put to death. Thus a well-known his-
torian says of Anne Boleyn that "she was tried,
found guilty, and -executed; " and in the news-
papers we almost always read of the "execution"
of a murderer. The writers declare the perform-
ance of an impossibility. A law may be executed ;
a sentence may be executed ; and the execution of
the law or of a sentence sometimes, although not
once in a thousand times, results in the death of the
person upon whom it is executed. The coroner's
jury, which sits in the prison-yard upon the body of
a felon who has been hanged, brings in its formal
verdict, "Execution of the law." To execute (from
sequor) is to follow to the end, and so to carry out,
and to perform ; and how is it possible that a human
being can be executed? A plea of metaphorical or
secondary use will not save the word in this sense ;
for the law or a sentence is as much executed when
a condemned felon is imprisoned as when he is put
to death. But who would think of saying that a
man was executed because he was shut up in th«*

112 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

State Prison? And even were it not so, how much
simpler and more significant a use of language to
say that a felon, or a victim of tyranny, had been
hanged, beheaded, shot, or generally, put to death,
than to say he was executed ! of which use of this
word there is no justification, its only palliation be-
ing that afforded by custom and bad example.

EXEMPLARY. — Archbishop Trench has pointed
out that a too common use of this word makes it
"little more than a loose synonyme for excellent?
Its proper meaning is, that which serves for an ex-
ample. Cervantes' Novelets exemplar es were so
called, because each of them furnished an ex-
ample. The misuse of exemplary confines it to
examples that should be followed. But some ex-
amples are not to be followed. A man is hanged
for an example. Othello says, "Cassio, I'll make
an example of thee." The language would gain a
word by the restriction of exemplary to its proper
meaning. Example itself is too often loosely used
for problem. A problem often is an example of the
operation of a rule, but not always ; and in any case
its exemplary is not its essential character.

EXPECT is very widely misued on both sides of
the water in the sense of suppose, think, guess.
E. g"., "I expect you had a pretty hard time of it
yesterday." Expect refers only to that which is
to come, and which, therefore, is looked for (ex,
out, and spectare, to look). We cannot expec*
backward.

EXPERIENCE. — Perhaps an objection to the use
of this word as a verb has no better ground than
that of taste or individual preference, which should

MISUSED WORDS. 113

be excluded from discussions like the present ; yet
I am inclined to make that objection very strong-
ly. We are told, for instance, in a London news-
paper of repute, that an Armenian archbishop
who penetrated into Abyssinia at the request of the
British authorities, " fell into the hands of some bar-
barous tribes of that district, from whom he is ex-
periencing very rough usage." He was receiving
or suffering rough usage ; and although that was
part of his experience, he did not experience it.
Experience is the passing through a more or less
continuous course of events or trials. A man's ex-
perience is the sum of his life ; his experience in any
profession, business, or condition of life, is the aggre-
gate of the observation he has had the opportunity of
making in that profession, business, or condition.
Experience should be a means of obtaining knowl-
edge and understanding, but it is not so always.
Some men learn much by experience ; most men,
very little ; many, nothing. Experience is akin to
experiment^ both being derived from the same Latin
word, experior, experimentum, the idea expressed
by which is trial. But experiment is voluntary trial,
experience involuntary. In experiment the trier is
an agent ; in experience, an observer, and often a
sufferer. He not only tries, but is tried himself.
Natural science advances by experiments which arc
undertaken by scientific men, and an experiment is
a positive fact, of which all men may avail them-
selves according to their knowledge and ability ;
but experience is of little value except to him who
lias passed through it. From the noun experience is
formed the participial adjective experienced (which
8

114 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

is not the perfect particif le of a verb experience) ,
as moneyed from money, landed from land, talented
from talent, casemated from casemate, battlemented
from battlement. Battlemented is not a part of a
verb — / battlement, thon battlemcntest, etc. ; or
talented from a verb — / talent, thou talentest, etc.
So an experienced man is a man of experience, not
one who has been experienced, i. <?., according to
the dictionaries, has been tried, proved, observed,
but one who has tried, has proved, has observed.
Of the use of experience as an active transitive verb,
I have been able to find, by diligent search, only
one example of any authority — the following, quoted
by Richardson from "The Guardian" — '"the max-
im of common sense — that men ought to form their
judgments of things unexperienced from what they
have experienced." The examples easiest to find
are such as the following, furnished by an incensed
farmer: "Wai, I'll be durned ef ever I exper'enced
sech a cussed cross-grained critter as that in all my
life ; " the cross-grained creature which the speaker
experienced being a cow that kicked over the milk-
pail. That this is not an extreme case, take the
following examples in evidence — the first from the
London "Spectator," the second from "The Mark
i.,ane Express," two high-class British newspapers:
* The attempt to adapt ourselves by temporary ex-,
pedients to a climate \vhich we experience [to which
we are exposed] about once in twenty or thirty
years ; " " The hay crop is one of the most deficien
experienced [that we have had] in many years/
Now, if we may experience a hot da}-, or experience
a hay crop, can we refuse to experience a cow.

MISUSED WORDS. 115

without coming athwart the stupendous principle of
equal rights for everybody and everything, and
subjecting ourselves to discipline at the hands of
Mr. Bergh's society? Let us bear, suffer, try, live
through, endure, prove, and undergo ; and from
all this we shall gain experience and become ex-
perienced ; but let us not experience either a hay
crop, or a cow, nor indeed any other thing.

EXTEND. — The fondness for fine words leads
lecture committees, and other like public bodies, to
propose to "extend an invitation" to one distinguished
man or other, instead of merely asking him, inviting
him, or giving him an invitation ; as, for instance,
it was reported by telegraph that " an invitation had
been extended to Reverdy Johnson" to dine with
the Glasgow bailies ; and in the dedication of a book
of some ability, upon an important literary subject,
the compliment is said to be paid " in remembrance
of the kind interest extended to the author." An
interest may be taken or shown in a man, or his
labors ; but to extend an interest is to make that
interest larger. A man who has ten thousand dol-
lars in a business, and puts in ten thousand more,
extends his interest in that business. And, more-
over, as extend (from ex and tendo) means merely
to stretch forth, it is much better to say that a man
put out, offered, or stretched forth his hand, than
that he extended it. Shakespeare makes the pomp-
ous, pragmatical Malvolio say, " I extend my hand
to him, thus;" but Paul "stretched forth the hand
and answered for himself/' This, however, is a
question of taste, not of correctness.

FLY is very frequently misused for flee. It has

Il6 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

even been questioned whether there is a real differ-
ence between these two words. Certainly there is ;
the distinction is valid and useful. Flee is a general
term, and means to move away with voluntary ra-
pidity ; fly is of special application, and means to
move with wings, either quickly or slowly. True,
the words have the same original ; but so have
sit and set, lie and lay. The needs of language,
guided by instinct, we know not exactly how, ef-
fected the distinction between these pairs of words,
and it has been confirmed by the usage of many
centuries. The similarity between the members of
each pair is so great, and they are so easily con-
fused, that it is difficult to decide what was the usage
of any one of our older authors except in those cases
in which their works were very carefully printed
under their own eyes. The worth of the distinction
and the real difference involved in it will appear by
reading, instead of " Sisera lighted down off his
chariot and fled away on his feet," Sisera lighted
down off his chariot andJZew away on his feet, or
for w the arrow that fiieth by day," the arrow that
flecth by day.

GET, one of the most willing and serviceable of
our vocal servants, is one of the most ill used and
imposed upon — is, indeed, made a servant of all
work, even by those who have the greatest retinue
of words at their command. They use the word
get — the radical, essential, and inexpugnable mean-
ing of which is the attainment of possession by vol-
untary exertion — to express the ideas of possessing,
of receiving, of suffering, and even of doing. ID
all there cases the word is misused. A man geti

MISUSED WORDS. 117

riches, gets a wife, gets children, gets well 'after
falling sick), and, figuratively, gets him to bed,
gets up, gets to his journey's end — in brief, gets
anything that he wants and successfully strives for.
But we constantly hear educated people speak of
getting crazy, of getting a fever, and even of getting
a flea on one. A man hastening to the train will
say that he is afraid of getting left, and tell you
afterward that he did or did not get left — meaning
that he is afraid of being left, and that he was or
was not left.

The most common misuse of this word, however,
is to express simple possession. It is said of a man
that he has got this, that, or the other thing, or that
he has not got it ; what is meant being simply that
he has it, or has it not — the use of the word got
being not only wrong, but, if right, superfluous. If
we mean to say that a man is substantially wealthy,
our meaning is completely expressed by saying that
he is rich, has a large estate, or has a handsome
property. We do not express that fact a whit better
by saying that he has got rich, or has got a large
estate; we only pervert a word which, in that case,
is at least entirely needless, and is probably some-
what more than needless. For it is quite correct to
yay, in tne very same words, that by such and such
a business or manoeuvre the man has gotten a large
estate. Possession is completely expressed by have ;
get expresses attainment by exertion. Therefore
there is no better English than, Come, let us get
home ; but to say of a vagrant that he has got nd
home is bad. So we read, "Foxes have holes;
birds of the air have nests : but the Son of Man hath

ri8 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

not where to lay his head" — not, have got holes,
have got nests, hath not got where to lay his head.
The phrase, He got the property through his mother
or by his wife, is common, but it is incorrect. An
estate inherited is not gotten. The correct expres-
sion is, That property came to him through his
mother, or by his wife. This word has a very wide
range, but the boundaries which it cannot rightfully
pass are very clearly defined.

There is among some persons not uneducated or
without intelligence a doubt about the past participle
of got — gotten, which produces a disinclination to
its use. I am asked, for instance, whether gotten,
like proven, belongs to the list of "words that are
not words." Certainly not. Prove is what the
grammars call a regular verb ; that is, it forms its
tenses upon the prevailing system of English verbal
conjugation, which makes the perfect tense in cd.
It is in this respect like love, the example of regular
verbal conjugation given in most grammars ; and
we may as well say that Mary has loven John as that
John's love for Mary was not proven. But get is of
the irregular conjugation, in which the preterite
tense is formed by an internal vowel change, and the
past participle in n, with or without such vowel
change; thus — get, gat, gotten. The number of
these irregular verbs, having what is well called a
strong preterite, is large in our language, of which
they are a very fine and interesting feature, and one
that we should solicitously preserve with their origi.
nal native traits unchanged. They are all pure Eng
ish, and, if I remember rightly, nearly all of their
monosyllables. Such are do, did, done ; begin [o

MISUSED WORDS. 119

gin] began, begun ; spin, span, spim ; slay, slew, slain ,
fly, flew, flown ; grow, grew, grown ; eat, ate, eaten ;
thrive, throve, thriven; shake, shook, shaken; spcak^
spake, spoken ; drink, drank., drunken ; get, gat, gotten.
There is and has long been, even among edu
cated people, a proneness to error in the use of
these strong verbs. A weak preterite is substi
luted for the strong ; the participle for the preterite
The former variation began so early, and became
so common in the last century, that it has been
assumed to indicate a tendency of the language.
Long ago it was noticed that the strong conju-
gation hardly holds it own, while all new verbs
are conjugated weak. But the confusion of pre-
terite and participle cannot be even thus pal-
liated. Thus Sterne says, " At the close of such
a folio as this, wrote for their sake." We can
forgive Yorick such errors as this, because of the
many charming pages that he has written for our
sake ; but they were committed by hundreds of others
who have not his claims upon our forbearance. This
mistake, by the by, is rarely made by writers on
this side the water. Pope opens his " Messiah "
with an error of this sort, into which he frequently
falls.

" Rapt into future times the bard begun :
A virgin shall conceive and bear a son."

He should, of course, have written began; and if
the need of a rhyme were pleaded and admitted
as his excuse in this instance, it would not avail in
the following passage in his "Essay on Criticism,''
where — of all places! — he makes the blunder
it the beginning of a line, in the body of which

C2O WORDS AND THEIR USES.

he weakens a preterite and an exprejjiou to-
gether : —

"In the fat age of pleasure, wealth, and ease,
Sprung [sprang] the rank weed, and thrived [throve] with
large increase."

Again, in the same poem, he has the follow inj»
couplet, without the excuse of rhyme, making, in-
deed, the blunder in two words which would have,
rhymed as well if properly used : —

"A second deluge learning thus o'errun [o'erran],
And the monks finished what the Goths begun [began]."

So Savage, in his "Wanderer," is guilty of the
same fault, in mere wantonness, it would seem, or
ignorance : —

" From Liberty each nobler science sprung [sprang],
A Bacon brightened and a Spenser sung [sang]."

And Swift writes, "the sun has rose," "will have
stole it," and " have mistook" For the sake of
illustration, I cite the following instance of the right
use of the strong pieterite and past participle in the
same sentence : —

"A certain mar made a great supper, and bade many; and
bent his servant at supper-time to say to them that were bidden,
Come, for all things are now ready." — Luke xiv. 17.

The confusion of the preterite and the past parti-
ciple of do, which is so frequent among entirely
illiterate people — He done it, for He did it, and He
has did .it, for He has done it — -provokes a smile
trom those who themselves are guilty of exactly
corresponding errors. For instance : He begun
well, for He began well ; His father had bade him
to go home, for His father had bidden him go
home ; and The jury has sat a long while, for The
jury has sitten a long while. Thus got, having bj

MISUSED WORDS. 121

custom been poorly substituted for gat, so that we
say He got away, instead of He gat awa} , many
persons abbreviate gotten into got, saying He had
got, for Pie had gotten ; and hence the doubt whether
gotten is not really, like proven , a word that is no
word. But if got is the preterite of get, as did is
of do, He had got is an error of the same class as
He had did; and, on the other hand, if got is the
past participle of get, as done is of do, He got is
really no worse than He done — only more common
among people of some education. Among such
people we too often hear, He had rode, for He had
ridden, and, perhaps, most frequently of all this class
of errors, I had drank, for I had drunk, or (better)
I had drunken, and I drunk, for I drank.

Contrary to common supposition, the irregularity
of these strong verbs is not in their deviation from
the weak form of conjugation — with the preterite
in ed or d. They have merely a peculiar form of
conjugation ; and their inflections (so to speak of
an internal change) are as systematic as those
of the other and larger division of the same part
of speech. The realty irregular verbs are the
strong which have acquired weak preterites. We
have all of us laughed often enough at "First it
blew, and then it snew, and then it thew, and then
it friz." But if this were ever uttered in good faith
(and it may have been so) , it was the product of
ignorance only as to the last word. Snew is the
regular preterite of snow, the regular past parti-
ciple of which is not snoivcd, but snown. E, g.,
grow, grew, grown throw, threw, thrown ;
blow, blew, blown. The preterite snew is to be

122 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

found in our early literature. Gower uses it, and
Douglas, in his translation of the yEneid, the maker
of the glossary to which (said in an old manuscript
note in my copy to have been John Urry) errone-
ously marks it as a Scotticism. Holinshed, noticing
an entertainment called Dido, given in the year
1583, says that in the course of it, "it snew an aiti-
ficial kind of snow " ; and in the account, given in.
Sprott's "Chronicles," of the battle of Towton, we
find " and all the season it sncw." It is only accord-
ing to present usage that snow is an irregular verb ;
and it is so because snowed is the vagary of some
man struggling long ago toward supposed regular-
ity. The regular conjugation of these verbs in ow
is to form the preterite in cw and the past participle
in wn ; as throw, threw* thrown ; and snow, snowed,
snowed is as irregular as throw, throwed, throwcd
would be, or blow, blowed, blowed. But although
there is high authority for the phrase, "You be
blowed," I cannot but look upon it quoad hoc as a
corruption. Show, sow, and mow have been, like
snow, perverted from their regular conjugation.
The conjugation, according to the usage now in
vogue, is show, showed, shown ; sow, sowed, sown,
and mow, mowed, mown, in which we have a pre-
terite of one form of conjugation, and a past parti-
ciple of another — a union of incongruity and irrcgu-
.Uritv quite anomalous. But the regular preterites
have not yet been quite ousted by the interlopers.
In some parts of England mew and seiv are still
aeard instead of moivcd and sowed. In some parts
oi New England, and notably in Boston, we stil
near from intelligent and not uneducated people
le snew (pronounced shoo) me the way, which is

MISUSED WORDS. 123

sneered at by persons who do not know that shew
is the regular and showed an irregular preterite,
the use of which is justified only by custom. The
preterite shew occurs in the following interesting
passage of the Wycliffite " Apology for the Lol
iards," written about A. D. 1375, in which there is
the Anglo-Saxon preterite strake, of strike : —

" Sin Jeshu was temptid, he overcam hunger in desert, he
despicid auarice in the hille, he strak ageyn veynglorie upon the
temple , that he schew to us that he that may ageynsey his womb
[i.e., den)' his belly], and despice the goodis of this world and
desire not veynglorie, he howith [/. e., oweth, ought] to be maad
Christ's vicar."

Although new verbs take the weak form, the
deprived strong verbs have for two generations
been reclaiming their own preterites. Some of the
latter were nearly lost in the last century, when,
for example, shined for shone, drinked for drank,
strived for strove, catched for caught, tcacked for
taught, and besceched for bcsougjit were common.*
And we have digged for dug, not only in the Bible
and in Shakespeare, but earlier. Now good wri
ters and speakers use the strong form of those
verbs. The fact that some of them, like teach and
catch, belonged in an earlier stage of the language
to a mixed form of conjugation, which combined
he vowel change of the strong with the terminal
inflection of the weak, has no bearing on the ten-
dency in question. It is not impossible that this
restoration may go on. The participle snown will,
" think, surely resume the place to which it has the
lame right zsflozvn and grown have to theirs.

* " If parts allure thee, think hovs Bacon shin'el
The wisest, brightest, meanes' of mankind."

HOPE. Efistlt IV.

124 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

GRATUITOUS. — An affected use of this word has
of late become too common. It is used in the vari-
ous senses, unfounded, unwarranted, unreasonable,
untrue, no one of which can be given to it with
propriety. It is not thus used either by the culti-
vated, or by those who speak plain English in a
plain way, they know not why or how, and who
arc content to call a spade a spade. Gratuitous
means, without payment ; as, for instance, Professor
A. delivered a gratuitous lecture. What meaning
can it have, then, in a sentence like the following?
"The assumption of Senator Fessenden, that a man
who goes into a caucus and acts there is bound
to vote in House or Senate in accordance with the
decis'on of the caucus majority, is wholly gratui-
tous." It is not gratuitous ; it may be unwaranted, in-
tolerable, unreasonable. But this word is supposed
to mean something else, people don't know exactly
what or why, and, therefore, because of this very
ignorance, they use it. For, in language, the
unknown is generally taken for the magnificent.
True, dictionaries are found in which gratuitous is
defined as meaning " asserted without proof or rea-
son." But in a moment's reflection any intelligent
person will see \.\\ak gratuitous cannot mean asserted,
in any manner. Dictionaries have come to be, in
too many cases, the pernicious record of unreasona-
ble, unwarranted, and fleeting usage.

GROW is even more perverted than get is, in
vulgar use, although the misapplications of it are
not so numerous. It properly means to increase
and expresses either enlargement or development
,t is, on the contrary, widely used in the sense o

MISUSED WORDS. 125

oecomc, and even ot diminish. An acorn grows
into an oak, an egg into a bird, a fish, or other ani-
mal. Groiv has therefore normally come to be
used to express a passage from one state to another ;
as, to grow mild, to grow faint, to grow dark. But
what is large cannot be reasonably said to gro*v
smaller: e.g., after the full, the moon grows smaller.
It lessens, diminishes ; the opposite of growth. And
in general even a change of condition is more
accurately expressed by become than by grow.

HEL.P. — I have heard objection made to the use
of this word "in the sense of avoid," which I notice
only because such a criticism is a good example of
a prim, precise treatment of language that would
deprive it of all strength and flexibility. There is
no better English than " I can't help it," which is a
compact and homely way of saying the matter is
beyond my aid. Aufidius, when he is told that
the presence of Coriolanus overshadows him, re-
plies,—

" I cannot help it now,
Unless by using means I lame the foot
Of our design."

But the use of the word in this sense must be much
older than Shakespeare's poetry. It is one of those
quasi idiomatic uses of words (impossible in this
instance in French or Latin, for example) that are
inevitable, that should not be unsettled, that, in-
deed, cannot be helped. There is no surer way to
a weak, poor, artificial style than the sitting in
udgement upon the use of* words and phrases of
spontaneous growth, which a*~e not at variance with
"eason, and which have been used for centuries by

126 WORDS AXD THEIR USES.

all sorts and conditions of men. A man who uses
language as Sampson, the valiant retainer of the
Capulet, bit his thumb, only when he has the law on
his side, will soon come to write like an attorney
drawing a lawpaper.

HELP MEET. — An absurd use of these two
words, as if they together were the name of one thing
— a wife — is too common. They are frequently
printed with a hyphen, as a compound word ; and
there is your man who thinks it at once tender,
respectful, biblical, and humorous to speak of his
wife as his help-meet ; and this merely because in
Genesis we are told that woman was given to man
as a help that was meet, fit, suitable for him. "I
will make him an help meet for him ; " not "I will
make a helpmeet for him." Our biblical friend
might as well call his "partner," his help-fit, or
help-proper. That this protest is not superfluous,
even as regards people of education, may be seen
by the following sentence in a work — and one of
ability, too — on the English language. "Heaven
gave Eve, as a help-meet, to Adam." Here the
hyphen and the change of the preposition from for
to to, leave no doubt as to the nature of the blun-
der, which is lamentable and laughable. And yet
Matthew Harrison, the author of the work in which
it appears, is not only a clergyman of the Church
of England, but Fellow of Queen's College, Oxford.

So a writer of some distinction in "The Galaxy,"
says, that "woman was designed b}' her Creator
to be a helpmeet to man;" and we are told in a.
'ending article in "The Tribune" on Mormon affairs
Ibat "the saints have gone on with their wholesale

MISUSED WORDS. 127

marrying and sealing, and the head prophet has
taken his forty-fifth help-meet."

HUMANITARIAN is very strangely perverted by a
certain class of speakers and writers. It is a theo-
logical word ; and its original meaning is, One who
denies the godhead of Jesus Christ, and insists upon
his human nature. But it is used by the people in
question, whose example has infected ethers, as if
it meant humane, and something more. Now, as
the meaning of humane \s recognizing in a common
humanity a bond of kindness, good will, and good
offices, it is difficult to discover what more humani-
tarian, if admitted in this sense, could mean. In
brief, humane covers the whole ground, and hu-
manitarian, used in the sense of widely-benevolent
and philanthropic, is mere cant, the result of an
effort by certain people to elevate and to appropri-
ate to themselves a common feeling by giving it a
grand and peculiar name. Mr. Gladstone uses this
word correctly in the following passage, in which
he is speaking of the Olympian system of theo-
mythology set forth by Homer.

" Homer reflected upon his Olympos the ideas, passions, and
appetites known to us all, with such a force thac they became
with him the paramount power in the construction of the Greek
religion. This humanitarian element gradually subdued to
. *self all that it found in Greece of traditions already recognized,
* aether primitive or modern, whether Hellenic, Pelasgian, or
l jieign." — Juventus Mundi, C\ ap. VII. p. 181.

ICE-WATER, ICE-CREAM. — By mere carelessness
}n enunciation these compound words have come
to be used for iccd-ivatcr and iccd-crcam — most
incorrectly and with a real confusion of language,
if not of thought. For what is called ice-water ia

<28 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

not made from ice, but is simply water iced, that
is, made cold by ice ; and ice-water might be warm,
as snow-water often is. Ice-cream is unknown.

INAUGURATE is a word which might better be
eschewed by all those who do not wish to talk
high-flying nonsense, else they will find themselves
led by bad examples into using it in the sense of
begin, open, set up, establish. The Latin word,
of which it is merely an Anglicized form, meant to
take omens from the flight of birds and the inspection
of their entrails and those of beasts, and hence was
applied to the occasions at which such omens were
chiefly sought. To inaugurate is to receive or in-
duct into office with solemn ceremonies. The occa-
sions are very few in regard to which it may be
used with propriety. But we shall read ere long
of cooks inaugurating the preparation of a dinner,
and old Irish women inaugurating a peanut stand ;
as well these as inaugurating, instead of opening, a
ball, or inaugurating, instead of setting up, or estab-
lishing, a business. Howells affords the following
good example of the figurative use of the word :
"To inaugurate a good and jovial year, I send you
a morning's draught, viz., a bottle of metheglin." —
Letters i IV. 41.

INITIATE is one of the long, pretentious words
that are coming into vogue among those who would
be fine. It means begin ; no more, no less. It may
be more elegant to say, The kettle took the initiative,
than to use the homelier phrase to which our ears
have been accustomed ; but I have not been able to
make the discovery. And I may as well here de-
spatch a rabble of such words, alJ of kindred origic

MISUSED WORDS. 129

Bnd pretentious seeming. Unless a man is a crown
prince, or other important public functionary, it is
well for him to have a house and a home, where he
lives, not a place of residence, where he resides.
From this let him and his household go to church
or to meeting, if they like to do so ; but let not the
inmates proceed to the sancttiary. And if, being
able and willing to do good, he gives something to
the parson for the needy, let him send his cheque,
and not transmit it. Let him oversee his household
and his business, not supervise them. Let him re-
ject, disown, refuse, or condemn what he does not
like, but not repudiate it, unless he expects to cause
shame, or to suffer it, in consequence of his action ;
and what he likes let him like or approve or uphold,
but not indorse; and, indeed, as to indorsing, lei
him do as little of that as possible. I have come fronr
pretension into the shop, and, therefore, I add, that
if he is informed upon a subject, has learned all
about it, knows it, and understands it, let him say
so, not that he is -well posted on it. He will say
tvhat he means, simply, clearly, and forcibly, rather
than pretentiously, vulgarly, and feebly. It is note-
worthy and significant that the man who will say
that he is posted up on this or that subject, is the
very one who will use such a foolish, useless, preten-
tious word as recuperate, instead of recover. Thus
the Washington correspondent of a leading journal
wrote that General Grant and Mr. Speaker Colfax
expected to start for Colorado on the first of July,
and that their trip is "for the sole purpose of re-
cuperating their health." If the writer had omitted
five of the eight woids which he used to express the

I3O WORDS AND THEIR USES.

purpose of the travellers, and said the trip is "for
health only/' his sentence would have been bettered
inversely as the square of the number of words
omitted. But it will not do to be so very exacting
as to ask people not to use many more words than
are necessary, and so all that can be reasonably
hoped for is, that recuperate may be shown to the
door by those who have been weak enough to admit
him. He is a mere pompous impostor. At most
and best, recuperate means recover ; not a jot more
or less. Recover came to us English through our
Norman-French kinsfolk, and sometime conquerors.
It is merely their recouvrer domesticated in our
household. They £Ot it from the Latin recuperare.
But why we should go to that word to make another
from it, which is simply a travesty of recover, passes
reasonable understanding. But I must have done
with such minute and particular criticism of verbal
extravagance, having written thus much only by
way of suggestion, remonstrance, and illustration.
It would be well if all such words as those of which
I have just treated could be gathered under one
head, to be struck off at a blow by those who would
like to execute justice on them.

JEW. — A noteworthy objection has been made
of late years by Jews to the common use of this
designation. I remember two instances, in one of
which the "Pall Mall Gazette" of London, and in
the other the "New York Times," was taken to
task for mentioning that certain criminals were
Jews. In each case the same question was asked,
in effect if not in words, Would you speak of the
arrest of two Episcopalians, a Puseyite, three Presby-

MISUSED WORDS.

terians, and a Baptist? and in each case there was
an apology made, and a promise given that the
"offence" should not be repeated. What offence
could be reasonably taken at this designation, it
would be difficult to discover. The Jews are a
peculiar people, who, in virtue of that strongly-
marked and exclusive nationality which they so
religiously cherish, have outlived the Pharaohs who
oppressed them, and who seem likely to outlive the
Pyramids on which they labored. And when they
are mentioned as Jews, no allusion is meant or made
to their faith, but to their race. A parallel case to
those complained of would be the saying that a
Frenchman or a Spaniard had committed a ciime,
at which no offence is ever taken. A Jew is a Jew,
whether he holds to the faith of his fathers or leaves
it for that of Christ or of Mohammed. The complaint
rests on a confusion of the distinctions of race with
those of religion, owing to the fact that in this case the
boundaries of the race and the religion are almost
identical. But it is none the less confusion.

JEWELRY, as applied to trinkets and precious
Stones, means, properly, jewels in general, not any
particular jewels. Its use in the latter sense is of
very low caste. Think of Cornelia pointing to the
Gracchi and saying, " These are my jewelry ; " or
read thus a grand passage in the last of the Hebrew
prophets : " And they shall be mine, said the Lord
ol Hosts, in that day when I make up n\y jewelry ! *
The word is of very late introduction, not being in
Shakespeare, the Bible, Milton, or Johnson's Dic-
tionary. Richardson's earliest authority for it is
Burke, who speaks of "the jewelry and eroods of

132 WORDS AND THLIR USES.

India," where the two nouns are happily conjoined
For jewelry, like goods, is a general and somewhat
abstract term ; and the frequent misapplication of
the former to particular articles of ornament is akin
to that of the latter to particular articles of dress,
which is pointed out on page 143. So Burke mi^hi
well have spoken of the spicery of India, but of the
spices, not the spicery, in a pudding. Jewelry is
the most important department at Tiffany's, but the
necklace, brooch, and earrings that a lady is wear-
ing are not her jewelry, but her jewels. In brief,
such words as spice and spicery, jewels and jewelry
are not synonymes. They distinguish the particu
lar from the general.

The termination ry, ary, or cry is of heteroge-
neous origin and of various and not easily deter-
minable meaning. But neither its history nor its
meaning is to our present purpose ; and of the
words which have this ending we are concerned
only with a class of about fifty nouns which express
primarily place, or condition, which is moral place.
Such are belfry, library, bakery, slavery, beggary and
the like. To this class jewelry belongs in one of
its senses, which may be that in which it was first
used. For the same or a similar difference obtains
between jewelry, jewels in general, and jewelry, a
place for jewels, that there is between surgery, an
art, and surgery, a place where the art is practised •
'battery, the act of battering, and battery, a collec-
tion of battering engines ; gentry, the condition of
gentleness in blood, and gentry, those who are ir,
that condition ; poultry, fowls in general, &R& poultry,
the place where fowls are kept or sold. In which

MISUSED WORDS. 133

sense jewelry was first used is not known ; but as
pastry, confectionery, and shrubbery were first used
r.o express the place, the locus in quo of paste, con-
fections, and shrubs, a like origin of jewelry is
probable. This supposition receives support from
the fact that the old French \vordjoyazitrie was de-
fined by Cotgrave, A. D. 1611, only as ''the trade
and mystery of jewelling." As jewelry is but an
Anglicised form tfjoyaulrie, it seems likely that the
former was brought in by the jewellers themselvos ;
and that when written shop-signs took the place of
symbols,yVsw/rj/ was so used, meaning at first the
art and mystery (as such words on signs do often
now-a-days), but afterward by natural transition, a
place where the art was practised and its produc-
tions were stored. Thence the transition would
be natural to the meaning, a miscellaneous collec-
tion of such productions, or jewels in general,
which, and not particular jewels, seems clearly
to be its proper meaning. So we wear and use
arms; but a place where arms are kept, and a
collection of arms or arms in general, we call
an armory.

KINSMAN. — For this hearty English word, full
of manhood and warm blood, elegant people have
forced upon us two very vague, misty substitutes —
relation and connection. By the use of the latter
words in place of the former, nothing is gained and
much is lost. Both of them are very general terms.
Men have relations of various kinds, and connec-
tions are of still wider distribution. Even in regard
to family and friends, it is impossible to give these
words exactness of meaning; whereas a man's kin,

134 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

his kinsmen, are only those of his own blood. His
cousin is his kinsr jan, but his brother-in-law is not.
Yet relation is made to express both connections,
one of blood, and the other of law. In losing kins-
'/nan we lose also his frank, sweet-lipped sister,
kinswoman, and are obliged to give her place to
that poor, mealy-mouthed, ill-made-up Latin inter-
loper, female relation.

LEAVE. — This verb is very commonly ill used
by being left without an object. Thus : Jones left
this morning ; I shall leave this evening. Left
what? shall leave what? Not the morning or the
evening, but home, town, or country. When this
verb is used, the mention of the place referred to
is absolutely necessary. To wind up a story with,
" Then he left," is as bad as to say, then he sloped —
worse, for sloped is recognized slang.

LIE, LAY. — There is the same difference between
these two verbs that there is between sit and set.
The difficulty which many persons find in using
them correctly will be removed by remembering
that lay means transitive action, and lie, rest. This
difference bztween the words existed in the Anglo-
Saxon stage of our language ; lay being merely the
modern form of lecgan^ to put down, to cause to
lie down, and so, to kill, — in Latin, defonere, occi-
derc, — and lie the modern form of licgan* to
extend along, to repose — in Latin, occumbcrc. Lie
is rarely used instead of lay, but the latter is often
incorrectly substituted for the former. Many per-
sons will say, I was laying (lying) down for a nap
very few, She was lying (laying) down her shawl
or, He was lying down the law. The frequent con-

MISUSED WORDS.

fusion of the two verbs in this respect is strange ; for
almost every one of us heard them rightly used from
the time when he lay at his mother's breast and until
he outgrew the sweet privilege of lying in the twi-
light and hearing her voice mingle with his fading
consciousness.

" Hush, my babe, lie still and slumber."
" Now I lay me down to sleep."

The tendency to the confusion of the two verbs
may be partly due to the fact that the preterite of
lie is lay.

" In the slumbers of midnight the sailor boy lay ; "

and that this expression of the most perfect rest is
identical in sound with the expression of the most
violent action.

" Lay on, Macduff,
And damn'd be he who first cries, Hold, enough ! "

Even Byron uses lay incorrectly in " Childe Harold."
" And dashest him again to earth — there let him lay."

The keeping in mind the distinction that lay ex-
presses transitive action, and lie rest, as is shown
in the following examples, will prevent all confusion
of the two : —

I lay myself upon the bed (action). I lie upon
the bed (rest).

I laid myself upon the bed (action). I lay upon
die bed (rest).

I have laid myself upon the bed (action). I
have lain upon the bed (rest).

A hen lays an egg (action). A ship lies at the
wharf (rest) . The murdered Lincoln lay in state
(rest) ; the people laid the crime upon the rebels
(action).

136 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

The need there is for these remarks could not
be better shewn than by the following ludicrous pas-
sages in the Rules of the Senate and the Rules of the
House of Representatives of the United States : —

"When a question is under debate, no motion shall be re-
ceived but to adjourn, to lie on the table, to postpone indefinite-
Ij," &c. — Senate Rule II.

" When a question is under debate, no motion shall be received
but to adjourn, to lie on the table, for the previous question," &c.
— House Rule 42.

And so it is all through the Manual. Now, con-
sidering the condition in which honorable gentlemen
sometimes appear on the floor, if the rule had been
"no motion shall be received but to lie under the
table," the Manual would, in this respect, have been
beyond censure. * The correct uses of lie and lay
are finely discriminated in the following passages
from the Book of Ruth, one of the most beau-
tiful and carefully written in our translation of the
Bible: —

" And it shall be that when he lietk down, that thou shalt mark
the place where he shall lie ; and thou shalt go in and uncover
his feet and lay thee down. And when Boaz had eaten and
t'runk, and his heart was merry, he went to lie down at the end
of the heap of corn, and she came softly and uncovered his feet
and laid her down. . . . and behold a woman lay at his feet.
. . . lie down until the morning. And she lay at his feet
>ntil the morning." — Chap. III. 4, 7, 13, 14.

LIKE, As. — The confusion of these two words,
which are of like meaning, but have different func-
tions, produces obscurity in the writing even of men
who have been well educated. Of this I find an
instructive and characteristic example in a London
f.aper of high standing — "The Spectator." In an
article supporting a remonstrance of the Londot

MISUSED WORDS. 137

gas-stokers against being compelled to work twelve
hours a day for seven days of the week before huge
fires in a temperature often of one hundred and eighty
degrees, the writer, deprecating a strike by the
stokers, goes on to say, "The Directors could fill
their places in three hours from the docks alone;
but that does not give them a right to use up English-
men like Cuban planters." But how have directors
of British gas companies the right to use up Cuban
planters? and how could they use up Cuban plant-
ers? There are no answers to these inevitable
questions, and the sentence as it stands is sheer
nonsense. But a little thought discovers that what
the writer meant to say was, that the directors had
no right to use up Englishmen as Cuban planters
use up negroes. His meaningless sentence was the
result of the confusion of like and as, which is com-
mon with careless speakers. Thus, for instance,
He don't do it like you do, instead of as you do.
Like and as both express similarity, but the former
compares things, the latter action or existence. We
may say correctly, John is like James, and may
express the same opinion by saying that John is such
«. man as James is. We may say, A's speech is like
B's, or, A speaks as B does; but not A's speech is
&s B's, or, A speaks like B does. When as is cor-
rectly used, a verb is expressed or understood. The
woman is as tall as the man, i. e., as the man is.
With like, a verb is neither expressed nor under-
stood. He does his work like a man ; not, like a
man works.

LOAN is not a verb, but a noun. A loan is the
i.mpleted act of lending, 01 is t'le thing lent. The

138 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

Ivord is the past participle of the Anglo-Saxon verb
laiian, to lend, and therefore of course means lent.
It may sound larger to some people to say that they
loaned than that they lent a thousand dollars —
more as if the loan were an important transaction ;
but that can be only because they are either ignorant
Or snobbish.

LOCATE is a common Americanism, insufferable
to ears at all sensitive. If a gentleman chooses to
say, "I guess I shall locate in Muzzouruh," meaning
that he thinks he shall settle in Missouri, he has,
doubtless, the right, as a free and independent citizen
of the United States, to say so. Certainly locate
and Muzzouruh should be. left together ; each in fit
company. Locate is simply a big word for -place
or settle ; and a man for whom those words are not
ample enough, may correctly speak of locating him-
self, his family, or his business here or elsewhere.
But locate without an object is suited to the use of
those only who are too ignorant and too restless to
settle anywhere.

LOVE and LIKE are now confused by many speak-
ers, and even by some writers of education and
repute. Love is often used for like ; the latter not
so often for the former. Both words express a pleas-
are in and a desire for the object to which they
are applied ; but love expresses this and something
more — a devotion to it, an absorption in it, a readi-
ness for sacrifice to obtain or to serve the beloved
object. A man loves his children, his mother, his
wife, his mistress, the truth, his country. But some
men speak of loving green peas or apple pie,
meaning that they have a liking for them. The dis-

MISUSED WORDS. 139

tinction between the two words existed in the An-
glo-Saxon stage of our language, and is one of great
value, as it enables us to discriminate between a
higher and lower preference, which differ in kind as
well as in degree. It gives us an advantage over
the French, for instance, who are obliged to use the
same word to express their affection for La France
and for meringues d la creme. We shall have
deteriorated, as well as our language, when we no
longer distinguish our liking from our loving.

MANUFACTURER is another one of the big words
that are now applied to little things. The village
shoemaker is disappearing, and shoes are made by
the hundred — not nearly so well as he used to make
them — by machinery in large factories, which have
come to be called manufactories, although man-
ufacture is making by the hand. But although boots
are going out of fashion, one does not see a little
shoe-shop without the sign Boot Manufactory, and
the condescending announcement, Repairing done
with despatch — meaning that there shoes are made
and mended. It would be well, on the score of
comfort as well as of taste, if there were a little more
of the old skill in the gentle craft, and a little less
magniloquence. But all this is a concomitant of
"progress," and may be borne with equanimity
if the boot-manufacturer and repairer is a worthier
and a happier man than the old shoemaker and
mender.

MARRY. — There has been not a little discussion
as to the use of this word, chiefly in regard to pub-
lic announcements of marriage. The usual mode
of making the announcement is — Married, John

WORDS AND THEIR USES.

Smith to Mary Jones. Some people having been
dissatisfied with this form, we have seen, of late
years, in certain quarters — Married, John Smith
with Mary Jones ; and in others — John Smith and
Mary Jones. I have no hesitation in saying that
all of these forms are incorrect. We know, indeed,
what is meant by any one of them ; but the same is
true of hundreds and thousands of erroneous uses of
language. ^Properly speaking, a man is not mar-
ried to a woman, or married with her ; nor are a
man and a woman married with each other. The
woman is married to the man. It is her name that
is lost in his, not his in hers ; she becomes a mem-
ber of his family, not he of hers ; it is her life that
is merged, or supposed to be merged, in his, not his
in hers ; she follows his fortunes, and takes his sta-
tion, not he hers. And thus, manifestly, she has
been attached to him by a legal bond, not he to her ;
except, indeed, as all attachment is necessarily mu-
tual. But, nevertheless, we do not speak of tying
a ship to a boat, but a boat to a ship. And so long,
at least, as man is the larger, the stronger, the more
individually important, as long as woman generally
lives in her husband's house and bears his name, —
still more should she not bear his name, — it is the
woman who is married to the manTj " Nubo : viro
(rador: to be married to a man. For it is in
the woman's part only." Lilly's Grammar. — In
speaking of the ceremony it is proper to say that he
married her (dux it in matrimonio}, and not that
she married him, but that she was married to him
and the proper form of announcement is — Married,
Mary Jones to John Smith. The etymology of the

MISUSED WORDS. 14!

word agrees entirely with the conditions of the act
which it expresses. To marry is to give, or to be
given, to a husband, mart.

MILITATE is rarely misused, except that any use
of it is misuse, and it belongs rather among words
which are not words. It does not appear in John-
son's Dictionary, and it is of comparatively recent
introduction. But it must have been creeping into
newspaper use in Johnson's day, as it occurs in the
following sentence of a passage quoted in the " Pall
Mall Gazette," from the " St. James's Chronicle," of
more than ninety years ago : —

" On Saturday, the Exhibition of the Royal Academy was
opened for the first time, at the great room in Pall Mall. We
are sorry to observe that though this institution has successfully
militated against all others, and nearly swallowed them up, it
seems to be on the decline."

What could be more absurd than the making of
the Latin milito into an English word to take the
place of oppose, contend, be at variance with, as,
for instance, in the following extract from a report
of the murder of a young lady in Virginia : —

"It was at first supposed that the lady had been thrown from
er horse, and killed by being dragged along the ground. Sev-
tral circumstances, however, militate against this suppoeition."

The absurdity is the greater because it is usually
a supposition, or a theory, or something quite as
incorporeal, that is militated against. The use of
mis word is, however, not a question of right or
wrong, but one of taste. It belongs to a bad family,
of which are necessitate, ratiocinate, effectuate, and
tventuatc, which, with their substantives, — neccssi-
tation, ratiocination, effectuation, and eventuation
( v/hich must be received with their parent verbs) , - •

142 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

should not be recognized as members of good Eng-
lish society. It is well in keeping for negro min-
strels, in announcing their performances, to say,
" The felicity will eventuate every evening."

OBNOXIOUS. — «- It were well if this word had
stopped short of its last deflected meaning. An
Anglicized form of the Latin obnoxius, its root is
(he verb nocco, to harm, hence noxius, harmful, and
therefore obnoxious means, liable or exposed to
harm. Until the close of the last century it was used
in this sense only, as may be seen by reference to
Richardson's Dictionary. Milton wrote in "Sam-
son Agonistes " w obnoxious more to all the miseries
of life," and Dr. Armstrong, in his "Art of Preserv-
ing Health," "to change obnoxious." But as a
person who is obnoxious to punishment is supposed
to be blameable, and as we affect that a blameable
person is an offensive one, it has come to be used
in the sense of offensive, particularly by those who
do not know exactly what it does mean. We do
not need both offensive and obnoxious, with but one
meaning between them ; but perhaps it is too much
to hope that we may retain both, and restore to
obnoxious its proper and useful signification.

OBSERVE. — This word, the primary meaning of
which is to keep carefully, and hence to heed, has
by an orderly and consistent deflection, come to
mean also to keep in view, to follow with respect and
deference, e.g., "and let thine eyes observe my
ways," and to fulfil and attend to with religious care,
as to observe one's duties, to observe the Sabbath.
But it is frequently used as a mere synonyme of say
This sense i.s not a derived or deflected sense, bul

MISUSED WORDS. 143

un extraneous one imposed upon the word by loose
usage. It is reached by uniting to the sense of
heeding or remarking, that of expressing what is
remarked, and then dropping the essential meaning
of the word in favor of that which has been im-
posed upon it. Used to mean heed, take note of,
keep in view, follow, attend to, fulfil, it does good
service. But in the sense of say, as, I observed to
him so and so, for, I said so and so to him, or,
What did you observe? for, What did you say? it
might better be left to people who must be very
elegant and exquisite in their speaking.

PARTIALLY is often used, and by educated peo-
ple, for partly. Even Mr. Swinburne says, in his
interesting but somewhat strained and overwrought

O O

book on William Blake, " If this view of the poem
be wholly or partially correct." But partially, the
adverb of partial, means with unjust or unreasona-
ble bias. A view cannot be both correct and partial.
When anything is done in part, it is partly, not
partially, done. Both words are from one root;
but to confuse the two is to deprive us of the use
of one.

PARTOOK. — Say, that you ate your breakfast or
your dinner, not that you partook of some rolls and
butter and coffee, or of beef and pudding. Although,
if you are at breakfast when a friend comes in, you
may ask him, if you like the phrase, to sit down
and partake of it, i. c., take a part of it, share it
with you.

PARTY, ARTICLE, GOODS. — These shop words
should, in their shop sense, be left in the shop.
Mr. Bullions :.n making a contract or going into

144 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

an " operation," is a party ; but in his house or yours
he is a person. Mrs. Bullions's Sevres vase, being
on her cabinet, is no longer an elegant article, but
a vase, more or less beautiful ; and the material of
her gown, having been honored by her possession,
and shaped by her figure, is no longer goodse Mr.
Sheldon's books, Mr. Low's tea, Mr. Stewart's silk*
are their goods ; but we neither read goods, nor
drink goods; how, then, do we wear goods? Yet
some people, and even women of some cultivation, —
they who so rarely err in language, — will speak of
the materials of their garments as goods. Goods
means articles of personal property, regarded as
property, not as personal appendages. Houses and
lands are good, but not goods ; nor are ships ; but
the cotton and the corn in the ships are goods : a
stock in trade is goods ; but a man's household gods
are not his goods until he puts them into the market.
And so Mrs. Bullions, when she is sold out, maj
rightly enumerate her gown among her goods, and
her Sevres vase among her " articles of bigotry and
virtue."

PATRON. — If you are in retail trade, don't call
your customers your patrons, and send them circu-
lars asking for a continuance of their patronage ;
unless you mean to say that they buy of you, not
because they need what you have to sell, but merely
to give you money, and that you are a dependant
upon their favor. There is patronage in this coun-
try, both within and without the administration of
government ; and it does not imply loss of inde-
pendence on the one side or arrogance on the other
but it does not consist in buying what one needs fo*
Dne's own comfort or pleasure.

MISUSED WORDS. 145

PELL-MELL. — This word or phrase implies a
crowd and confusion (Fr. melee), and should
never be applied, as it is by some speakers and
some writers for the press, to an individual ; as, for
instance, in this sentence from a first-rate newspa-
per : " I rushed pell-mell out of the theatre." The
writer might as well have said that he rushed out
promiscuously, or that he marched out by platoons.

PERSUADED. — The use of this participle in the
sense of convinced, cannot, I think, be justly con-
demned as vulgar or a solecism. The best usage
is too strongly in its favor. w All the people will
stone us, for they be persuaded that John was a
prophet." Luke xx. 6. " I am persuaded that none
of these things were hidden from him ; for this thing
was not done in a corner." Acts xxvi. 26. "This
is the monkey's own giving out. She is persuaded
I will marry her out of her own love and flattery,
not out of my promise." Othello iv. i. Neverthe-
less its use in this sense is a loss to the language.
It deprives us of a word which expresses the result
of influences gentler than those that produce convic-
tion. A man is sometimes persuaded to act against
his conviction. The root of the Latin word suadco,
from which the verb -persuade is derived, has in it
a suggestion of sweetness (suavis, sweet), hinting
gentleness and allurement. Suavium means a
sweet mouth, and so, a kiss. Women persuade
when they cannot convince. It would be well if
this tender and delicate sense of the word could be
preserved.

PORTION is commonly nrsused in the sense of
fart. For instance, * A large portion of Bread
10

t^6 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

way is impassable for carriages, on account of the
snow and ice." A correct speaker would say, w A
large part of Broadway," etc. A portion is a part
set aside for a special purpose, or to be considered
by itself.

PREDICATE. — Should I express to my own satis-
faction the feeling which the frequent misuse of this
word by people who use it because they do not know
its meaning, excites in the bosoms of those who do
know, and who, therefore, use it rarely, I might
provoke a smile from my readers, and I certainly
should smile at myself. If there is one verbal of-
fence which more than any other justifies an open
expression of contempt, it is when an honorable
gentleman rises in his place and asks whether the
honorable body of which he is a member "intends
to predicate any action upon the statement of the
honorable gentleman who has just sat down ; " what
he wishes to know being, if they mean to do any-
thing or to take any steps about it, or found any action
upon it. And so a well-known member of Con-
gress addessed a letter to the New York " Times "
in which he said, "You predicate an editorial on
a wrong report of my speech in Brooklyn." Yet,
perhaps, such a man does not forfeit all the consid-
eration due to a vertebrate animal. Predicate means
primarily to speak before, and, hence, to bear wit-
ness, to affirm, to declare. So the Germans call
their clergymen predicants, because they bear wit-
ness to and declare the gospel. But in English,
predicate is a technical word used by grammarians
to express that element of the sentence which affirms
sninothing of the subject, or (as a noun) that

MISUSED WORDS. 147

is affirmed. And thus action may be predicated of
a body or an individual ; but action predicated by a
body upon circumstances or statements, is simple
absurdity. Those persons for whom this distin;1iun
is too subtle had better confine themselves to plain
English, and ask, What are you going to do about
it? — language good enough for a chief justice or
a prime minister.

PRESENT. — The use of this word for introduce
is an affectation. Persons of a certain rank in Eu-
rope are presented at court ; and the craving of
every item of the sovereign people of this demo-
cratic republic to be presented at the Tuileries
affords one of the greatest charms of the life of
our minister resident near that court, and is the
chief solace of his diplomatic labors. In France,
every person, in being made acquainted with an-
other, is presented, the French language not having
made the distinction which is made in England be-
tween present and introduce. We present foreign
ministers to the President ; we introduce, or should
introduce, our friends to each other. We intro-
duce the younger to the older, the person of lower
position to the person of higher, the gentleman to
the lady — not the older to the younger — the lady
to the gentleman. Yet some ladies will speak of
being introduced to such and such a gentleman. Is
his a revolutionary intimation that they set nothing
by the deference which man in his strength and mas-
tery and sexual independence pays to their weak-
ness, their charms, and their actual or probable
motherhood ?

QUITE means completely, entirely, in a finished

148 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

manner. It is from the French quitte, discharged,
and is akin to quits, the word used by players ol"
games to mean that they are even with each other.
Therefore the common phrase, miscalled an Amer-
icanism, quite a number, is unjustifiable. A cup or
a theatre may be quite full ; and there may be quite
a pint in the cup, or quite a thousand people in the
theatre, and neither may be quite full. But nuihber
is indefinite in its signification, and therefore can-
not be properly qualified by quite. Yet Thomas
Hughes, whom we all think of as Tom Brown,
in his letter about the Oxford and Harvard boat
race, spoke of "quite a number of 3'oung Ameri-
cans."

RAILROAD DEPOT is the abominable name usu-
ally given in this country to a railway station. In
England they generally say railway ; but some of
their companies are styled Railroad Companieo. In
America the compound most in use is railroad, but
we have the Erie Railway Company, and others of
like-name. How the difference came about it would
be difficult to discover ; but railway is absolutely
right, and railroad, at least, measurably wrong.
A way is that which guides or directs a course,
or that upon which anything moves or is carried.
Hence, we say that a ship, when she is launched,
glides into the water upon her ways. The ways
upon which a ship is launched are very like those
,vhich guide railway carriages, and which at first
were called tramways. A road is the ground rid-
den over, the land appropriated to travel, and used
as a means of communication between place and
place. A railway is laid upon a road, and the roa<2

MISUSED WORDS. 149

is always somewhat, and generally very much, wider
than the way.- But the calling a way, a road, is a
venial offence compared to that of calling a station
a depot. Every depot is a station, although not in
all cases a passenger or even a freight station ; but
very few stations are depots. A depot is a place
where stores and materials are deposited for sale
keeping. A little lonely shanty, which looks like
a lodge outside a garden of cucumbers, a staging
of a few planks upon which two or three people
stand like criminals on the scaffold — to call such
places depots is the height of pretentious absurd-
ity. But it is not less incorrect to give the same
name to the most imposing building which is used
merely as a stopping place for trains and pas-
sengers. Station means merely a standing, as in
the well-known passage in Hamlet, —

"A station like the herald Mercury
New-lighted on a heaven-kissing hill," —

and a railway station is a railway standing — a place
where trains and passengers stand for each other.
There is no justification whatever for calling such a
place a depot. And to aggravate the offence of so
doing as much as possible, the word is pronounced
in a manner which is of itself an affront to com-
mon sense and good taste — that is, neither day-
pok> as it should be if it is used as a French word,
nor dec-pott, as it should be if it has been adopted
as an English word. With an affectation of French
pronunciation as becoming as a French bonnet 01
French manners to some of those who wear them,
it is called dce-poh, the result being a hybrid Eng

150 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

lish-French monster, which, with the phrase of
which it forms a part, should be put out of existence
with all convenient despatch.

REAL, ESTATE is a compound that has no propei
place in the language of e very-day life, where it la
merely a pretentious intruder from the technical
province of law. Law makes the distinction of real
and personal estate; but a man does not, therefore,
lalk of drawing some personal estate from the bank,
or going to Tiffany's to buy some personal estate for
his wife ; nor, when he has an interest in the na-
tional debt, does he ask how personal estate is sell-
ing. He draws money, buys jewels, asks the price
of bonds. Real estate, as ordinarily used, is a mere
big-sounding, vulgar phrase for houses and land,
and, so used, is a marked and unjustifiable Ameri-
canism. Our papers have columns headed in large
letters, "Real Estate Transactions," the heading
of which should be Sales of Land.

RECOLLECT is used by many persons wrongly for
remember. When we do not remember what we
wish to speak of. we try to re-collect it. Misrec-
ollcct appeared in a leading article in the "Tribune"
not long ago — a word hardly on a par with Biddy's
disremcmber. We either can or cannot recollect
what we do not at once remember. We cannot
recollect amiss, unless it be that we recollect the
facts, but not in their proper order.

RELIGION is constantly used as if it were a
synonyme of -piety, to the obliteration of a very
important distinction in ethics, and the consequent
misleading of many minds. Religion is a bond,
according to which all who acknowledge it assume
the performance of certain duties and rites having

MISUSED WORDS.

relation to a supreme being, or to a future state of
existence, or to both. Piety is that motive of human
action which has its spring in the desire to do good,
in the reverence for what is good, and in the spon-
taneous respect for the claims of kindred or grati-
tude. There are many religions : there is but one
piety. Judaism is a religion ; Mohammedanism is 3
religion ; Christianity has become a religion, with-
in which are three religions, the Roman, the Greek,
and the Protestant. And as to which of all these is
the true religion, very different views are honestly
held by Jews, Mohammedans, Roman Catholics,
and Protestants, all of whom may be pious with the
same piety. Socrates inculcated piety ; but when,
on his death-bed, with his last breath, he reminded
his friend to sacrifice a cock toyEsculapius, he con-
formed to the rites of a religion for attempting to un-
dermine which he was put to death. When Christ
kept the Passover, he conformed to a right of
Judaism into which he had been born and in which
he had been bred. But he was put to death by the
priests and the Pharisees chiefly because he taught
the needlessness of that very religion. The Ser-
mon in the Mount teaches not religion, but piety.

REMIT. — Why should this word be thrust contin-
ually into the place of send? In its proper sense, to
send back, and hence to relax, to relinquish, to sur-
render, to forgive, it is a useful and respectable
word ; but why one man should say to another, I will
remit you the money, instead of, I will send you the
money, it \vould be difficult to say, did we not so
frequently see the propensity of people to use a big
Hrord of which they do not know the meaning ex-
actly, in preference to a small one that thev have

152 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

understood from childhood. This leads people,
in the present instance, to speak even of sending
remittances; than which it would be hard to find an
absurder phrase. But it sounds, they think, much
finer to say, My correspondents have not sent the
remittances I expected, instead of, My friends have
not sent me the money I looked for.

RESTIVE means standing stubbornly still, not
frisky, as some people seem to think it does. A
restive horse is a horse that balks ; but horses that
are restless are frequently called restive. Restive-
ness, however, is one sign of rebellion in horses.
Thus Dryden (quoted by Johnson) : —

"The pampered colt will discipline disdain,
Impatient of the lash, and restiff to the rein."

Hence a misapprehension, by which those who did
not understand the word, were led to a complete
reversion of meaning.

REVEREND and HONORABLE. — The editor of a
western newspaper has asked me the following
question: "In speaking of a clergyman — not a
Catholic or an Episcopalian — is it proper to say
the Rev. John Jones, for instance, or, simply, Rev.
John Jones? If it is proper to say the Rev. John
Jones, why is it not proper to say the Captain Tom
Robinson, or the General Robert Smith?"

The article is absolutely required. The sect to
which the clergyman belongs does not affect the ques-
tion. Between Reverend and Captain or General
there is no analogy. The latter are names of oflices ;
they are titles pertaining of right to the persons who
hold those oflices. Reverend is not the name of an
office, nor is it a title, and it belongs to no one of

MISUSED WORDS. 153

right. Clergymen are styled Reverend by a cour-
tesy which supposes that every man set apart fol
his special sanctity and wisdom as an example, a
guide, and an instructor, is worthy of reverence.
So members of Congress are styled Honorable, but
by mere courtesy. But in Congress does a member
ever rise and say, " I heartily agree with the views

which honorable gentleman from has just laid

before the House.' Honorable gentleman could not
have presented them with greater force or clear-
ness " ? The most unlettered and careless speaker
in the House of Representatives would say the
honorable gentleman. Honorable and Reverend
are not even courtesy titles ; they are adjectives,
mere epithets applied at first (the one to men of
importance, and the other to clergymen) with
special meaning, but afterward from custom only.
The impropriety of omitting the article can be
clearly shown by a transposition of the epithet and
the name, which does not affect the sense. For
instance, Henry Ward Beecher, the Reverend ;
Charles Sumner, the Honorable ; not Henry Ward
Beecher, Reverend ; Charles Sumner, Honorable.
But the transposition which has this effect in the
case of epithets has none in that of official titles ;
thus : Winfield Hancock, Major-General, Samuel
Nelson, Judge, which, indeed, are very common
modes of writing such names and titles. The omis-
sion of the article has been the cause of a misappre-
hension on the part of many persons as to the name
of the ecclesiastical historian to whom we owe so
much of our knowledge of our Anglo-Saxon fore-
fathers in England. He was styled by his succes-

154 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

sors the Venerable Bede ; but this having been
written in Latin Venerabilis Beda, he has often
been mentioned by British writers as Venerable
Bede, which some readers have taken, as a whole,
for his name. (I have more than once heard the
question mooted among intelligent people.) He
\vas merely called Bede, the venerable ; but the
Latin has no article ; and hence the mistake of call-
ing him Venerable Bede. We may correctly speak
of a distinguished prelate who recently died as
Bishop Hopkins, as the Right Reverend Bishop
Hopkins, or as the Right Reverend John Henry
Hopkins, Bishop (not the Bishop) "of Vermont.
But if we speak of the officer without mention of
the individual, even although we give the courtesy
epithet, we should use the article before the title,
as, the Right Reverend the Bishop of Vermont;
and so, in speaking of a military officer by name,
the article is not admissible ; but if we speak of the
officer without mentioning the name, the article is
required : thus, Major-General Meade, Command-
ing-in-Chief, but, the Major-General Commanding-
in-Chief.

SAMPLE ROOM. — This confluent eruption has
appeared on sign-boards all over New York during
the last few years. Thus used, it means, not a
room in which samples are displayed, but simply a
place at which spirits and beer may be drunk at
a bar, and is the fruit of a nauseous attempt to
sweeten bar-room, ale-house, and tavern. Its his-
tory is a very disgusting one. It first appeared in
small, shame-faced letters over the doors of par
Litions put up across the back part of certain so

MISUSED WORDS. 153

called wholesale wine and liquor stores ; and it told
of men sponging up liquor by samples until it
became necessary to say that if they " sampled "
hey must pay ; and then of the self-styled whole-
sale wine merchant, who was above keeping a
bar, finding that it was profitable as well as gen-
tlemanly to ask acquaintances to " sample " his
liquors ; and of this sham's being kept up until it
became necessary to hide the multitudinous " samp-
lers" and the multifarious "sampling" from the
public and the police by a screen or partition ; and,
finally, of the spread of this " gentlemanly " way of
keeping a tippling house ; so that the very sight of
the word is enough to make one's gorge rise. Very
worthy and well-behaved, and even intelligent, men
do keep bars and taverns ; but if they do, let them
say so. When I see sample-room over a door, I feel
a respect for a bar-room, and as if I could take to my
heart a man who owns that he keeps a grog-shop.

SECTION. — An unpleasant Americanism for
neighborhood, vicinity, quarter, region ; as, for in-
stance, our section, this section of country. It is
western, of course, but has crept eastward against
the tide. It is the result of the division of the un-
occupied lands at the West, for purposes of sale,
into sections based upon parallels of latitude and
longitude. Emigrant parties would buy and settle
upon a quarter-section of land ; and they continued
talking about their section even after they had
homes, and neighborhoods, towns, villages, and
counties ; a fashion which, even with them, should
have had its day, and in which ";hey should not be
irritated.

1 56 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

SIT (one of the verbs a confusion in the use ol
parts of which has previously been remarked upon)
is confounded with another word, set, as most of my
readers well know. The commoner mistakes upon
this point I pass by ; but some prevail among peo-
ple who fancy that they are very exquisite in their
speaking. Most of us have heard and laughed at
the story of the judge who, when counsel spoke of
the setting of the court, took him up with, "No,
brother, the court sits; hens set." But I fear that
some of us have laughed in the wrong place. Hens
do not set ; they sit, as the court does, and frequently
to better purpose. No phrase is more common than
" a setting hen," and none more incorrect. A hen
sits to hatch her eggs, and, therefore, is a sitting
hen. Sit is an active, but an intransitive verb —
a very intransitive verb — for it means to put one's
self in a position of rest. Set is an active, transi-
tive verb — very active and very transitive — for it
means to cause another person or thing to sit. willy-
nilly. A schoolma'am will illustrate the intransitive
verb by sitting down quietly, and then the transitive
by giving a pupil a setting down which is anything
but quiet. This setting down is metaphorical, and
is borrowed from the real, physical setting-down
which children sometimes have, much to their as-
tonishment. The principal parts of one of these
verbs are sit, sat, sitten ; but of the other, the pres-
ent, preterite, and the past participle are in form the
same, set. Many persons forget this, and use sai
as the preterite of set, thus : She sat her pitchei
down upon the ground. But as we read in our
translation of Matthew's Gospel (chap, xxi.), it wai

MISUSED WORDS. 157

prophesied that Christ should come " sitting upon
an ass," and, therefore, his disciples took a colt and
"they set him thereon." On the other hand, some
persons use the preterite of set for that of sit, e.g.,
I went in and set down ; while others have invented
one labor-saving monosyllable for both these hard-
worked verbs. For instance, " I went to meet him
at his office, sharp on time, and sot (sat) down and
waited for him, and sot, and sot, and sot ; and when
he came in, he sot (set) me down that his time was
right, because he'd sot (set) his watch that morning
by the City Hall clock." I have heard the word
thus used by an estimable and not unintelligent mer-
chant. As far as the poultry-yard is concerned, the
hen-wife sets the hen, but the hen sits. The use o.(
the former wt>rd for the latter in this case is so com-
mon, and I have heard it defended so stoutly by
intelligent people, that I shall not only refer to
the dictionaries those of my readers who care to
consult them, but cite the following examples in
point : —

As the partridge sitteth on eggs and hatcheth them not, etc.

Jeremiah, xvii. n. Tr. 1611.

And birds */'/ brooding in the snow.

Love's Labor 's Lost, iv. 3.

Thou from the first

Wast present, and with mighty wings outspread,
Dove-like safst brooding on the vast abyss.
And mad'st it pregnant.

Paradise Lost, I. 21.

When the nominative in a sentente requiring sit
or set is the subject of the action, the word is set ;
when the nominative is not the subject, the word
is sit ; — a rule which, like most of its kind, is si>-

158 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

perfluous to those who can understand it, and use-
less to those who cannot.

Sit and set, unlike lie and lay, \vhich have the
same relations with each other as the former have,
and are subject to a like confusion, have no tenses
or participles which are the same in form.

There is one peculiarity in the use of the two for-
mer which is worthy of attention. We say that a
man rises and sits ; but that the sun rises and sets.
For this use of set, which has prevailed since Eng-
lish was a language, and from which it would
require an unprecedented boldness to deviate, there
is no good reason. It is quite indefensible. Sets
is no part of the verb sit ; and as to setting, the sun
sets nothing. For we do not mean to say that he
sets himself down — an expression which would not
at all convey our apprehension of the gradual de-
scent and disappearance of the great light of the
world. If either of these words be used, we should,
according to reason and their meaning, say the sun
sits, the sun is sitting.

I had supposed that this application of the verb
set to the sinking of the sun was inexplicable as
well as unjustifiable, when it occurred to me that in
the phrase in question set might be a corruption of
settle. On looking into the matter, I found reason
for believing that my conjecture had hit the mark.
In tracing this corruption, it should be first observed
that the Anglo-Saxon has both the verb sittan (sit)
and settan (set). In coming to us, these words
iiave not changed their signification in the least
they have only lost a termination. Indeed, it is only
the absence or the presence of this termination tha.

MISUSED WORDS. 159

makes them in the one case English, and in the
other Anglo-Saxon. They have been used straight
on, with the same signification by the same race for
at least fifteen hundred years. But when that race
spoke Anglo-Saxon, they said, neither the sun sets
nor the sun sits, but the sun settles, and sometimes
the sun sinks ; and his descent they called not sun-
set or the sun setting, but the sun settling. Thus
the passage in Mark's Gospel, i. 32, which is
given thus in our Bible, "And at even, when the
sun did set, they brought him all that were dis-
eased," etc., appears thus in the Anglo-Saxon ver-
sion, "Sol>lice sa hit was oefen geworden sa sunne
to setle code." That is, Verily when it was even-
ing made when the sun to settle went. In Luke's
account of the same matter our version has "Now
when the sun was setting; but the Anglo-Saxon
"Sof>lice Sa sunne asah" — Verily when the sun
sank down. And the Maeso-Gothic version has
"Miw>anei J>an sagq sunno" — when the sun sagg-
ed, or sank down. In Genesis, xv. 17, "And it
came to pass when the sun went down," we have
again in the Anglo-Saxon version "j?a i?a sunne
code to sctle" — when the sun went to settle; and
in Deuteronomy, xi. 30, "by the way where the sun
goeth down," is in the Anglo-Saxon Bible "be pam
Arege i?e lis to sunnen setlgangc " — by the way
that lieth to the sun settle-going, or settling ; and
vi Psalms, cxiii. 3, "From the rising of the sun
unto the going down of the same " in Anglo-Saxon
" From sunnan uprine os to setlgange " — From sun's
uprising even to settle-going. The word setl in all
these passages, is not a verb, but a noun ; and the

160 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

2xact meaning in each case is that the sun was go
ing seat-ward — toward his seat. All the stronger
therefore, is the conclusion that it is right to say
that the sun sits or takes his seat, and wrong tc
say that he sets: the clear distinction between the
two Anglo-Saxon verbs sittan, to sit, to go down,
and scttan, to place in a seat, to fix, being remem-
bered.

This conclusion receives yet other support from
the facts that, according to Herbert Coleridge's
Glossary, sunrising appears in the English of the
thirteenth century, but sunset is not found, and
that in the passages above cited, and others in which
the same fact is mentioned, the earlier English
versions of the Bible do not use set. Wycliffe's,
made about A. D. 1385, Tyndale's, A. D. 1536,
Coverdale's, A. D. 1535, and the Geneva version
A. D, 1557, have either " when the sun went down,"
or " when the sun was down." It is not until we
reach the Rheim's version, A. D. 1582, that we find
" in the evening, after sunset." But in Thomas
Wilson's "Arte of Rhetorike," A. D. 1567 (first
published in 1553), I find " All men commonly more
rejoice in the sonne rising then thei do in the sonne
setting " (fol. 35, £.). It would therefore seem as
:f the corruption of setle into set had been handed
down through common speech, and perhaps by vul-
gar writers, from* the time when our language
passed from its Anglo-Saxon to its so-called early
Englisn period, but that sunset was not used bv
scholars until the middle of the sixteenth century.

I offer, not dogmatically, but yet with a grea!
degree of confidence, this explanation of our singu

MISUSED WORDS. l6l

lar use of the verb set to express the descent of the
sun to the horizon ; warning my readers at the same
time that the definitions of set in dictionaries, as
meaning to go down, to decline, to finish a course,
all rest upon the presence, or rather the supposed
presence, of this word in the old and .common
phrase sunset, which is really an abbreviation of
sun-settling, the modern form of stinnan-setlgang.
SOCIABLE, SOCIAL. — We are in danger of losing
a fine and valuable distinction between these words.
This is to be deplored, and, if possible, prevented.
The desynonymizing tendency of language enriches
it by producing words adapted to the expression
of various delicate shades of meaning. But the
promiscuous use of two words each of which has a
meaning peculiar to itself, by confounding distinc-
tions impoverishes language, and deprives it at once
of range and of power. The meaning of sociable
is, fitted for society, ready for companionship, quick
to unite with others — generally for pleasure. So-
cial expresses the relations of men in society, com-
munities, or commonwealths. Hence, social sci-
ence. But there is no sociable science, although
some French women are said to make societe an
art. A man who is an authority upon social mat-
ers may be a very unsociable person. Those who
are inclined to like that strange kind of entertain-
ment called a social surprise, the charm of which is
in the going in large bodies to a friend's house
unannounced and unexpected, should at least call
their performance a sociable surprise ; for it must
be the crucial test of the sociability of him to whom
it is administered. It may possibly tend to a pleas-
ii

.'62 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

\.nt sociability among those whose taste it suits; bill
ts social tendency is quite another matter.

SPECIAL is a much overworked word, it being
loosely used to mean great in degree, also peculiar
in kind, for the particular as opposed to the gen-
eral, and for the specific as opposed to the generic.
Sometimes it seems to express a union or resultant
of all these senses. This loose and comprehensive
employment of the word is very old, at least six
hundred years ; and yet it cannot but be regarded
as a reproach to the language. But to point out the
fault is easier than to suggest a remedy, other than
the dropping of the first and third uses, in which
it is at least superfluous.

SPLENDID suffers from indiscriminate use, as
aivftil does, but chiefly on the part of those whom
our grandfathers were wont to call, in collective
compliment, the fair. A man will call some radiant
beauty a splendid woman ; but a man of any culture
will rarely mar the well-deserved compliment of
such an epithet by applying it to any inferior excel-
lence. But with most women nowadays everything
that is satisfactory is splendid. A very charming
one, to whose self the word might have been well
applied, regarded a friend of mine with that look of
personal injury with \vhich women meet minor dis-
appointments from the stronger sex, because he did
not agree, avec effusion , that a hideous little dog
tying in her lap was " perfectly splendid ; " and once
a bright, intelligent being in muslin at my side pred-
icated perfect splendor of a slice of roast beef which
was rapidly disappearing before her, any dazzling
qualities of which seemed to me to be due to her own

MISUSED WORDS. l^

sharp appetite. The sun is splendid, a t ^n of dia-
monds may be splendid, poetry may be metaphori-
cally splendid. But all good poetry is not splendid ;
for instance, Gray's "Elegy." The use of splendid
to express very great excellence is coarse.

STATE is much misused in the sense of say.
State, from status, perfect participle of the Latin
verb meaning to stand, means to set forth the con-
dition under which a person, or a thing, or a cause,
stands. A bankrupt is called upon to state his con-
dition, to make a statement of his affairs. But if a
man merely says a thing, do let us say merely that
he says it.

STORM is misused by many people, who say that
it is storming when they mean merely that it is
raining. A storm is a tumult, a commotion of the
elements ; but rain may fall as gently as mercy.
There are dry storms. Women sometimes storm
in this way ; with little effect, however, except upon
very weak brethren. But the gentle rain from a
fair woman's eyes, few human creatures, not of her
own sex, can resist. A dry storm not unfrequently
passes off in rain. Hence, perhaps, the confusion
of the two words.

TEA is no less or more than tea ; and while we
call strong broth beef-tea, or a decoction of cam-
omile flowers camomile tea, we cannot consistently
laugh at Biddy when she asks whether we will have
lay tay or coffee tay.

TRANSPIRE. — Of all misused words, this verb is
probably the most perverted It is now very com-
monly used for the expression of a mode of action
which it has no relations whatever. Words

164 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

may wander, by courses more or less tortuous, so
far from their original meaning as to make it almost
impossible to follow their traces. An instance of
this, well known to students of language, is the
word buxom, which is simply bow-some or bough-
some, i. e., that which readily bows or yields, like
the boughs of a tree. No longer ago than when
Milton wrote, boughsome, which, asg$ in English
began to lose its guttural sound, — that of the letter
chi in Greek, — came to be written buxom, meant
simply yielding, and was of general application.

" and, this once known, shall soon return,
And bring ye to the place where thou and Death
Shall dwell at ease, and up and down unseen
Wing silently the buxom air." — Paradise Lost, II. 840.

But aided, doubtless, as Dr. Johnson suggests,
by a too liberal construction of the bride's promise in
the old English marriage ceremony, to be " obedi-
ent and buxom in bed and board," it came to be ap-
plied to women who were erroneously thought likely
to be thus yielding ; and hence it now means plump,
rosy, alluring, and is applied only to women who
combine those qualities of figure, face, and expres-
sion. Transpire, however, has passed through no
such gradual modification of meaning. It has not
been modified, but forced. Its common abuse is
due solely to the blunder of persons who used it
although they were ignorant of its meaning, at which
the}'' guessed. Transpire means to breathe through,
and so to pass ofF insensibly. The identical word
exists in French, in which language it is the equiva-
lent of our perspire, which also means to breathe
through, and so to pass off insensibly. The French

MISUSED WORDS. 165

man says, y*ai beaucoup transpir£ — I have much
perspired. In fact, transpire and perspire are
etymologically as nearly perfect synonymes as the
nature of language permits ; the latter, however,
has, by common consent, been set apart in English
to express the passage of a watery secretion through
Ihe skin, while the former is properly used only in
a figurative sense to express the passage of knowl-
edge from a limited circle to publicity. Here follow
examples of the proper, and the only proper or
tolerable use of this word. The first, which is
very characteristic and interesting, is from Hov\-
ell's Letters : —

" It is a true observation that among other effects of affliction,
one is to try a friend ; for those proofs that were made in the
shining, dazzling sunshine are not so clear as those which
breakout and transpire through the dark clouds of adversity." —
I. 6, 55-

The next three, because I have had such frequent
occasion to censure severely the general use of
words in newspapers, I have pleasure in saying, are
from the columns of New York journals.: —

" Who the writer of this pamphlet was, who, four years before
the great uprising in 1848, saw so clearly, and spoke so pointed-
ly, has, to our knowledge, never transpired."

"After twelve o'clock last night it transpired that the Massa-
chusetts delegation had voted unanimously in caucus to present
the name of General Butler for Vice-President."

" It transpired Monday that the ' Boston Daily Advertiser' has
»een recently sold 'to a new company for something less than two
hundred and fifty thousand dollars."

The following very marked and instructive ex-
Ample of the correct use of transpire is — marvellous
to relate — from one of the telegrams of the Associ-
ated Press : —

l66 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

" At a quarter past four o'clock Judge Fisher received a com-
munication from the jury, and he sent a written reply. The
subject of the correspondence has not transpired."

The next is from the London " Times : " —

" The Liberals of Nottingham, England, have selected Lord
Amherley and Mr. Handel Cossham as their candidates. It has
not yet transpired who the conservative candidate will be. The
election, the first after the vote on the Reform bill, will be ot
great importance."

But the same number of the same paper furnishes,
in the report of a speech by a member of Parlia-
ment (I neglected to note by whom), the following
example of the misuse of the word in the sense of
occur, take place. The insurrection in Jamaica
was the subject of discussion.

" So that, notwithstanding that the population of the Island
was 450,000, it was stated that only 1,500 voted for the mem-
bers of the Legislature. The whole thing had culminated
in the horrors and the atrocities which had lately transpired
there, and which he was obliged to believe had thrown discredit
upon the English government and the English character in every
other country in the world."

So I find it said, in a prominent New York news-
oaper, that " the Mexican war transpired in the year
1847." The writer might as well — and, consider-
ing the latitude in which the battles were fought,
might better — have said that the Mexican war
perspired in the year 1847. The most monstrous
perversion of the word that I have ever met with —
than wh'ch it would seem that none could be more
monstrous — is in the following sentences, the first
and second from journals of the highest position
the last from a volume of which tens of thousand
have been sold, and which aspires to the dignity
3! history : —

MISUSED WORDS. 167

"Before this can be finished, years may transpire; indeed, il
may take as long to compete the West Bank Island Hospital as
it has taken to erect the new Court-house."

"The police drill will transpire under shelter to-day in conse-
quence of the moist atmosphere prevailing."

" More than a century was allowed to transpire before (he
Mississippi was revisited by civilized man."

To any person who has in mind the meaning of
Ihe word, the idea of years and centuries and police
drills transpiring, is ridiculous.

There is a very simple test of the correct use of
transpire. If the phrase take place can be substi-
tuted for it, and the intended meaning of the sentence
is preserved, its use is unquestionably wrong ; if the
other colloquial phrase, leak out, can be put in its
place, its use is correct.

This is illustrated in the following sentence : —

"An important cabinet meeting was held to-day; but what
took place did not transpire." *

* The writer of an article in the "Methodist Quarterly Review" thus boldly
advocates the misuse of transpire, anJ flouts those who oppose it : —

" We have no one ivoril to express tlie regular coming into existence of an event.
. . . Now, there is a word which is fresh and clear, which is not very irrevocably ap-
propriated to any other idea, and which by popular healthy instinct is aspiring to occupy
the blank spot. The word is transpire. 'O, no,' exclaim the effeminates, 'that word
must not designate the taking pliice of an event ; it signifies to become knerwn.' It is
if no use to tell these imbeciles that the latter meaning is itself little known, little used,
»nd little needed, while the want it is called to supply is a startling defect in the entire
Qnguage. You may supply reasons, but you cannot supply brains. Your only method
is to use the needed word in the needing place, and leave the shrieking pedant to hi*
ipasms."

To this the answer is, first, that transpire is misused to express not the regular com-
npj into existence of an event uut the most hap-hazard accidents of daily life, as any
jne may see: next, the flat contradiction of the assertion that the meaning, to become
known, is little known, little used, and little ceeded. Of the contrary, examples ar«
^iven above, taken from newspapers of the day; and here follow others, recently taken
from the minor news reports of two New York journals, the "Times" and the
" Tribune," which, although they may sometimes have been written by imbeciles, it
»ou'.d seem are rarely or never from the pens of pedants: —

"Nothing new transpired concerning the ste^-ner Eme.;* /esterday. Workmen
were engajed in filling her with a quantity of haf " &c.

l68 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

THOSE SORT. — Many persons who should, and
who, perhaps, do, know better, are in the habit of
using this incongruous combination, exgr.j those sort
of men, instead of that sort of men. The pronoun
(so-called) belongs to soit, and not to men. It would
be as proper to say, those company of soldiers.

TRUISM is often used for truth, as if such use
were more elegant and scholarly; whereas it is the
reverse. For instance, take the following sentence
from a leading article in a high-class New York
newspaper : —

" That the rents charged for tenements on the lower part of
this island are higher than men of moderate means can afford
to pay, is a palpable truism."

Tt is no such thing. The writer meant to say that

" It transpires that the Gotild-Fisk control of the Bank is not to be consummated
until January, although Jay Gould is already a director."

" Hannah Baker, a child nine years old, was kidnapped near her home, in Park
Avenue, by Catharine Turner, and taken to New York, where it transpired that the
child disowned the woman as her mother," &c.

" Soon after the funeral, however, it transpired that the supposed dead and buried
woman was alive and in good health, the fact being made certain to her daughters by
her actual, living presence. "

And see the following passage from the very preamble to Resolutions passed at a
political meeting within the erudite precincts of Tammany Hall, on the evening of
March 29, 1870: —

" Whereas, A call for a meeting of the General Committee, to be held in Tammany
Hall this evening, has been issued, having for its ostensible purpose the consideration
of measures of legislation relating to this city, but it has transpired that this movement
has originated with Mr. John Morrissey and his prominent associates," &c., &c.

The contemporary London press would also furnish numberless instances like the
following : —

" A meeting of the Tory party was called by Mr. Disraeli, on Wednesday, at Lord
Lo&sdale's house. The meeting was fully attended, — Lord Stanley, however, being
ibscnt, — and no report of its proceedings was allowed to transpire." — Spectator
April 17, 1869.

A page of such examples might be taken even ^oin newspapers published within a
fceek of the publication of the ' Methodist Quarterly's ' assertion, quoted above. The
rru^h is, that this word seems to be used in its proper sense by all who know id
meaning, in which sense it is valuable, and occupies a place which can be filled b)
U> other

MISUSED WORDS. 169

his proposition was plainly true ; but to say so sim-
ply would have been far too simple a style ibr him.
He must write like a moralist or a philosopher,
according to his notion of their writing. A truism
is a self-evident truth ; a truth, not merely the truth
in the form of a true assertion of fact. Thus : The
sun is bright, is not a truism : it is a self-evident
fact, but not a self-evident truth. But, All men
must die, Youth is weak before temptation, are tru-
isms ; i. e., self-evident, or generally admitted truths.
ULT., INST., PROX. — These contractions of ulti-
mo, instante, and -proximo, should be used as little
as possible by those who wish to write simple Eng-
lish. It is much better to say last month, this
month, next month. The contractions are conven-
ient, however ; and much must be sacrificed to con-
venience in the use of language. But from the
usage in question a confusion has arisen, of which
I did not know until I was requested to decide a
dispute whether, in a letter written, for instance, on
the I5th of September, "the loth ult.," would mean
the last loth, /. e., the loth of September, or the loth
of the last month, i. c., the loth of August, and "the
2Oth prox." would mean the next 2Oth or the ?.oth of
the next month, October. Ult. and prox. are con-
tractions of ultimo and proximo, which are the abla-
tive cases of ultimus and proximus, and mean, not
the last and the next, but in the last and in the next
— what? The last and the next month. Ultimo
and proximo are themselves contractions of ultimo
mcnse, in the last month, and proximo mense, in
the next month; sc that "the loth ult." means
fhe loth day in the last month, and "the 2Oth

I7O WORDS AND THEIR USES.

prox." the 2Oth day in the next month. In-
stant is instant e mense, the month now standing
before us. We do a thing instantly, or on the in-
stant, when we do it at the present moment, the
moment standing before us. But I submit it to the
good sense of my readers that it is better to write
August loth and October 2Oth, than to write loth
uit. and 2Oth prox., and that it is nearly as expe-
ditious and convenient.

UTTER. — This word is merely jutcr in another
form. The outer, or utter, darkness of the New
Testament is the darkness of a place completely
outside of the realm of light. To utter is merely to
put out, to put forth, or outside of the person utter-
ing. Utter nonsense is that which is entirely outside
the pale of reason. This outwardness is the essence
of the word in all its legitimate uses, and in all its
modifications. But some people seem to think that
because, for instance, utter darkness is perfect dark-
ness, and utter nonsense absolute nonsense, there-
fore utter means perfect, absolute, complete. Thus,
in a criticism in a literary paper upon a great pic-
ture, it is said of the color that "the effect is that of
utter harmony ; " and in one of Mrs. Edwards's
novels, she says of a girl and a man, "Nelly's
nature fitted into his nature utterly." This is sheer
nonsense, unless we agree to deprive utterly of its
proper meaning, and make it do superfluous duty
as a mere synonyme of co'uplcte and perfect, which
would be by just so muca to impoverish and confuse
our language. The use of this word in the sense
of absolutely is not, however, of recent or of popu
lar origin. Witness the following examples : —

MISUSED WORDS. 17 1

* Full cunningl v these lords two he grette,
And did his message, asking him anon
If that they were broken, or aught wo begon,
Or had need of lodesmen or vitaile,
For socoure they shoulde nothing feile,
For it was utterly the queenes will."

Chaucer, Legend of Good Women, I. 1460.

•' It is not necessary that Traditions and Ceremonies be in all
places utterly alike."

Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England, Art. 34.

VENTILATE. — Many persons object to the use
cf this word in the sense of to bring into discussion,
on the ground that it is a neologism. This use, of
course, is metaphorical ; and while we may say that
a man airs his notions at a public meeting or in a
newspaper, I am not prepared to defend the good
taste of saying thai he ventilates them. But this
use of ventilate is not a neologism, as appears by
this passage in a state paper of the time of Henry
the Eighth, quoted by Froude : "Nor shall it ever
be seen that the king's cause shall be ventilated or
decided in any place out of his own realm."

VERACITY. — It is newspaper English to say, as
lovvadays is often said, that a man is "a man of
truth and veracity." Veracity is merely an Angli-
cized Latin synonyme of truthfulness. Truth and
veracity is a weak pleonasm. But veracity is prop-
ery applied to persons, truth to things. A story is
or is not true; a man is or is not veracious -- if
truthful is too plain a word We may doubt the
truth of a story because we doubt the veracity, nr,
better, the truthfulness, of the teller.

VICINITY. — This word is subject to no perversion
of sense that I have observed ; but it is very often in-
correctly and vulgarly used without the possessive

172 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

pronoun necessary to define it and cause it to express
a thing instead of a thought. Thus : New York ami
vicinity, instead of New York and its vicinity. With
equal correctness and good taste we might say,
New York and neighborhood; which no one, I
believe, would think of doing. This error has
arisen from the frequent occurrence of such phrases
as, this city and vicinity, i. e., this city and this
vicinity, this being understood. So we may say,
this village and neighborhood. When a pronoun
is used before a common noun, as, this town, this
village, it need not be repeated after the conjunction
which unites the noun to vicinity. But otherwise a
pronoun is required before vicinity, just as one is
before neighborhood, which, in most cases in which
vicinity is used, is the better, as well as the shorter,
word.

VULGAR, the primitive meaning of which is com-
mon, and which, from its frequent qualification of
the conduct and the speech of the vulgar, came in
natural course, to mean low, rude, impolite, is often
misused in the sense of immodest. A lady not
without culture said to another of a third, "She
dresses very low ; but as she has no figure, it doesn't
look vulgar;" meaning, by the feminine malice of
her apology, that it did not look immodest. The
gown was perhaps low enough (at the top) to be
vulgar, if material lowness were vulgarity ; but only
lhat which is metaphorically low is vulgar.

WIDOW WOMAN. — Here is an unaccountable
superfluity of words ; for it would seem that the
most ignorant of those persons who use the phrasu
must know that a widow is necessarily a woman

MISUSED WORDS. 173

It would be as well to say a female lady, or a she
cow. The error is hardly worth this notice; but
the antiquity of the word widow in exactly the same
sense in which it is now used, the remoteness of its
origin, and the vast distance which it has travelled
through ages without alteration of any kind, — ex-
cept as to the pronunciation of v and w , which are
continually interchanging, not only in various lan-
guages but in the same language, — make it an unu-
sually interesting word. How many thousand years
this name for a bereaved woman has been used, by
what variety of nations, and over what extent of the
earth's surface, it would not be easy to determine.
Our Anglo-Saxon forefathers used it a thousand
years ago in England and in North Germany ;( they
spelled it zuiduwe or ivudctvc. The Masso-Goths,
in the fourth century, for the same thing used the
same word — widoivo. But nearly a thousand years
before that time it was used by the Latin people,
who wrote it vidua. And yet again, a thousand
years and more backward, on the slopes of the
Himalayas a bereaved wife was called a widow ;
for in the Sanscrit of the Rig Veda we find the
word vidhavd.* Pronounce the v as iu, and see
iiow simply each stricken woman has taken this
word from her stricken sister and passed it on from
lip to lip as they were bearing our fathers in the
weary pilgrimage of war and suffering through un-
lold ages from what are now the remotest bounds of
civilization. The Sanscrit vidhavd is merely the

* I give this on the authority cf Max Mi.Jer. My naving in Sanscrit, like Orlando'*
caard, is a younger brother's revenue — what I can gleao from the well-worked field*
ti rav elders and betters.

174 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

word dhavd, a man, and vi\ without; so that the
word at its original formation meant simply a wo-
man left without a man, just as it does to-day ; and il
has remained all these ages materially unchanged
both in sound and meaning.

Widow is one of the very few words of which the
feminine form is the original ; for owing to the traits,
functions, and relations of the sexes, among no peo-
ple would a peculiar name be first given to a man
who was deprived of a woman. It would be only
after the condition of widowhood had been loner

O

recognized, and conventional usages had narrowed
and straitened the sexual relations, that it would
enter the mind of a people to give widow its mascu-
line companion-word. It must be admitted that in
English this has been done clumsily. Widoiver is
a poor word, which should mean one who widows,
not who is widowed. Its etymology seems uncer-
tain ; for it can hardly be a modern form of widuwa^
which is given by Morris (English Accidence, p. 82),
but not by Bosworth, as the masculine of ividuwe.
But finely formed and touching as the original femi-
nine word is, it was inevitable that the preposterous-
ness of forming upon it a masculine counterpart
should produce monstrosity. The same difficulty
did not occur in Latin ; for although it would seem
that the word must have come into that language in
its original feminine form, yet, as the Latin had gen-
der, all that was necessary was to give vidua a mascu-
line termination, and it became viduns, or a neuter
and it became vidmim. It was in adjective in Latin
is doubtless it was first in Sanscrit, and it became a
noun also, like many adjectives in most languages

MISUSED WORDS. 1 75

By metaphor it came to mean deprived, deprived
of anything. But until recently deprived was given
in Latin lexicons as its primary meaning, and de-
prived of wife or husband was given as its- secon-
dary and dependent meaning, — preposterously, as
\ve have seen. It must have been applied first to
women, then to men, and last to things in general,
which is the natural manner of growth in language.
Men do not conceive an abstract idea and then pro-
ject their thoughts into infinite space in search of a
name for the new born ; but having names for par-
ticular and concrete objects, they transfer, modify,
and combine these names to designate new things
and new thoughts.*

WITNESS. — This word is used by many per-
sons as a big synonyme of see, with absurd effect.
" I declare," an enthusiastic son of Columbia says,
as he gazes upon New York harbor, " this is the most
splendid bay I ever witnessed." In which exclama-
tion, by the by, if the speaker has much acquaint-
ance with bays, the taste is worthy of the English.
Witness, an English or Anglo-Saxon word, is from
witan, to know, and means testimony from per-
sonal knowledge, and so the person who gives such
testimony ; and hence the verb witness, to be able
to give testimony from personal knowledge. A
man witnesses a murder, an assault, a theft, the
execution of a deed, or of the sentence of a felon.
He witnesses any act at the performance of which
he is present and observing. " Bear witness,"

* In two out of seventy instances in the English Bible a widow is called a
»idow woman ; the reason being, as I am informed by a friend who is, what 1
kin uot, a Hebiew scholar, that in those cases the original reads " a woman I

l>]6 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

say we, " that I do thus." But we cannot witness a
thing : no more a bay or a range of mountains than
a poodle dog or a stick of candy.

And yet, if mere ancient usage and high authority
could justify any form of speech, this would not be
without an approach to such justification, as will be
seen by the following sentence in Wycliffe's "Apolo-
gy for the Lollards : " —

" ForsoJ? it is an horrible J>ing f>at in sum kirkes is witnessid
tnarchaundis to haue place." — p. 50, Ed. Camd. Soc

SQUEAMISH CANT.

Persons of delicacy so supersensitive that they
shrink from plain words, and fear to call things by
their names, who think evil of the mothers that bore
them, and, if men, of the women who have brought
them children, and who are so prurient that they
prick up their ears and blush at any implied dis-
tinction of sex in language, even in the name of a
garment, would do well to avoid the rest of this
chapter, which cannot but give them offence. But
that would leave me only the well-bred and modest
among my readers ; and they are they who least
need counsel in the use of language.

CHEMISE. — How and why English women came
to call their first under-garment a chemise, it is not
easy to discover. For in the French language the
word means no more or less than shirt, and its
mr.aning is not changed or its sound improved by
those who pronounce it shimmy. Of the two names
shirt and smock, given at a remote period to this
garment, the first was common, like chemise ic

MISUSED WORDS. 1 77

French, to both sexes ; c. g., the following passage
from Gower's "Confessio Amantis : " —

"Jason his clothes on him cast,
And made him redj right anon,
And she her sherte did upon
And cast on her a mantel close,
Withoute more, and than arose."

By common consent shirt came to be confined
to the man's garment, and smock to the woman's,
to express which it was generally, if not univer-
sally, used until the middle of the last century.
It is now so used by some English women of
high rank and breeding, and unimpeachable in
propriety of conduct, while by the large majority
it is now thought coarse — why, is past conjecture.
The place of smock was taken and held for a time
by shift — a very poor word for the purpose, the
name of the act of changing being applied to the
garment changed. As smock followed shirt, so
shift has followed smock; and women have returned
to shirt again, merely giving it its French name.
From this it is more than possible that the grand-
daughters of those who now use it with no more
thought that it is indelicate than stocking, may shrink
as they now do from smock or shift, and for the
same reason, or, rather, with the same lack of rea-
son. Indeed, the history of our language gives us
reason to believe that this will surely happen, unless
good sense, simplicity, ard real purity of thought
should drive out the silly shame that seeks to hide
its unnatural face behind a transparent veil of for-
eign making.

ENCEINTE. --The use of this French word by
English-speaking folk to mean, with child, like tha

12

178 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

of accouchement for delivery, seems to me gross, pru
rient, and foolish. Can there be a sweeter, purei
phrase applied to a woman, one better fitted to claim
for her tenderness and deference from every man,
than to say of her that she is with child? What is
gained by the use of the French word, or of the round-
about phrase "in a delicate situation"? Certainly
nothing is gained in delicacy by implying, as these
periphrastic euphemisms do, that her condition is in-
delicate. Delicate health may be owing to various
causes ; and yet even the phrase "in delicate health"
is used by many persons with exclusive limitation
to pregnancy or child-bearing. There is about this
a cowardly, mean-minded shifting and shuffling
which is very contemptible. Can there be in lan-
guage anything purer and sweeter than the declara-
tion, " He shall tenderly lead all those that are with
young," or that, "Woe unto them that are with
child, and to them that give suck, in those days"?
As bad as accouchement is confined, used in a sim-
ilar sense — worse, indeed; for the former does
mean a bringing to bed. The use of this word is
carried by some persons to that pitch of idiocy that,
instead of saying of a woman that her child was
born at such or such an hour, — half past six, foi
instance, — they will say that she was confined at
half past six ; the fact being that she was confined,
and from the same cause, just as much a few hours
before, and would before some days afterward.
This esoteric use of this word is liable to ludicrous
and unpleasant consequences — like this. A lad)1
was reading aloud in a circle of friends a letter just
received. She read, " We are in great trouble

MISUSED WORDS. 179

Poor Mary has been confined" — and there she
stopped ; for that was the last word on a sheet, and
the next sheet had dropped and fluttered away, and
poor Mary, unmarried, was left really in a delicate
situation until the missing sheet was found, and the
reader continued — "to her room for three days,
with what, we fear, is suppressed scarlet fever."
The disuse of the verb to child has been a real loss
to our language, with the genius of which it was
in perfect harmony, while it expressed the fact in-
tended to be conveyed with a simplicity and delicacy
which would seem unobjectionable to every one,
except those who -are so superfinely and super-
humanly shameful that they think it immodest that
a woman should bear and bring forth a child at all.
It might comfort them in the use of this word to re-
member that the French, which they regard as a
language so much more refined than their own, has
in constant use an exactly correspondent word, —
enfantcr. But that might lead them to say that
yesterday Mrs. Jones enfanted.*

FEMALE. — The use of this word for -woman is
one of the most unpleasant and inexcusable of the
common perversions of language. It is not a Brit-
icism, although it is much more in vogue among
British writers and speakers than among our own.
With us lady is the favorite euphemism for woman.
For every one of the softer and more ambitious sex
who is dissatisfied with her social position, or uncer-
tain of it, seems to share Mrs. Qj-iickly's dislike of
being called a woman. There is nc lack of what is
called authoritative usage during three centuries for
ihis misuse of female. But this is one of those per-

• See Note at the cm.' .f iliiv chap'.er.

ISO WORDS AND THEIR USES.

versions which are justified by no example, however
eminent. A cow, or a sow, or any she brute, is a
female, just as a woman is; as a man is no more a
male than a bull is, or a boar ; and when a woman
calls herself a female, she merely shares her sex
with all her fellow-females throughout the brute
creation.*

GENTLEMAN, LADY. — These words have been
forced upon us until they have begun to be nau-
seous, by people who will not do me the hon^r of
reading this book ; so that any plea here for man
and woman would be in vain and out of place. But
I will notice a very common misuse of the former,
which prevails in business correspondence, in which
Mr. A. is addressed as Sir, but the firm of A. B. &
Co. as Gentlemen. Now, the plural of Sir is Sirs ;
and if gentleman has any significance at all, it ought
not to be made common and unclean by being ap-
plied to mere business purposes. As to the ado that
is made about " Mr. Blank and lady," it seems to
me quite superfluous. If it pleases any man to an-
nounce on a hotel book that his wife, or any other
woman who is travelling under his protection, is a
lady, a perfect lady, let him do so in peace. This
is a matter of taste and habit. The world is wide,
and the freedom of this country has not yet quite
deprived us of the right of choosing our associates
or of forming our own manners.

* The following whimsical fling at this squeamishness is from Graham's "Word
Gossip," which has appeared since the publication of these chapters in their original
form. Observe the implication that a young person must be of the female sex. Thi*
is a Briticism • —

'' In the many surgings of the mighty crowd I had actually laboured to assist and
piotect two (1 was going to say ladies, but ladies are grateful ; I can't say young per-
ions, for they wern't young ; nor can I say women, for that is considered a slight ; «
females, for such persons are no longer supposed to exist) — well, two individuals of I
lifferem •sex nrum u» owu. ' - w /v

MISUSED WORDS. 1 8 1

LIMB. — A squeamishness, which I am really
ashamed to notice, leads many persons to use this
word exclusively instead of leg. A limb is any-
thing which is separated from another thing, and yet
joined to it. In old English limbed was used to
mean joined. Thus, in the " Ancren Riwle," " Lok-
•eth that ye beon euer mid onnesse of herte ilimed
togeder," i. e., "Look that ye be ever with oneness
of heart joined together." The branches of a tree
have a separate individual character, and are yet
parts of the tree, and thus are limbs. The fingers
are properly limbs of the hand ; but the word is
generally applied to the greater divisions, both of
trees and animals. The limbs of the human body
are the arms and the legs ; the latter no more so
than the former. Yet some folk will say that by a
railway accident one woman had her arms broken,
and another her limbs — meaning her legs ; and
some will say that a woman hurt her leg when her
thigh was injured. Perhaps these persons think
that it is indelicate for a woman to have legs, and
that therefore they are concealed by garments, and
should be ignored in speech. Heaven help such
folk ; they are far out of my reach. I can only say to
them that there is no immodesty in speaking of any
part or function of the human body when there is
necessity for doing so, and that when they are
spoken of it is immodest not to call them by their
proper names. The notion that by giving a bad
thing a wrong or an unmeaning name, the thing, or
the mention of it, is bettered, is surely one of the
silliest that ever entered the mind of man. It is
the occasion and the purpose of speech that make

l82 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

it modest or immodest, not the thing spoken of, 01
the giving it its proper name.

RETIRE. — If you are going to bed, say so,
should there be occasion. Don't talk about retir-
ing, unless you would seem like a prig or a prurient
prude.

ROOSTER. — A rooster is any animal that roosts.
Almost all birds are roosters, the hens, of course,
as well as the cocks. What sense or delicacy, then,
is there in calling the cock of the domestic fowl a
rooster, as many people do? The cock is no more
a rooster than the hen ; and domestic fowls are no
more roosters than canary birds or peacocks. Out
of this nonsense, however, people must be laugher
rather than reasoned.

NOTE (p. 179).— Southey uses the verb to child in "The Battle of Blenneuu,
one of the simplest and most popular of his poems.

"And many a childing mother died."

How much more truly decent and delicate this is than the following passage
from, I am sorry to say, the London " Medical Press : "

" For what female about legitimately to become a mother would desire to be
among strangers at such a time ! "

That a physician, of all men, should call a wife near her delivery, or a mar-
ried woman near childbirth, by such a sickening round-about phrase as "a
female about legitimately to become a mother ! " But the extremity of this
nauseating nonsense was reached in a woman's letter which was produced in a
divorce case in some Western State. The wife, who was herself with cniid
when she was married, discovered, about six months afterwards, a letter ad-
dressed to her husband in a feminine hand, which she was dishonorable enough
to open and read. In it she found, as she deserved to find, this question :—
* Did you marry that child because she too was en famillef " As a coir luna-
tion of ignorant pretension and prurient prudery, this is unsurpassable. E*
fawiilU' means at home, without ceremony, in the family circle, domestic.
This poor creature thought she was elegantly using the French for that hideo j
SngHsli phrase, " In the family wav."

SOME BRITICISMS. 183

CHAPTER VI.

SOME BRITICISMS.

I HAVE heretofore designated the misuse of cer-
tain words as Briticisms. There is a British
affectation in the use of a few other words which is
worthy of some attention. And in saying that a form
of English speech is of British origin, or is a Briti-
cism, I mean that it has arisen or come into vogue
in Great Britain since the beginning of the eighteenth
century, when, by the union of England and Scot-
land (A. D. 1706-7), the King of England and of
Scotland became King of the United Kingdom of
Great Britain and Ireland, a British took the place
of an English Parliament, and Englishmen became
politically Britons. This period is one of mark in
social and literary, as well as in political history.
To us it is one of interest, because, about that
time, although our political bonds were not severed
until three quarters of a century latter, our absolute
identity with the English of the mother country may
be regarded as having ceased. For, after a mod-
crate Jacobite exodus at the end of the seventeenth
century, there was comparat'vely little emigration
from the old England to the new. They change
their skies, but net their souls, ~,vho cross the sea ;
and whatever the population of this country may

184 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

become hereafter, it had remained, till within twen-
ty-five years, as to race, an English people, just
as absolutely as if our fathers had not left the Old
Home. The history of England, of the old Eng-
land, pure and simple, is our history. In British
history we have only the interest of kinsmen ; bul
the English language and English literature before
the modern British period belongs to both of us, in
the same completeness and by the same title — in-
heritance from our common fathers, who spoke it
and wrote it, quickened by the same blood, on the
same soil. And, in fact, the English of the period
when Shakespeare wrote and the Bible was trans-
lated has been kept in use among people of educa-
tion somewhat more in the new England than in
the old. All over the country there are some words
and phrases in common use, and in certain parts
of New England and Virginia there are many,
which have been dropped in British England, 01
are to be found only among the squires and farmers
in the recesses of the rural counties. The forms
of speech which may be conveniently called Briti-
cisms, are, however, generally of later origin than
the beginning of the British empire. They have al-
most all of them sprung up since about A. D. 1775.

As WELL. — This phrase is improperly used by
some British writers in the sense of all the same.
For instance, " Her aged lover made her presents,
out just as well she hated the sight of him and the
sound of his voice ; " i. e. , she hated him all the
same. This misusage has yet no foothold here,
although, owing to the influence of second-rate
British novels, it begins to be heard.

SOME BRITICISMS. 185

AWFUL. — It would seem superfluous to say that
awful is not a synonyme of very, were it not that
the word is thus used by many people who should
know better than to do so. The misuse is a Briti-
cism ; but it has been spreading here within the last
few years. I have heard several educated English
gentlemen speak in sober, unconscious good faith
of " awfully nice girls," " awfully pretty women,"
and "awfully jolly people." That is awful which
inspires or is inspired by awe ; and in the line in the
old metrical version of the Hundredth Psalm,
" Glad homage pay with awful mirth,"

Tate and Brady did not mean that we were to be
awfully jolly, or very mirthful or gay, in our worship.
Observe here, again, how misuse debases a good
and much-needed word, and voids it of its meaning,
by just so much impoverishing the language.

COMMENCE. — There is a British misuse of this
word which is remarkably coarse and careless.
British writers of all grades but the very highest will
say, for instance, that a man went to London and
commenced poet, or commenced politician. Mr.
Swinburne says that " Blake commenced pupil ; "
and Pope, quoted by Johnson, —

" If wit so much from ignorance undergo,
Ah, let not learning too commence its foe."

A man may commence life as an author, or a poli-
tician, or he may commence a book, or any other
task, although it is better to say he begins either.
But it is either a state or an action that he com-
mences. Commencement cannot be properly pred-
icated of a noun which does not express the idea
of continuance. It mjiy be said that a woman

1 86 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

commences married life, or that she commences
jilting, but not that she commences wife, or com-
mences jilt, any more than that she ends hussy.

DIRECTLY. — The radical meaning of this word
is, in a right line ; and hence, as a right line is the
shortest distance between two points, it means at
once, immediately. Its synonyme in both senses is
a good English word, now, unhappily, somewhat
obsolete — straightway. But John Bull uses directly
in a way that is quite indefensible — to wit, in the
sense of when, as soon as. This use of the word is
a wide-spread Briticism, and prevails even among
the most cultivated writers. For instance, in the
London "Spectator" of May 2, 1867, it is said that
" Directly Mr. Disraeli finished speaking, Mr. Lowe
rose to oppose," etc. Anglice, As soon as Mr.
Disraeli finished speaking, etc. It is difficult to
trace by continuous steps the course of this strange
perversion, for which there is neither justification
nor palliation. A fortnight ago I should have said
that it was unknown among speakers and writers
of American birth ; but since then I have read Mr.
Howells's charming book, "Italian Journeys," than
which I know no book of travel more richly fraught
with pleasure to a gentle reader. And by a gentle
reader I mean one who, like its author, can look
not only with delight upon all that is beautiful and
loveable, but with sympathy upon that which is
neither beautiful nor loveable in the customs and
characters of those who are strangers to him, whose
ways of wickedness are not his ways, and whose
follies are foreign to him, — one who can admire the
boldness of an impostor, and see the humorous side

SOME BRITICISMS. 187

of rascality. When a traveller sees with Mr. How-
ells's very human eyes, and writes with his graphic
and humorous pen, — a pen that caricatures with a
keenness to which malice gives no edge, — travel-
ling with him on paper, which is generally either
the dullest or the most frivolous of employments, is
one of the most inspiriting, and not the least in-
structive. Mr. Howells's style, too, is so good, it
shows such unobtrusive and seemingly unconscious
mastery of idiomatic English, that I notice with the
more freedom two or three lapses, one of which,
at least, I attribute to the deleterious influences of
foreign travel. I am sure that it was not in .New
England, and not until after he had been subjected
to daily intercourse with British speakers and to the
influence of British journals, that he learned to write
such sentences as these : " Directly I found the house
inhabited by living people, I began to be sorry that
it was not as empty "as the library and the street,'
p. 30. " I was more interested in the disreputable
person who mounted the box beside our driver
directly we got out of our city gate," p. 218. Mr.
Howells meant that when he found the house in-
habited he began to be sorry, and that the interest-
ing and disreputable person mounted his coach-box
«5 soon as they got out of the gate. Mr. Howells
is the first born and bred Yankee that I have known
to be guilty of this British offence against the Eng-
lish language ; and his example is likely to exert
so much more influence than my precept, that, unless
lie repents, I am likely to be pilloried as his perse-
cutor by the multitude 01 his followers. But I am
sure that he will repent, and that, with the amiable

1 88 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

leaning toward iniquity which enables him to throvt
BO fresh a charm over the well-trodden ways of
Italy, he will even think kindly of the critic who
has put him upon the barb as if he loved him.

So sure am I of this, that, wishing to use him
again as an eminent example of error, I shall bring
forward two other faults which I have noticed in his
book, and in which he is not singular among Yan-
kees. There is among some people a propensity v
which is of late growth, and is the fruit of presum-
ing half- knowledge, to give to adjectives formed
participially from nouns, and to nouns used as adjec-
tives, a plural form, the effect of which is laughably
pedantic, as all efforts to struggle away from simple
idiom to superfine correctness are apt to be. For
instance, the delicious confection, calf's-foot jelly,
is advertised in many confectionary windows as
calves-feet jelly — the confectioners having been
troubled in their minds by the reflection that there
went more than one calf's foot to the making of
their jelly. So I once heard a richly-robed dame,
whose daughter, named after the goddess of wis-
dom, was suffering pangs that only steel forceps
could allay, say, with a little flourish of elegance,
that " M'nervy was a martyr to the teethache." And
could this gorgeous goddess-bearer doubt that she
was right, when she found Mr. Howells saying that
the peasants in Bassano return from their labor
"led in troops of eight or ten by stalwart, \vhite-
iccthcd, bare-legged maids !" She would probably
be shocked by the bareness of the maidens' legs,
but she would glory in the multitudinous denta,
epithet which Mr. Howells applies to them. Bu

SOME BRITICISMS. 189

because the most beautiful of the Nereides trips
through our memories as silver-footed Thetis, do
we, therefore, think of her as a unipede, a one-
legged goddess? How would it do for the Cam-
bridge lads to translate, silver-reeled Thetis? And
if we have calves-feet jelly, why must not we, a
fortiori^ have oyster '5-pie and^>/#ws-pudding? and
'tfwhite-teetfod maids, why not tect/i-brushes? and,
above all, why do we commit the monstrous ab-
surdity of speaking of the numberless human race
as mankind instead of men-kind? A noun used as
an adjective expresses an abstract idea ; and when
by the introduction of the plural form this idea is
broken up into a collective multitude of individuals,
it falls ludicrously into concrete ruin.

A like endeavor toward precision has led some
folk to say, for instance, that a man was on Broad
way, or that such and such an event took place on
Tremont Street ; and Mr. Howells countenances
this folly by writing, " There were a few people to
be seen on the street." Let him, and all others who
would not be at once childish and pedantic, say,
in the street, in Broadway, and not be led into the
folly of endeavoring to convey the notion that a man
was resting upon or moving over an extended sur-
face between two lines of houses. A house itself is
m Broadway, not on it ; but it may stand on the line
}f the street ; and an event takes place in a certain
street, whether the actors are on the pavement or on
the steps, or in the balcony of a house in that street,
01 in the house itself. We are hi or within a limited
surface, but on or upon one that is without visible
boundaries. Thus, a man is in a field, but on a

190 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

plain. Some generations, at least, will pass away
before a man shall appear who will write plainer,
simpler, or better English than John Bunyan wrote ;
and he makes Christian say, "Apollyon, beware
what you do, for I am in the king's highway,"

There is no telling into what absurdity these blind
gropers after precision will stumble when we find
them deep in such a slough as written over the sig-
nature, fancying the while that they stand on solid
ground. A man's signature, we are told, is at the
bottom of his letter, and therefore he writes over
the signature 1 But — answering a precisian ac-
cording to his preciseness — the signature was not
there while the man wrote the letter ; it was added
afterward. How, then, was the letter written over
the signature ? This is the very lunacy of literalism.
A man writes under a signature whether the signa-
ture is at the top, or the bottom, or in the middle of
his letter. For instance, an old correspondent of
the New York " Times " writes under the signature
of " A Veteran Observer," and his letters, written sub
tcgminefagi, are under the date of " The Beeches."
And as they would be under that date whether it
were written at the top, or, as dates often are, at the
bottom of the letter, so they are under that signature,
wherever on the sheet it may be signed. A soldier
,»r a sailor fights under a flag, not, as Mr. Precisian
would have it, because the flag is flying over his
head, but because he is under the authority which
that flag represents. Sometimes he does his fight-
ing above the flag, as is often the case with sharp-
shooters in both army and navy ; and Farragut, in
the futtock shrouds of the "Hartford," fought the

SOME BRITICISMS.

buttle of Mobile Bay as much under the United
States flag that floated ten or fifteen feet below him,
as if he had issued his orders from the bottom of the
hold. So writs are issued under the authority of a
court, although the seal and the signature which
represent that authority are at the bottom of the
writ ; and a man issues a letter under his signature,
/. £., with the authority or attestation given by his
signature, whether the signature is at top or bottom.
The use of such a phrase as over the signature is
the sign of a tendency which, if unchecked, will
place our language under the formative influence,
not of those who act instinctively under guidance of
what we call its genius, or of scholars and men of
general culture, but of those who have least ability
to fashion it to honor — the literate folk who know
too much to submit to usage or authority, and too
little rightfully to frame usage or to have authority
themselves.

I shall notice only one other bad example set by
Mr. Howells, that in the phrase "when we came to
settle for the wine." He meant, to pay for the wine,
that and nothing more. To settle is to fix firmly,
and so, to adjust; and therefore the adjusting of
accounts is well called, by figure, their settlement.
But the phrase to settle, meaning to pay, .had better
be left entirely to the use of those sable messengers,
rapidly passing away, who summon passengers on
steamboats to "step up to the cap'n's office and settle."
For accounts may be settled, that is, they may be
nade clear and satisfactory, — as the passenger
wished his cup of coffee to be made when, he called
x'.pon the negro to take it to the captain's office and
nave it settled, — and yet they may not be paid.

£92 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

To settle your passage means, if it means any-
thing, nothing more or less than to pay your fare
and there is no reason whatever for the use of the
former phrase instead of the latter. It displaces
one good word, and perverts another; .vhile the
use of settle without any object, which is sometimes
heard, as, Hadn't you better settle with me? is
hideous.

These four slips are notable as being all that I
remarked in reading " Italian Journeys " thoroughly
and carefully. There have been very few books,
if any, published on either side of the water, tbat
would not furnish more as well as greater oppo/-
tunities to a carping critic.

DRIVE and RIDE are among the words as to which
there is a notable British affectation. According to
the present usage of cultivated society in England,
ride means only to go on horseback, or on the back
of some beast less digniiied and comfortable, and
drive, only to go in a vehicle which is drawn by
any creature that is driven. This distinction, the
non-recognition of which is marked by cousin Bull
as an Americanism, is quite inconsistent with com-
mon sense and good English, and it involves absurd
Contradictions. Drive comes to us straight from
the Anglo-Saxon : it means to urge forward, to
expel, to eject, and Drift is simply that which is
driven. There is no example of any authority
earlier than this century known to me, or quoted
by any lexicographer, of the use of drive with the
meaning, to pass in a carriage. Dr. Johnson gives
that definition of the word, but he is able to support
it only by the following passages from Shakespear<
and Milton, which are quite from the purpose : —

SOME BRITICISMS. 193

" There is a litter ready : lay him out,
And drive toward Dover." — King Lear.

•'Thy foaming chariot wheels, that shook
Heaven's everlasting frame, while o'er the neck
Thou drov'st of warnng ungels disarrayed."

Paradise Lai.

In the first of these the person addressed is
merely ordered to drive or urge forward his car-
riage to Dover ; in the second, Jehovah is represented
as urging the wheels of his war chariot over his
fallen enemies. There is not a suggestion or im-
plication of the thought that drive in either case
means to pass in any way, or means anything else
than to urge onward. Dr. Johnson might as well
have quoted from the account in Exodus of the pas-
sage of the Red Sea, that the Lord took oft" the char-
iot wheels of the Egyptians, that " they drave them
heavily." Drive means only to force on ; but ride
means, and always has meant, to be borne up and
along, as on a beast, a bird, a chariot, a wagon, or
a rail. We have seen that Shakespeare, and Mil-
ton, and the translators of the Bible use drive in
connection with chariot when they wish to express
the urging it along ; but when they wish to say that
a man is borne up and onward in a chariot, they
use ride.

"And Pharaoh made him [Joseph] to ride in the second
chariot which he had." — Genesis xli. 43.

"And I will overthrow the chariots and those that ride in
them ; and the horses and their riders shall come down, every
one by the sword of his brother." — Haggai ii. 22.

" So Jehu rode in a chariot, and went to Jezreel. . . . And
Ihe watchman told, saying, Hi came even unto them, and cometr
not again ; and the driving is like the driving of Jehu the son
of Nimshi ; for he driveth furiously." — 2 Kings ix. 16, 2O.

13

194 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

In these passages drive and ride are used in
what is their proper sense, and has been since long
before the days of the Heptarchy, and as they are
used now in New England. And yet only a few
clays since, as I spoke of riding to a British friend-
he said to me, pleasantly, but with the air of a politt
teacher, "You use that word differently to what
\\ e do. We ride on horseback, but we drive in a
carriage ; now, I have noticed that you ride in a
carriage." "The distinction seems to be, then," I
replied, "that when you are on an animal, you
ride, and when you are in a vehicle, you drive."
" Exactly ; don't you see ? quite so." " Well, then "
(we were in Broadway), "if you had come down
from the Clarendon in that omnibus, you would say
that you drove down, or, if you went from one place
to another in a stage coach, that you drove there."
" 'M ! ah ! no, not exactly. You know one rides in
a 'bus or a stage coach, but one drives in one's own
carriage or in a private vehicle." I did not answer
him. Our British cousins will ere long see the in-
correctness of this usage and its absurd incongruity,
and will be able to say, for instance, — for are they
not of English blood and speech as well as we ? —
We all rode down from home in the old carryall
to meet you, and John drove. But if they insist, in
mch a case, upon saying that they all drove, we
•shall have reason to suspect that there is at least the
beginning of a new language, — the British, — and
that the English tongue and English sense has fled
to the Yankees across the sea.

RIGHT. — A Briticism in the use of this word i>
creeping in among us. It is used to mean obliga

SOME BRITICISMS. 195

lion, duty. On one of those celebrations of St.
Patrick's day in the city of New York, when, in
token of the double nationality of its governing
classes, the City Hall is decorated with the Irish
and the United States flag, and miles of men, each
one like the other, and all wearing stove-pipe hats
and green scarfs, are allowed to take possession of
its great thoroughfares, in acknowledgement of the
large share which their forefathers took for two
hundred and fifty years in framing our government
and establishing our society upon those truly Irish
principles of constitutional liberty and law which
are the glory and the-safeguard of our country, and
in acknowledgement, also, of that devotion to the
great cause of religious freedom which brought
those Celtic pilgrims to our shores — on one of those
occasions I heard an alien creature, a Yankee, who
had presumed to drive out jauntily in a wagon on
that sacred and solemn day, and who ventured to be
somewhat displeased because he had been detained
three quarters of an hour lest he should break the
irregularity of that line, and interrupt his masters'
pleasure — I heard this Yankee say to the police-
men, as he saw the Fourth Avenue cars allowed to
pursue their course (probably because it was thought
they might contain some of the females of the dom-
inant race), "What do you stop me for? The cars
have as good a right to be stopped as the carriages.''
This was unpleasant. That he should have stood
humbly before his masters, having put a ballot into
their hands with which to break his back, was a
small matter ; bu. of his language he should have
been anhamed. He could net have spoken worse

£96 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

English if he were a Cockney; and from some
Cockne} he must have caught this trick, which,
common enough for a long while among British
speakers, and even writers of a low order, has been
heard here only within a few years. He meant that
carriages had as good a right as cars to go on with-
out interruption, and that the cars had as much
obligation to stop as the carriages. A right is an
incorporeal, rightful possession, and, consequently,
something of value, which we strive to get and to
keep, except always when it is claimed from us in
the name of the patron saint Patrick, of the great
State and the great city of our country. Death is
the legal punishment of certain felonies. But we
do not speak of the murderer's right of being
hanged. Yet in case of a choice of two modes of
death, we should use the word, and speak, for in-
stance, of the soldier's right to be shot rather than
hanged.

SICK and ILL are two other words that have been
perverted in general British usage. Almost all
British speakers and writers limit the meaning of
sick to the expression of qualmishness, sickness at
the stomach, nausea, and lay the proper burden of
the adjective sick upon the adverb ///. They sneer
at us for not joining in the robbery and the impo-
sition. I was present once when a British merchant,
receiving in his own house a Yankee youth at a
little party, said, in a tone that attracted the atten-
tion of the whole room, "Good evening! We
haven't seen you for a long while. Have you been
teccfc" (the sneer prolonged the word), "as you
say in your country?" "No, thank you," said the

SOME BRITICISMS. 197

other, frankly and promptly, "I've been hill, as they
say in yours." John Bull, although he blushed to
the forehead, had the good sense, if not the gocd
nature, to join in the laugh that followed ; but 1 am
inclined to think that he never ran another tilt in
that quarter. As to the sense in which sick is used
by the best English writers, there can be, of course,
no dispute ; but I have seen this set down in a British
critical journal of high class as an M obsolete sense."
It is not obsolete even in modern British usage.
The Birmingham "Journal" of August 29, 1869,
informs its readers that, "The Sick Club question
has given rise to another batch of letters from local
practitioners of medicine ; " Mrs. Massingberd pub-
lishes "Sickness, its Trials and Blessings" (Lon-
don, 1868) ; and a letter before me, from a London
woman to a friend, says, " I am truly sorry to hear
you are so very sick. Do make haste and get well."
One of Matthew Arnold's poems is "The Sick
King in Bokara," in which are these lines :

" O, King thou know'st I have been sick
These many days, and heard no thing."

British officers have sick leave ; British invalids
keep a sick bed, or a sick room, and so forth, no
matter what their ailment. No one of them ever
speaks of ill leave, an ill room, or an ill bed. Was
an 111 Club ever heard of in England? The incon-
gruity is apparent, and it is new-born and needless.
F'or the use of ill — an adverb — as an adjective,
llius, an ill man, there is no defence and no ex-
cuse, except the contamination of bad example.

STOP for stay is a Briticism; e. g., "stop at
ome." To stop is to arrest motion ; to stay is to

tgS WORDS AND THEIR USES.

retrain where motion is arrested. " I shall stop at
the Clarendon," says our British friend — one of the
sort that does not " stop at 'ome." And he will
quite surely stop there ; but after he has stopped,
whether he stays there, and how long, depend upon
Circumstances. A railway train stops at many sta-
tions, but it stays only at one.

NASTY. — This word, at best not well suited to
dainty lips, is of late years shockingly misused by
British folk who should be ashamed of such defiled
English. Thus we read in the Saturday Review
or the Spectator of Mr. Disraeli's or Mr. Bernal
Osborne's making "a nasty retort;" meaning that
the rejoinder was ill-natured or irritating. And in
Miss Broughton's last novel, " Good-bye, Sweet-
heart," the same misuse occurs in more than one
passage. For example :

" Fiddlesticks," replies Scrope, brusquely, " a man to throw a
girl over to whom he is passionately attached, because she says a
few nasty things to him ; more especially (smiling a little mali-
ciously) when she has got into a habit of saying nasty things to
t irerybody." Part 2, Chap. 9.

Miss Broughton reproduces the daily talk of the
cultivated people for whom she writes. But could
there be better reason for a man's throwing a girl
jver than her saying nasty things? For hardly
three other English words are so nearly the same
in meaning as dirty, filt/'.y, and nasty ; of which the
last expresses the greatest offence to all the senses —
I he quality and condition of moist and generally
ill-smelling filth. This slangy misuse of the wore
is rarelv or never heard in the United States.

WORDS THAT ARE NOT WORDS. 199

CHAPTER VII.

WORDS THAT ARE NOT WORDS.

WHAT is a word? Every one knows. The
most ignorant child, if it can speak, needs no
definition of "word. Probably no other word in the
language is so rarely referred to in dictionaries.
Until I began to write this chapter, and had framed
a definition of ivord for myself, I had never seen or
heard one, that I remember. Yet, if any reader will
shut this book here, and try to tell exactly what a
word is, 'and write down his definition before he
opens the book again, he may find that the task is
not so easy as he may have supposed it to be. Dr.
Johnson's definition is, " a single part of speech," at
the limited view and schoolmasterish style of which
we may be inclined at first to smile. Richardson's
first definition is, "anything spoken or told." But
this applies equally to a speech or a story. His
second is, "an articulate utterance of the voice,'*
which is really the same as Worcester's, " an artic
ulate sound." But this will not do ; for baclomtyivit
is an articulate sound, but it is not a word, and I
hope never will be one in my language ; and / and
you are not articulate sounds, and yet they are
words. Webster's definition is, —

" AIJ articulate or vocal sound, or a combination

ZOO WORDS AND THEIR USES.

of articulate and vocal sounds, uttered by the human
voice, and by custom expressing an idea or ideas/

Here plainly, fulness and accuracy of definition
have been sought, but they have not been attained
The definition, considering its design, is superflu-
ous, inexact, and incomplete. The whole of the
rirst part of it, making a distinction between articu-
late and vocal sounds, and between such sounds
and a combination of them, is needless and from
the purpose. The latter part of the definition uses
custom vaguely, and in the word idea fails to in-
clude all that is required.

A word is, an utterance of the human voice
which in any community expresses a thought or a
thing. If there is a village or a hamlet where ao
expresses I love, or any other thought, and babo
means bread, or anything else, then for that com-
munity ao and babo are words. But words, gen-
erally, are utterances which express thoughts or
things to a race, a people. Custom is not an es-
sential condition of wordship. Howells, in one of
his letters (Book I. Letter 12), says of an Italian
town, "There are few places this side the Alps
better built and so well strceted as this." Streetcd
was probably never used before, and has probably
never been used since Howells used it, two hundred
and forty years ago. But it expressed his thought
perfectly then to all English-speaking people, and
does so now, and is a participial adjective correctly
formed. It is unknown to custom, but it has all
the conditions of wordship, and is a much better
English word than very many in "Webster's Dic-
tionary." And, after all, Johnson's definition cov-

WORDS THAT ARE NOT WOKDS. 2OJ

ers the ground. We must dismiss from our minds
our grammar-class notion of a sort of things, prep-
ositions, nouns, adverbs, and articles, the name
of which is part-of-speech, and think of a single
part of speech. Whatever is a single part of any
speech is a word.

But as there are books that are not books, so
there are words that are not words. Most of them
are usurpers, interlopers, or vulgar pretenders ;
some are deformed creatures, with only half a life in
them ; but some of them are legitimate enough in
their pretensions, although oppressive, intolerable,
useless. Words that are not words sometimes die
spontaneously ; but many linger, living a precarious
life on the outskirts of society, uncertain of their
position, and a cause of great discomfort to all right
thinking, straightforward people.

These words-no-words are in many cases the
consequence of a misapprehension or whimsical
perversion of some real word. Sitting at dinner
beside a lady whom it was always a pleasure to
ook upon, I offered her a croquette, which she de-
clined, adding, in a confidential whisper, " I am
Banting." I turned with surprise in my face, (for she
had no likeness to the obese London upholsterer,)
and heard the naif confession that she lived in daily
fear lest the polished plumpness which so delighted
my eye should develop into corpulence, and that
therefore she had adopted Banting's system of diet,
the doing of which she expressed by the grotesque
participle banting. She was not alone in its use, I
soon learned. And thus, because a proper name
happened to end in ing> it was used as a participle

2O2 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

formed upon the assumed verb bant. In fact, 1 have
since that time often heard intelligent women,
speaking without the slightest intention of pleas-
antry, and in entire simplicity and unconsciousness,
say of one or another of their friends, " O, she
bants" or " She has banted these two years to keep
herself down." The next edition of " Webster's
Dictionary" will probably contain a new verb —
Bant, to eschew fat-producing food.

Another example of this mode of forming words
is afforded by the following political advertisement,
'vhich I found in a Brooklyn newspaper: —

"Notice. — I am intercessed by Mr. and certain of his

friends to withdraw my claims for the supervisorship of this Ward.
I have only to say to the citizens of the I3th that I run for the
office upon the recommendation and support of many influential
citizens, amounting to me as much as is claimed by the so-called
regularly nominated candidate. I shall run for the office as
Democratic Supervisor, despite intercessions or browbeating,
and if elected shall make it my sole duty to attend to the inter
ests of property-holders and rights of the country.

J S K G."

I have given the advertisement entire, because
it shows that the writer is a man of intelligence and
some education ; and yet such a man not only sup-
poses that intercession means simply entreaty, —
losing sight entirely of the vicarious signification
which is its essential significance (its primitive
meaning being, going between), — but that it is
from a verb inter cess ; or else he boldly forms in-
ter cess from intercession, and uses it apparently
without the least hesitation or compunction. His
honesty of purpose should win him forgiveness for
less venial errors ; but at this rate, and with this
style of word-formation, where shall we stop? Fo/

WORDS THAT ARE NOT WORDS. 2O3

intercess, although it is yet rather raw and new, is
as good a word as others which are in not infre-
quent use among people of no less intelligence and
general information than his. In this chapter some
of these words will be examined, and also some
others against which purism has raised objections
which do not seem to be well taken.

ADJECTIVES are used as substantives with clear-
ness and force when they thus give substantive
form to an abstract quality, as, Seek the good,
eschew the evil ; the excellent of the earth ; speak
well of the dead. But the use of the adjective part
of a compound-designating phrase as a noun is to
be avoided upon peril of vulgarity and absurdity,
and generally produces a word-no-word of the most
monstrous and ridiculous sort. For example, a
large gilded sign in Wall Street announces that
Messrs. A & B are " Dealers in Governments ; "
but if any gentleman in want of the articles should
step in and ask to be supplied with a republic and
two monarchies, he would then probably learn that
Messrs. A & B dealt not in governments, but in
government securities. In like manner the editor
of a Southern paper, carried out of the orbit of high
'journalistic reserve by the attractions of two ladies
unknown to fame, begins thus an article in their
glory : —

" For the first time during the ey'stence of this paper we
notice a theatrical representation editorially. We generally
leave that matter to our locals; but really the Worral sis-
iers ! "

What " a local " is might well puzzle any re?der
¥-li'j had not the technical knowledge that would

204 WORDS AND THEIR. USES.

enable him to see that it is K short " for local re-
-porter •, itself an incorrect name for a reporter oi
local news. Beguiling the time by reading the ad-
vertising cards in a railway station where I awaited
a belated train, my eye was caught by the following
sentence in one of them : —

" The Southern States is without exception the most com-
plete six-hole premium ever made."

What a premium was I knew, but a six-hole pre-
mium, and, still more, a complete six-hole premium,
was beyond the range even of my conjecture, un-
less, perhaps, it might be a flute given as a reward
of merit. But, reading farther, I found that the
advertisers called public attention not only to their
Southern States, but to their "Dixie for wood, with
extended fire-box. A perfect premium ! " This,
and the wood-cut of a cooking stove, led me step
by step to the apprehension of the fact that these in-
ventors in language, as well as in household articles,
had produced a utensil for the kitchen, which, hav-
ing received a premium for it, they called, rightly
enough, their premium stove ; and that thereafter
they called their stoves, and perhaps all other good
stoves, if any others than theirs could be good, -pre-
miums, and consequently the best and largest of
them all a complete six-hole premium. The height
of absurdity which they thus reached is a sufficient
warning, without further remark, against the sub-
stantive use of adjectives of which they furnished
^o bewildering an example.

AUTHORESS, POETESS. — These words and oth«
eis of their sort have been condemned by writers

WORDS THAT ARE NOT WORDS. 205

for whose taste and judgement I have great icspect ;
but although the words are not very lovely, it would
seem that their right to a place in the language
cannot be denied. The distinction of the female
from the male by the termination ess is one of the
oldest and best-established usages of English speech.
Mistress, goddess, prioress, deaconess, shepherd-
ess, heiress, sempstress, traitress are examples that
will occur to every reader. Sir Thomas Chaloner,
in his translation of Erasmus's " Praise of Folly "
(an excellent piece of English) makes a feminine
noun, and a good one, by adding ess to a verb —
foster.

" Further, as concerning my bringynge up, I am not envious
that Jupiter, the great god, had a goat to his fostress"

Gower says that Clytemnestra was " of her own
lord tnordrice" Fuller uses buildress and intru-
dress, Sir Philip Sidney captainess, Holland (Plu-
tarch) jflattress, Sylvester soveraintess, and Ben
Jonson victress. And could we afford to lose
Milton's

" Thee, ckauntress, oft the woods among
I woo, to hear thy even song " ?

Indeed, these examples and this defence seem
quite superfluous. There can be no reasonable
objection made, only one of individual taste, to
actress, authoress, poetess, and even to sculptress
and paintrcss.

DONATE. — I need hardly say, that this word is
utterly abominable — one that any lover of simple
honest English cannot hear with patience and with-
out offence. It has been formed by some presum-
ing at:d ignorant person from donation, and is

2O6 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

much such a word as vacate would be from voca*
lion, orate from oration, or gradate from grada*
tion ; and this when we have give, present, grant,
confer, endow, bequeath, devise, with which to
express the act of transferring possession in all its
possible varieties. The first of these will answer
the purpose, in most cases, better than any one of
the others, and donation itself is not among out
best words. If any man thinks that he and his gift
are made to seem more imposing because the latter
is called a donation, which he donates, let him
remember that when Antonio requires that the
wealthy Shylock shall leave all he dies possessed
of to Lorenzo and Jessica, he stipulates that "he
do record a gift" of it, and that Portia, in conse-
quence, says, " Clerk, draw a deed of gift ; " and
more, that the writers of the simplest and noblest
English that has been written called the Omnipo-
tent "the Giver of every good and perfect gift."
But there are some folk who would like to call
him the Great Donater because he donates every
good and perfect donation. If they must express
giving by an Anglicized form of the Latin dono, it
were better that they used donation as a verb. So
Cotton writes (Montaigne's Essays, I. 359), "They
used to collation between meals." This is better
than "They used to collate between meals."

ENQUIRE, ENCLOSE, ENDORSE. — These words
have been condemned by some writers on the
ground that they are respectively from the Latin
inquiro, inchido, and in dorsum, and should, there-
fore, be written inquire, inclose, and indorse. Thij
is an error. They are, to be sure, of Latin origin.

WORDS THAT ARE NOT WORDS. 2O7

but remotely ; they come to us directly from the old
French cnquerre, enclos, and endorser. For cen-
turies they appear in our literature with the prefbr
en. That Johnson gives this class of words with
the prefix in must be attributed to a tendency,
not uncommon, but not healthy, to follow words
of Norman or French origin back to their Latin
roots, and to adopt a spelling in conformity to these,
in preference to that which pertains to them as rep-
resentatives of an important and inherent element
in the formation of the English language. The
best lexicographers and philologists now discour-
age this tendency, and adhere to the forms which
pertain to the immediate origin of derived words.
But it must be confessed that the class of words in
question is notably defiant of analogy, and very
much in need of regulation. For instance, enquire^
enquiry, inquest, inquisition. No one would think
of writing enquest and enquisition. The discre-
pancy is of long standing, and must be borne, except
by those who choose to avoid it by writing inquire
for the sake of uniformity ; condemnation of which
may be left to purists.

ENTHUSED. — This ridiculous word is an Ameri-
canism in vogue in the southern part of the United
States. I never heard or saw it used, or heard of
its use, by any person born and bred north of the
Potomac. The Baltimore "American" furnishes
the following example of its use : —

" It seems that this State, so quicl'y enthused by the generous
and loyal cause of emancipation has grown weary of vhtuous
r&brt, and again stands still *

I shall not conceal the fact that the following

2O8 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

defence might be set up, but not fairly, for en-
thuse. EvOouatuafiog (Enthousiasmos) was formed
by the Greeks from svdous (enthous), a contracted
form of evdeos (cntheos), meaning in or with God,
i. £., divinely inspired. From the Greek adjective
enthous, an English verb, enthuse might be properly
formed. But, v/ith no disrespect to Southern schol-
arship, we may safely say that enthuse was not made
by the illogical process of going to the Greek root
of a Greek word from which an English noun had
already been formed. It was plainly reached by
the backward process of making some kind of verb
from the noun enthusiasm, as donate was formed
from donation. If our Southern friends must have
a new word to express the agitation of soul to which
this one would seem to indicate that they are
peculiarly subject, let them say that they are <?»-
thusiasmed. The French, who have the word en-
thousiasme, have also the verb enthousiasmer ', and,
of course, the perfect participle enthousiasme , en-
thusiasmed, which are correctly formed. But while
we have such words as stirred, aroused, inspired,
excited, transported, ravished, intoxicated, is it
worth while to go farther and fare worse for such a
word as enthused, or even enthusiasmed!

&c. &c. — This convenient sign is very frequently
read "and so forth, and so forth ;" and what is worse,
many persons who read it properly, et cetera, regard
it and use it as a more elegant equivalent of " and
so forth ; " but it is no such thing. Et cetera is
merely Latin for and tJie rest, and is properly
used in schedules or statements after an accoun4
of particular things, to include other thingi

WORDS THAT ARE NOT WORDS. 209

too unimportant and too numerous for particular
mention, But the phrase and so forth has quite an.
other meaning, i. e., and as before so after, in the
same strain. It implies the continuation of a story
in accordance with the beginning. Sometimes the
story is actually continued in the relation, at other
times it is not. Thus we may say, And so forth he
told him — thus and so ; or, after the relation of the
main part of a story we may add, And so forth ;
meaning that matters went on thereafter as before.
This phrase is one of the oldest and most useful in
the language. Gower thus used it in his "Confessio
Amantis," written nearly six hundred years ago : —

"So as he mighte [he] tolde tho{then~|
Unto Ulixes all the cas,
How that Circes his moder was,
And so forth said him every dele
How that his moder grete him wele."

FELLOWSHIP used as a verb (for example, w An
attempt to disfellowship an evil, but to fellowship
the evil-doer") is an abomination which has been
hitherto regarded as of American origin. It is
not often heard or written among people whose
language is in other respects a fair example of
the English spoken in " America ; " but Mr. Bart-
lett justly says in his " Dictionary of American-
isms" (a useful and interesting, although a very
misleading book) , that it " appears with disgusting
frequency in the reports of ecclesiastical conven-
tions, and in the religious newspapers generally."
The conventions, however, and the newspapers are
those of the least educated sects. To this use of
fellowship it would be a perfect parallel to say that,

2IO WORDS AND THEIR USES.

fifteen years ago, the mcnarchs of Europe would not
kings/iip with Louis Napoleon. There is no excuse
of need for the bringing in of this barbarism. Fel-
low, like mate, may be used as a verb as well as a
noun ; and it is as well to say, I will not fellow with
him, as I will not mate with him. The authority of
eminent example is not needed for such a use of 'fel-
low ; but those who feel the want of it may find it
in Shakespeare's plays and in " Piers Ploughman's
Vision " by referring to Johnson's and Richardson's
dictionaries, in both of which fellow is given as a
verb. Words ending in ship express a condition
or state, and fellowship means the condition or state
of those who are fellows, or who fellow with each
other. But the use of this word as a verb did not
begin in " America ; " witness the following pas-
sages from the " Morte d' Arthur : —

" How Syr Galahad faugh t wyth Syr Tristram, and how
Syr tristram yelded hym and promysed to felauskyp with lance-
lot."

"And, sire, I promyse you, said Sir Tristram, as soone as I
may I will see Sir launcelot, and enfelauship me with hym, for
of alle the knyghtes of the world I moost desyre his felauship."
" Morte d' Arthur" Ed. Southey, Vol. I. pp. xix. 287.

This was written A. D. 1469, and the verbs fel-
lowship and enfellowship were reprinted in all
editions, notwithstanding numerous and important
modernizations and corrections of the text, down to
that of 1634, which Mr. Wright has made the
.lasis of his excellent edition of 1858. [f the word
could be justified by origin and use, is has them,
of sufficient antiquity and high authority. And
as to its being an Americanism, it was in use,
ike many other words, so-called, before Columbus

WORDS THAT ARE NOT WORDS. 211

§et sail on the voyage that ended in the unexpected
discovery of the new continent.

FORWARD, UPWARD, DOWNWARD, TOWARD, and
other compounds of -ward (which is the Anglo-
Saxon suffix weard, meaning in the direction of,
over against), have been written also forwards^
upwards, and so forth, from a period of remote
antiquity, extending even to the Anglo-Saxon form
of the language. But there seems hardly a doubt
that the s is a corruption as well as a superfluity.
The weight of the best usage is on the side of the
form without the s. " Speak to Israel that they go
forward" (Exodus xiv. 15.) "For we will not
inherit with them on yonder side Jordan, or for-
ward; because our inheritance is fallen to us on
this side Jordan eastward." (Numbers xxxii. 19.)
No reason can be given for using1 fonvards and back-
wards which would not apply to eastwards and west-
wards, which no one thinks of using. Granting that
both forms are correct, the avoiding of the hissing
termination, which is one of the few reproaches of
our language, is a good reason for adhering to the
simple, unmodified compound in ward.

GENT and PANTS. — Let these words go together,
like the things they signify. The one always wears
the other.

GUBERNATORIAL. — This clumsy piece of verbal
pomposity should be thrust out of use, and that
speedily. While the chief officers of States are
tailed governors, and not gubernators, we may
oetter speak of the governor's house and of the gov-
ernor's room, than of the gubernatorial mansion and
the gubernatorial chamber ; and why that which

WORDS AND THEIR USES.

relates to government should be called guberna-
torial rather than governmental, except for the sake
of being at once pedantic, uncouth, and outlandish,
it would be hard to tell.

HYDROPATHY. — This word, and electropathy,
and all of the same sort, should also be scouted out
of sight and hearing. They are absolutely with-
out meaning, and, in their composition, are fine
examples of pretentious ignorance. Hahnemann
called the system of medicine which he advocated,
homoeopathy, because its method was to cure dis-
ease by drugs which would cause a like (omoios]
disease or suffering (pathos}. The older system
was naturaDy called by him (it was never before
so called by its practisers) allopathy, because it
worked by medicines which set up an action counter
to, different from («//<?$), the disease. These are
good technical Greek derivatives. And by just as
much as they are good and reasonable, are hy-
dropathy and electropathy bad and foolish. Why
should \vater-cttre be called water-disease 1 why
electric-cure, electric-disease? The absurdity of
these words is shown by translating them. They
are plainly sprung from the desire of those who
practise the water-cure and the electric-cure to be
reckoned with the legitimate pathics. And the
" hydropathists " and "electropathists" are not alone.
I saw once, before a little shop with some herbs in

;he window, a sign which ran thus :

INDIAN
OPATHIST.

I was puzzled for a moment to divine what an
opathist might be. But, of course, I saw in the

WORDS THAT ARE NOT WORDS. 213

next moment that the vender of the herbs in the
little shop, thinking that his practice had as good a
right as any other to a big name, and deceived by
the accent which some persons give to homoeop-
athy and allopathy ', had called his practice Indian-
Opathy, and himself an Indian-Opathist. He was
not one whit more absurd than the self-styled " hy-
Jropathist" and " electropathist." As great a blun-
der was made by an apothecary, who, wishing to
give a name to a new remedy for cold and cough,
advertised it widely as coldine. Now, the termi-
nation ine is of Latin origin, and means having the
quality of; as metalline, having the quality of metal ;
alkaline, having the quality of alkali ; canine hav-
ing the qualities of a dog ; asinine, those of an ass.
And so this apothecary, wishing to make a name
that would sound as fine as glycerine, and stearine^
and the like, actually advertised his remedy for a
cold as something that had the quality of a cold.
The rudest peasants do better than that by lan-
guage, for they are content with their mother
tongue. A gentleman who was visiting one of the
remotest rural districts of England, met a bare-footed
girl carrying a pail of water. Floating on the top
of the water was a disc of wood a little less in diam-
eter than the rim of the pail. "What's that, my
lass?" he asked. "Thot?" (with surprise) ; "why,
tttot's a stiller,"" It was a simple but effective con-
trivance for stilling the water as it was carried.
The word is not in the dictionaries, but they con-
tain no better English. It is only when men wish
to be big and fine, to seem to know more than they
do know, and to be something that they are not, thai

214 , WORDS AND THEIR USES.

they make such absurd words as hydropathy ', elec*
tropathy, indianopathy , and coldine.

IZE and IST, two useful affixes for the expression
of action and agency, are often ignorantly added
when they are entirely superfluous, and when they
ftre incongruous with the stem. They are Greek
terminations, and cannot properly be added to An-
glo-Saxon words. 1st is the substantive form, ize
the verbal. Among the monsters in this form none
is more frequently met with than jeopardize — a fool-
ish and intolerable word, which has no rightful place
in the language, although even such a writer as
Charles Reade thus uses it : —

" He drew in the horns of speculation, and went on in the old,
safe routine ; and to the restless activity that had jeopardized
the firm succeeded a strange torpidity."

Certain verbs have been formed from nouns and
adjectives by the addition of isc, or properly ize;
as, for example, equal, equalize ; civil, civilize ; -pa-
iron, patronize. But jeopardize has no such claims
to toleration or respect. It is formed by adding ize
lo a verb of long standing in the language, and
v\ hich means to put in peril ; and jeopardize, if it
means anything, means nothing more or less.

Experimentalize is a word of the same cha*"-
acter as the foregoing. It has no rightful place
in the language, and is both uncouth and pre-
tentious. The termination ize is not to be tacked
indiscriminately to any word in the language,
verbs and adverbs as well as adiectives and nouns,
for the purpose of making new verbs that are
not needed. It has a meaning, and that mean
ing seems to be continuity of action ; certainly

WORDS THAT ARE NOT WORDS. 215

action, and action which is not momentary. Thus,
equalize, to make equal ; naturalize, to make as if
natural; civilize, to make civil ; so with moralize,
legalize, humanize, etc. But the people who use ex-
perimentalize, use it in the sense, to try experi-
ments. Experiment^ however, is both noun and
verb, and will serve all purposes not better served
by try and trial.

Controversialist, conversationalist, and agricul-
turalist, too frequently heard, are inadmissible for
reasons like to those given against experiment-
alize. The proper words are controvcrtist, con-
versationist, and agriculturist. The others have
no proper place in the English vocabulary.

The ridiculous effect of the slang words shootist^
stabbist, ivalkist, and the like, is produced by the
incongruity of adding ist to verbs of Teutonic ori-
gin. Er, the Anglo-Saxon sign of the doer of a
thing, is incorrectly affixed to such words as -pho-
tograph and telegraph, which should give us pho-
tographist and telegraphist ; as we say, correctly,
paragraphist, not paragrapher ; although the lat-
ter would have the support of such words as geog-
rapher and biographer, which are firmly fixed in
the language.

PETROLEUM. — This word may be admitted as
perfectl}' legitimate, but it is one of a class which is
doing injury to the language. Petroleum means
merely rock oil. In it the two corresponding Latin
words, pctra and oleum, are only put together ;
and we, most of us, use the compound without
knowing what it means. Now, there is no good
reason, or semblance of one, vhy we should use a

2l6 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

pure Latin compound of four syllables to express
that which is better expressed in an English one oi
two. The language is full of words compounded
of two or more simple ones, and which are used with-
out a thought of their being themselves other than
simple words — chestnut, ivalnut, acorn, household,
husbandman, manhood, witchcraft, shepherd, sher*
iff., anon, alone, wheelwright, toward, forward,
and the like. The power to form such words is an
element of wealth and strength in a language : and
every word got up for the occasion out of the Latin
or the Greek lexicon, when a possible English com-
pound would serve the same purpose, is a standing
but unjust reproach to the language — a false im-
putation of both weakness and inflexibility. The
English out-take is much better than the Latin
compound by which it has been supplanted — ex-
cept. And why should we call our bank-side townd
riparian ? In dropping wanhopc we have thrown
away a word for which despair is not an equiva-
lent ; and the place of truth-like, or true-seeming
would be poorly filled by the word which some very
elegant people are seeking to foist upon us — vrai-
scmblable. If those who have given us -petroleum
for rock-oil had had the making of our language in
past times, our evergreens would have been called
sempervirids.

PRACTITIONER is an unlovely intruder, which has
slipped into the English language through the phy-
Ekian's gate. We have no word practition to be
made a noun of agency by the suffix cr or ist.
But either practitioner or practitionist means only
one who practises, a practiser. Physicians speak &

WORDS THAT ARE NOT WORDS. 21^

their practice, and of the practice of medicine, and
in the next breath call a medical man a practitioner.
The dictionary-makers give •practise as the stem
of practitioner — it is difficult to see why. The
word is evidently the French praticien, which has
been Anglified first by distortion, and then by an
incongruous addition, in the hope of attaining what
was unattainable — a word meaning something big-
ger and finer than is meant by the simple and cor-
rect form practiscr.

PRESIDENTIAL. — This adjective, which is used
among us now more frequently than any other not
vituperative, laudatory, or boastful, is not a legiti-
mate word. Carelessness or ignorance has sad-
dled it with an i, which is " on the wrong horse."
ft belongs to a sort of adjectives which are formed
from substantives by the addition of al. For
example, incident, incidental', orient, oriental ;
regiment, regimental ; experiment, experimental
When the noun ends in ce, euphony and ease ot
utterance require the modification of the sound of
al into that of ial ; as office, official ; consequence,
consequential; commerce, commercial. But we
might as well say parcntial, monumcntial, and
govcrnmential, as presidential. The proper form
is prcsidcntal, as that of the adjectives formed upon
tangent and exponent is tangental and cxponental.
Presidential, tangential, and exponential are a
trinity of monsters which, although they have not
been lovely in their lives, should yet in their death
be not divided.

Tangential and exponential, it is plain, were in
correctly made up by some mathematician ; and

2l8 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

mathematicians, however exact they may be in
their scientific work, are frequently at fault in
their formation of words and phrases. These
words and -presidential are the only examples of
their kind which have received the recognition, and
have been stamped with the authority, even of die
tionary-makers ; which recognition and stamp of
authority mean simply that the dictionary-makers
have found the words somewhere, and have added
them to the heterogeneous swarm upon their pages.
Euphony, no less than analogy, cries out for the
correct forms, prcsidental, tangcntal, and cxponcn-
taL The rule of analogy is far from being abso-
lute ; but if analogy may not be reasoned from in
etymology (although not always as the ulthna
ralio), language must needs be abandoned to the
popular caprice of the moment, and we must admit
that, in speech, whatever is, at any time, in any
place, among whatever speakers, is right.

The phrase presidential campaign is a blatant
Americanism, and is a good example of what has
been well styled* " that inflamed newspaper Eng-
lish which some people describe as being elo-
quence." Is it not time that W2 had done with
this nauseous talk about campaigns, and standard-
bearers, and glorious victories, and all the bloated
army-bumming bombast which is so rife for the six
months preceding an election? To read almost
any one of our political papers during a canvass is
enough to make one sick and sorry. The calling
i canvass a campaign is not defensible as a use of

* Iu " The Nation, " a paper wliicli is doins much, I hope, at once to sober and U
Ue< ate U .£ tote both of our journalism and oui ^wliucs

WORDS THAT ARE NOT WORDS. 219

metaphor, because, first, no metaphor is called for,
and last, this one is entirely out of keeping. We
could do our political talking much better in simple
English. One of the great needs of the day, in re-
gard to language, is the purging it of the prurient
and pretentious metaphors which have broken out
all over it, and the getting plain people to say plain
things in a plain way. An election has no manner
of likeness to a campaign or a battle. It is not
even a contest in which the stronger and more dex-
terous party is the winner : it is a mere comparison,
a counting, in which the bare fact that one party is
the more numerous puts it in power, if it will
only come up and be counted ; to insure which,
a certain time is spent by each party in belittling
and reviling the candidates of its opponents, and in
magnifying and lauding its own ; and this is the
canvass, at the likening of which to a campaign
every honest soldier might reasonably take offence.
The loss of an election is sure to be attributed to vari-
ous causes by the losers ; but the only and the sim-
ple and sufficient cause is, that more men chose to
vote against them than with them ; and as to the
why of the why, it is either conviction, or friend-
ship, or interest, with which all the meeting and
parading, and bawling and shrieking, of the previ-
ous three or four months has nothing whatever to
io. It will be well for the political morality and
lie mental tone of our people when they are brought
o see this matter as it is, simply of itself; and one
•ery efficient mode of enabling them to do so, would
be for journals of character and men of sense to
write and speak oT it in plain language, calling a

Z2O WORDS AND THEIR USES.

spade a spade, instead of using "that inflamed Eng-
lish " which is now its common vehicle, and which is
so contagious and so corrupting : — so contagions, and
so corrupting, indeed, that I am not fond enough to
hope that anything said here, even were it said with
more reason and stronger persuasion than I can use,
will unsettle any fixed habit of speech in my read-
ers. I merely tell them what, in my judgment, it
is right and best to say, knowing in my heart, all
the while, that they, or most of them, will go on
speaking as they hear those around them speak, as
they will act as they see those around them acting.
People do not learn good English or good manners
by verbal instruction received after adolescence.
Ever}' man is like the apostle Peter in one re-
spect— that his tongue bewrays him.

PROVEN, which is frequently used now by law-
yers and journalists, should, perhaps, be ranked
among words that are not words. Those who use
it seem to think that it means something more, or
other, than the word for which it is a mere Low-
land Scotch and North of England provincialism.
Proved is the past participle of the verb to prove,
nnd should be used by all who wish to speak
English.

RELIABLE. — Before giving our attention direct-
ly to this word, it will be well to consider what
might be said in favor of one which has some-
what similar claims to a place in the language —
unditfcUowshipable. We have seen that the verb fa
fellowship has the " authority " of ancient and distin-
guished usage. Now, if we can fellowship with a
man, we may disfellowship with him ; and if a mat

WORDS THAT ARE NOT WORDS. 22J

whom we may rely upon is a reliable man, a man
whom we can disfellowship with is disfellowshipa-
ble, and one whose claims upon us are such that we
cannot disfellowship with him is undisfellowshipable.
I admit that I can discover no defect in this reasoning
if the premises are granted. If mere ancient and
honorable use authorizes a word, the verb to fellow-
ship— as, I would fellowship with him — has un-
deniable authority; and no reason which can be
given for calling a man who may be relied upon
reliable will fail to support us in calling a man who
can be fellowshipped with fellowshipable. It may,
however, be urged, — and I should venture to take
the position, — that the mere use of a word, or a col-
location of syllables with an implied meaning, what-
ever the eminence of the user, is not a sufficient
ground for the reception of that word into the recog-
nized vocabulary of a language. For instance,
the word intrinsccate is used by Shakespeare him-
self:—

" Come, mortal wretch,

With thy sharp tooth this knot intrinsecate
Of life at once untie." — Ant. and Cleop., V. 2.

This may have been a superfluous attempt to An-
glicise the Italian intrinsecare, or, as Dr. Johnson
suggested, an ignorant formation between intricate
and intrinsical. But notwithstanding the eminence
of the user, it has no recognized place in 11 ie Ian
g-uage, and is one of the words that are not words.
Reliable is conspicuous among those words.
'1 hat it is often heard merely shows that many per-
sons have been led into the error of using it ; that
other words of like formation have oeen found in

222 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

the writings of men of more or less note in litera-
ture merely shows that inferior men are not more
incapable than Shakespeare was of using words
ignorantly formed by the union of incongruous ele-
ments. Passing for the present the words which
are brought up to support reliable by analogy (on
the ground, it would seem, unless they themselves
can be sustained by reason, that one error may be
'tistiiied by others), let us confine our attention to
that one of the group, which, being oftenest heard,
is of most importance.

Probably no accumulation of reason and authority
would protect the language from this innovating
word (which is none the worse, however, because
it is new) ; for to some sins men are so wedded that
they will shut their ears to Moses and the prophets,
and to one risen from the dead. Previous writers
have well remarked that it is anomalous in position
and incongruous in formation ; that adjectives in
able, or its equivalent, iblc, are formed from verbs
transitive, the passive participle of which can be
united with the meaning of the suffix in the definition
•)f the adjective. For example, lovable, that may
i»e loved ; legible^ that may be read ; eatable, that
may be eaten ; curable^ that may be cured, and so
forth ; that reliable does not mean that may be
relied, but is used to mean that may be relied up^n,
and that, therefore, it is not tolerable. The counter-
plea has been, until recently, usage and conven-
ience. But the usage in question has been too shor*
and too unauthoritative to have any weight ; and
convenience is not a justification of monstrosity,
when the monstrosity is great, offensive, and of

WORDS THAT ARE NOT WORDS. 223

degrading influence, and the convenience so small
as to be inappreciable. But it has been recently
urged, with an air of pardonable triumph, that the
rule of formation above mentioned has not pre-
vailed in our language, as is shown by the presence
in it of long-established adjectives, bearing with
them the weight of all possible authority ; for in-
stance, laughable, which does not mean that may
be laughed, but that may be laughed at. Here the
case has rested ; and if this argument could not be
overthrown, the question would have been decided
by it, and the use of reliable would be a matter of
individual taste. But the argument goes too far,
because those who used it did not go far enough.
Comfortable does not mean that may be comforted,
but that has or that gives comfort ; forcible, not that
may be forced, but that is able to force ; seasonable,
not that may be seasoned, but that is in season, in
accord with the season ; leisurablc, that has leisure ;
fashionable, that has fashion. The suffix able, in
Latin abilis, expresses the idea of power,* and so
2>f capacity, ability, fitness. It may be affixed either
lo veibs or to nouns ; and of adjectives in this class
not a few are formed upon the latter. In the ex-
amples above it is affixed to nouns. Now, laugh is
a noun, and laughable, marriageable, treasonable,
Icisurable, objectionable, and companionable are in
the same category. Laughable does, in effect,
mean that m?y be laughed at, as objectionable
Vieans, in effect, that may b^ objected to , but neither
u.ust therefore be regarded as formed from the
verb by which each may DC defined. Finally, the,

S«e Tooke's " Diversions of Purlcy. '" VoL II. p. «joa.

224 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

fact is that, excepting a comparatively few adjec-
tives in able or ible thus formed upon nouns,* every
one of the multitudinous class of adjectives formed
by this suffix — a class which includes about nine
hundred words — is formed upon a verb transitive,
and may be defined by the passive participle. They
afford, therefore, no support to the word reliable*
because we cannot rely anything.

Professor Whitney, in his book on "The Study
of Language," a work combining knowledge and
wisdom in a greater degree than any other of its
kind in English literature, gives some attention to
the word in question, but contents himself with
setting forth the arguments for and against it, with-
out summing up the case and passing judgement.
Among the reasons in its favor he mentions "the
enrichment of the language by a synonyme, which
may yet be made to distinguish a valuable shade
of meaning ; which, indeed, already shows sight of
doing so, as we tend to say 'a trustworthy witness1
but ' 'reliable testimony.' "

This is plausible, but only plausible ; and it has
been well answered by an able pupil of Professor
Whitney's, and one worthy of his master, f as fol-
lows : —

" A little examination will show that there is no case at all for
the word in question. There is really no tendency whatevei.
n common speech, to differentiate the two words in the senses
lamed, for reliable is, in a large majority of cases, applied to
persons. Nor, if there were such a tendency, would it add eny-
tliing to the language, any more than to devise two dist.nct
terbs meaning believe, the one to express believing a man, the
other, believing what he says."

* No small proportion of them is cited above. Many which have DO proper plaa
ID the language are to be found in dictionaries.

* Mr. Co-Trlton Lewis in "The Evening Post " of March 6, 1869.

WORDS THAT ARE NOT WORDS. 225

*

Of the common use of reliable, I met with the
following amusing and illustrative example in the
Paris correspondence of the London " Star." The
Prince and Princess Christian, arriving at the French
capital, had been compelled, for want of better
carriage, to visit Trianon in a cab. Whereupon a
quarter of a column of British astonishment and
disgust, closing with this paragraph : —

" I do the justice to the Prefect to assert that a telegram de-
spatched on the party leaving Paris would have secured the
presence of a more reliable vehicle than a hackney cab at the
Versailles station."

Here our word is put to fitting service in contrast-
ing a reliable vehicle with an unreliable cab. And
here is yet another instance in which the word ap-
pears suitably accompanied. The sentence is from
the prospectus of "The Democrat," published by
the gentleman known as " Brick Pomeroy."
" Politically it will be Democratic, red-hot and reliable."

\

The red-hot and reliable democracy of Mr.
"Brick Pomeroy's" paper and the unreliable cab
at Versailles are well consorted.

Of the few words which may be, and some ol
which have been, cited in support of reliable, here
follow the most important — the examples of their
use being taken from Richardson's Dictionary : —

JLncJiorable. " The sea, everywhere twenty leagues from land,
is anckorable." — Sir T. Herbert.

Complainable. "Though both be blamable, yet superstition
is less complainable." — Fcltham.

Disposable. " The office is not disposable by the crown.'
— Burke.

Inquirable. "There may be many more things inquiratle b^
fou/' — Bacon.

IS

226 . WORDS AND THEIR USES.

Of the.se passages, the first affords an example
of the improper use of words properly formed ; the
second, of unjustifiable formations, like reliable.
A vessel may be anchorable ; a sea cannot be
so : neither a superstition nor anything else can
be complainable, although it may be complained
of. Herbert and Feltham could go astray in the
use of anchorable and complainablc, as Shakes-
peal e could in that of intrinsccate. The other
two words could be accepted as of any weight
upon this question only through ignorance both ol
their meaning and their history. Dispose does not
need of to complete its transitive sense ; and the
preposition has been added to it in common usage
quite recently — long after disposable came into the
language. Richardson affords the following ex-
amples in point : —

" Sens God seeth everything out of doutance,
And hem disposeth through his ordinance."

Chaucer,

" But God, who secretly disposeth the course of things."

Tyndal.

And to this day we say that people dispose (not
dispose of) themselves in groups to their liking, as
Spenser said : —

"The rest themselves in troupes did else dispose."

Faerie Queene, II. 8.

And accordingly Prynne, a careful writer, who
lived two hundred years before Burke, says of the
icalm of Bohemia, "most of the great offices of
which realme are hereditary, and not disposable by
the king."

Inquirablc, as used by Bacon, means, not thai
may be inquired into, but that may be inquired, /. e..

WORDS THAT ARE NOT WORDS. 227

asked. It is simply equivalent to askable. In the
sense of inquired into it would not be admissible,
and no recent examples of its use, or of its use in
that sense, are cited by Richardson.

Available — the word which seems most to sup-
port reliable, because it is surely formed upon the
verb avail, and because, although we may say of a
thing that it avails much or it avails nought, we
cannoc say it may be availed — is itself unavail-
able to the end for which it is cited. For avail
itself is an anomalous and exceptional word in the
manner of its use. It means to have value, effect,
worth, power. Yet we say, both, It avails little, and
He avails himself of it; both, Of what avail was it?
and It was of no avail, as we say, Of what worth was
it? and It was of no worth. But we cannot, or do not,
speak of the avail of anything, as we speak of the
worth of any thing. Avail, both as verb and sub-
stantive, was used absolutely by our early writers in
the sense of value, and available — i.e., that may
be valued — came into the language under those
circumstances.

Unre^entable, which is used by Pollok, a writer
of low rank and no authority, has been cited in
support of reliable. But there is no verb unre-
•pent ; nor is there any instance known of the use
of the adjective rcpentable. And although exam-
ples are numerous of the use in the Elizabethan
period of recent absolutely, without of,* yet we
read in our English Bible not of a repentance not
repentable, but of "a repentance not to be repented
of."

* See Mrs. Clarke's "Concordance ta Shakespeare."

228 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

Accountable and answerable are, like available,
anomalous, self-incongruous, and exceptionable.
Accountable is used to mean, not that may be ac-
counted for, but that may be held to account ; but
answerable is used to mean both that may be an-
swered (in which it is not a counterpart of reliable)
and, that may be held to answer; while unaccount~
able is used only to mean that cannot be account-
ed for, and unanswerable, only that cannot be an-
swered. These adjectives are out of all keeping.

These are all the instances of adjectives in ble
which are worthy of attention in the consideration
of this formation ; and we have seen that none of
them support the use of the affix with a verb de-
pendent and intransitive, like rely. If there were
a noun rely, upon that we might form reliable, as
companionable has been formed on companion, and
dutiable on duty. Unless we keep to this law of
formation, there is no knowing where we may find
ourselves — stranded, it maybe, on some such rock
as a grievable tale, an untrifleable person, or a weep-
able tragedy. For instance, reliable has been fol-
lowed into the world by a worthy kinsman, liveable,
in the phrase "a liveable house," which we not
only hear now sometimes, but even see in print,
although it has not yet been taken into the diction-
aries. See, for example, the following passage
from a magazine of such high and well-deserved a
reputation as " Macmillan's : " —

" In the first place, we would lay down as a fundamental prin-
ciple in furnishing, that the end in view should be to make a
house or a room cheerful, comfortable, and liveable. We sav
'ivea&le, because there are so many which, though handsomelj
furnished, are dreary in the extreme, and the very thought of
M\5ng in them makes one shudder."

WORDS THAT ARE NOT WORDS. 229

Now, a life is liveable, because a man may live
a life, as he can be himself; but a house cannot be
lived any more than a pea-jacket. Either may be
lived in, according to the liver's fancy. Let us not,
through mere sloth and slovenliness, give up for
such a mess as reliable our birthright in a good
word and a good phrase for a man who is trust-
worthy, and whose word may be relied upon.

PREVENTATIVE, CASUALITY, receive a passing
notice, only because they are heard so often instead
of ^preventive^ casualty. They ought to be, but I
fear that they are not, evidences of an utter want
of education and of a low grade of intelligence.

RESURRECTED. — This amazing formation has
lately appeared in some of our newspapers, one of
them edited by a man who has been clerk of the
Senate, another, one of the most carefully edited
journals in the country. For example : —

" The invention described in yesterday's Times, and displayed
on Saturday at Newark, by which a person who may happen to
be buried alive is enabled to resurrect himself from the grave,
may leave some people to fancy there is actual danger of theii
being buried alive."

A weekly paper, of some pretensions, now ex-
tinct, described Thomas Rowley as a priest whose
writings Chatterton " professed to resurrect in the
form of old, stained, moth-eaten manuscripts."

What is this word intended to mean ? Possibly
the same act which people whc speak English mean
when they say that Lazarus was raised from the
dead. The formation of resurrect from resurrection
is just of a piece with the formation of donate from
donation , inter cess from intercession. But it is

23O WORDS AND THEIR USES.

somewhat worse ; for resurrected is used to mean
raised, and resurrection does not mean raising, but
rising. Thus we speak of the raising of Lazarus,
but of the resurrection of Christ ; of God's raising
the dead, but of the resurrection of the dead.

Sis, SlSSY. — The gentlemen who, with affec-
tionate gayety and gay affection, address very
young ladies as Sis or Sissy, indulge themselves
in that captivating freedom in the belief that they
are merely using an abbreviation of sister. They
are wrong. They doubtless mean to be frater-
nal, or paternal, and so subjectively their notion
is correct. But Sis, as a generic name for a young
girl, has come straight down to us, without the
break of a day, from the dark ages. It is a mere
abbreviation or nickname of Cicely, and appears
all through our early literature as Cis and Cissy.
It was used, like Joan and Moll, to mean any
young girl, as Rob or Hob, the nicknames of
Robert, were applied in a general way to any
young mnn of the lower classes.

" Robert's esteemed for handling flail,
And Ciss for her clean milking-pail."

TJie Sarah-ad '., 1742, p. 5.

S.HAMEFACED, as every reader of Archbishop
Trench's books on English knows, is a mere cor-
ruption of shamcfast, a word of the steadfast sort.
The corruption, doubtless, had its origin in a misap-
prehension due to the fact thztfast was pronounced
likefac'd, with the name sound of a, which led to the
supposition that shame-fast was merely an irregular
spelling of shamefaced. To a similar confusion of
words pronounced alike we owe the phrase "not

WORDS THAT ARE NOT WORDS 23!

worth a damn," in which the last word represents
water-cress. The Anglo-Saxon name of the cress
was ccrse ; and this, by that transposition of the r
so common in the earlier stages of our language,
and which gave us bird for brid, and burn for bren,
became cres. But for a long time it retained its
original form ; and a man who meant to say that
anything was of very little value, said sometimes that
it was not worth a rush, and others that it was not
worth a cerse, or kerse. For example (one of
many), see this passage of "Piers Ploughman's
Vision:" —

Wisdom and wit now

Is noght worth a kerse,

But if it be carded with coveitise,

As clotheres kemben his wolle."

Identity of sound between two words led to a
misapprehension which changed the old phrase into
* not worth a curse ; " and a liking for variety,
which has not been without its influence, even in
the vocabulary of oaths and objurgations, led to the
substitution to which we owe "not worth a damn."
But for one variety of this phrase, which is peculiar
to this country, and which is one of its very few
original peculiarities, " not worth a continental
damn," I am at a loss to assign a source; except
that it may be found in that tendency to vastness
of ideas, and that love of annexation of which we
are somewhat justly accused, and which crops out
even in our swearing.

STAND-POINT. — To say the best of it, this is a
poor compound. It receives some support, but not
full justification, from the German stand-^unkt^ of

232 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

which, indeed, it is supposed to be an Anglicized
form, first used by Professor Moses Taylor. Grant-
ing for the moment that stand-point may be accepted
as meaning standing-point, and that when we say,
from our stand-point, we intend to say from the point
at which we stand, what we really mean is, from
our point of view, and we should say so. Periph-
rasis is to be avoided when it is complicated OT
burdensome, but never at the cost of correctness
and periphrasis is sometimes not only stronger,
because clearer, than a single word, but more ele-
gant. Stand-point , whatever the channel of its
coming into use, is of the sort to which the vulgar
words wash-tub, shoe-horn, brew-house, cook-stove,
and go-cart belong, the first four of which are
merely slovenly and uncouth abbreviations of wash-
ing-tub, shoeing-horn, brewing-house, and cooking-
stove, the last being a nursery word, a counterpart
«:o which would be rock-horse, instead of rocking-
horse. Compounds of this kind are properly formed
by the union of a substantive or participle, used
adjectively, with a substantive ; and their meaning
may be exactly expressed by reversing the position of
the elements of the compound, and connecting them
by one of the prepositions of, to, and for. Thus,
death-bed, bed of death ; stumbling-block, block
of stumbling; turning point, point of turning;
play-ground, ground for play ; dew-point, point of
Jew ; steam-boat, boat for or of steam (bateau de va~
peur} ; starvation-point, point of starvation ; horsc~
trough, trough for horses ; rain-bow, bow of rain
bread-knife, knife for bread ; house-top, top of house
dancing-girl, girl for dancing ; and standing-point

WORDS THAT ARE NOT WORDS. 233

point for or of standing; and so forth. But by no
contrivance can we explain stand-point as the point
of, or to, or for, stand.

TELEGRAM. — This word, which is claimed a?
an "American" production, has taken root quickly,
and is probably well fixed in the language. It is
both superfluous and incorrectly formed ; but it is
regarded as convenient, and has been allowed to
pass muster. Telegraph is equally good as a verb
expressing the act of writing, and as a noun ex-
pressing the thing written. This is accoiding to a
well-known analogy of the language. But they
who must have a distinct etymology for every word
may regard telegraph, the verb, as from yguyeiv
(grapketn) — to write, and the noun as from the
Greek noun ye«qpj? (graphe} =a writing. In mono-
graph, epigraph, and paragraph, the last syllable
in like manner represents yj?w?"/ (graphe) ; in mon-
ogram, epigram, and diagram the last syllable
represents -/oa^/m (gramma} = an engraved charac-
ter, a letter.* This distinction, remembered, will
prevent a confusion which prevails with many
speakers as to certain words in graph and gram
A monograph is an essay or an account having a
single subject; a monogram, a character or cipher
Composed of several letters combined in one figure :
an epigraph is an inscription, a citation, a motto;
an epigram, a short poem on one subject. The
confusion of these terminations has recently led
some writers into errors which are amazing and

* rpajijia, litera, sciiptum ; (2) librum ; (3^ scriptura quodcunqueut tabula public*
Jeg's, libri rationum, &c., et in filurali; (4^ spistoia, litera ; (5) liter*, doctrina
(6) acta publica, tabulae ; (7) chirographiun

Tpa^T, scriptura, scriptio; (a) pictura : (^) iccuaatio. — Hidt rifi Lexicon.

WORDS AND THEIR USES.

amusing. We have hac ^hologram proposed, and
stcrcogrc.m, and — Cad..ms save us ! — cablegram^
not only proposed, but used. Finally, to cap the
climax of absurdity, some ingenious person, encour-
aged by such example, proposes thalagram as " fully
expressive and every way appropriate," because
thalassa is the Greek for sea, and gramma the Greek
for letter, and the letters come through the sea.
The first two, although homogeneous, are incorrect,
the proper termination in both cases being graph ,
representing /£«qn? (grap/ie), a writing, and not
gram, from •/?«,«,«« (gramma}, a character; and in
the third there is not only the same error, but the
incongruous union of the Teutonic cable with the
Greek gramma. The last is not worth serious con-
sideration. Such words as cablegram and thala-
gram are only deplorable and ridiculous examples
of what is produced when men who are unfit to
work in language undertake to make a word that
is rot wanted. There is no more need of such
words as cablegram and thalagram were meant to
be, than there is of a new name for bread-and-but-
ter. A telegraph is the thing which sends words
from afar, and telegram is in general use to mean
the word or words so sent ; and whether they
come across land or water, what matter? what is it
to any reasonable purpose? A telegram from Eu-
rope, or from California, or from China, is all the
same, whatever may be the route by which it is
Bent. Whether it comes by an iron cable, or a
copper wire, over land or through wrater, what
Difference? There could not be a finer specimen
of an utterly superfluous monster than this English-
Greek hybrid cablegram .

WORDS THAT ARE NOT WORDS. 235

TIME AND TIDE WAIT FOR NO MAN. — This prov-
erb, one of the oldest in the language, one of the
most commonly used, and one which cannot be
expressed with its full force and point in any other
tongue, may be noticed here without impropriety,
because it is probably not understood by one in a
thousand of its users. The word misunderstood is
tide, which, contrary to almost universal apprehen-
sion of the adage, does not here mean the ebb and
flow of the ocean. Tide has here its original mean-
ing — time. Thus we find in some Middle English
Glosses, published in the " Reliquiae Antiquas " (Vol.
I. p. 12), " 3empore=tyda." But tide is not a mere
synonyme of time', it means a time, an allotment
of time, an occasion. It was long used for hour,
as in the following Anglo-Saxon statement of the
length of the year : " dis is full yer, twelf monf>as
fulle and endlufan dagas, six tida ; " i. £., this is a
full year, twelve full months, and eleven days, six
hours: It meant also a certain or an appointed
time; e.g.-, "Nu tumorgen on J>is ylcan tid," i. e.,
Now to-morrow on this same time. (Exodus ix.
18.) This sense of an appointed time it had in the
old, and now no longer heard, saying, The tider you
go, the tider you come, which Skinner renders thus
.n Latin : £>iio tem-porius discedis, co temporiils re-
cedis. The ebb and flow of the sea came to be
;alled the tide because it takes place at appointed
seasons. The use of tide in this sense, a set time,
a season, continued to a very late period; of which
the following passage fioci Shakespeare is an
sample :

236 WORDS AND THEIR USES

" What hath this day deserved,
That it in golden letters should be set
Among the high tides in the calendar?"

King John, iii. i.,

where " high tides " has plainly no meaning of
peculiar interest to mariners and fishermen. Chau-
cer says, in "Troilus and Cressida:" —

" The morrow came, and nighen gan the time
Of mealtide."

This use of the word is still preserved in the names
of two appointed seasons, the church festivals Whit-
suntide and Christmastide, or Christtide, which are
more in vogue in England than in this country.
Tide^ appears in this sense in the word betide. For
example : Woe betide you ! that is, Woe await you ;
May there be occasion of woe to you. Tide was
thus used before the addition of the prefix be, as in
the following lines from a poetical interpretation of
dreams, written about A. D. 1315 : —

" Gif the see is yn tempeste
The tid anguisse ant eke cheste " (/'. e., strife).

Our proverb, therefore, means, not time and the
flow of the sea wait for no man, but time and occa-
sion, opportunity, wait for no man. The proverb
appears almost literally in the following lines, which
are the first two of an epitaph of the fifteenth cen-
tury, that may be found in the " Reliquiae Antiquae "
(Vol. I. p. 268): —

" Farewell, my frendis, the tide abideth no man;
I am departed fro this, and so shall ye,"

where, again, there is manifestly no allusion to tin
flow of water. There is an old agricultural phrase
still used among the Lowland Scotch farmers, io

WORDS THAI ARE NOT WORDS. 237

ivhich tide appears in the sense of season : fl The
gruncTs no in tid," /. <?., The ground is not in sea-
son, not ready at the proper time for the earing.

The use of tide in its sense of hour, the hour, led
naturally to a use of hour for tide. Among the
examples that might be cited of this conversion,
there is a passage in "Macbeth" which has long
been a puzzle to readers and commentators, and
upon which, in my own edition of Shakespeare, I
have given only some not very relevant comments
by the Rev. Mr. Hunter. Macbeth says (Act i.
scene 3), —

"Time and the hour runs through the roughest day."

As an hour is but a measured lapse of time, there
has been much discussion as to why Shakespeare
should have written "time and the hour," and many
passages have been quoted from Shakespeare and
other poets by the commentators, in which time and
hour are found in close relation ; but they are all,
as such quotations are apt to be, quite from the
purpose.

"Time and the hour" in this passage is merely an
equivalent of time and tide — the time and tide that
wait for no man. Macbeth's brave but unsteadfast
soul is shaken to its loose foundations by the prophe-
cies of the witches, and the speedy fulfilment of the
.Irst of them. His ambition fires like tinder at the
touch of temptation, and his quick imagination scis
before him the bloody path by which he is to reach
the last and highest prize, the promised throne. But
his good instincts — for he has instincts, not purposes
— icvolt at the hideous prospect, and his whole na-
ture is in a tumult of conflicting emotion. The soul

238 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

of the man that would not play false, and yet \vould
wrongly win, is laid open at a stroke to us in this
first sight we have of him. After shying at the
ugly thing, from which, however, he does not bolt,
at last he says, cheating himself with the thought
that he will wait on Providence, —

" If chance will have me king, why, chance may crown me
Without my stir."

And then he helps himself out of his tribulation,
as men often do, with an old saw, and says it will
all come right in the end. Looking into the black,
turbulent future, which would be all bright and clear
if he would give up his bad ambition, he neither
turns back nor goes forward, but says, —

" Come what come may,
Time and the hour runs through the roughest day."

That is, time and opportunity, time and tide, run
through the roughest day ; the day most thickly
bestead with trouble is long enough, and has occa-
sions enough for the service and the safety of a
ready, quick-witted man. But for the rhythm,
Shakespeare would probably have written, Time
and tide run through the roughest day ; but as the
adage in that form was not well suited to his verse,
he used the equivalent phrase, time and the hour
(not time and an hour, or time and the hours) j
and the appearance of the singular verb in this line,
I am inclined to regard as due to the poet's own pen,
not as accidental.

FORMATION OF PRONOUNS.

CHAPTER VIII.

FORMATION OF PRONOUNS. — SOME. — ADJECTIVES

IN EN. EITHER AND NEITHER. SHALL AND

WILL.

FORMATION OF PRONOUNS.

TWO correspondents have laid before me the
great need — which they have discovered —
of a new pronoun in English, and both have sug-
gested the same means of supplying the deficiency,
which is, in the words of the first, "the use of en,
or some more euphonious substitute, as a personal
pronoun, common gender." "A deficiency exists
there," he glibly continues, "and we should fill it."
My other correspondent has a somewhat juster
notion of the magnitude of his proposition, or, as I
should rather say, of its enormity. But, still, he
insists that a new pronoun is "universally needed,"
and as an example of the inconvenience caused by
the want, he gives the following sentence : —

" If a person wishes to sleep, they mustn't eat cheese for
Eupper."

Of course," he goes on to say. "that is incorrect;
f et almost every one would say they? (That I
venture to doubt.) "Few would say in common
conversation, ' If a person wishes to sleep, he or
>he mustn't eat cheese for .-upper It is too much

240 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

trouble. We must have a word to take the place of
he or she, his or hers, htm or her, etc.
As the French make the little word en answer a
great many purposes, suppose we take the same
word, give it an English pronunciation (or any other
word), and make it answer for any and every case
of that kind, and thus tend to simplify the lan-
guage."

To all this there are two sufficient replies. First,
the thing can't be done ; last, it is not at all neces-
sary or desirable that it should be done. And to
consider the last point first. There is no such
dilemma as the one in question. A speaker ot
common sense and common mastery of English
would say, "If a man wishes to sleep, he must not
eat cheese at supper,"* where man, as in the word
mankind, is used in a general sense for the species.
Any objection to this use of man, and of the rela-
tive pronoun, is for the C'nsideration of the next
Woman's Rights Convention, at which I hope it
may be discussed with all the gravity beseeming its
momentous significance. But as a slight contribu-
tion to the amenities of the occasion, I venture to
suggest that to free the language from the oppres-
sion of the sex and from the outrage to its dignity,
which have for centuries lurked in this use of man
and he, it is not necessary to say, " If a person
wishes to sleep, en mustn't eat cheese for supper,'1
but merely, as the speakers of the best English now
say, and have said for generations, K If one wishes
to sleep, one mustn't, etc." One, thus used, is a

* Unless we mean that the supper consisted entirely or chitfly of cheese, we shoul.1
tot ray cheese for suppei, but cheese at supper.

FORMATION OF PRONOUNS. 24!

good pronoun, of healthy, well-rooted growth. And
we have in some another word which supplies all our
need in this respect without our going to the French
"or their over-worked en; e. g., Void des bonnes
fraiscs. Voulcz-vous en avoir ? These are fine
strawberries. Will you have some? Thus used,
some is to all intents and purposes a pronoun which
leaves nothing to be desired. With fie, she, it, and
we, and one, and some, we have no need of en or
any other outlandish pronoun.

Or we should have had one long ere this. For
the service to which the proposed pronoun would be
put, if it were adopted, is not new. The need is
one which, if it exists at all, must have been felt
five hundred years ago as much as it can be now.
At that period, and long before, a noun in the third
person singular was represented, according to its
gender, by the pronouns he, she, or //, and there
was no pronoun of common gender to take place of
all of them. In the matter of language, popular
need is inexorable, and popular ingenuity inex-
haustible ; and it is not in the nature of things that,
if the imagined need had existed, it should not have
been supplied during the formative stages of our
language, particularly at the Elizabethan period,
to which we owe the pronoun its. The introduction
of this word, although it is merely a possessive
"orm of it, was a work of so much time and diffi-
culty, that an acquaintance with the struggle would
alone deter a considerate man from attempting to
make a new pronoun Although, as I have said,
,t is a mere possessive form of a word which had
been on the lips of all men ot Ansrlo-Suxon b' >od

242 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

for a thousand years, and although it v/as intro-
duced at a period notable for bold linguistic innova-
tions, and was soon adopted by some of the most
popular writers, Shakespeare among them, nearly
a century elapsed before it was firmly established
in the English tongue.

For pronouns are of all words the remotest in
origin, the slowest of growth, the most irregular and
capricious in their manner of growth, the most
tenacious of hold, the most difficult to plant, the
most nearly impossible to transplant. To say that
/, the first of pronouns, is three thousand years old,
is quite within bounds. We trace it through the
Old English ich to the Anglo-Saxon ic, and the
Gothic ik. It' appears in the Icelandic ek, the Dan-
ish jeg, the Old German ih, the Russian ia, the
Latin and Greek ego, and the Sanscrit aham. Should
any of my readers fail to see the connection between
\ih-am and /, let him consider for a moment that
the sound expressed by the English / is ah-ee.

The antiquity of pronouns is shown, also, by the
irregularity of their cases. That is generally a trait
of the oldest words in any language, verbs and
adjectives as well as pronouns. For instance, the
words expressing consciousness, existence, pleas-
ure, and pain, the first and commonest linguistic
nords of all peoples, — in English, /, be, good, bad ;
in Latin, ego, csse, bonus, malus, — are regular in
no language that I can remember within the narrow
circle with which I have been able to establish an
acquaintance. Telegraph and skedaddle are as
regular as may be ; but we say go, went, gone ; the
Romans said eo, ire, ivi, itum ; and the irregular

FORMATION OF PROJNOUNS. 243

ities, dialectic and other, of the Greek nui (cimi), are
multitudinous and anomalous. Engjish pronouns
have real cases, which is one sign of their antiquity,
the Anglo-Saxon having been an inflected lan-
guage ; but not in Anglo-Saxon, in Latin, or in any
other inflected language, are the oblique cases of /
derived from it more than they are in English. Jlfyy
me, we, our, tis, are not inflections of /; but neither
are metis, mihi, me, nos, nostrum, nubis, inflections
of ego. The oblique cases of pronouns are furnished
by other parts of speech, or by other pronouns, from
which they are taken bodily, or composed, in the
early, and, generally, unwritten stages of a lan-
guage. Between the pronoun and the article there
is generally a very close relation. It is in allusion
to this fact that Sir Hugh Evans, putting William
Page to school (" Merry Wives of Windsor," Act IV.
Scene i), and endeavoring to trip the lad, — though
he learned the trick of William Lilly the gram-
marian,— asks, "What is he, William, that doth
lend articles?" But the boy is too quick for him,
and replies, "Articles are borrowed of the pronoun,
and be thus declined : singular iter^ nominativo,
hie, h<zc, /ioc."

A marked instance of this relationship between
the pronoun and the article, and an instructive ex-
ample of the manner in which pronouns come into
a language, is our English she, which is borrowed
from the Anglo-Saxon definite article se, the feminine
form of which was sc6 ; and this definite article it-
self originally was, or was used as, a demonstrative
pronoun, corresponding to wkc, that. For se is a
softened form of the older the ; and Ic the, he the

144 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

are Anglo-Saxon for I who, he who. The Anglo
Saxon for she was he6 ; the masculine being, as in
English, he. And as a definite feminine object was
expressed by the article sco, it has been supposed
lhat the likeness in form and meaning between the
two caused a coalition, so that from hco and j/iee
came she. But this must have been in the North,
if at all. For seo or scho, the Northern equivalent
ID heo seems to have been the direct ancestor of
our she. And in Gothic « or se=ske ; where, how-
ever, there is again the kindred likeness between
the feminine pronoun and the article, sa, so = tkc.

Our possessive neuter pronoun its, to which refer-
ence has been made before, came into the language
last of all its kin, in this manner : As he6 was the
feminine of he, hit was the neuter. From kit the
h was dropped by one of the vicissitudes which
have so often damped the aspirations of that unfor-
tunate letter. Now in ?'/, the / — half the word — is
no part of the original pronoun, but the mere in-
flectional termination by which it is formed from
he. But by long usage, in a period of linguistic
disintegration,, the / came to be looked upon as an
essential part of the word, one really original let-
ter of which, h, had been dropped by the most
cultivated writers. This letter, however, long held
As place ; and in the usage of the common people,
and in that of some writers, the Anglo-Saxon hit
was the neuter pronoun nearly down to the Eliz-
abethan period. Of both the masculine he and the
neuter hit, the possessive case was his, just as cjus
s the genitive ot both is and id ; and so his was
the proper lineal possessive case of /'/, the succes

FORMATION OF PRONOUNS. 245

sor of hit. If his had been subjected to a depriva-
tion like to that of the nominative, by an elision of
the h, and made into z>, there would have been nc
apparent reason to question its relationship to it.
But this was not to be. The /, not the h, had coma
to be regarded as the essential letter of the word ;
his was looked upon as belonging to he, and not t<
it ; and to the latter was added the 5, which is a
sign of possession in so many of the Indo-Euro-
pean languages. But there lingered long, not only
among the uneducated people who continued to use
kit, but among writers and scholars, a consciousness
that his was the true possessive of it, and still more
a feeling that its was an illegitimate pretender.
And, indeed, if ever word was justly called bastard,
(his one deserves the stigma. But like some other
bastards, it has held the place it seized, and justified
the usurpation by the service it has rendered.*

This is the history of a pronominal form which
was excluded from our English Bible (A. D. 1611),
which was used but nine times by Shakespeare, and
instead of which we find his, her, and even it late in
the seventeenth century. A singular idiom, the own,
expressing reflective possession, was in use between
1350 and 1600. Here the does not stand for its ;
the old possessive hit having been in general use as
late as 1500. Besides, the own expressed plural rs
well as singular possession.

* Some doubt yet prevails as to the origin of the use of his as a sign of the rossrs-
ii ire case, as, John his book. May it noi have come in thus? Es or is, the possess!'.-*
inflection, was first separated from the noun ; e. g-., —

"& theaweetest tyring that is to gosshawke & sperhawke is a pisge « tayle."
" Anoynt the hawke is crys with oyie of olive," etc.

Book of H making \ cm. Henry VI.), Relig. Antiq. I. 296, 301.

The separation effected, is was aspirated, and supposed to be the pronoun. A pigg«
kij tavle and John his book .ire not easily distinguishable from a pigg-es tayle and

240 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

The formation of certain other possessive pro-
nouns is somewhat like that of its. These arc the
absolute possessives hers, ours, yours, and theirs, ah
of which are made by adding the singular possessive
suffix s to an already possessive form, which in the
last three is plural — a striking irregularity. These
absolute possessive pronouns are thus double pos-
sessives. The others, mine and thine, are only old
possessive forms which have been set apart for use
absolutely. It is in analogy with them that the vul-
gar absolute possessives hisn, hern, ourn, yourn, and
tJieirn are formed. Remarkably, in the feminine
personal pronoun, and in no other, both the posses-
sive and objective relation are expressed by the same
form, her. This results from the fact that the Anglo-
Saxon hire, the genitive and dative of heo—slie, took
the place of the accusative hi. It has long been es-
tablished that the objective of English pronouns was
formed upon the Anglo-Saxon dative. In the case of
heo, however, not only were the genitive and dative
'.dentical, but hire, in both the genitive and dative
use, went through the same changes, hire, hcore, here,
hir in passing into her, upon which hers was formed,
and which has long been used provincially as a
nominative. This identity of the feminine genitive
and dative is common in Anglo-Saxon pronouns.

To these illustrations of the way in which pro-
nouns find their way into a language, I will add one
other example of this taking of a part of an origi-
nal word as a stem. Had we lived three hundred
years ago, we should have said about the season}
July, when I am writing, that we liked pison for din-
ner. But by this we should not have meant tnat
fluid which is sung, cold, in the touching ballad of
- Villikins and his Dinah." but simolv peas- and

FORMATION OF PRONOUNS. 247

we should have pronounced the word, noipy-son,
but -pce-son. Pison or pisen is merely the old plu-
ral in en (like oxen, brethren} of pise — pronounced
(pcese} — the name of the vegetable which we call
pea. Our forefathers said a pise, as we say a pea.
When the old plural in en was dropped, pise (peese)
came to be regarded as a plural in s of a supposed
singular, pi (pronounced pee} ; and by this back-
ward movement toward a non-existent starting-point,
we have attained the \vordpea.

To return to our subject. The British Parliament
is called omnipotent, and a majority may, by a
single vote, change the so-called British Constitu-
tion, as a majority of Congress may, if it will, set
at naught the Constitution of the United States.
But neither Parliament nor Congress, not both of
them by a concurrent vote, could make or modify
a pronoun in the language common to the nations
for which they legislate.

I shall endeavor to answer another and a difficult
question which has been lately asked as to the for-
mation of pronouns. Why do we say myself, your"
self, ourselves, using, as it appears, the possessive
form of the pronoun, and yet himself, themselves •,
using the objective? No reason has been discov-
ered for this anomaly ; but its history is traceable.*

* The question was asked by Mr. Edward S. Gould, author of " Good English," a
aook full of counsel and criticism that justifies its title. His communication ap-
peared in "The Round Table" of April 10; and the above reply, forming the remain-
der of the present chapter, appeared April 24, in the same paper, under date of
April 10. An explanation, substantially the same was subsequently given in "The
Round Table" of June 5 by Mr. Tlvmas Davidson, of St. Louis, an accomplished
scholai ind etymologist, who thus introduced his remarks : —

" Mr. Gould's other difficulty is one which he shares with a very large number of
l-Jlolars. It is a real one, and I have never seen in any book a definite solution of
"«. I wi!', therefore, ask leave to state, at so .;e length, ,'u: resuii& of my own rt&earc'.iM

248 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

The emphatic compound pronoun has come directly
down to us from the Anglo-Saxon, in which it was
formed by the union, although not the compound-
ing, of the pronoun ic (I), and the pronominal
adjective sy^(self). The adjectival force of the
latter word continued long unimpaired. In the
Cursor Mund;, a Middle English metrical version
of parts of the Bible, Christ says, "For I am self
man al perfite," i. e., I am very man all perfect ; and
even in Twelfth Night Shakespeare wrote, "with
one self king," which the revisors of the text for
the folio of 1632, not apprehending, altered to " with
one self-same king." But the Anglo-Saxon ic (\)
and sy If (self) were both declined; and when they
were united they still were both declined. So, as we
have res-publica, ret-publicce, res-publicce, rerum-
•publicarum, and so forth, in Latin, we have ic sylf,
min sylfes, we sylfe, urc sylfra, in Anglo-Saxon ; the
third person being, in the singular, — nom. he sylf,
gen. his sylfes, dat. him sylfum, ace. hine sylfne,
and in the plural, — nom. hi sylfe, gen. hira sylfra,
dat. him sylfum, or heom sylftim, ace. hi sylfe.
But by the process of phonetic degradation these
double-case inflections were broken down, and a
compound emphatic pronoun was formed, not from
either the nominative case or the' accusative, but

and conclusions in regard to it, acknowledging, at the same time, my indebtedness to
the woiks of Koch, M&tzner, Grein, and other German scholars."

I am thus led to believe that my own solution of this question is the first that was
g'-en. For what Mr. Daviason does not know of philological literature can be hardly
worth ki.owing ; and I refer to his article, not to imply that he took any hint frorc
mine (than which hardly any supposition could be more presumptuous), but to clam
for the latter the support of a judgement formed by his acumen and research, and rest
ing on the labors, of the learned German philologists whom he mentions, and wiil
•hose w orks I am unacquainted.

FORMATION OF PRONOUNS.

from the dative or the genitive ; the result being,
not f-self, ive-selves, he-self, they-selves, etc., but
my-self (me sylfuni), our-selvcs (ure sylfrtim),
him-self (Jiim-sylfuni) , them-selves (Jieom sylfum ) ,
and so forth; but us-selven appears in Henry Ill's
proclamation A. D. 1258. Later we find such forms
as ich-silf and me-silf, tlm-silf and the-self alternat-
ing. Within a century, however, we find the
modern form fully established. Thus, in the ro-
mance of Sir Perceval of Gallcs, about A. D,
1350: —

" Sone them hast takjne thy rede
To do tkiselfe to the dede."

" His stede es in stable sett
And hymselfe to the haulle fett."

" The sowdane sayse he will her ta,
The lady wille hir-selfe sla,
Are he that is her maste fa [i. e., greatest foe]
Solde wedd hir to wyfe."

" Ane unwyse man, he sayd, am I
That puttis myselfe to siche a foly."

What determined the selection of the case form
for preservation can only be conjectured. It may
have been accident ; but mere accident has little
influence upon the course of language ; and the
notion that self expressed an identity possessed by
or pertaining to the subject of the pronoun may have
led to the choice of the genitive or the dative case,
and this selection may have been helped by con-
siderations of euphony, or ease of utterance.

The vulgar use of Ids-self, as, for example, " Sara
was a-cleanin of his-self,' springs from the notion
of the substantive character of self, and is not an

250 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

error that illiterate people have fallen into, but a
remnant of an old usage ; educated people, as well
as the uneducated, having very early framed their
speech upon this notion. Thus in Bishop Bale's
" English Votaries : " " But Marianus sayth she
was a presbyteresse, or a prieste's leman, to save
the honour of tb*it ordre, by cause he was a monk his
sctfe" (fol. 91, ed. 1560, et -passim} ; and Tyndale
in his version of the Bible has (Job xxii. 24), " Yee
the Allmightie his own selfe shall be thy harvest."
I have called this use of the pronoun an idiom of
our language ; but it has a parallel in the French
use of moi, toi, and lui. The French do not say
je meme, tu meme, il memc, but moi meme, tot
memc, lui meme, in which the pronouns are dative
forms, the remnants of the Latin mihi, tibi, and illi.
But in old French the nominative was used. I
have carefully examined early French chansons and
romans, including the Chanson de Roland and the
Roman de Tristan , and have found not a single
instance of moi, toi, or lui used other than objec-
tively, and generally after a preposition. The
modern Frenchman says ni moi : his forefathers,
eight hundred years ago, said ne to, where the pro-
noun is a degraded form of ego, which becameyV?,
and finally je ; so that, according to correct lineal
descent, the modern French should be ni Je.
Louis XIV. said, L'ctat, c'cst moi ; Hugh Capet,
would have said, cst jo ; as the King of Spain still
signs himself, grandly, Yo el Rey. Is it not pos
iible, therefore, that -in the phrase, not entirely
vulgar, // is me, which Dean Alford has defendeo
ou insufficient grounds, and Mr. Moon has at

SOME 25 ^

tacked without sufficient knowledge, the pronour
is not a misused accusative, but, as in the exactly
correspondent French phrase, a remnant of the
dative ? It is me is not Anglo-Saxon certainly, in
which language we have Ice eom hit, a form pre-
served by early English writers of repute. But if !
remember rightly, the phrase in question may be
traced back to a very respectable antiquity.

We find, then, that himself and themselves are
-lot objective or accusative forms, but remnants of
tv dative form, which, by phonetic degradation, have
become, so to speak, the nominative cases of inde-
clinable emphatic pronouns of the third person. So
herself is not possessive, but a like remnant of a
dative form. Itself, notably, is not possessive, not
a compound of its and self, it having been used
for centuries before the appearance of its in the lan-
guage. And until a very late period, after A. D.
1600, it was written separately, it self. We do use
self with a possessive, as "Csesar's self; " and our
Anglo-Saxon forefathers joined it to proper names,
as Petrus sylf, Crist sylf. But here I must stop,
not only to avoid prolixity, but because the etymol-
ogy and relations of self is one of the most difficult
and least understood subjects in the history of our
language.

SOME.

Several correspondents have asked me, in the
words of one of them, "not to forget the word
that is more misused than any other in our lan-
guage •— some. Thus," my correspondent contin-
ues, " } eople say (writers as well as speakers)

252 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

there were some six or seven hundred persons pres-
ent, there are some ninety vessels, when they mean
about, or when some is entirely superfluous." This
use of the word has also been recently denounced
by some British writers on language, who, how-
ever, have given no good reasons for their objec-
tions, although one of -them calls attention to the
fact that some of our best writers are using the
word carelessly. Let us look a little into the his-
tory and the radical signification of this word, and
trace this use of it.

We hear all around us, among well-educated
people of good English stock, but who give them-
selves no care about their use of words, speaking
their mother tongue merely as they have learned
it from the mouths of their kinsfolk and acquaint-
ance, such phrases as some three or four, some
few. Oliver Wendell Holmes, whose English, as
well as whose thought, merits the attention and ad-
miration of his readers, says " some fifty " in a pas-
sage in w The Guardian Angel." Thackeray,
in one of his lectures on the Queen Anne Wits, has
this passage : —

" And some five miles on the road, as the Exeter fly comes
iing'.ing and creaking onwards, it will suddenly be brought to a
halt by a gentleman on a gray mare," etc., etc.

Prior closes his epigram on K Phillis's Age " with
the line —

"And Phyllis is some forty-three."

Bacon is quoted by Dr. Johnson (not upon this
point, however) as using not only the phrase " some
two thousand," but "some good distance," ".some

SOME. 253

good while ; " and Raleigh, in one of his letters,
has the following passage : —

"Being encountered with a strong storm some eight leagues
to the westward of Sicily. I held it office of a commander to take
B port."

Shakespeare, in " Richard III.," writes, —

" Has she forgot already that brave prince,
Edward her lord, whom I, some three months since,
Stabbed in my angry mood at Tewksbury?"

and in "Twelfth Night," —

" Some four or five attend on him :
All, if you will."

If a man sin against the English language by
using some in the manner in question, he will do it
in very good company ; and is it not better to sin
with the elect than to be righteous with the repro-
bate? But in the determination of such a question
as this we must not defer to mere usage. I repeat
that there is a misuse of language which can be
justified by no authority.

Some is one of the oldest simple, underived, un-
compounded, and unmodified words in the English
language, in the Anglo-Saxon part of which it can
be traced without change, as som or sum, generally
the latter, for a thousand years. Its meaning dur-
ing that \vhole period seems not to have been
enlarged, diminished, or inflected, in the slightest
degree, in either popular or literary usage. That
meaning is — an indeterminate quantity or number,
greater or less, considered apart from the whole
existing number. Some is separative ; it implies
•jthers, and contrasts with all. It is segregative,
and sets apart, either a number, though indefinite,
from another and generally a larger number, or an

254 WORDS AND THEIR USES,

individual person or thing not definite. It corre-
sponds not only to the Latin altqtiantum , but tc
quidcm and aliquis, and to circiter. Such has been
its usage always in English and in Anglo-Saxon.
Let us, for instance, examine the passage in the
Gospels about the centurion and his sick servant.
It begins in the modern version (Luke vii. 2),
" And a certain centurion's servant, who was dear
unto him, was sick." But in Wicliffe's English
version, made about A. D. 1385, we find, "Sothli,
a servant of sum man centurio hauying yvel." In
the Anglo-Saxon version, made about A. D. 995^ it
is, " B& waes sumes hundred mannes peowa untrum."
Again, in the same Gospel (ix. 19) , " Others say that
one of the old prophets is risen again;" which, in
the Anglo-Saxon version, is "Sume baet sum witega
of bam ealdum aras." Here the Greek word trans-
lated some is T/J, which the Vulgate renders gut-
dam ; and the meaning is, clearly er ough, an
indefinite individual of a certain class. But the
word may be used to set apart indefinitely two, or
five, or fifty individuals, as well as one. We may
say, a certain five, or a certain fifty, as well as a
certain one ; and so, some five or some fifty. And
such, we find, was the very best and oldest Anglo-
Saxon usage. King Alfred, first in scholarship as
well as in the state, and the writer of the purest
Anglo-Saxon that has come down to us, translated,
fiom the Latin, Bede's account of Caedmon, the
Anglo-Saxon sacred poet, which begins (in Eng
lish) thus : —

" In this abbess's minster was a certain brother (' quidam fra
ttr ') notably glorified and honored with a divine gift," etc.

SOME. 255

This Alfred renders thus : —

•• On f>isse abbuddissan mynstre waes sum broSor synderlice
mid godcunde gyfe gemsered et geweorpad."

In his translation of Boethius (I cite here from
Bosworth) he has the following passage : —
" pa woeron hi sume ten gear on pam gewinne."

That is, Then they were some ten years in the
war. I find, also, in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
this passage, which relates to the year 605, but was
written about A. D. 805 : —

" paer man sloh eac cc preosta J>a comon Sider paet her scoldan
ge biddan for Walana here. Scromail waes gehaten hjra ealdor,
se aet baeerst Sonou fiftiga sum,"

That is, "There they slew, also, two hundred
priests, who came thither that they might pray for
the British army. Their prince was named Scro-
mail, at whose hands some fifty were slain." But
the word, in this sense of a separated, although in-
definite number or individual, goes far back beyond
the Anglo-Saxon, to the Gothic, spoken by the peo-
ple who broke into Dacia, and settled there in the
second century. They became Christians very
early — so early that Ulphilas, their bishop, a man
of preeminent learning and ability, made a transla-
tion of the Gospels for them about A. D. 360, which
exists in a superb manuscript, written in silver and
golden letters upon a light-purple parchment, and
known as the Codex Argenteus. Referring to the
two passages from Luke, quoted above, we find thai
that about the centurion begins thus : —

" Hundafade ban stttnis skalks siukands, swultawairbhya ; "
and that about John the Baptist thus : —

" Sumai pan f>atei praufetus sums frize airizane usstot>."

256 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

That is, some centurion, some prophet; as we
might say, some one centurion or other, some two
or three centurions. So that the Gothic Ulphilas
used some just as it was used by the Anglo-Saxon
Alfred and the English Wycliffe. Returning to the
Anglo-Saxon, we find that where Moses tells us, ac-
cording to our modern version (Genesis xlvi. 37),
that " all the souls of the house of Jacob which came
into Egypt were threescore and ten," the Anglo-
Saxon translator tells us that there were "some
seventy" of them — "seofontigra sum" Our ex-
amination proves, then, that this use of some, which
is objected to, in so many quarters, as inelegant and
incorrect English, conforms strictly to the meaning
which the word has had among speakers and the
best writers ever since.it came out of the darkness a
thousand and half a thousand years ago ; that it can
be traced from Holmes and Thackeray, through
Shakespeare, and Bacon, and Wycliffe, and King
Alfred, to Ulphilas, the Goth, on the Dacian banks
of the Danube ; where, we may be sure, the Em-
peror Julian heard it, as, during the life of Ulphilas,
and before Alaric came upon the stage, he led his
victorious legions down that river, after his splendid
campaign against the Germans, which so revived
the somewhat tarnished lustre of the Roman arms.
In fact, this idiom, as well as this word, is found,
without variation, in the oldest Teutonic dialect
known to us, and is, at least, a thousand years
older than the modern English language, in which
it has been preserved, without change, both in the
writings of scholars and in the common speech of the
people. There can be no higher authority, no bettei

SOME. 257

reason, for any word or form of language, than thai
it springs from a simple native germ, and is rooted
in the usage of fifteen hundred years. And it would
be difficult to find in any tongue another word or
phrase which has such simplicity of origin and
structure, and such length of authoritative usage in
its support, as this, which has offended the ears of
some half a dozen of my correspondents and some
three or four British critics.

It is not my purpose to enter here upon the
defence of good English words and phrases ; but
I have gone somewhat at length into the history of
this phrase, not only because I hoped it might be
interesting to my readers, but because the denuncia-
tion of the usage is a noteworthy example of the
mistakes that may be made by purists in language.
When a word, a phrase, or an idiom is found in use
both in common speech and in the writings of edu-
cated men, we may be almost sure that there is good
reason for the usage. But cultivated and well-
meaning people sometimes take a scunner against
some particular word or phrase, as we have seen
in this case, and they flout it pitilessly, and think
in their hearts that it is the great blemish upon the
speech of the day.

And, by the bye, one of my critics, and one
who I fear rates my judgment and my knowledge
much above their desert, finds fault with my own
.English (which I am far from setting up as an
example, having neither time nor inclination to
wBlair-up"my sentences), because I use the phrase
first rate as denoting a high degree of superiority,
which he says " will hardly be found in that sense
17

258 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

in serious English composition, certainly not until
within a comparatively recent period." Thia
brought to my mind the following passage from Sh
Walter Scott's " Monastery " (chapter xxviii.) : —

" The companion of Astrophel, the flower of the tilt-yard of
Feliciana, had no more idea that his graces and go«d parts could
attach the love of Mysie Happer than a first-rate beauty in the
boxes dreams of the fatal wound which her charms may inflict
on some attorney's apprentice in the pit; "

and this also from Fielding's " Tom Jones " (chapter
iv.).—

" — and she was indeed a most sensible girl, and her under-
standing was of the first rate"

and this from Farquhar (" Poems, Letters and Es.
says," A. D. 1700, p. 14): —

" 'No first-rate beau with us, drawn by his six before and his six
behind," etc.

But I had, I need hardly say, no thought of
these precedents when I wrote, and should have
used the phrase without scruple, even were I sure
that it had never been used before. Too much
Btress is generally laid upon the authority of mere
previous usage, which is not at all necessary to the
justification of a good word or phrase. A lawyer
Df distinction once said to me that, before a jury, he
had needed, and on the spur of the moment, had
made and used, the word juxtapose, adding that he
had no business to do so, but that it was a pity that
there was no such word in the language, or, as he
etaid, in the dictionaries. But no man needs the
authority of a dictionary (even such authority as
dictionaries have), or of previous usage, for suck

ADJECTIVES IN EN. 259

a word as juxtapose. It is involved in juxtaposi-
tion as much as interpose and transpose are in in*
terposition and transposition. The mere fact that
it had not been used before this occasion, or rather
that no maker of dictionaries had happened to
notice it, is of no moment whatever. Any man has
the right to use a word, especially a word of such
natural growth and so well rooted as juxtapose, for
the first time, else we should be poorly off for
language. But he must be wary and sure of his
ground ; for an innovator does his work at his own
proper peril.

ADJECTIVES IN EN.

Unless a stand is made by the writers and
speakers who guide the course of language (I
mean not only scholars and men of letters, but the
great mass of well-educated and socially-cultivated
people), we shall lose entirely a certain class of
words — adjectives in en formed from nouns —
which contribute much to the usefulness and beauty
of our language. Thrcaden is hopelessly gone,
and, rarely needed, will be little missed. Golden,
brazen, leaden, leathern, wheat en, oaten, and waxen
are in more or less advanced stages of departure.
They all appear in poetry, but are not often used
for the every-day needs of life, except in figurative
language. Most people would say, a gold candle-
stick, a brass faucet, a lead pipe, and so forth; but
a golden harvest, a brazen face, a leaden sky.
The most untaught or the most eccentric person
would hardly say, a brass face, or a lead sky.
The adjective in en seems to be restricted to the

Z6O WORDS AND THEIR USES.

expression of likeness ; whereas it was formed to
express substance, of course including likeness.
Golden, meaning made of gold, and,* of course,
like gold, now is generally used to mean the latter
only ; and for the former sense the noun gold
is used as an adjective. This is to be deplored, not
only because the formation in question is one of the
oldest in our language, but because its loss is a real
impoverishment of our vocabulary, compelling us to
put one word to two uses, and also because we are
thereby deprived of what we much need — dis-
syllables the last syllable of which is unaccented.
In proportion as a language is without such words,
it lacks one of the chief elements cf a flowing
rhythm, and becomes stiff and ohalk-knuckled.
Compare the sound of a golden crown, a leaden
weight, a wheaten loaf, with that of a gold crown,
a lead weight, a wheat loaf. To a person who has
an ear for rhythm the former is agreeable, the
latter harsh and offensive. To any one the former
phrases are easier of utterance than the latter.
The adjectives in en can be saved if we will, and
they are well worth saving. If those who are
strong enough do not stretch out their hands to
them, we shall soon be wearing wool clothes ; we
shall not know the difference between a wooden
house and a wood-house ; we shall be talking of
the North States and the South States, the East and
the West States ; and when we go back to the old
well, we shall find there, not the old oaken bucket,
but an oak bucket, which, in losing half its distinc*
live epithet, will have lost half the association, and
all the beauty, of its name. In an old inventory

EITHER AND NEITHER. 26l

before me, which was made about the year 1600,
there are these items: "A tynnen quart, lod. ; a
square tynnen pot, 6d" Overbury, in his "Charac-
ters," writes of " pellets in eldern guns ; " Tubervile
of * a pair of yarnen socks." And in the "Apology
for the Lollards," supposed to have been written by
Wycliffe, is this passage, which contains a cluster
of adjectives in en formed from substantives, and
used by our forefathers five hundred years ago.

"As the hethun men hed sex kyndis of similacris clayen,
treen, brasun, stonun, silveren, and golden, so have lordis now
sex kyndis of prelatis."

It is difficult to see why silveren should have
been dropped, and brazen and golden retained.
Better return to stoncn and clayen and yarn-en, than
lose golden and its fellows.

EITHER AND NEITHER.

Either is a singular word. It expresses, and from
Anglo-Saxon times has expressed, in the best usage,
one of two and both of two. As both means two
taken together, so cither means two considered sep-
arately. Thus, " On either side of the river was
the tree of life," means that the tree grew on both
sides alike ; but, " Take either side of the river,"
means that one or the other of the two sides may
be taken. It is well to assert this claim for ei~
tAer, because it has been questioned by some pu-
nsts. It is almost impossible to explain hovv this
word means both one and two, and how it can
yret be used without causing any confusion for in-
telligent people. Either, being compounded of the
Anglo-Saxon aeg, every, and hwsei>er, which of two;

262 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

and so meaning every which, or one, of two, should,
strictl}7, be used only with reference to two objects.
Neither, being but the negative of either, conforms
to like usage. But for a very long period, they,
particularly the latter, have been used by our best
writers in relation to more than two objects. For
example, —

" Which of them [the ancient Fathers] ever said that neithei
kings, nor the whole clergy, nor jet all the people together are able
to be judges over you?" — Bishop Jewell's Apology, Part V. c. 5.

" — theii main business [that of sacred writers] is to abstract
man from this world, and to persuade him to prefer the bare hope
of what he can neither hear, see, nor conceive, before all present
enjoyments this world can afford." — Hobbes's Liberty and Ne~
cessity, Fpistle.

"Independent morals are to be neither Catholic, Evangelic,
Buddhist, nor Atheistic." — Saturday Review, October 31, 1869.

" — this new and ambitious organ attacks neither Protestants
like M. Guizot, Catholics like its orthodox readers, Israelites like
M. Rothschild, nor Atheists like M. Prudhon." — Idem.

This use of these words, although not defensible
on any other grounds than those of convenience and
custom, seems likely to prevail, and it were well
if no graver errors had been sanctioned by the au-
thority of eminent writers. Either, used separately,
is responded to by or, and neither by nor ; thus —
either this or that, neither this nor that. This rule,
which is absolute, is frequently violated. Some
people, not uneducated, seem to think that if cither
has been preceded by a negation, it should be fol-
lowed by nor. They would write, for instance, a
passage in Bacon's " New Atlantis " thus : w We
never heard of any ship that had been seen to arrive
upon any shore of Europe ; no, nor of either the
East nor the West Indies." But Bacon wrote, cor

EITHER AND NEITHER. 263

rectly, " nor of either the East or the West Indies."
The introduction of a second nor in such sentences
involves the use of two negatives in the same asser-
tion. It is like, He hadn't none.

The pronunciation of cither and neither has been
much disputed, but, it would seem, needlessly. The
best usage is even more controlling in pronunciation
lhan in other departments of language ; but usage
itself is guided, although not constrained, by anal-
ogy. The analogically correct pronunciation of
these words is what we call the Irish one, ayther and
nay t her ; the diphthong having the sound which it
has in man)'- words in which ci is, and apparently
has always been so pronounced — weiglit, freight,
deign, vein, obeisance, etc. This sound, too, has
come down from Anglo-Saxon times, as we have
already seen, the word in that language being
Ggper ' > a°d there can be no doubt that in this, as
in some other respects, the language of the educated
Irish Englishman is analogically correct, and in
conformity to ancient custom. His pronunciation
of certain syllables in ci which have acquired in
English usage the sound of e long, as, for example,
Conceit, receive, and which he pronounces consayt,
resayve, is analogically and historically correct. £
had of old the sound of a long, and i the sound of
e, particularly in words which came to us from or
through the Norman French. But ayther and nay-
jher, being antiquated and Irish, analogy and the
best usage require the common pronunciation ecther
ind nccthcr. For the pronunciation i-ther and ni-
thcr, with the i long, which is sometimes heard,
there is no authority, either of analogy or of the

264 WORDS AND TIIF.IR USES.

best speakers. It is an affectation, and in this coun-
try, a copy of a second-rate British affectation.
Persons of the best education and the highest
social position in England general!}' say ecthcr and
necther.

SHALL AND WILL.

The distinction between these words, although
very clear when it is once apprehended, is liable to
be disregarded by persons who have not had the
advantage of early intercourse with educated Eng-
lish people. I mean English in blood and breeding ;
for, as the traveller found that in Paris even the
children could speak French, so in New England it
is noteworthy that even the boys and girls playing
on the commons use shall and will correctly ; and
in New York, New Jersey, and Ohio, in Virginia,
Maryland, and South Carolina, fairly educated
people of English stock do the same ; while by
Scotchmen and Irishmen, even when they are pro-
fessionally men of letters, and by the great mass of
the people of the Western and South-western States,
the words are used without discrimination, or, if
discrimination is attempted, will is given the place
of shall, and vice versa. It is much to be regretted
that an English scholar of Mr. Marsh's eminence
should have expressed the opinion that the distinc-
tion between these words " has, at present, no logical
value or significance whatever," and have ventured
the prediction that " at no very distant day this
verbal quibble will disappear, and that one of the
auxiliaries will be employed with all persons of the
nominative, exclusively as the sign of the future

SHALL AND WILL. 265

and the other only as an expression of purpose or
authority."

The distinction between shall and will, as aux-
iliary verbs to be used with various persons as nom-
inatives, is a verbal'quibble, just as any distinction
is a quibble to persons too ignorant, too dull, or too
careless for its apprehension. So, and even yet more,
i3 the distinction between be, am, art, is, and are, a
quibble. All these words express exactly the same
thought — that of present existence. Why, there
fore, should not the distinction between them, which
assigns them to various persons as nominatives, be
swept away, so that, instead of entangling ourselves
in the subtle intricacies of I am, thou art, he is, we
are, you are, they- are, which are of no logical val-
ue or significance, we may say, with all the charm
and the force of simplicity, I be, thou be, he be, we
be, you be, they be? — as, in fact, some very worthy
people do, and manage to make themselves under-
stood. Why, indeed, should we suffer a smart
ittle verbal shock when the Irish servant says,
Will I put some more coal on the fire?" And
why should we be so hard-hearted as to laugh at
the story of the Frenchman, who, falling into the
water, cried out, as he was going down, " I vill
drown, and nobody shall help me"? But those
who have genuine, well-trained English tongues and
ears are shocked, and do laugh. The reason of
the distinction is regarded by most writers upon
language as very difficult of explanation. Essays
have been written upon the question ; Sir Edmund
Head even made a little book about it ; but no one
has yet traced the usage to its origin so clearly as

*00 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

to satisfy all philologists. Without pretending tc
do what so many others have failed to do, I shall
give the explanation that is satisfactory to me.

The radical signification of will (Anglo-Saxon
•wiHaii) is purpose, intention, determination; that of
shall (Anglo-Saxon sccal, ought) is obligation. /
will do means, I purpose doing — I am determined
to do. I shall do means, radically, I ought to do;
and as a man is supposed to do what he sees he
ought to do, / shall do came to mean, I am about
doing — to be, in fact, a mere announcement of
future action, more or less remote. But so you shall
do means, radically, you ought to do ; and therefore
unless we mean to impose an obligation or to
announce an action on the part of another person,
over whom we claim some control, shall, in speak-
ing of the mere future voluntary action of another
person, is inappropriate ; and we therefore say
you -will, assuming that it is the volition of the
other person to do thus or so. Hence, in merely
announcing future action, we say, I or we shall ',
you, he, or they will ; and, in declaring purpose on
our own part, or on the part of another, obligation,
or inevitable action, which we mean to control,
we say, I or we willt you, he, or they shall. Offi-
cial orders, which are in the form you will, are but
a seeming exception to this rule of speech, which
they, in fact, illustrate. For in them the courtesy ol
superior to subordinate, carried to the extreme even
in giving command, avoids the semblance of com«
oulsion, while it assumes obedience in its very
language. Should and would follow, of course, the

SHALL AND WILL. 267

fortunes of shall and will; and, in the following
short dialogue, I have given, I believe, easily-
apprehended examples of all the proper uses of
these words, the discrimination of which is found by
some persons so difficult. A husband is supposed
to be trying to induce his reluctant wife to go from
their suburban home to town for a day or two.

He. I shall go to town to-morrow. Of course you -will ?

She. No, thanks. I shall not go. I shall wait for better
weather, if that will ever come. When shall we have three fair
days together again?

He. Don't mind that. You should go- I should like to have
you hear Ronconi.

She. No, no; I will not go.

He. [To himself.} But you shall go, in spite of the weather
and of yourself. [ To hcr.~\ Well, remember, if you should
change your mind, I should be very happy to have your com-
pany. Do come; you will enjoy the opera; and you shall have
the nicest possible supper at Delmonico's.

• She. No ; I should not enjoy the opera. There are no sing-
ers worth listening to; and I wouldn't walk to the end of the
drive for the best supper Delmonico will ever cook. A man
seems to think that any human creature would do anything for
something good to eat.

He. Most human creatures will.

She. I shall stay at home, and you shall have your opera and
your supper all to yourself.

He. Well, if you will stay at home, you shall; and if you
won't have the supper, you shan't. But my trip will be dull
without you. I shall be bored to death — that is, unless, indeed,
your friend Mrs. Dashatt Mann should go to town to-morrow,
as she said she thought that she would; then, perhaps, we shall
neet at the opera, and she and her nieces will sup with me.

She. [To herself.'} My dear friend Mrs. Dashatt Mann ! And
KO that woman will be at her old tricks with my husband again.
Bat she shall find that I am mistress of this situation, in spite
jf her t ig black eyes and her big white shoulders. [To him.~\
John, why should you waste yourself upon those ugly, giggling
girls? To be sure, she"" a fine woman enough; that is, if you
will buy your beauty by the pound , but they !

H«. O, think what I will abort that, I must take them, for

268 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

politeness' sake; and, indeed, although the lady is a matron, i!
wouldn't be quite proper to take her alone — would it? Whul
bhould you say?

S/te. Well, not exactly, perhaps. But it don't much matter ,
she can take care of herself, I should think. She's no chicken-
she'll never see thirty-five again. But it's too bad you should be
bored with her nieces — and since you're bent on having me go
with you — and — after all, I should like to hear Ronconi — and
— you shan't be going about with those cackling girls — we!'1,.
John, dear, I'll go.

The only passage in this colloquy which seems
to me to need a word of explanation, is that in
which the lady says to herself that her friend Mrs.
D. Mann " shall find" that some one else is mistress
of the situation. It would have been quite correct
for the wife to say " she will find," etc. But, in
that case, she would merely have expressed an
opinion as to a future occurrence. By using shall,
she not only predicts with emphasis, but claims th*
power to make her prediction good. I have given
my readers this colloquy, because more can be
gained toward the proper use of these words
through example than from precept. It seems
to be instinctively apprehended — imbibed. Asso-
ciation and early habit cause many people, who are
far from being well educated, and who are entirely
unconscious as to their speech, to be unerring in
their use of this idiom, which, in my judgment,
is one of the finest in the language.

It is violated with conspicuous perversity in the
following examples. The first is from Coverdale'a
Version of the Bible : —

"And Gedeon sayde unto God, Yf thou wilt delyuer T'-rae.
thorow my hande, as thou hast saide, then wil I laye a flese of
Iroll in the courte : yf ye dew be onely upon ye flese, and dry upoi

SHALL AND WILL. 269

nil the grounde, then -wyll I perceaue that thou shalt delyver
[srall thorow my hande, as thou hast said." — Judges vi.

Here, in the last sentence, -will is used for shall,
and shalt for wilt. Gideon meant to express merely
a future occurrence in both cases, and to imply
no will on his own part, and no obligation on God's*
And thus, in the King James version of the same
passage, we have "then shall I know that thou wilt
save Israel."

The next example is from a "Narrative of a
Grand Festival at Yarmouth," in honor of the
victory of Waterloo (Yarmouth, 1815).

" Every individual wa? requested to take his place at the t&bie,
. . . and it was requested that no persons would leave their seats
during dinner."

Here the right word is should, as -would and
should follow the regimen of will and shall, and we
request that people shall do thus or so, not that they
will do it. A similar error appears in the following
extract from an account published in the " New
York Tribune " of the interview between President
Grant and a committee of Pennsylvanians who
waited upon him to urge the importance of appoint-
ing a Pennsylvanian to a place in the Cabinet.

" They intended making no suggestions or recommendations
further than that if Pennsylvania was to be represented, the ap-
pointment -would be given to a man who should be known as an
unflinching supporter of the Republican party."

These disinterested gentlemen meant to say, and
perhaps did say, that they recommended that the
appointment should be given to a man who would
be known as a thorough-going party-man.

The next passage, which is from an article in

27O WORDS AND THEIR USES.

"The World " on the last change in the British
embassy at Washington, contains an example of a
monstrous misuse of will.

" Mr. Thornton was without any suite, as it is intended that
the staff or legation formerly attached to Sir Frederick Bruce
will act under the orders of Mr. Thornton until further news
from the Foreign* Office."

Without doubt, the writer meant that it is intended
that the staff shall act, etc. The intention was to
lay a future obligation upon the members of the
legation. We cannot intend what others will do.

Another New York journalist, not improbably an
Irishman, exclaims, as these pages are in prepara-
tion for the press, —

" When -will we get through with the everlasting, tedious, un-
profitable, and demoralizing Byron controversy?"

He meant, When shall we get through with it?

There is a fine use of shall, the force of which
escapes some intelligent and cultivated readers.
An example is found in the following passage from
a number of K The Spectator,'' written by Addison :
" There is not a girl in town, but, let her have her
will in going to a mask, and she shall dress like a
shepherdess." Upon this even the acute and gen-
erally sound Crombie remarks in his " Etymologj7
and Syntax of the English Language " (p. 398,
ed. 1830), "It should be 'she will' The author
intended to signify mere futurity ; instead of which
he has expressed a command." But mere futurity
was not what Addison meant to express, nor did he
express a command. He meant to assert strongly ;
and therefore, instead of the word will, which with
the third person predicates simple futurity, he used

SHALL AND WILL. 27!

shall, which implies more or less of obligation, —
here a propensity so strong as to control action.
So in the Urquhart translation of Rabelais, a mas-
terpiece of idiomatic English, we find (Book I.
c. 17), "A blind fiddler shall draw a greater conflu-
ence together than an evangelical preacher." So
Dr. Johnson says, in the Preface to his Dictionary,
that it should be considered, —

" — that sudden fits of inadvertency will surprise vigilance,
slight avocations will seduce attention, and casual ellipses of the
mind will darken learning; and that the writer shall often in
vain trace his memory at the moment of need for that which
yesterday he knew with intuitive readiness, and which will come
uncalled into his thoughts to-morrow."

Here will is used in three clauses, and shall in
one, to express the same relation of time in the third
person ; but the latter clause would lose much of its
significance if will were to take in it the place of
shall. And in the prophecy of Isaiah, t{ He shall feed
his flock like a shepherd . . . and shall gently lead
all those that are with young," how much of its
grandeur, as well as of its power of assurance, would
be lost, if will were substituted for shall! Bishop
Jewell nicely discriminates (but intuitively, we may
be sure) between shall and. will thus used, in the
following passage in one of his sermons : —

'•' Let us turne to him with an upright heart. So shal he turne
to us; so shal we walke as the children of light; so shall we
thine as the sunne in the kingdome of our father; so shall God
ne our God, and will abide witn us f irever." — Ed. 1583, fol. q. iii.

An example of this distinction, unsurpassed in
delicacy and exactness, and consequent effect, is
ouad in the following passage, — my memorandum
of the source of which is unfortunately lost, — and

272 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

which refers to the assassination of President Lin
coin : —

" It justly fastened itself upon the rebellion, and demanded
new and severer punishment of the rebels, instead of the mag-
nanimous reconciliation which the beloved president, of whom
it had been bereaved, had recommended. Who will say that this
sentiment was unnatural ? Who shall say that it is even unjust ?'

Here, again, W//and shall are used to express the
same time in regard to like actions of the same per-
son. Will might have been used correctly in the lat-
ter question as it was in the former ; but some force
would thereby have been lost. Shall could not
have been used with the same fine effect in both
questions. Will having been used, shall intensifies
the query. It is as if the questions were, Who can
say that this sentiment was unnatural? Who could
venture to say that it is even unjust? But we may
be sure that no conscious, careful selection of these
vvords was made in this case. And we may be
even surer of the unconsciousness with which the
following passage was written, in a letter from a
lady to a friend from whom she had been alienated,
and who sent her a present which she felt deli-
cate about accepting. The subject is common-
place, and the writer expresses in the simplest lan-
guage a feeling natural, yet not too common. But
the passage is so remarkable for its free yet nicely
correct use of idiom, that I am sure the writer, as
well as the friend to whom I am indebted for a sight
of it, will pardon its appearance here. In the last
sentence, the use of may, instead of «////, which
would have been quite proper, shows a delicate in-
stinct in the use of language, which, as I have said

SHALL AND WILL. 273

before, is characteristic of the epistolary style of
intelligent and cultivated women.

" I thank you sincerely for still thinking of me, and I will
keep it just as it is until I hear from you again. If you are
willing to become friends with me once more, I shall only be
too happy. I will accept it as a seal on the renewal of our
friendship. If not, then I will return it and what you gave me
before we parted. Perhaps, after you have read this letter to
the end, you may not wish to continue our acquaintance; if

•not, I shall come back to , and will keep my engagement?

there, and then go home."

Such a mastery of idiom belongs only to persons
who, having grown up among those who use lan-
guage correctly, have themselves a delicate and sure
sense of the various significance of words. It is not
so common even among the educated as to be taken
as a matter of course : for instance, see the following
note, printed from the original, which .was written
by a distinguished member of one of the learned
professions in New York : —

" I enclose to you a document which your interest in Sanitary
matters will doubtless induce an appreciation of the views there-
in expressed."

" I should feel very obligatory to you if you could find a good

appointment for my son , to enable him to procure a free

living for himself and his family, having a wife and 2 children.
He is intelligent, industrious, and perfectly reliable, and would
devote all the time required for the necessary duty."

Of the authors of these two specimens of letter
writing, the lady is not, I believe, highly educated,
,'oid her intellectual pretensions, should she make
fcny, would be scouted by the gentleman ; but she
jould no more fall into his olundering style and in-
correct use of words than lie could write or speak
with her simple clearness and unaffected grace.
18

274 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

CHAPTER IX.

GRAMMAR, ENGLISH AND LATIN.

THE first punishment I remember having re-
ceived was for a failure to get a lesson in
English grammar. I recollect, with a half painful,
half amusing distinctness, all the little incidents of
the dreadful scene ; how I found myself standing in
an upper chamber of a gloomy brick house, book in
hand, — it was a thin volume, with a tea-green pa-
per cover and a red roan back, — before an awful
being, who put questions to me, which, for all that I
could understand of them, might as well have been
couched in Coptic or in Sanskrit; how, when
asked about governing, I answered, " I don't know/'
and when about agreeing, "I can't tell," until at
last, in despair, I said nothing, and choked down
Try tears, wondering, in a dazed, dumb fashion,
whether all this was part and parcel of that total
depravity of the human heart of which I heard
so much; how then the being — to whom I apply
no harsh epithet, for, poor man, he thought he was
doing God service — said to me, in a terrible voice
" You are a stupid, idle boy, sir, and have neglected
your task. I shall punish you. Hold out youi
band." I put it out half way, like a machine

GRAMMAR, ENGLISH AND LATIN. 275

a hitch in its gearing. " Farther, sir." 1 advanced
it an inch or two, when he seized the tips of my
fingers, bent them back so as to throw the palm
well up, and then, with a mahogany rule, much
bevelled on one side, and having a large, malig-
nant ink-spot near the end, — an instrument which
seemed to me to weigh about forty pounds, and to
be a fit implement for a part of that eternal torture
to which I had been led to believe that I, for my
inborn depravity, was doomed, — he proceeded to
reduce my little hand, only just well in gristle, as
nearly to a j -Hy as was thought, on the whole, to
be beneficial to a small boy at that stage of the
world's progress.

The carefully-filed and still preserved receipts of
a methodically managed household enable me to
tell the age at which I was thus awakened to the
sweet and alluring beauties of English grammar.
I was just five and a half years old when one Al-
fred Ely — may his soul rest in peaee ! — thus gently
guided my uncertain and reluctant steps into the
'paths of humane learning. Fortunately, my father,
when outside the pale of religious dogma, was a
man of sound sense and a tender heart ; and as
there was nothing about English accidence either
in the Decalogue or the Common Prayer-Book, he
sent a message to the schoolmaster, which caused
that to be my last lesson in what is called the gram-
mar of my mother tongue. I was soon after re-
moved to a school the excellence of which I have
only within a few years fully appreciated, although,
as a boy, I knew that there I was happy, and felt

276 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

as if I were not quite stupid, idle, and depraved.*
Thereafter I studied English, indeed, but only in
the works of its great masters, and unconsciously
in the speech of daily companions, who spoke it
with remarkable but spontaneous excellence.

My kind and courteous readers will pardon, I
hope, this reminiscence, in which I have indulged
myself only because in some of the comments, pri-
vate as well as public, which have been made upon
these chapters in their original form, I have seen
myself called a grammarian. God forbid that 1
should be anything of the sort ! That I am un-
versed in the rules of English grammar (so called),
I am not ashamed to confess ; for special ignorance
is no reproach when unaccompanied with presump-
tion. And that in which I confess that I have no
skill, I have not undertaken to teach. That task I
leave to those who are capable of the subject, and
who feel its necessity.

If grammar is what it has been defined as being,
the science which has for its object the laws which
regulate language, the remarks just made cannot
be justified ; for, in that sense, grammar is as much
concerned with words by themselves, with their
signification and their origin, and with their right-
ful use in those regards, as with their relations to
each other in the sentence ; and it is in that sense
but another name for the science of language — phi

* Let me mention with respect and love, which have grown with my years, the
names of my two teachers, Theodore Eames and Samuel Putnam, to whom I owe all
that I could be taught at school before I left them for college. I know that should
any one of my fellow-pupils chance to see these lines, he will declare with me that thl
boy v.-ho could remain even a year under their lirinds without profit in mind. tnoraJ*
ind manners, must indeed have given himself uf to original sin.

GRAMMAR, ENGLISH AND LATIN. 277

lology. But, notwithstanding that definition, and
its acceptance by some grammarians and some com-
pilers of dictionaries, such is not the sense in which
the word grammar is generally used. Nor can the
position which I have taken be maintained, if gram-
mar is regarded as the science of the rightful or
reasonable expression of thought by language ; for
grammar extended to these wide limits would in-
clude logic and rhetoric. But grammar, in its
usual sense, is the art of speaking and writing a
language correctly ; in which definition, the word
correctly means, in accordance with laws founded
upon the relations, not of thoughts, but of words,
and determined by verbal forms. It is this formal,
constructive grammar wrhich seems to me almost
if not entirely superfluous in regard to the English
language. Long ago, before any attempt had
been made to write its grammar, that language had
worked itself nearly free from those verbal forms
which control the construction of the sentence, and
therefore free in the same degree from the needs
and the control of formal, constructive grammar.
And, notably, it was not until English had cast
itself firmly and sharply into its present simple
mould that scholars undertook to furnish it with a
grammar, the nomenclature and the rules of which
they took from a language — the Latin — with
which it had no formal affinity, to which it had no
formal likeness, and by the laws of which it could
not be bound, except so far as they were the uni-
versal laws of human thought. Allusions to gram-
mar and to its importance as a part of education
abound in our early literature. In a rhyming ex-

278 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

hortation to a child, written in the fifteenth century,
these lines occur : —

" My lefe chyld I kownsel ye
To furme thi vj tens, them awyse ye;
And have mind of thy clensoune
Both of nowne and of pronowne,
And ilk case in plurele
How thai sal end, awyse the wele;
And thi participyls forgete thou nowth,
And thi comparisons be yn thi thowth ;
Thynk of the revele of the relatyfe ;
And then schalle thou the better thryfe ;
And how a verbe schalle be furmede,
Take gode hede that thou be not stunnede ;
The ablatyfe case thou hafe in mynd,
That he be saved in hys kynd ;
Take gode hede qwat he wylle do.
And how a nowne substantvfe
Wylle corde with a verbe and a relatyfe,
Posculo, posco, peto.

Reliquice Antigua, II. 14.

But, as appears on its face, this exhortation refers
not to English, but to Latin grammar, which was the
only grammar taught or thought of at the time when
it was written. That was the day of the establish-
ing and endowing of grammar schools in Eng-
land ; but the grammar taught in them was the
Latin, and afterward a little of the Greek. Chau-
cer and Wycliffe had written, but in English gram-
mar schools no man thought of teaching English.
When, at last, it dawned upon the pedagogues that
English was a language, or rather, in their signifi-
cant phrase, a vulgar tongue, and they set themselves
to giving rules for the art of writing and speaking
jt correctly, they attempted to form these rules upon
the models furnished by the Latin language. An6
what wonder? for those were the only rules the)'

GRAMMAR, ENGLISH AND LATIN. 279

knew. But the construction of the English lan-
guage was even less like that of the Latin than
English words were like Latin words. From this
heterogeneous union sprang that hybrid monster
known as English grammar, before whose fruitless
loins we hare sacrificed, for nearly three hundred
years, our children and the strangers within our
gates.

Of grammar, the essential parts, if not the whole,
are etymology and syntax. For orthography re-
lates to the mere arrangement of letters for the
arbitrary representation of certain sounds, and pros-
ody to the aesthetic use of language. And, if
prosody is a part of grammar, why should the latter
not include rhetoric, and even elocution? In fact,
grammar was long regarded as including all that
concerns the structure and the relations of language ;
and a grammarian among the ancients was one who
was versed, not only in language, but in poetry,
history, and rhetoric, and who, generally, lectured
or wrote upon all those branches of literature. But
it seems to me that in the usage of intelligent peo-
ple the English word grammar relates only to the
laws which govern the significant forms of words,
and the construction of the sentence. Thus, if we
find extraordinary spelled igstrawncry, or hear
suggest pronounced sujjest, we do not call these
lapses false grammar ; but if we hear, " She was
hisn, but he wasn't hern" which violates true ety-
mology, or, " He done it good" which is incorrect
uyntax, these we do call false grammar.

Etymology, whidi relates to the significant forms
of words, and syntax, the rules of wlvch govern

28O WORDS AND THEIR USES.

their arrangement, are, then, from our point of view,
the great essentials, if not the whole, of grammar,
Now, the principal Latin words, the noun, the ad-
jective, the verb, the participle, and the adverb, vary
their forms by a process called inflection, and the
Latin sentence is constructed upon the basis of those
significant verbal forms. English words do not
vary their forms by inflection, and the English sen-
tence is constructed without any dependence upon
verbal forms. To this remark there are exceptions ;
but they are so few, and of such small importance,
that they cannot be regarded as affecting its general
truth. The structure of the Latin sentence depends
upon the relation of the words of which it is com-
posed ; that of the English sentence, upon the rela-
tion of the thoughts it expresses. In other words,
the construction of the Latin sentence is grammati-
cal, that of the English sentence, logical. At the
first offshooting of the English language from its
parent stem, its growth and development began at
once to tend toward logical simplicity — in fact, that
tendency was its offshooting ; and since then it has
gradually, but surely and steadily, cast off inflec-
tional forms, and freed itself from the trammels of
a construction dependent upon them. This being
true, how preposterous, how impossible, for us to
measure our English corn in Latin bushels ! Yet
that is what we have so long been trying to do with
our English grammar.

In illustration of the foregoing remarks, I will
present and compare some examples of Latin and
English words and sentences, the former of which
shall be so simple that they can hardly escape th?

GRAMMAR, ENGLISH AND LATIN. 28l

apprehension even of those who have not received
the training of a grammar school.

The Latin for boy is puer. But -puer stands for
boy only as the subject of a sentence. When the
boy spoken of is the object of an action, he is repre-
sented by an inflection ofpucr — the word -puerunu
Boys as the subjects of an action are called -pit*
eri, but as the objects, -pueros.

The Latin for girl is -puella^ as the subject of a
verb, but when the girl is the object of the action, she
is not represented in that relation by changing puclla
into pucllum, as puer was made puerum, but the
wordpuella, being feminine, becomes puellam. In
the plural it becomes, not puelli as the subject, and
•puellos as the object, of an action, but puella and
ptiellas, those being feminine inflections.

Loved is amabam, if you wish to say, I loved;
but if he or she loved, amabat ; if they loved, ama-
bant. Any of my readers will now be able to trans-
late this little sentence : — .
Pueri amabant puellam.

There being no article in the Latin, it of course
must be supplied, and we therefore have, —

The boys loved the girl.

In this Latin sentence, and in its English equiva-
lent, the words not only represent each other per-
fectly in sense, but correspond exactly in place. If,
however, we change the relative positions of the
English nouns, without modifying them in the least,
we not only change, but entirely reverse the mean-
ing of the sentence.

The girl loved the boys

Hut in the Latin sentence we may make what

282 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

changes of position we please, and we shall not
mala; a shade of difference in its meaning.

Puellam amabant pueri,
Puellam pueri amabant,
Pueri amabant puellam,
Pueri puellam amabant,

all have the same meaning — the boys loved the girl.
For -puellam shows by its form that it must be the
object of the action ; amabant must have for its
subject a plural substantive, and which must there-
fore be, not puellam, but pueri. The connections
of the words being therefore absolutely determined
by their forms, their position in the sentence is a
matter at least of minor importance. The reader
who has not learned Latin will yet, by referring to
a preceding paragraph, have little difficulty in con-
structing a Latin sentence, whicli represents the
reverse of our first example ; i. e., tht girl loved the
boys. For in that the girl is the subject, and the
boys are the objects of the action, and the verb
must have its singular form, which gives us

Puella amabat pueros.

In the corresponding English sentence, the words
are exactly the same as those' in the sentence of
exactly opposite meaning ; in the Latin they are
fill different. And again, their position has no
effect on the meaning of the sentence ; for these
words, whether given as above in the order, the
girl loved the boys, or in the more elegant order,

Puella pueros amabat
[The girl the boys loved],

<MT,

Pueros amabat puella
[The boys loved the girl],

GRAMMAR, ENGLISH AND LATIN. 283

can have but one construction, and therefore but
one meaning; i. e., the girl loved the boys.

If we extend the sentence by qualifying eithei
the subject or the object, or both, the operation of
this rule of construction will be more striking.
Let the qualification be goodness. The Latin for
good is bonus; but in this form the word qualifies
only a subject of the singular number and mascu-
line gender ; singular feminine and neuter subjects
are qualified as good by the forms dona and bonum.
A singular feminine object is qualified as good by
bonam ; a plural masculine subject by boni, a
plural masculine object by bonos. If, therefore, we
wish to say that the boys were good, the sentence
becomes

Boni pueri amabant puellam,
The good boys loved the girl.

By merely changing the position of the adjective
in the English sentence, we say, not that the boys
were good, but the girl :

The boys loved the good girl.

But a corresponding arrangement of the Latin
words

Pueri amabant boni puellam,

means still that the boys were good, and the girl
iv as loved ; because from', from its form, can qualify
vDnly a plural masculine subject — here -pueri. If
we wish to say that the girl was good, we must use
the form of bonus which belongs to a singular
feminine object, and write bonam puellam. Then,
wherever we put bonam , it will qualify only^ueltam,
Thus, in the sentence,

Bonam puellam amabant pueri,

284 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

the order of the words, represented in English, is
The good girl loved the boys ;

but the meaning is, the boys loved the good girl,
It is not even necessary, in Latin, that the adjective
and the noun which it qualifies should be kepi
together. Thus, in the sentence,
Puella bonos amabat pueros,

the order of the words, represented in English, is

The girl good loved the boys ;

and in this arrangement,

Pueros amabat bonos puella,

the order is,

The boys loved the good girl ;

but the meaning in both is the same, and is quite
unlike that conveyed by the English arrange-
ment— The girl loved the good boys.

The reason of this fixed relation is simply that
bonos, whatever its place in this sentence, qualifies
•pueros only, as appears by the number, gender,
and case of each, which are shown by their respec-
tive and agreeing forms ; that pueros must be an
object of action, which is shown by its form ; and
ihatpttella and amabat are subject and predicate,
pertaining to each other, which is also shown
by their forms. Bonos cannot belong to puella,
because the former is masculine plural, and belongs
to an object; and puclla is feminine singular, and a
subject ; pueros cannot be the subject of amabat,
because the former is plural in its inflection, and the
(atter singular. In Juvenal's noble saying, Maxima
debetur pucro rererentia, The greatest reverence
is due to a boy, the order of the words is this ,

GRAMMAR, ENGLISH AND LATIN. 285

greatest is owed to a boy reverence ; and there
is nothing in this order to preclude the application
of the word meaning greatest to the word meaning
boy, which would give us, Reverence is due to the
biggest boy. But in Juvenal's sentence, the Latin
word for boy has the dative inflection, which shows-
that the boy is the recipient of something, and
is the object of the verb dcbctur ; it is also mascu-
line , and 0.3 maxima agrees in case and in gender
with rcvcrevtta, the feminine subject of the verb, it
must qualify that word.

If we should find the following collocation of
words, " For thy now sake of my of mistress with
weeping swollen redden pretty eyes," we should
pronounce it nonsense. It is not even a sentence.
And yet it is a translation of the beautiful lines, in
the order of their words, with which Catullus closes
his charming ode, " Funus Passeris."

" Tua nunc opera meje pullse
Flendo turgiduli rubent ocelli."

And the words, reduced to their logical or English
order, are, For thy sake the pretty swollen eyes
of my mistress now redden with weeping. The
Latin arrangement is as if we were presented with
the figures 172569384, and \\ere expected to read
h?m, not one hundred and seventy-two million five
hundred and sixty-nine thousand three hundred
and eighty-four, but one hundred twenty-three
million four hundred fifty-six thousand seven hun-
dred and eighty-nine; the order 123456789 being
mdicated by some peculhrand correspondent form
of the characters known only to the initiated

286 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

Enough has been said in illustration of the differ-
ence between the construction of the Latin and that
of the English sentence. The former depends
upon the inflectional forms of the words ; and its
sense is not affected, or is affected only in a secon-
dary degree, by their relative positions. In the
latter, the meaning of the sentence is determined
by the relative positions of the words, their order
being determined by the connection and inter-
dependence of the thoughts of which they are the
signs. Syntax, guided by etymology, controls the
Latin ; reason, the English. In brief, the former is
grammatical ; the latter, logical. English admits
very rarely, and only in a very slight degree,
that severance of words representing connected
thoughts which is not only admissible, but which is
generally found in the Latin sentence ; of which
structural form the foregoing examples are of the
simplest sort, and are the most easily resolvable into
logical order.

Milton is justly regarded as the English poet
whose style is most affected by Latin models ; and
the opening passage of his great poem i- often cited
as a strongly-marked example of involved construc-
tion. But let us examine it briefly.

" Of man's first disobedience [and the fruit
Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste
Brought death into the world, and al' cur woe,
With loss of Eden, till one greater Man
Restore us, and regain the blissful seat],
Sing, heavenly muse [that on the secret top
Of Oreb, or of Sinai, didst inspire
That shepherd who first taught the chosen seed
In the beginning how the heavens and earth
Rose out of chaos]."

GRAMMAR, ENGLISH AND LATIN. 287

This, certainly, is not the colloquial style, or even
the high dramatic. How many young people,
when called upon to "parse" it, have sat before it
in dumb bewilderment! And yet its apparent
intricacy is but the result of a single, and not
violent, inversion. In all other respects the words
succeed each other merely as the thoughts which
they represent arise. The natural order of the
passage is, Sing, heavenly muse, of man's first
disobedience ; and that simple invocation is the
essential part of the sentence. What follows muse,
between brackets, is a mere description, modifica-
tion, or limitation of muse; what follows disobe-
dience is a description of the disobedience, which
is the object of sing—~\ha\. is, the subject of the
poem. The words between brackets are only a
sort of prolonged parenthetical adjectives, qualifying
muse and disobedience. If any intelligent person,
bearing this in mind, will read the passage, begin-
ning at sing, and turning from chaos back to the
first line, all the seeming involution will disappear ;
and in the after reading of it in its written order, he
will be impressed only by the grandeur and the
Viighty sweep and sustained power of the invoca-
tion. The two qualifying or adjectival passages,
although composed of several elements, each of
which is evolved from its predecessor, which it
qualifies, being itself a sort of adjective, are written
in a style so plain and so direct that no reader
if ordinary intelligence can fail to comprehend
them as fully and as easily as he can comprehend
any passage in a novel or newspaper of the day.
Would, indeed, that ncvels and newspapers were

WORDS AND THEIR USES.

written \vith any approach to such simplicity and
such directness ! I do not say such meaning.

Milton's invocation is not the only example of
its kind in the opening of a great English poem.
Chaucer, writing nearly three hundred years be-
fore the blind Puritan, and in an entirely different
spirit, thus introduces his " Troilus and Creseidc,"
a poem as full of imagination and of a knowledge
of man's inmost heart as any one, not dramatic
in form, that has since been bestowed upon the
world : —

" The double sorrow of Troilus to tellen,
That was Kinge Priamus sonne of Troy,
In loving, how his aventures fallen
From woe to wele, and after out of joy,
My purpose is, er that I part froy :
Thou, Tesiphone, thou helpe me for t'indite
These wofull verses, that wepen as I write."

That is clear enough to any intelligent and edu-
cated reader who is not troubled by the fact that
Chaucer " didn't know how to spell ; " but it is real-
ly more involved in structure, more like a passage
from a Latin poet, than the opening of " Paradise
Lost." The sentence, according to the natural
order of thought, begins with the fifth line, M My
purpose is, "etc., and then turns back to the first
line, which itself contains an inversion — " The
sorrow to tellen " for " To tellen the sorrow." But
i.he whole of the second line is really an adjective
qualifying Troi/us, and this is thrown in between
A\e verb " to tellen " and the phrase " in loving," the
latter of which is really an adjective qualifying the
object of the action " sorrow." So that the logical
orcfcr of the sentence is this : " .^y purpose is t>

GRAMMAR, ENGLISH AND LATIN. 289

tell the double sorrow in loving of Troilus, that was
King Priam's son of Troy, how his adventures fell
from woe to weal, and after out of joy." The con-
struction of the passage, however, as Chaucer wrote
it, is not English ; and although in a formal open-
ing of a long poem, it is not only admissible, but
impressive, it would, if continued, become intolcr
able. Inversion has been used with fine effect in a
single clause by Parsons, in his noble lines upon a
bust of Dante, —

" How stern of lineament, how grim,
The father was of Tuscan song ! "

Here the limiting adjectival phrase, " of Tuscan
song," is separated by the verb from the noun which
it qualifies, and the result is (we can hardly tell why)
a deep and strong impression upon the reader's mind.
Such effects, however, are not in harmony with the
genius of the English language, and are admissible
and attainable only at the hands of those who wield
language with a singular felicity.

The reason why inversions of the logical order
of thought are perilous, and rarely admissible in
English, has a direct relation to the subject under
discussion. For example, in neither of these pas-
sages from Chaucer and from Parsons is the con-
traction safely keyed together by etymological
"orms, as would have been the case if they had
been written by a Greek or a Latin poet. We have
to divine the connection of the words and clauses —
to guess at it, from our general knowledge of the
poet's meaning — from the drift of his sentence;
and thus, instead of being placed at once in com
oUmication with him, and receiving his thought di

290 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

rectly and without a doubt, and being fiee to assent
or dissent, t<j like or to dislike, we must give our-
selves, for a longer or a shorter time, — in some
cases but an inappreciable moment, — to unravel-
ling his construction; doing, in. a measure, wha*
we are obliged to do in reading a Greek or a Lathi
author. In the example quoted from Parsons, the
inversion, although violent, disturbs so little of the
sentence, and produces so pleasant a- surprise, and
one which is renewed at each re-reading, that we
not only pardon, but admire. Success is here, as
ever, full justification. But Chaucer loses more in
clearness and ease than he gains in impressiveness
and dignity ; and Milton's exhibition of power to
mount and soar at the first essay does not quite
recompense all of us for the sudden strain he gives
our eyes in following him. But the completes!
victory over the difficulty of inversion in the con-
struction of the English sentence will not make it
endurable, except as a curious exhibition of our
mother tongue, disguised in foreign garb, and aping
foreign manners. A single stanza, composed of
lines like that of Parsons, on Dante's bust, would
weary and offend even the most cultivated English
reader. Those who are untrained in intellectual
gymnastics would abandon it, upon the first at-
tempt, as beyond their powers.

The most striking example of the destruction of
meaning by the inverted arrangement of thought that
I have met with in the writings of authors of re-
pute is the following line, which closes the beauti-
ful sonnet in Sidney's " Astrophel and Stella,"
beginning, " With hou sad steps, O Moon, tiiou
climbst the night ! "

GRAMMAR, ENGLISH AND LATIN. 2pl

" Do they call virtue there forgetfulness?"

The meaning of this seems clear ; and it is so,
according to the order of the words, which ask if,
in a certain place, virtue is called forgetfulness. But
this is exactly the reverse of Sidney's meaning, as
will be seen by the context : —

" Is constant love deemed there but want of wit?
Are beauties there as proud as here they be?
Do they above love to be loved, and yet
Those lovers scorn whom that love doth possess?
Do they call virtue there forgetfulness?"

That is, we at last discover, Do they call forgetful-
ness virtue? But reason ourselves into this appre-
hension of the sentence as absolutely as we can,
familiarize ourselves with it as much as we may, it
will, at every new reading, strike us, as it did at
first, that the poet's question is asked about virtue.
So absolute, in English, is the law of logical order.
The following passages, which I have recently
seen given as examples of confusion resulting from
a lack of proper punctuation, illustrate the present
subject : —

"I continued on using it, and by the time I had taken five
bottles I found myself completely cured, after having been
brought so near to the gates of death by your infallible med-
icine " !

" The extensive view presented from the fourth story of the
Hudson River"!

" His remains were committed to that bourn whence no trav-
eller returns attended by his friends " ! .

The fault here is not in the punctuation, but in
the order of the words, which, however, although
nonsensical in English, might make very good sense
in Greek or Latin. The sentences are all examples
of the hopeless confusion which may be produced

292 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

by an inversion which violates logical order ; and
if they were peppered with points, the fault would
not thus be remedied.' I shall leave it to my read-
ers to put the words into their proper order, merely
remarking upon the last example, that the form of
the sentence is quite worthy of a man who could
speak of committing a body to a bourn, and that
bourn the one whence no traveller returns !

The difference between the construction of" the
Latin and Greek languages and that of the English
language is not accidental, nor the product of a
merely unconscious exercise of power. It is the
result of a direct exertion of the human will to make
the instrument of its expression more and more
simple and convenient. The change which has
produced this difference began a very long while
ago, and for many centuries has been making more
or less progress among all the Indo-European lan-
guages. Latin is a less grammatical language than
its elder sister, the Greek ; the modern Latin or
Romance tongues, Italian, Spanish, French, are less
grammatical than the Latin ; the Teutonic tongues
are less grammatical than the Romance ; and of the
Teutonic tongues English is the least grammatical —
so little dependent is it, indeed, upon the forms of
grammar for the structure of the sentence, that it
cannot rightly be said to have any grammar.

And here I will remark that it is in this wide dif-
ference between the etymology and the syntax of
tlr; modern languages — French, Italian, Spanish.
German, and English, and those of the Greek and
Latin — that the incomparable superiority of the
latter as the means of education consists. The
languages of modern Europe, widely dissimilai

GRAMMAR, ENGLISH AND LATIN. 293

although they seem to the superficial reader, diffej
chiefly in their vocabularies ; and even there muck
of their unlikeness is due to the difference of pro-
nunciation, an incidental variation which obtains to
a considerable degree in the same language within
the period of one hundred years. In structure the
modern languages are too much alike to make the
study of any one of them by a person to whom any
other is vernacular very valuable as a means of men-
tal discipline. They are acquired with great facility
by people of no education and very inferior mental
powers : couriers and valcts-dc-placc, who speak
and write three or four of them fluently and cor-
rectly, being numerous in all the capitals of the
European Continent.

Education is not the getting of knowledge, but dis-
cipline, development ; and it is notfprthe knowledge
we obtain at school and college that we pass our
early years in study. The mere acquaintance with
facts that we then painfully acquire, we could, in our
maturer years, obtain in a tenth part of the time that
we give to our education. Nor is it necessary in
modern days that any one should go for knowledge
to Greek and Latin authors. All the lore and the
thought of the past is easily attainable in a living
tongue. And, finally, to the demand why, if boys
must study language as a means of education, can
they not study French or German languages which
%re now spoken, and which will be of some practical
\i. e., money-getting) use to them, the ans\ver is,
that the value of the classical tongues as means of
education is in the very fact that they are dead,
pnd '.hat their structure is so remote from that of
•jurs, that to dismember their sentences and rccon

294 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

Struct them according to our own fashion of speak,
ing is such an exercise of perception, judgment, and
memory, such a training in thought and in the use
of language, as can be found in no other study or in-
tellectual exertion to which immature and untrained
persons of ordinary powers are competent. To us
of English race and speech this discipline is more
severe, and therefore more valuable, than to any
people of the Continent, because of the greater dis-
tance, in this respect, between our own language
than bet\veen any one of theirs and the Greek and
Latin, and the wider difference between the English
and the Greek or the Latin cast of thought. He-
cause, to repeat what has already been insisted
upon, the Greek and the Latin languages are con-
structed upon syntactical principles, which, in their
turn, rest upon etymological or formal inflection,
and English, being almost without formal inflection^
and nearly independent of syntax — without dis-
tinction of mood in verbs, and with almost none of
tense and person — with only one case of nouns,
and with neither number nor case in adjectives —
with no gender at all of nouns, of adjectives, or of
participles — without laws of agreement or of govern-
ment, the very verb in English being, in most cases,
independent of its nominative as to form, rests solely
upon the relations of thought ; in brief, because
the Greek and Latin languages have grammar —
formal grammar — and the English language, tc
all intents and purposes, has none.

How this is, and why, will be more fully anc
particularly considered in ihe next chapter.

THE GRAMMARLKSS TONGUE. 295

CHAPTER X.

THE GRAMMARLESS TONGUE.

IN the last chapter it was set forth that English
is an almost grammarless language. The two
elements of grammar being etymology, — which
concerns the inflections of words ; that is, changes
in form to express modification of meaning, — and
syntax, — which concerns the construction of sen-
tences according to the formal relations of words, —
and the English language being almost without the
former, and therefore equally without the latter, its
use must be, in a corresponding degree, untram-
melled by the rules of grammar, and subject only
to the laws of reason, which we call logic. We
have, indeed, been long afflicted with grammarians
"rom whom we have suffered much, and to whose
usurped authority we — that is, the most of us —
nave submitted, with hardly a murmur or a ques-
tion. But the truth of this matter is, that of the
rules given in the books called English Grammars,
some are absurd, and the most are superfluous.
For example, it can be easily shown that in the
English language, with few exceptions, the fol-
lowing simple and informal Delations of words
prevail : —

296 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

The verb needs not, and generally does not,
agree with its nominative case in number and per-
son :

Pronouns do not agree with their antecedent
nouns in person, number, and gender :

Active verbs do not govern the objective case, or
any other :

Prepositions do not govern the objective case, 01
any other :

One verb does not govern another in the infin-
itive mood :

Nor is the infinitive a mood, nor is it governed
by substantive, adjective, or participle :

Conjunctions need not connect the same moods
and tenses of verbs.

The grammarians have laid down laws directly
to the contrary of these assertions; but the gram-
marians are wrong, and, in the very nature of
things, cannot be right; for their laws assume as
conditions precedent 'the existence of things which
do not exist. In English, the verb is almost with-
out distinction of number and of person ; the noun
is entirely without gender, and has no objective
case ; the adjective and the participle are without
number, gender, and case ; the infinitive is not a
mood, it is not an inflection of the verb, or a part
of it ; and conjunctions are free from all rules but
those of common sense and taste.

No term was ever more unwisely chosen than
government to express the relations of words in the
sentence. It is one of the mysterious rftetaphors
which have been imposed upon the world, gen
erally by tyrants or tricksters, and with which

THE GRAMMARLESS TONGUE.

thought is confused and language darkened. In
grammar it implies, or seems to imply, a power in
one word over another. Now, there is in no lan-
guage any such power, or any relation which is
properly symbolized by such a power.

In Latin, Greek, and other inflected languages,
the forms of the words of which a sentence is made
up, present outward signs of requirement which
give some hint as to what the grammarians mean
by one word's governing another. But in English
there is no such visible sign ; and this arbitrary,
.nysterious, and metaphorical phrase, government,
is, to young minds, and particularly if they are
reasoning and not merely receptive, perplexing in
the extreme. Even in languages which have va-
riety of inflection, words do not govern each other;
but they may be said to fit into each other by cor-
responding forms which indicate their proper con-
nection, so that a sentence is dovetailed together.
In English, however, v/ith the exception of a few
pronouns, one case of nouns, and two tenses and
one person of the verb, all the words are as round
and smooth, and as independent of each other in
form, as the pebbles on the sea-shore. The at-
tempt' to bind such words together by the links of
etymology and syntax, or, in other words, to make
grammatical rules for a language in which the noun
has only one case, — in which there is no gender
of noun, adjective, or participle, — in which dis-
tinction of tense, number, person in verbs is almost
unknown, and that of voice absolutely wanting, is,
on its face, absurd.

Aoi English, words are formed into sentences by

298 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

the operation of an invisible power, which is like
magnetism. Each one is charged with a meaning
which gives it a tendency toward some of those in the
sentence, and particularly to one, and which repel?
it from the others ; and he who subtly divines and
dexterously uses this attraction, filling his words
with a living but latent light and heat, which makes
them leap to each other and cling together while
they transmit his freely-flowing thought, is a master
of the English language, although he may be igno-
rant and uninstructed in its use. And here is one
difference between the English and the ancient
classic tongues. The great writers of the latter
were, and, it would seem, must needs have been,
men of high culture — grammarians in the ancient
sense of the word, which I have before mentioned ;
but some of the best English that has been written
is the simple, strong utterance of uneducated men,
entirely undisciplined in the use of language.
True, they had genius, — some of them, at least ;
but genius, giving them strength arid clearness of
imagination, or of reason, could yet not have taught
them to write with purity and power a language
'ike the Greek, in which the verb has three voices,
nve moods, and two aorists, and nine persons for
every tense; in which all nouns have three num-
bers, and each noun a gender of its own ; and
every adjective and participle three genders and
six cases, a copiousness of inflection possessed by
the very articles, definite and indefinite. The
Greek language may be the noblest and most per-
fect instrument ever invented by man for the. ex

THE GRAMMAKLESS TONGUE. 299

pression of his thought ; but certainly, of all the
tongues ever spoken by civilized men, it is the
most complicated. And I venture to express my
belief, that its complication, so far from being an
element of its power, is a sign of rudeness, and a
remnant of barbarism ; that the Greek and Latin
authors were great, not by reason of the verbal
forms and the grammatical structure of their lan-
guages, but in spite of them ; and that our mother
tongue, in freeing herself from these, has only cast
aside the trammels of strength and the disguises
of beauty.

But 1 must turn from these general considerations
of my subject to such an examination of its partic-
ulars as will sustain the position which I have taken.
And first of the verb. The Greek verb has, for
the expression of the various moods and times of
acting and suffering by various persons, more than
five hundred inflections ; and these inflections so
modify, by processes called augmentation and re-
duplication, and by signs of person and of number,
both the be'ginning and the end of the verb, that,
to the uninstructed eye, it passes beyond recogni-
tion. Thus, for instance, ivmu (tupto], (the verb
which occupies in Greek Grammars the place of
to love in English Grammars), assumes, among its
changes, these dissimilar forms: U;JTTW (tupto], 1
strike; ixerivpeiv (ctctttphcin} , I had struck; rimmo-
aa,v (tuptctosari) , Itt them strike; iTttiiyuouv (etctu-
•pheisar}, they had struck; 7»'i//a9- (tupsas)^ having
struck ; tcvm6fic6ni> {ctuptomethoii} , we two were
struck; livifi&pedov (etupsamethon) , we two struck

3OO WORDS AND THEIR USES.

ourselves ; rv^d^aotfir^ (tuphtheesoimccii) , I might
be about to be struck. These are but specimens
of the more than five hundred bricks which go to
make up the regular Greek verbal edifice. Each
person of each case has its peculiar significant
form or inflection, every one of which must be
learned by heart.

Looking back upon this single and simplest
specimen of its myriad inflections, I cannot wonder
that boys of English race regard Greek as an
invention of the enemy of mankind. But this
variety of inflection has not entirely passed away
with the life of the ancient Hellenic people and
language. It has been shown that the French lan-
guage has three hundred different terminations for
the simple cases of the ten regular conjugations,
one thousand seven hundred and fifty-five for the
thirty-nine irregular conjugations, and two hundred
for the auxiliary verbs — making a sum total of two
thousand one hundred and sixty-five terminations
which must be learned by heart.* The verbs of
the Greek language must have, I think, in all,
more than ten times that number of changes in
form. Now, the English verb has, in its regular
or weak form, only four inflections ; and in its
so-called irregular, or strong, or ancient form, only
five. These inflections serve for the t\vo voices,
five moods, six tenses, and six persons which must
have expression in a language that answers the
needs of a civilized, cultured people. The four
torms of the verb to love, for instance, are love,
loves, loved, and loving. The first two and the last

• Sinibaldo, quoted by Max Mailer.

THE GRAMMARLESS TONGUE. 30!

express action indefinite as to time, the third, definite
action. Two others, lovcst and lovedest, are to be
found in the Grammars, but they have been thrown
out of use by the same process of simplification
which has cast off the mass of the Anglo-Saxon
inflections during the transformation of that lan-
guage into English. The present tense indicative
of the verb to love is, therefore, now as follows : —

I love, We love,

You love, You love,

He loves, They love.

Here are five, and, in effect, six nominatives of
two numbers and three persons, but only two forms
of the verb. How, then, to return to our rules
of grammar, can the verb agree with its nominative
in number and person? The truth is, that it does
not so agree, because those who use it have found
that such agreement is not necessary to the clear
expression of thought. / love and we love are just
as exact in meaning as amo, amamus. The past
tense of the English verb has not even one infler
don. It is as follows : —

I loved, We loved,

You loved, You loved,

He loved, They loved.

It was not always thus. The Anglo-Saxon verb,
although, like the English, it had but one voice an^
two tenses, had inflection of person and number.
The present, or indefinite, and the perfect tensefl
wf lufian, to love, were as follows: —

PRESENT .

ic lufige we "ufiath,

thu lufast, ge lufiath,

he l»fath, hi lufiath.

3O2 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

PERFECT.

ic lufode, we lufodon,

thu lufodest, ge lufodon,

he lufode, hi lufodon

These inflections appear in what is called the
Early English stage of our language, and some
of them are found even in the writings of Chaucer
and Govvef , although in the days of those poets
they had lost their old force, and were rapidly
passing away. They were dropped almost with
the purpose of simplifying the language, of doing
away with complications which were found need-
less. It was seen that as the noun or pronoun
always accompanied the verb, the plural form in
ath or en was not necessary for the exact expres-
sion of thought, and that ivc love and vue loved
were as unmistakeable in their significance as tue
lufath and ive lufodon ; and so as to the other
numbers and persons of the two tenses. The plu-
ral form in en held a place long after other inflec-
tions had disappeared ; but that disappeared from
the written language about the end of the fifteenth
century, and at last from the speech of the com-
mon people.

The inflections of the singular number had a
stronger hold upon the language, probably because
the singular number is more frequently used in the
common intercourse of life than the plural, and
because it is found more necessary to distinguish
between the actions, thoughts, and conditions of
individuals than between those of masses or groups
The distinctive inflection of the second person
singular, cst, held its own until the Elizabethan
period, when it began to disappear. It prevails in

THE GRAMMARLESS TONGUE. 303

the English Bible, but is less common in Shake-
speare and the general literature of the period;
one reason being that precision of language is
legarded as becoming solemnity of occasion or of
subject ; another being the increasing use of the
socond person plural for both the singular and
plural, which is now prevalent, not only in Eng-
lish, but in most European languages.

Again, the change from thou lovest and tkou
loi'cdest to you love and you loved, seems to have
been made merely from the wish to do away with a
superfluous inflection. If, in the course of years,
the inflection of the third person singular should
follow that of the second, and we should say he
love, the change would be directly in the line of the
natural movement of our language. Should it not
take place, the preservation of this lonely, unsup-
ported inflection will probably be owing to the
restraints of criticism, and the introduction of con-
sciousness and culture among the mass of speakers.
To some of my readers it may seem impossible that
this change should be made, and that he love would
be barbarous and almost incomprehensible. But
such is not the effect of identitv of form between

tt

the third person and the first of the perfect tense ;
and as it is neither absurd nor obscure to say /
loved, you [2. e., thou] loved, he loved, why should
it be so to say I love, you [t. c., thou] love, he
love ?

To turn now to the first rule of our text-books of
English grammar — "A verb must agree with its
nominative case in number and person." In this
rule, if agree means anything, it can only mean that

304 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

the verb must conform itself in some manner to its
subject, so that it may be seen that it belongs to thai
subject. This is the case in Latin, for instance, in
which language every person of each number of
the verb has a form which indicates that person.

[ego] amo, I love, [vios] amamus, we love,

f tu] amas, you \i. t., thou] love [vos] amatis, you love,
[ille] amat, he loves, [illi] amant. they love.

But in English, for five of these six persons the
verb has but one form. It has been released from
all conformity to person except in the third person
singular. It has but one form for all the other
persons, and it therefore cannot agree with its
nominative in number and person, except in the
case specified. To say that this one form of the
verb does agree with all those forms of the nom-
inative— that love does agree with /, and youy
singular, we, you, and they> plural is a mere
begging of the question by a childish and stren-
uous "making believe." And, indeed, as I trust
most of my readers now begin to see, nearly all of
our so-called English grammar is mere make-
believe grammar. No more words should be
accessary to show that verbs which have not num-
ber and person cannot agree with nominatives,
or with anything else, in number and person.
And yet that they do so agree is dinned into chil-
dren from their infancy until they cease to receive
instruction . and the}7 are required to cite a rule
which they cannot understand, as the law of a
relation which does not exist.

The Anglo-Saxon language was even charier as
to tenses of the verb than as to numbers and persons

THE GRAMMARLESS TONGUE. 305

It had but two of the former, the present, or rather
the indefinite, and the past. As it passed into Eng-
lish, this number was not increased. No English
verb has more than two tenses. With these and the
two participles, present and past, English speaking
folk express all the varieties of mood and tense, and
also of voice ; for in English there is but one voice,
the active. The Anglo-Saxon present or indefinite
tense expressed future action as well as present.
Ic lufigc (I love) predicated loving in the future as
well as in the present time. Nor has this form of
speech passed away from the Anglo-Saxon folk.
To this day we say, I go to town to-morrow ; Do
you go to town to-morrow ? The form, / shall
go to town, is rarely used except for emphasis ;
that, / will go, except to express determination.
Indeed, I go is the more elegant form ; is heard
most generally from the lips of speakers of the
highest culture. And in fact, the commonest predi-
cation of future action is one which expresses action
passing continuously at time present — I am going,
£.£"., I am going to town to-morrow.

This use of the present or indefinite tense is not
kit all peculiar to the Anglo-Saxon language, or to
the English. It appears in many others. M Simon
Peter said unto them, I go a fishing ; they say unto
him, We also go with thee." Two Greek verbs are
here translated go ; but both the first, vn&yu (kupa-
go), and the second, eQ^uedu ' ' erchomctha) , are in
the present tense. In this passage, too, I go, I am
going, I shall go, and ivc go, ive are going, -we -will
go, would be equivalents. The peculiarity of the
Anglo-Saxon and the Engn&h languages in this
20

WORDS AND THEIR USES.

respect (if they are two languages, which some
philologists with show of i^ason deny, on the ground
that our present speech is only a lineal descendant
of that of our forefathers), — the peculiarity of our
tongue as to this tense and others is, that while, like
others, it uses the present indefinite form to ex-
press future action, it has not developed a form of
the verb for the special expression of that action, or,
in fact, of any other action but that which is either
present or past. We say, I shall go ; but shall
can no more be a part of the verb go than will, or
may, or can. We say, I have loved; but, again, have
is no more a part of the verb love than to be is,
when we say, If I were loving. When we say, I
am loving, we only say, in other words, J exist
loving ; and what connection has am with loving
Other than exist would have were it used in the
place of the former? We, like other peoples, are
obliged to express all the different times of action,
present, past, and future ; but most other peoples do
this by inflections, that is, by real tenses of the verb.
As English has different words for expressing the
time present and time past of the same action,
other tongues have different words for expressing
all the varieties of the time of action.

In English \ve say, I love, I have loved, I shall
have loved ; but in Latin the same thoughts are
expressed respectively by the different single words
aino. amavi, amavero. To express what the Ro-
man expressed by amavi, an inflection of amo,
we use a verb have, and the perfect participle of
Another verb. That participle is an expression of
completed action in the abstract — loved. It has nc

THE GRAMMARLESS TONGUE. 307

relation to person, whether the person is the subject
or the object of the action, — a point to be remem-
bered in our consideration of voice — or to specific
time or occasion. The only real verb that we use
in this instance is one that signifies possession. We
say, I have — have what? possess what? Posses-
sion implies an object possessed ; and in this case it
is that completed action which is expressed in the
abstract by the participle. Loved is here the object
of the verb have as much as money would be in the
sentence, I have money ; and / have loved is no
more a verb, or a part or tense of a verb, than 1
have money is, or / have to go. In the first and
the last of these, loved and to go are as plainly
objects of the verb have as money is in the second ;
nor is this relation at all affected by the mere verbal
origin of the participle and the infinitive.

As to the latter, what the grammarians call the
infinitive mood is no mood at all, but a substantive,
of verbal origin. It is the name of the verb, and
so may well be called a substantive. It is not so
called for that reason, but because there is no qual-
ity of a substantive which the infinitive has not, and
but one relation of the substantive — that of pos-
session— which it cannot assume; and there is no
distinctive quality of the verb which it does not lack,
or relation of the verb which it can assume. For
instance, / have to go is merely, It belongs to me to
go, To go belongs to me — forms of expression not
uncommon among the most cultivated and idiomatic
speakers, and which are not only correct, but ele-
gant. But that which is expressed by a verb cannot
belong to any one. Only a thir g, something sub-

308 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

Btantial (although not necessarily material or phys-
ical), i. e.y a substantive, can belong. This is no
new discovery ; and yet grammarians have gone
on for generations teaching children and strangers
that to go is a mood, as they have taught them
that / have gone and / shall go are tenses of a
verb.*

The substantive character of the infinitive is to be
discovered in those phrases which the grammarians
call the future tense indicative, and the present
and imperfect tenses subjunctive — I shall love, I
may love, and I might love. These are no tenses,
and have no semblance of tenses ; they are phrases,
or rather complete sentences, which express future
or contingent action.

The formation of the future indicative and of the
tenses of the subjunctive mood was in this wise :
The Anglo-Saxon infinitive was formed in an or en,
and did not admit the preposition to before it ; but
there was a second infinitive, formed with the prep-
osition, having a dative sense, and being, in fact, a
dative form of the infinitive, conveying that sense
of obligation or pertinence to which linguists have
given the name dative. Thus ivitan is the Anglo-
Saxon infinitive, meaning to know ; but there was
-used another infinitive, to -witanne, implying duty,
obligation. For example, Hit is t6 vvitanne* it is

• Alary Elstob alone, among Anglo-Saxon grammarians ("The English-Saxon
Grammar," 410, London, 1715, p. 31), mentions "a future tense or time to come " is

tlat language ; of which her example is, " ic stanM HU rihte, or on siunnt timan, I
•hall stand by-aucl-by, or some time or other ; " and a very pretty sort of future tensa
It is — one tliat must commend itself to some of my critics, and all the gentlemen who

'usually talk of a noun and a verb." For if / stand at some tinie or otlur be not aj
<Ood a tense as / sluill have stood, they may be able to tell the reason why. I regret
for their s.'.kcs, that Mistress Elstob is not, at the present day, a very high authority
•n ibe An^io- Saxon l.inj

THE GRAMMARLESS TONGUE. 309

to know, /. £., it should be known, or ought to be
known. This very phrase (with the mere rubbing
off of the termination during its passage through the
centuries) has come down to us as to wit. But
to know itself has been thus used for live hundred
years, as in the following passage in Purvey'?
Prologue to the revised WyclifTe Bible, A. D.
1388:-

"First it is to know that the best translating is to translate
after the sentence, and not only after the words."

And it also appears not infrequently nowadays in
the phrase, You are to know — thus and so, mean-
ing, You should know, You ought to know, It be-
hooves you to know, thus and so ; and constantly in
the colloquial phrases, I have to go here or there, I
have to do thus and so. The phrase, This house
to let, which some uneasy precisians would change
into This house to be let, is quite correct, and has
come down to us, as it will be seen, from the re-
motest period.

Now, when Anglo-Saxon- was becoming English
by the dropping of its few inflections and the lay-
ing aside of its light bonds of formal grammar, the
form of the infinitive which remained was natu-
.-ally the one which was indicated, not by an inflec-
tion; but by a preposition. At first, and indeed foi
a century or two, the inflected termination was
retained, but it would seem merely from habit,
with no significance attached to it. Thus in the
passage from Chaucer's "Troilus and Cresseide "
quoted in the last chapter, the first line is, —

"The double sorrow of Troilus to tellen."

But m Chaucer's day, our forefathers were be>

3IO WORDS AND THEIR USES.

ginning to drop the n and the syllable of which it
was part, and instead of to loven and to liven, to
write to live and to love, as we do. But they wrote
to idle, as we do not ; the final e, which appears
in old, and in some modern forms of certain verbs,
being in its place, not by mere accident, but as a
remnant of the old infinitive. Hence, too, this final
e was sometimes pronounced, as every student of
Chaucer knows The dropping of old plurals ot
verbs and nouns in en (a great loss in the latter
case, I think) left many words ending in silent e
preceded by a double consonant, — a fonn which
began to pass rapidly away in the latter part of the
sixteenth century, but which may still be traced in
our orthography ; for instance, the very verb in the
line from " Troilus and Cresseide." If we do not
write tcllcn, there is no etymological reason why we
should not write tcl. The cause of the present
form of the verb is, that in Anglo-Saxon it was a
dissyllable, and that in dropping the last syllable,
only its essentials, the vowrel and the following con-
sonant, were removed. The double consonant is
now retained in some words, and the silent vowel
in some others, as love and live, for orthoepicaJ
reasons.

To return to the formation of what the gramma-
rians call the future indicative tense, and to the
tenses of the subjunctive mood. These, they tell
us, are formed by means of auxiliary verbs. But
that is a very misleading representation of the case,
consequent upon the endeavor to keep up the fic-
tion of formal grammar in English— -the make*
Selieve system. In fact, the auxiliary theory is a

THE GRAMMARLESS TONGUE.

mere clurmy sham. In / am loved, I will go,
there are no auxiliary or really helping words.
Neither word needs the help of the other, except, as
other words do, for the making of a sentence, which
each of these examples is, completely. In I am
loved, and / will go, am and will are no more
helping verbs than exist and determine are in the
sentences. I exist loved, and I determine to go.
Loved and go will each make a perfect sense with 1
and without any help — I loved, I go. In the sen-
tences I am loved and I will go, loved and go are
not verbs. The former is a participle, or verbal
adjective, the latter a verbal substantive. The
Anglo-Saxon had not even any seeming auxiliary
verbs. Its use of habban, bcon, willan, magan,
cunnan and mot (/. c., have, be, will, may, can,
might), does not convey the notion of time and
contingency, but simply predicates possession, ex-
istence, volition, necessity, power; and hence came
those phrases by which we speak of action or exist-
ence in the future or under supposed circumstances.
I will tell is in old English, I will tcllcn, and this
is merely the verb / will joined to the infinitive
or verbal substantive tcllen. From the latter the
last syllable has been worn ; but none the less 1
will tell is simply I will to tell. The dative per-
luining idea is conveyed, i. <?., my will is to tell,
IT1* ..ill is for telling, or toward telling. Thus /
can love is merely I can to love, I am ab^e to
love ; and so it is with the phrases / might love, I
could love, I would love, I should love. They
are all, not verbs or parts of verbs, but phrases
formed by the use of the indicative present of one

312 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

verb with the infinitive or verbal substantive of an-
other.

By this discarding of inflected Lenses the Eng-
lish language has gained, not only in simplicity, bu»
in flexibility and variety. The Latin language,
for instance, has, for the expresvsion of I might love,
and also of I could, and of I would, and of I should
— love, only the single inflected form amarcin :
whereas we are able to express, in regard to the
same time of action, four very marked and differing
shades of meaning, while we are entirely freed from
the grammatical restraints and complications im-
posed by inflection. The Latin folk were obliged
to remember six forms for this one tense, and yet
were able to make no distinction in tense between
the ideas of possibility, power, volition, and obli-
gation, in connection with future action.

SINGULAR. PLURAL.

1. Amarem i. Amaremus,

2. Amares, 2. Arnaretis,

3. Amaret, 3. Amarent.

Whereas in English we, by a simple change of
the subject, noun or pronoun, say, —

I

You

He

We

You

They

might, or
could, or
would, or
should,

(according to the meaning
to be conveyed)

love.

But we do not thereby form a tense of the verb.
Could absurdity be more patent than in the asser-
tion, not only that might and should are a par"
of the verb to love, but that several words convey

THE GRAMMARLESS TONGUE. 313

ing thoughts so widely different as / might love
and / sJioidd love, are actually the same part of the
same verb? A consideration of the difference in
meaning of those two sentences, of their radical
difference, or rather their absolute opposition, the
one expressing possibility? the other obligation, and
of the fact that, according to the English gram-
marians, they are equally parts of one so-called
tense, the imperfect subjunctive, which in Latin is
a tense, amarcm, will make it clear that in English
we have not merely substituted one tense form for
another. We have done away with the tense ; we
have done away with all tenses, except the present,
or indefinite, and the past. We have found that
those tenses are all that we need ; that with the
forms significant of present and of past action, or
being, or suffering, we can express ourselves in con-
formity to all the conditions of time, past, present,
and future.

As we have dealt with tenses, so have we with
voices. The English verb has but one voice — the
active. And not only has it no passive voice, but
there is in the language no semblance of a passive
voice. The Greek, who must have three numbers
to his nouns, one for an individual, one, the dual,
for two, and a third for more than two, was also
not content without three voices — the active, the
passive, and one which was in sense between those
two, which has been called the middle voice, but
might better havs been called the reflective voice.
Thus we say I wash, I am washed, I washed my-
self; the Greek, expressing the same facts that
are expressed by these Englisn phrases, said in

314 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

three words, iovw (louo), J.ououui (touomat),
(clousamccn). Now, the English grammarians tell
their hapless pupils that to be -washed is the passirc
voice of the verb to wash. It is no such thing
If / am -washed is the passive voice of / wash,
equally is / -wash myself its middle voice. Bui
no English grammarian known to me, or that I
ever heard of, has set forth such forms of speech
as / "washed myself as a middle voice. It is a
sentence, as much so as / -washed John ; and if
myself is no part of the verb to -wash, no more is
am ; and / am washed is no part of any verb, but
a complete sentence, with a subject and a predicate
consisting of a verb and a participial adjective.
The reason why, although I am -washed 'is set down
by the English grammarians as a part of the verb
to -wash, I -wash myself, is not, plainly is that the
La:in language, upon which our English gramma-
rians have formed their system, and to which their
rules have been as much as possible assimilated,
has a passive, but no middle voice. Had there
been a middle voice in the Latin, there would have
been one in the English Grammars, and we should
have been told that one part of the verb to -wash
was I shall have -washed myself, although we could
separate this tense thus: / probably shall by ten
o'clock have nearly washed or bathed myself.

We have done away with the passive voice in all
its moods and tenses ; and we have no passive form
of the verb whatever, not even a passive participle.
We express the fact of passivity, or the recipience
of any action, by some verb, and the perfect partici-
ple of the verb expressing that action ; and thii

THE GRAMVARLESS TONGUE. 315

perfect participle we apply to ourselves or to others
as a qualification. In technical language we make
it a participal adjective, that is, a word which quali-
fies a noun by representing it as affected or modified
by some action. Thus we say, a good man, or,
a loved man ; and in these phrases both good and
loved are adjectives qualifying man. To be loved
is no more a verb than to be, good. According
to the English grammarians, we can conjugate the
former, in all the moods and tenses of their so-
called passive voice. But so we can the latter.

I am good, We are good,

Thou art good, Ye or you are good,

He is good, They are good.

This is conjugation as much as / am loved, Thou
art loved, and so forth, is ; and it can be carried
out, of course, to I shall have been, or I might,
could, would, or should have been — either good
or loved, it makes no difference which. But that
is not conjugation in either case ; it is the mere
forming of sentences. When a Greek boy wished
to express his conviction that at a certain time
future, if he had done what was wrong, or had not
done what was right, certain unpleasant conse-
quences w»uld have followed, he said in one word,
TtTvyo'iui (tctupsomai) , which is a tense of the verb
rbmta (tupto). But the English boy uses instead of
this one word a sentence made up of a pronoun,
two verbs, and two participles : he says, I shall
have been beaten. Of the verbs, the first, shall,
expresses a present sense of future certainty,
obligation, or inevitableness. Thus Dr. Johnson
says, / shall love is equivalent to "it will be so thai

WORDS AND THEIR USES.

I must love." The second verb, have, expresses
possession. He says, I shall have — what? Some-
thing.

f something.
I shall have -I a beating.

I. been beaten.

Have cannot have one meaning in two of these
instances, and another in the third. Of the two
perfect or definite participles, the first, been, ex-
presses past existence. He says, I shall have
been — what? Something, or in some condition.

fa b:id boy.

I shall have been -< deficient in my lesson.
L beaten.

By what process can, or in consequence of what
necessity does, been have one meaning in two
of these instances, and another in the third? But
by the union of the verb of existence with the per-
fect or definite participle of an active verb, the
English language can and does express the recipi-
ence of action, /. c., existence under action. There-
fore the perfect participle of the verb of existence
united to that of an active verb expresses the
perfected recipience of action. But, according to
English idiom, we cannot use been without putting
the idea of possession between it and the subject.
To express a completed existence, we say not, /
been, but / have been. Therefore our English
boy, when he says, I shall have been beaten, savs
in other words, It will be so that I must possess
the perfected recipience of the action of beating.
Truly, a long and lumbering equivalent of his
phrase ; but so are, and so must be, all explana

THE GRAMMARLESS TONGUE. 317

tions and paraphrases of idiomatic or figurative
forms of speech. None the less, however, is I
shall have been beaten a sentence ; and "this sen-
tence, thus made up of a pronoun, with two verbs
and two participles which have no etymological
relations, English grammarians call a tense, the
future perfect tense of the passive voice of the verb
to beat ! Could there be better proof that the Eng.
lish verb has neither future tense nor passive voice? *
The simplification of our language, which has
left the English verb only one voice and but two
tenses, has given only one case to the English
noun, the possessive, or two if we reckon the
nominative, which, strictly speaking, is not a case.
The English noun has no objective case. English
grammarians tell us that it has, and that this case
is governed, and agrees, and is put in apposition,
and what not. But the truth is, that the English
language, although it expresses clearly the objec-
tive relation, does it without case, and merely by
position, arrangement in logical order. One of the
rules of the English grammarians is that, " Active
verbs govern the objective case," or, according to
another form., "A noun or pronoun used as the
object of a transitive verb or its participles must be
in the objective case ; as, William defeated Har-
old." Here, therefore, we are told Harold is in
"the objective case." How, then, is it with this
sentence ? — Harold defeated William. No change

* I nee'1, not stop to say to the candid scholar that the Latin, like the Enslitli, is
vithout a tenst corresponding to the Greek Mrd future passive, and also without seme
«her formal teiues in the passive voice. Br* that is not to my present purpose. Hera
_aiin and Greek concern me only when they v-an be used by way of illustration. A*
to some objections which have been made to the heory jf oir verb formation imper-
fectly set forth above, sea the Note at the end of tbU chapter.

3l8 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

has been made in the word Harold ; it is in the
same case in both sentences. It has simply
changed *its position, and so its relation. In the
former sentence, Harold is the object, and William
the subject, of the action ; in the latter, Harold
is the subject, and William the object. But what
in language could be more absurd or more confus-
ing to a learner than to say that a mere change in
the place of a word makes a change in its case ?
And so, as to the rule, "A noun or pronoun
used to explain or identify another noun is put by
apposition in the same case ; as, William, the Nor-
man duke, defeated Harold, the Saxon king."
Here we are told that duke is in the nominative
case, because it is in apposition with William, and
that king \s\\\ the objective case, it being in apposi-
tion with Harold. But let the words be merely
shifted, without any inflection, and let us read,
Harold, the Saxon king, defeated William, the Nor-
man duke ; which is English, and might have been
truth. In what case here are king and duke 7
Clearly they are in no case in either example.
They are simply subject and object, or object and
subject, according to their relative positions.

We are told by one of the latest English gram-
marians, in his etymology of pronouns, that, "To
pronouns, like nouns, belong person, number,
gender, and case." This is a notably incorrect
assertion. Upon two of these points, nouns and
pronouns are remarkably unlike ; upon one other
they are correctly said to be alike ; upon the
fourth, the assertion is untrue as to both.

Pronouns and nouns have number ; pronouns

THE GRAMMARLESS TONGUE. 319

have person, nouns have not; pronouns have
two cases — the possessive and the objective, nouns
but one — the possessive. The rules given in
English Grammars for the syntax of nouns, apply,
with a single exception, to pronouns only, and
are founded chiefly upon the persons and cases of
the latter — the forms /, my, me, We, our, us,
T/iou, thy, thce, Tozi, your, He, his, him, She,
hers, her, It, its, They, their, them, to which there
are no corresponding forms in nouns, except the
possessive in es, which has been contracted to 's, as
if we were feeling our way towards its entire
abolition. Disappear it surely will, if we find that we
can do without it, and that, for instance, John coat
is just as precise and apprehensible as 'John's coat.
One of the pronoun cases is visibly disappearing —
the objective case -whom. Even in the fastidious
" Saturday Review " we sometimes find who as the
object of a verb. Our pronouns, however, are still
inflected, and have cases ; and of pronouns, active
verbs do govern, or rather require, the objective
case. To our few pronouns, then, may be applied
all those rules of construction which rest upon case-
form, which, borrowed from the Latin language
and thrust upon the student of English, are an-
nounced in our Grammars as the laws for the
syntax of the vast multitude of nouns.

Thus far, as to the positive likeness and unlike-
ness of nouns and pronouns. They have also a
negative likeness, as to which they are misrepre-
sented in all English Grammars, as in the one
above cited. Both nouns and pronouns are without
gender. There is no gender in the English Ian-

32O WORDS AND THEIR USES.

guage, Distinctions of sex are expressed by Eng-
lish folk ; but this fact does not imply the existence
of gender in the English language. Sex is gen-
erally, although not always, expressed by gender ;
but distinction of gender rarely implies distinction
of sex. There are thousands of words in Greek,
in Latin, and in French, which are masculine or
feminine, and which are the names of things and of
thoughts that can have no sex. The Latin noun
penna, a pen, is feminine ; and so is the French
table, a table. These words have gender, although
the things they signify have no sex. The corre-
sponding English nouns are said in English Gram-
mar to be of "the neuter gender." But they are
of no gender at all.

Gender in language belongs, not to things, but to
words. It is one of the most barbarous and foolish
notions with which the mind of man was ever vexed.
One or two examples shall make this plain. Beau is
the French adjective expressing masculine beauty ;
its feminine counterpart is belle ; so that a fine man
has come to be called a beau, and a beautiful wo-
man a belle. But, notwithstanding this, women, as
the fair sex, are called in French le beau scxe — the
reason being that in French, sex, the word scxc, is
masculine ! All languages afflicted with gender
are covered with such irritating absurdity ; so that
this distinction of words is the bane and the torment
of learners, whether to the manner born or not.
For instance, in French, one is in constant dread
lest one should commit such blunders as to speak
of masculine breeches — the name of that garment
in France being, with fine satire, feminine. Anc

THE GRAMMARLESS TONGUE. 321

yet, with all this complicated provision of gender —
say rather by reason of it — these languages are
sometimes unable to distinguish sex. A case in
point is this passage from " Gil Bias : " —

" Je fis la lecture de mon ouvrage, que sa majesle n'entendit
pas sans plaisir. Elle temoigna qu'elle etait contente de n:o; " —
Book VIII. Chap. 5.

This passage tells us that Gil Bias read his work
to a monarch, who was pleased and who expressed
satisfaction. But although every word in the two
sentences, except the participles and the verbs, has
gender, it is impossible to learn from this passage
whether the monarch was male or female ; as im~
possible as it is to do so from my paraphrase, which
is purposely made without distinction of sex. The
latter of the two sentences is bewildering to the
common sense of an English reader who knows
the context. It is, She showed that she was satis-
fied with me. Now, the she was a man — King
Philip IV. of Spain. But in defiance of sex, the
feminine pronoun is used because majesty, not the
quality or the condition, but the word majeste, is
feminine ! Here sex is not 'expressed by gender ;
and the lack of necessary connection between sex
and gender is manifest.

In English we express only sex; that is, we
merely have different words to express the male
and the female of living things. The human male
we call man, the human female, woman ; so we
say boy and girl, father and mother, brother and
sister, uncle and aunt, bull and cow, horse and
mare, bullock and heifer, buck and doe, cock and
hen, and sc forth. But even in cases like these,
21

\12 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

woman, for instance, is not the feminine form of the
word man, or girl of boy, or doe of buck, or In. n of
(pck. (In Anglo-Saxon iver=man is masculine, but
wif-= woman is of neuter gender !) And although in
such instances as actor, actress, Jiunter, liuntrcss, tiger
tigress, the name of the female is a feminine forry?
of the name of the male, this has no effect upon the
construction of the sentence ; the distinction made
is still one purely of sex, and not of gender. Yet
further : in pronouns, although they represent nouns
belonging to the two sexes, there is no distinction
of gender whatever; and, what is the more re-
markable, considering the ado grammarians make
about gender, none even of sex, except in one num-
ber of one person. /, thou, we, you, they, ivho,
and all the rest, except he, she, and it, refer to mas-
culine and feminine persons alike. In the pronoun
of the third person singular we have a relic of our
forefathers' inflected tongue. The Anglo-Saxon
pronoun was masculine he, feminine hc6, neuter hit,
which are respectively represented by our he, she,
it. But here, again, the distinction is of sex, not
of gender, and would be so even if it were carried
through all the persons. He, she, and /'/ are merely
vvords that stand for male, female, and sexless
things, and their forms are not affected by any
" governing " or requiring power of the other words
:n the sentences in which they appear. There is,
then, no gender in the English language, but only
distinction of sex ; that is, merely, we do not call a
.voman a man, a hen a cock, or a heifer a bullock.
This being true, it is impossible that there can be
Agreement in gender of nouns or of pronouns.
The one case of English nouns, the possessive,

THE GRAMMARLESS TONGUE. 323

is equally without power in the sentence, upon the
structure of which it has no effect whatever. It
merely expresses possession, and its power, confined
to that expression, "governs" nothing, requires
nothing, " agrees " with nothing. The reason of
which is, that English adjectives and participles are
without case, as they are without number and with-
out gender. In Latin every word qualifying a
noun in the genitive or possessive case, or closely
related to it, must be also in that case. Thus we
see upon the title-pages of the classics, sentences
crammed with genitives like the following : Albii
Tibulli, Equitis Romani Elegiarum aliorumque Car-
minum, Libri IV. ad optimos codices emendati,
cura Revert-ndissimi, Doctissimi, Sanctissimi Caroli
Bensonis ; that is, Four books of the Elegies and
other poems of Albus Tibullus, a Roman knight,
restored according to the best manuscripts, by the
care, of the most reverend, learned, and holy Carl
Benson. Here, in Latin, because Tibullus is in
the genitive or possessive case, the words meaning
Roman and knight must also be in that case ; so
with the word meaning other, because that mean-
ing poems is in the genitive ; and of course so with
those meaning most reverend, most learned, and
most holy, that these may agree with Carl Benson.
This is syntax or grammatical construction. We Eng-
lish folk have burst all those bonds of speech forever.
It' must have been with some reference to this
topic that Lindley Murray has vexed the souls of
generations by proclaiming as the tenth law of
English grammar, that "One substantive governs
another signifying a different thing in the possessive
case." Truly an awful and a mysteiious utterance,

324 WORDS AND THK1R USES.

It is about substantives and the possessive case ; buf
what about them? I can believe that the Apoca-
lypse is to be understood — hereafter ; I will under
take to parse " Sordello " — for a consideration ; but
I admit that before the Yankee Quaker's tenth law
I sit dumbfounded. I cannot begin, or hope to
begin, to understand it, or believe that it has been:
is, or will be understood by any man.

The assertion that it is a law of the English lan-
guage that conjunctions connect the same moods
and tenses of verbs, may be confuted by a single
example to the contrary, such as, " I desire, and
have pursued virtue, and should have been re-
warded, if men were just." That sentence is good
English ; and yet in it the conjunction and connects
what are, according to Murray and the other Eng-
lish grammarians, two moods and three tenses.

But I must bring this chapter to an end ; and I
may well do so, having shown my readers that
government, and agreement, and apposition, and
gender have no place in the construction of the
English sentence, that tense is confined to the
necessary distinction between what is passing, or
may pass, and what has passed, and case, to the
simple expression of possession. This being the
condition of the English language, grammar, in
the usual sense of the word, — i. e., syntax accord-
ing to etymology, — is impossible ; for inflected
forms and the consequent relations of words are the
conditions, sine qua non, of grammar. In speaking
or writing English, we have only to choose the right
words and put them into the right places, respecting
no laws but those of reason, conforming to no ordei
but that which we call " logical."

THE GRAMMARLESS TONGUE. 32s

NOTE.

THE views set forth in " The Grammarless Tongue "
as to the English verb have met with an opposition which
I looked for, and which, indeed, has been less general
and violent than I expected it would be ; for the reason,
I am inclined to think, that the article in question had
the good fortune to express the opinions to which many
silent and unprofessional thinkers on language — among
whom I was until I began these articles — had been led,
independently of authority, and by the mere force of light
reason.

My assertion that the English verb has but two tenses,
that it generally does not agree with the nominative in num-
ber and person, and the like, bring upon me the charge,
not of error, but of blundering, misstatement, ignorance,
and impertinent self-assertion. (I take some pleasure in
the recapitulation.) As to the general non-agreement
of the English verb with its nominative case, it is too
manifest to need a word of argument. And as to whether
a man in taking this position may justly be held guilty
of ignorant and impertinent self-assertion, I cite the fol-
lowing passage from Sir John Stoddart's " Universal
Grammar."

"The expression of Number is another accidental property of
the verb, and belongs to it only in so far as the verb may be com-
bined with the expression of person. . . . The verb is equally
said to be in the singular or plural whether it has or has not
distinct terminations appropriated to those different numbers;
we call f love singular, and iue love p'ural; but it is manile t
that in all such instances the expressitf a of number exists on.y
in the pronoun." — p. 155.

Now, it is the calling of things what they are not, in
order that the terminology of English Grammar may

325 \VORDS AND THEIR USES.

correspond to that of the Greek and Latin languages
which I think pernicious.

Upon so/tie of the points in question, I cite the follow-
ing passages rrom Crombie's " Etymology and Syntax of
tl>e English Language." Dr. Crombic, an Oxford Doctoi
of Laws, and a Fellow of the Royal Society, is one of
the profoundest, and closest, and least pedantic thinkers
that have written on our subject ; and his work (from
the third and last edition of which — London, 1830 — I
quote), was made a text-book for the class of English
literature in the London University. Dr. Crombie is
examining the argument of an English grammarian,
which is *o this effect. If that only is a tense which in
one inflected word expresses an affirmation with time,
we should in English have but two tenses, the present
and past in the active verb, and in the passive no tenses
at all, — the very position that I have taken. " But," the
writer, Dr. Bcattie, adds, " this is a needless nicety, and, if
adopted, would introduce confusion into the grammatical
art. If amavcram be a tense, why should not amatus
fueram? If / heard be a tense, I did hear, I have
heard, and / shall hear must be equally entitled to that
appellation." This argument Crombie thus sets aside : —

" HDW simplicity can introduce confusion I am unable to com-
prehend, unless we are to afiirm that the introduction of Greek
and Latin names, to express nonentities in our language, is
necessary to illustrate the grammar and simplify the study of
the language to the English scholar. . . . Nay, further, if it be
a needless nicety to admit those only as tenses which are formed
by inflection, is it not equally a needless nicety to admit those
cases onlv which are formed by varying the termination? And
if confusion be introduced by denying I had //rani to Le a t:nse,
why does not the learned author simplify the doctrine of English
nouns by giving them six cases — a king, of a king, to or for a
king, a king, O king, 'with, from, in, or by a king? This, surely,
would be to perplex, not to simplify. In short, the inconsistency
of those grammarians who deny that to be a case which is no!
formed by inflection, yet would load us with moods and tensei

THE GRAMMAI LESS TONGUE. 327

not formed by change of termination, is so palpable as to require
neither illustration nor argument to oppose it. ... Why do not
these gentlemen favor us with a dual number, with a middle
voice, and with an optative mood? Nay, as they are so fond of
tenses as to lament that we rob them of all but two, why do they
not enrich us with a first and second aorist and a paulo post fu-
ture?" (pp. 118, 119.) "Whether amatus fueram be or be not
a tense is the very point in question ; and so far am I from ad-
mitting the affirmative as unquestionable, that I contend it has
no more claim to the designation of these than laonai TIT^U! — no
more claim than amandum est mi/ii, amari oportct, or amandus
sum have to be called moods. Here I must request the reader to
bear in mind Lhe necessary distinction between the grammar of
a language and its capacity of expression. , . . Why not give,
as Zr.glioh cases, to a king, of a king, with a king, etc. ? The
mode is certainly applicable, whatever may be the consequences of
that application. A case surely is as easily formed by a noun and
a preposition as a tense by a participle and an auxiliary." (p. 121.)
" What should we think of that person's discernment who should
contend that the Latins had an optative mood because utinam
legercs signifies, I wish you would read? It is equally absurd to
say that we .have an imperfect, preterpluperfect, or future tense;
or that we have all the Greek varieties of mood, and two voices,
because by the aid of auxiliary words and definitive terms we
contrive to express these accidents, times, or states of being. I
consider, therefore, that TUB have no more cases, moods, tenses, or
voices in onr language — as far as its grammar, not its capacity
of expression, is concerned — than we have variety of termina~
tion to denote these different accessory ideas." — p. 127, 128.

But upon this point I cite also the following passage
from a yet higher authority, — Bosworth, — in the front
rank of the Anglo-Saxon and English scholars of the
world, who speaks as follows upon the subject, at p. 189
of the Introduction to his Anglo-Saxon Dictionary. The
passage, it will be seen, touches what I have said, and
upon voices and cases as well as upon tenses.

"What is generally termed the passive voice has no existence
:r. Anglo-Saxon, any more than in modern Er glish. The Anglo-
Saxons wrote, he is ivfod-. he is loved. Here is is the indicative,
indefinite of the neuter verb wesan, ari lufod. loved, is the past
participle of the verb l**fian, to '.ove In parsing, every word

328 WORDS AND THEIR USES*.

should be considered a distinct part of speech. To a king is not
called a dative case in English, as rcgi in Latin, because the Eng-
lish phrase is not formed by inflection, but by the auxiliary words
to a. If auxiliaries do not form cases in English nouns, why
should they be allowed to form various tenses and a passive
voice either in the English, or in its parent, the Saxon? Thus,
Ic maeg beon lufod, I may be loved, instead of being called the
potential mood passive, maeg is more rationally considered a
verb in the indicative mood, indefinite tense, first singular, beon
the neuter verb in the infinitive mood after the verb maeg; lufod
is the perfect participle of the verb lufian"

This view is exactly the same, it will be seen, as that
which is taken of the subject by Crombie ; and, indeed,
it is hard for me to understand how any man of common
sense, who thinks for himself, can take any other. Bos*
worth here supports the main position taken in " The
Grarnmarless Tongue," which is in effect, to use Bos-
worth's words, that in analyzing the English sentence " ev-
ery ivord should be considered a distinct part of speech ; rt
every word, auxiliary verbs as well as auxiliary preposi-
tions, as he regards them in his analysis of what English
grammarians call the first person singular, present in-
dicative, potential mood, passive voice of the verb to
love — / may be loved. That is the point of this
whole question.

Against the position taken in the foregoing chapter
as to the so-called tenses which are formed by the union
of a verb and a participle, — that the verb retains its
proper meaning ; e. g., that in I have loved, have ex-
presses possession, — a position impregnable, I think, to
argument, — two of my critics have directed the shafts of
feeble ridicule. One says, " He, therefore, who has
loved, has, in his possession, an abstract completed action,
bearing the name ' loved.' Such a person may well be
excused for inquiring with some anxiety what he shall
do with it." Another flouts the pretensions of a man
who dared to write about language, and yet " though
Vhat a participle could be the object to a verb."

THE GRAMMARLESS TONGUE. 329

Now, iu the first place, Bosworth's dictum — say
rather his primal law of English construction — that, in
parsing, every word should be regarded as a distinct
part of speech, covers this ground entirely. The case
of a verb followed by a participle is no more than any
other excluded from the operation of that law, which,
indeed, as we have seen, Bosworth himself illustrates
by an analysis of the so-called tense / may be loved.
What I have written upon this point is therefore merely
an expression and particular enforcement of a general
law recognized by thejfecffe princefs of British Anglo-
Saxon scholars. But I am not left without a particular
justification of my view of the relation of the auxiliary
verb to its participle. Dr. Crombie, explaining the
difference between the tenses which some grammarians
have called the preterite definite, I have written, and
the preterite indefinite, I 'wrote, furnishes me with the fol-
lowing opinion in point : —

"When an action is done in a time continuous to the present
instant, we employ the auxiliary verb. Thus, on finishing a
letter, I say, I have written my letter, i. e., I possess (now) the
finished action of writing a letter. Again, when an action is
done in a space of time which the mind assumes as present, or
when we express our immediate possession of things done in that
space, we use the auxiliary verb. ' I have this week written sev-
eral letters,' I have now the -perfection of writing several letters
finished this week. These phraseologies, as the author last
quoted justly observes, are harsh to the ear, and appear exceed-
ngly awkward ; but a little attention will suffice to show that
:hey correctly exhibit the ideas implied by the tense which we
have at present under consideration." — Etymology, etc., p. 166.

Upon the same subject, one of my critics has the fol-
lowing passage, which is useful in enabling me to illus-
trate my position: —

" A.11 participles are adjectives, and cannot, without being
made substantives by the prefixing of the article, or in some
rlmilar way, be used as objects »o trans;tive verbs. We can, o»
course, say, He posits the conditioned ; but we cannot say, fie

WORDS AND THEIR USES.

positr conditioned, or, He possesses conditioned. In the third
place, suppose we admit that a participle could be the object of
a transitive verb, and that I possess conditioned expressed what
we mean by I have conditioned ; is there not one respect in which
/ have conditioned or / hare lo'-ed differs from I have money t
We can certainly say I have loved the ocean; but can we also
say / have money the bank ? I have hunted the fox does mean
something; I have a hunt the fox means nothing."

Clearly all participles are adjectives when they are
predicated of the subject, or used to qualify a noun.
That is so obviously true that it hardly needs to be
asserted. Thus, in / am good and I am loved, good and
loved are equally adjectives, as in a bad man and a
hated man, bad and hated are also adjectives. But I
am not so sure that the prefixing of an article, or the like,
is the condition and sign of use as an object of a trans-
itive verb. I am overwhelmed with such a tremendous
illustration of the use of participles, as He posits the
conditioned. It takes me back, however, to the days
when Tappan and Henry led my youthful steps through
the flowery paths, and fed my downy lips with the sweet
and succulent fruits of metapheczic. Of this experience
I retain sufficient memory to admit, with shame and con-
fusion efface, that we can say, He posits the conditioned,
and that we cannot say, He posits conditioned, or He
possesses conditioned. But when, stepping down from
.he sublime of the conditioned, I reflect that although we
may say of Paddy, He bolts the pratic, we may not say,
He. bolts pratie, or, He possesses pratie, anil yet that we
may say, He bolts praties, and even, He likes bolting
traiies, I am comforted. I admit that although we may
*ay, / have loved the ocean, we may not say, 1 havt
money the bank, unless we would talk nonsense. But
jhat is because loved the ocean, which in one case is the
object of the verb have, is sense, and money the bank,
which is its object in the other case, is not sense. As a
phrase or sentence may be the subject of a verb, so i/

THE GRAMMARLESS TONGUE. 33!

siay be its object. For example, in the sentence, HA
likes bolting, the participle, although no article is pre-
fixed to it, is the object of the transitive verb likes; but
in the more complex, fully-developed, and well-rounded
sentence, He likes bolting praties, the object of the verb
is bolting praties.

I have called English the grammarless tongue ; but it
merits that distinction only because it excels in its supe-
riority to inflections, and its regard for the logical se-
quence of thought, all other languages of civilized Chris-
tendom. Compared with Greek and Latin, the French,
Italian, and Spanish languages, and even the German,
may be called grammarless. Indeed, the tendency to
the laying aside of inflections showed itself early in the
Latin tongue, in the very Augustan period of which we
find in the best writers the germ of our method of ex-
pressing action in combination with the idea of time, by
the use of the verbs signifying existence and possession,
in combination with participles. Cicero, instead of De
Csesare satis dixi, said, " De Caesare satis dictum habeo "
— I have said enough of Caesar ; and Caesar himself
wrote, " copias quas habebat paratas" instead of para-
verat — the forces which he had prepared.* Now, will
&ny one pretend that when Cicero said habeo dictum —
I have said, he used the word habeo without the idea of
possession, and yet that he used it with that idea when
.'le said habeo pomum — I have an apple? I think no
one will do so who is competent to write on language at
all ; and should there be such a person, I confess at once
.hat I cannot argue with him. We do not approach
each other near enough to clash. And as to the ques-
tions whether English verbs have real tenses, and what
s the force of " auxiliary" verbs in all cases, I shall leave
them without further discussion, merely giving my readers
»n example upon which to ruminate. If I shall kav6

* These examples 1 find to my hand, among others of »he same iort, in Brachet'f
'Gramrtiire Historique de la Langue Franvaise."

332 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

followed is a tense, the future perfect tense of the verb
to follow, in which the verb shall does not expi •jss futu-
rity, and the verb have does not express possession, what
becomes of that tense, and what is the meaning of tl ose
verbs, when, instead of saying, I shall have followed Lini
so long to-morrow, we say, I shall to-morrow have fol-
lowed him so long, or, I shall to-morrow have so long
followed him, or, I shall have so long followed him to-
morrow ? If a tense may be split in pieces and scattered
about in this way, and its component parts, each of them
a word in constant and independent use, may retain in
their divided condition the same modified meaning or
lack of meaning which they have in combination, it
would seem that the construction of English, according
to the grammarians, is so absolved from the lawu of rea-
son, which hold on all other subjects, that any discus-
sion of it in conformity with those laws must be en-
tirely superfluous and from the purpose.

A volume like this is not the place for controversy,
sven were I inclined thereto ; but I will notice one or
two of the remarks elicited by the foregoing chapter
from writers who, I am sorry to say, were not pretentious
ignoramuses, but men of sense and some philological
acquirement, because these examples will show the style
and temper of even the ablest of my opponents. One
of them sneered at the views set forth in that chapter,
because, among other things, they were those of a man
who " could make iniyotHu a future perfect," meaning, I
(shall have been beaten. As to that point, I cite the fol-
lowing passages from a grammarian of authority: —

" The third future, or paulo post future, of the passive in
respect to signification (§ 139), and form is derived from the
perfect passive, of which it retains the augment, substituting
m/iai for the termination of the perfect passive. It is therefore
only necessary to take the ending of the second person perfect
passive in aai (^ai, {«(). and change the ai into oftat — r/rvppat («n>
y«(), TtTl^opat" — Buttman, § 99.

"The third, or paulo post future, is properly, both in fornj
•ad in signification, compounded from the perfect and future

THE GRAMMARLESS TONGUE. 333

ft places what is past or concluded in the future; e. g., ft iroJLtrtla

'citias KfKoa/JLi/jaiTai lav i TOIOVTO; avrtjv IxiOKOirij <j>liJ.a% — The city will have

been perfectly organized if such a watchman oversee it; i. e*,
tlisposita erit, not disponetur" — Ibidem, § 139.

This is Greek, as I learned it. I do not pretend to
write a new Cratylus, or profess to be able to do so.

Another of my censors is facetiously severe upon a
man who ventures to write on language, and yet himself
uses such phrases as " a young-eyed chcrubin," and
" poning the gutter." This writer, although he figured
in the Philological Convention at Poughkeepsie, seems
not to know that chcrubin came into our language from
the Italian cherubino, and that until a very late period
the form cherub was not known. And as to the par-
ticular phrase I used, if my very scornful censor will
take a poor mariner's advice, and overhaul his little
Shakespeare, he will find, in a passage famous (among
the ignorant) for its beauty, the following lines : —

" There's not the smallest orb which thou beholdest
But in his motion like an angel sings,
Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubins."

Merchant of Venice, V. I.

Now, if very learned and scornful professors of phi-
lology will not, before criticising a poor layman like me,
and before figuring at philological conventions, make them-
selves acquainted with such familiar passages of poetry as
that, why, all the worse for me — and for Shakespeare.

As to " poning the gutter," that is a city boy's name for
u city boy's amusement. In winter, when a hard frost, ha*
filled the gutters with ice, boys make slides on them,
and as they dash down the slide and run up again to take
a start from the head, they ciy out one to another, " Pon
ihe gutter." Therefore, although the origin of the first
\void is unknown to me, 1 said of my young-eyed cher-
ubiu, that <c five years ago he, rustic, was milking the
cow, or urban, was poning the gutter."

With this answer I shall leave my critics in charge of
my reputation, and their DWU.

334 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

CHAPTER XI.

IS BEING DONE.

rT^O a man who has reached what Dante calls
JL the middle of the journey of our life, nothing in
the outside world is more remarkable than the un-
conscious freedom with which people ten or fifteen
years younger than himself adopt new fashions and
fangles of dress, of manners, and of speech, except,
perhaps, their persistence in these novelties after
the absurdity thereof has been fully set forth and
explained. His difficulty is, that for a long time
he does not see — does not unless he combines, un-
usually, quickness of penetration and readiness of
reflection — that what seems so new and strange to
him seems to younger people neither strange nor
new. The things are new, indeed, to them, but
only in that they are not yet old ; they are not nov-
elties that disturb their peace as they disturb his.
He wonders that that beautiful girl of seventeen goes
about in public unconcerned, and in fact almost
unnoticed, — that is the strangest feature of the
case, — in such amazing apparel as would ten years
ago have made her mother the laughing-stock of the
whole town, and which yet she wears as calmly as
if from Eve's day down the sex had known no othe>

IS BEING DONE. 335

garments. Why should she not? The faohion of
to-day is all that she knows of fashion, and she
cares to know no more, except for the sake of
curiosity. All the rest is to her in the keeping of
history, where she may, perhaps, in an idle mo-
ment, look at it, and find it food for wonder or for
laughter. In it there is nought to her of personal
concern.

When does a fashion cease to be ne\\ ? When
does it become old? when obsolete? Before these
questions can be answered, we must know the
measure of time used by him who asks them*
What would be new to a }roung elephant of thirty
or forty years would be old to an aged cony of nine
or ten ; what to the butterfly of a meadow and a
summer would date from the beginning of all things,
would hardly be a memory to an eagle that had
soared for half a century above half a continent.
What is new to one man may be old to men only
five years younger than he, and to men ten years
younger, obsolete. Few truths are more difficult
of apprehension than this, apparently so obvious
Few mental faculties are rarer than that which gives
to a mature man the prompt, intuitive recognition of
the fact that there are human beings whose opinions
and habits, if not worthy of consideration, must yet
/>e considered, to whom that which is to him a part
M the present is not merely unfamiliar, but shut out
among the things of the past as completely as the
biege of Troy, or the building of the Pyramids.
Five thousand years ago, rive hundred, fifty, five — •
what is the difference as to that which is beyond
Vhe grasp of consciousness, out of the record of ex
perience?

33$ WORDS AND THEIR USES.

This elasticity of the standard by which the new is
measured, is in no respect more worthy of consider-
ation than in that of language. Unless a man is a
monster of pedantry and priggishness, — and, in-
deed, not then, — the words and the forms of speech
he uses are not made, or even chosen, by himself.
The first condition of language — that it shall be a
means of communication between men — forbids the
near approach to a vocabulary or a construction
which is, even in part, the worker the choice of any
one man. As we get our food and our breath from
the earth and the air around us, so we get our lan-
guage from our neighbors — not the language in
which we work out and discuss questions in science,
in art, or in letters, but that which serves the needs
of our daily life. A little comes to us from abroad;
but this is mere spicery, much of which is neither
wholesome nor appetizing.

A fastidious precisian in language might carry
his nicety so far as to leave himself almost speech-
less. A man must speak the language of his peo-
pJe and his time. As to the first, there can be no
doubt; but what is his time? Generally, to-day.
If A hears B use a word or a phrase to-day which,
although it is entirely new to him, has a meaning
that he readily apprehends, and that saves trouble,
and "will do," he will use it himself, if he has need,
to-morrow. And so it will go on from mouth to
mouth, until within a year it may pervade a neigh-
borhood ; and in these days of railways and news-
papers, a year or two may spread it over a whole
country. The child that was in the cradle when
•he new word first was spoken, on going to schoo

IS BEING DONE. 337

/inds it a part of the common speech. For that
child it is neither new nor old ; it simply is. And
that impression of its far-off, unknown origin — for
" I am " expresses the eternal — the child will carry
through life, although he may afterward learn that
it was new when he first heard it. But to him
who was a man when the word came in, and who
reflects at all upon the language that he uses,
it will always have upon it the stamp of newness,
because it is one of the things of which he remem-
bers the beginning.

In bad eminence, at the head of those intruders
in language which to many persons seem to be of
established respectability, but the right of which
to be at all is not yet fully admitted, stands out the
form of speech is being done, or rather, is being,
which, about seventy or eighty years ago, began
to affront the eye, torment the ear, and assault the
common sense of the speaker of plain and idiomatic
English. That it should be pronounced a novelty
will seem strange to most of my readers ; for we
have all heard it from our earliest childhood. But
so slow has been its acceptance among unlettered
people, so stoutly has it been resisted by the let-
tered, that we have heard it under constant protest ;
yet it is so much used, and seems to suit so well the
.nental tone of those who now do most to mould the
common speech, that to check its diffusion would be
% hopeless undertaking. But to examine it may be
worth our while, for the sake of a lesson in language.

Mr. Marsh says of this form of speech, that it is
Ran awkward neologism, which neither conven-
.ence, intelligibility, nor syntactical congruity de

22

338 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

mands," and that it is the contrivance of some
grammarian. But that it is the work of any gram-
marian is more than doubtful. Grammarians, with
all their faults, do not deform language with fan-
tastic solecisms, or even seek to enrich it with new
and startling verbal combinations. They rather
icsist novelty, and devote themselves to formulating
that which use has already established. It can
hardly be that such an incongruous and ridiculous
form of speech as is being1 done was contrived by a
man who, by any stretching of the name, should be
included among grammarians. But, nevertheless,
it is a worthy offspring of English grammar ; a
fitting, and, I may say, an inevitable consequence
of the attempt to make our mother tongue order
herself by Latin rules and standards. Some pre-
cise and feeble-minded soul, having been taught
that there is a passive voice in English, and that,
for instance, building is an active participle, and
buildcd or built & passive, felt conscientious scruples
at saying, The house is building. For what could
the house build? A house cannot build ; it must be
built. And yet to say, The house is built, is to say
(I speak for him), that it is finished, that it is
"done built." Therefore we must find some form
that will be a continuing present tense of this pas-
sive verb to be built ; and he found it, as he thought,
in the form is being built ; supposing that, by the
introduction of the present participle, expressive of
continued existence, between is and built, he had
modified the meaning both of the former and the
letter. Others, like him, half taught and badly
'aught, precise and fussy, caught up the phras*

IS BEING DONE. 339

R-hich seemed to them to supply a deficiency in their
passive voice, and so the infection spread over Eng-
land, and ere long into this republic. It was con-
fined, however, to the condition of life in which it
had its origin. Simple-minded common people and
tnose of culture were alike protected against it
by their attachment to the idiom of their mother
tongue, with which they felt it to be directly at
variance.

To this day there is not, in the Old England or
.he New, a farmer's boy who has escaped the
contamination of popular weekly papers, who would
not say, While the new barn was a-building, unless
some prim schoolma'am had taught him to say,
was being built ; and, at the other extreme of
culture, Macuulay writes, " Chelsea Hospital was
building," " While innocent blood was shedding,"
K While the foulest judicial murder that had dis-
graced even those times was perpetrating."

Mr. Dickens writes (Sergeant Buzfuz's speech),
"The train was preparing." In the "Atlantic
Monthly" for May, 1869, I find, "Another flank
movement was making, but thus far with little
effect.;" and in the "Brooklyn Eagle" for June 13,
1869," St. Ann's Church, which has been building
for nearly two years on the corner of Livingston
and Clinton Streets." I cite these miscellaneous
writers to show modern and common usage, mean-
ing to set up neither the " Brooklyn Eagle " nor
Mr. Dickens as a very high authority in the use of
anguage.

And thus, to go no farther back than the Eliza-
oethan period, Bishop Jewel wrote, " Some other

340 WORDS ANb THEIR USES.

theie be that see and know that the Church of God
is now a building, and yet, not onely refrain them-
selves from the worke, but also spurne dovvne that
other men have built up." (Sermons, Ed. 1583,
fol. F. vii.) "After the Temple was buylded, or
was in building, and rearing, Esdras the prophet
read the Law of God." {Idem. G. vi.) And
Bishop Hall, "While my body is dressing, not with
*n effeminate curiosity, nor yet with rude neglect,
.iy mind addresses herself to her ensuing task ; "
and Shakespeare,

" and when he thinks, good easy man,
His greatness is a-ripening."

Henry VIII.

Thus Milton wrote, "While the Temple of the
Lord was building;" Bolingbroke, "The nation
lad cued out loudly against the crime which was
committing ; " and Johnson wrote to Bosvvell,
* My ' Lives ' are reprinting." Hence we see that
the form is being done, is being made, is being
built, lacks the support of authoritative usage from
the period of the earliest classical English to the
present day. That, however, it might do without
if it were consistent with reason, and conformed
to the normal development of the language, else
there would be no growth of language. But that
very consistency and conformity it lacks. Let us
see why and how.

The condition sought to be expressed by is being
ione is not new in any sense. It is neither a new
shade of thought nor a new-born idea. On the
:ontrnry, it is one of the first conditions that need
expression. It has been expressed in many Ian

IS BEING DONE. 341

£iiages from remote ages, and veiy completely in
English for centuries. At best the phrase is
merely a new name for an old thing already well
named. Those who use it seem to me to disregard
the fitness of the forms of speech by which the
thought which they would present has been uttered
by our best writers and speakers. For example,
Hamlet says to the king, of the slain Polonius, that
the latter is at supper, " not where he eats, but
where he is eaten ; " and the words fully express —
there has never been a doubt suggested by the most
microscopic commentator that they express — just
what Hamlet meant, that the eating of Polonius
was going on at the time then present. " Is eaten "
does not mean has been eaten tip. It is in the
present tense, and expresses what has been called
"the continuous recipience of action," as much
as I cat expresses continuous action. Hamlet goes
on to say, " A certain convocation of politic worms
arc e'en at him." So Hotspur says, —

" Why, look you, I am ivhipp'd and scourg'd with rods,
Nettled and stimg with pismires vjhen I hear
Of this vile politician, Bolingbroke."

It was not necessary for Hotspur, although he spoke
of time present, to say, " I am being whipped,
being scourged, being nettled, being stung, when I
hear," or for Hamlet to say that Polonius was being
eaten, although the worms were at him while the
prince was speaking.

It will be of some interest to observe how this idea
lias been expressed in various languages, including
iCnglish. It may be, and has been, expressed, both
partidpially and verbally. In the New Testament

342 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

(i Peter iii. 20) there is the following passage in

the original : iv f^aewn; A'we, xuruaxeva'ZoiiiKijS xifiwov,

which, in our English version, is translated thus :
wJn the days of Noah, while the ark was a-prcpar-
ing" Here the last clause represents the Greek
passive participle present used absolutely with the
substantive, according to the Greek idiom. In the
translation of 1582 we find, "when the ark was
a-building;" in that of 1557, "while the ark was
-preparing'," but in Wycliffe's translation, made
about A. D. 1380, "In the days of Noe, when the
ship was made." The last form, which corre-
sponds to Hamlet's "not where he eats, but where
he t's eaten" represents the imperfect subjunctive
passive, "cum fabricaretur area" of the Vulgate,
from which Wycliffe made his translation. In the
account of the building of Solomon's temple is an-
other passage (i Kings vi. 7), which serves in
illustration : "And the house, when it was in build-
ing, was built of stone made ready before it was
brought thither ; so that there was neither hammer,
nor axe, nor any tool of iron heard in the house
while it was in building" Here, "when it was in
building" is represented in the Septuagint version
by lv TU oixodo^eiodui, ui'nov (the infinitive passive),
and in the Vulgate by * cum <edificarcturn — again
the imperfect subjunctive passive. The German
translation gives in the first instance, "da man die
archa zurustctc" when they prepared or fitted out
the ark; in the second, " und da das haus gesctzt
ward" and when the house was founded ; at the
eno of the verse, "in building" of the English ver-
sion ha< its exact counterpart in "/«/ bauen" Th?

rs BEING DONE. 34 J

French version gives, in the first instance, pendant
que Varche se bdtissoit? which, according to the
French idiom, is, while the ark was built; and in
the second instance, both at the beginning and the
end of the verse, en bdfissant la maison, that is, in
building the house. In the Italian version we find,,
in one passage, " quando la casa fit, edificata?
which is, literally, when the house was built; and
* tncntrc 5' edificava" while it built itself, an idiomatic
form for while it was built; and in the other, ac-
cording to the same idiom, " mentre s' apparccchifi-
va r arcfza" while the ark was prepared. Now, all
these versions express the same facts completely,
not only each one of them to those to whom the
respective languages are vernacular, but com-
pletely to every man who has acquired a knowl-
edge of all these tongues ; and in all of them we
find either the verbal substantive form, was in tuild-
ing, teas a-prcparing, -was preparing, or the
imperfect verbal form, ivas built, -was prepared.
In no one of them, not even in the Greek with its
present passive participle, is there an approach to
such a phraseology as is being' done, is being' btiilt,
which in Latin, for instance, could be represented
only by the use of the obsolete participle present
ens, and the monstrous construction ens factus estt
ens adificatus est.

In the form is a-doing, is a-making, the a is a
Viere degraded form of on or in ; as in ten o'clock
0' represents of the. Such words as doing and
making are both participles and verbal nouns.
When we say, I am doing thus, I am making this,
they are real participle*'. When we say, It was

344 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

long in the doing, It was slow in the making, they
are verbal nouns. For example, in the following
passage from Ascham's M Schoolmaster," it is plain
that weeping, learning, and misliking, are nouns
no less than grief, trouble, and fear : —

"And when I am called from him I fall on weeping, because
whatever I do else but learning is full of grief, trouble, and fear,
and whole misliking unto me."

So in the following passage from Barrow (Ser-
mon XIII.), on going, which we nowadays cut
down into a-going, is as much a noun as rest is in
"put at rest:" —

" Speech is indeed the rudder that steereth human affa-'rs, the
spring that setteth the wheels of action on going."

In the Anglo-Saxon, the participle and the verbal
noun were distinguished in sense and in form ; the
participle ending in cnde, the verbal noun in ung*
In the lapse of time, and by the simplifying pro-
cess which I have before mentioned, these two ter-
minations were blended in the form ing, which
represents them both. Hence has arisen the diffi-
culty of those precise people who were not content
to speak their mother tongue as theyT learned it from
their mothers, and who undertook, not only to crit-
icise, but to take to pieces and put together in a
new shape, something the structure of which the)'
did not understand. If, in their trouble about the
active present participle, they had looked into Ben
Jonson's Grammar (for he, like Milton, was a scholar
as well as a poet, and wrote an English grammar, as
Milton wrote a Latin accidence), they would have seer,
that he said that, " Before the participle present, a

IS BEING DONE. 345

nn, have the force of a gerund ; " and a gerund, they
might have learned, was a Latin verbal noun (taking
its name from gero, I bear, I carry on), used to express
the meaning of the present infinitive active, under
certain circumstances. Jonson cites, in illustration of
his law, this line from Norton, " But there is some
grand tempest a-brewing towards us," which they
would have done well to consider before making
their improvement ; for I think that, even now, one
of their sort would hesitate to look up into a lower-
ing sky, and say, There is a storm being brewed.
He would be laughed at by any sensible Cape Cod
fisherman or English countess. To this day we
say, — every man and boy of us who is not fitter
for Bedlam than many who are sent there, — There
is a storm a-brewing, as our forefathers have said
for centuries. So, in "The Merchant of Venice"
(Act II., Scene 5), Shylock says to Jessica, —

" I am right loath to go :
There is some 511 a-brewing toward my rest;
For I did dream of money-bags to-night."

This a, which represents in, is said, by Mr.
Marsh, to have been dropped (by writers, I sup-
pose he means,) about the beginning of the eigh-
teenth century. It might better not have been
dropped at all ; but it began to disappear before
that time. Witness this passage in Cotton's trans-
lation of Montaigne's Essays, a masterpiece of
idiomatic English, which was produced about the
year 1670: —

u A slave of his, a vicious ill-conc'itioned fellow, but that had
the precepts of philosophy often ringing in h:s ears, having, for

346 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

«>ome offence of his, been stript, by Plutarch's command, whilst
be -was -whipping muttered at first that he did not deserve it, etc.j
etc." — Book II. " Of Anger."

That the suppression of the a is a loss will be
clear, from consideration of this example. It is un-
deniable, that the phrase "whilst he was whipping"
might be misunderstood as meaning, while the
he was whipping a him. Its meaning is deter-
mined only by the context. But so is the meaning
of nearly half the words in any sentence. If,
however, Cotton had written " whilst he was a-
whipping," there would be no opportunity for the
mistaking of the verbal noun -whipping for the
present participle "whipping. The distinction be-
tween these two intimately-related parts of speech
may be clearly exemplified b}' the following sen-
tence : Plutarch was whipping a slave, and while
the slave was a-whipping he told his master that,
in this whipping, he set at nought his own moral
principles. Here no one can fail to see at once that
the first whipping is a participle, and that the last
s a noun ; and a moment's consideration will reveal
lo any intelligent person that the second -whipping
is also not a participle, but a verbal poun. If the a
in " a-whipping " were the article, that would de-
cide the question ; for the article, definite or indefi-
nite, can be used only with a substantive. This is
illustrated even by the phrase " a go," which is
sometimes heard ; for, when a gentleman remarks,
" Here is a rum go," without meaning any allusion
to .spirituous liquors, or if, with such allusion
speaks of " a go of gin," the anguish that he in
tiicU upon the well-regulated grammatical mine

IS BEING DONE. 347

Is caused merely by his placing the first person
present indicative of the verb to go in the relation
in which it can be properly parsed only as a noun.
But the a in the phrases, While the slave was a-
whipping, While the house was a-building, While
the thing was a-doing, is not the article, as I have
said before, but a mere corruption of z«, or on, the
change of which to a was" caused, clearly, by that
lazy carelessness of speech that tends so much
to the phonetic degradation of language. Either
011 or /«, however, determines the substantive char-
acter of the words to which it applies. As, for
example, if the gentleman just referred to speaks
of "going on a bust," the preposition, no less than
the article, shows that he is so reprobate, so lost to
Murray and to Moon, as to treat the verb burst a.s
if it were a noun ; and his omission of the r rrom
the perverted word is not only a striking instance
of the addition of insult to injury, but a warning
example of the phonetic degradation of language,
and of man.

The nature of this noun of action, and of the
simple, strong construction which it admits, is
finely shown in this pregnant passage from Hobbes
("De Corpore Politico," Part II., chap. 2) : —

" In the making of a Democracy there passeth no covenant
between the sovereign and any subject; for, while the Democ-
racy is a-making, there is no sovereign with whom to contract."

Here the word making is, in both instances, the
same part of speech, the representative of the same
idea, and in the same relation ; and the writer who
Would change the latter to, While the democracy is
leing made, must also, that his language may not

348 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

be at variance with itself in one sentence, change
the former, and read, In the being made of a de-
mocracy, or, what is the same thing, In a democ-
racy's being made.

The latter course of this idiom of in, on, or a
with the verbal noun may be traced, and the period
of the concoction of is being may be approximated
by a comparison of the heading of chapter xxii.
of " Don Quixote," as it appears in the principal
English translations. The original is as follows : —

" De la liberdad que dio don Quixote a muchos desdichados
que mal de su grado los llevaban donde no quisieran yr *

Shelton, in 1612, rendered it thus: "Of the
liberty Don Quixote gave to many wretches who
were a-carrying perforce to a place they desired
not." Motteux, A. D. 1719, gives, " How Don
Quixote set free many miserable creatures who
•were carrying, mucn against their wills, to a place
they did not like." Jarvis, whose translation was
published in 1742, has it thus : " How Don Quixote
set at liberty several unfortunate persons who -were
carrying much against their wills where they had
no wish to go." But in the edition of Jarvis's trans-
lation published A. D. 1818 "carrying" is changed
to "being carried."

This change indicates the latter part of the seven
teenth century as the birth-time of is being. And
in fact the earliest known instance of its use occurs
in a letter by Southey dated 1795. Coleridge used
•t, and Lamb, and Landor; yet after three-quarters
af a century it is pronounced a novelty and a nui.
sance. It made no little stir when it was Srsj

IS BEING DONE. 349

brought here, and it was adopted at once by many
people — of course those who wished to be elegant.
I have heard of an instance of its use, after it had
become in vogue among such people, which illus-
trates one of the objections to which it is obnoxious
— that it represents an act as going on (z's being)
and as completed (done} at the same time. A
gentleman culled early in the evening at a house
with the ladies of which he was intimate. The
door was opened by a negress, a bright, pompous
wench, in one of the Madras kerchief head-dresses
commonly worn at that time by such women. She
needed not to wait for his inquiry for the ladies,
but welcomed him at once ; for he was a favored
guest. "Good evenin', sar ! Walk in, sar. De
ladies bein' done gone to de uproar." " Gone to
the opera ! Thank you, I won't come in. I'll see
them there." " No, sar, I didn't say dey done gone
to de uproar," but, with a slight toss of the Madras
kerchief and a smile of superior intelligence, " dey
beirf done gone. Walk in, sar. Ole missus in de
parlor ; young missus be down stairs d'recly." My
grandmother told me that story, which she heard
from the gentleman himself, in my boyhood, neither
of us thinking that it would be thus used to expose
the absurd affectation in speech at which she
'aughed. From the negress's point of view, — that
.G, the " done gone " point, she was as right in her
f bein' done gone " as those whose speech she aped
were in their " is being done," and " is being built."
To her, done gone expressed a going that waa
finished, a completed going But the ladies wrere
in process of going, not going o~ " gwine ; " that

35O WORDS AND THEIR USKS.

would have expressed an act too much in the future
according to the new light she had seen cast upon
language ; and so she boldly dashed at her contin-
uing present of a completed action — "bein'done
gone." She was more nearly right in her practice
than some learned linguists are in their theory.
For the phrase under consideration is not a " con-
tinuing present of the passive voice." The parti-
ciples done, built, etc., are not passive, but merely
perfect participles, as \ve have seen before; and
being is merely a present participle. The union
of the two, therefore, cannot express an existing
and continuing passivity ; it merely brings preposter-
ously together the ideas of the present and the past.
The combi-iation of do and go by the mean
whites and the negroes of the South, chiefly in the
forms done gone and gone done^ is not wholly il-
logical and absurd ; nor is it without something
like respectable precedent in English literature.
Witness these passages from Chaucer : —

" That ye unto your sonne as trewly
Done her been wedded at your home coming ;
This is the final end of all this thing."

Legend of Good Women, 1. 2096.

" And I woll geve him all that fals
To his chamber and to his hals;
I luoll do paint with pure gold
And tapite hem full manifold."

The Duchess, 1. 257.

" Bid him crcepe into the body
And do it gone to Alcione.
The queene, there she lieth alone."

Ibid., !. 146.

A.nd indeed the Southern provincial use of do and
go is capable of formulation into tenses, which, if il

IS BEING DONE. 35 1

were not for the prejudice in favor of other — in
the present delicate condition of the country, I will
not say better — usage, might claim the attention,
and even the adhesion, of people like those who
adopt is being done — who shun an idiom as they
would be thought to shun a sin, and who must be
correcty or die. For example : —

INDICATIVE MOOD.

PRESENT AND IMPERFECT TENSE.

Singular. Plural.

1. I done, i. We uns done,

2. Yer done, 2. You uns done,

3. He done, 3. They uns done.

PERFECT.

1. I gone done, i. We uns gone done,

2. Yer gone done, 2. You uns gone done,

3. He gone done, 3. They uns gone done.

PLUPERFECT.

j. I done gone done, i. We uns done gone done,

2. Yer done gone done, 2. You uns done gone done,

3. He done gone done, 3. They uns done gone done.

FUTURE.

1. I gwine done, I. We uns gwine done,

2. Yer gwine done, 2. You uns gwine done,

3. He gwire done, 3. They uns gwine done.

FUTURE PERFECT.

1. I gwine gone done, i. We uns gwine gone done,

2. Yer gwine gone done, 2. You uns gwine gone done,

3. He gwine gone done, 3. They uns gwine gone doiie.

Ccetera desunt.

Here, I submit, is as regular and symmetrical a
form of conjugation as can be found in any English
grammar. In some respects it is more so. For
instance, the ambiguitv of the singular you and the

352 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

plural you is obviated by the use of ycr for the
second person singular, and you uns for the same
person plural. Of these two persons, on this sys-
tem, there can be no confusion. I gwine gone done.
is as reasonable a part of the verb to do as / shall
or will have done.

But the full absurdity of this phrase, the essence
of its nonsense, seems not to have been hitherto
pointed out. The objection made to it is, that it
unites a present with a " passive," or rather a
perfect participle. But this combination is of fre-
quent occurrence, and, of itself, is quite unobjec-
tionable. For instance, " He, being fore-warned of
the danger, fled." And there is a combination of the
same participles which seems yet nearer in mean-
ing to the one under consideration. A lady will
say to her servant, Why can't you set the table
thus, or so, without being told every morning?
That is good sense and good English. In Cotton's
translation of Montaigne's " Apology for Raimond
de Sebonde " is this passage, which contains a
like construction: "There is more understanding
required in the teaching of others than in being
taught" Here we have also sense and English ;
and that being admitted, it will seem to some
persons a full justification of the phrase, w while
the boy is being taught." It is not so, however.
Florio, writing nearly a hundred years before
Cotton, translates the same passage thus: "More
discourse is required to teach others than to be
laught," using the infinitive in both parts of the
sentence. The likeness between the infinitive and
lha verbal noun is so close that the latter ma}

IS BJ2ING DONE. 353

almost always be used for the former, although
the former may not be used for the latter. Mon-
taigne used the verbal noun in both instances.
His sentence has merely an elision of the article
before the last verbal noun, and in full is, "There
is more understanding required in the teaching
of others than in the being taught." This elision
is common, and appears in the lady's question to
her servant, which in full is, Why cannot you
set the table thus without [what? some object] —
without the being told?

What, then, is the fatal absurdity in this phrase,
which has been so long and so widely used that, to
some people, it seems to be an old growth of
the language, while it is yet in fact a mere trans-
planted sucker, without life and without root? It
is in the combination of ts with being ; in the
making of the verb to be a complement, or, in
grammarians' phrase, an auxiliary to itself — an
absurdity so palpable, so monstrous, so ridiculous
that it should need only to be pointed out to be
scouted. To be — called by Latin grammarians
the substantive verb — expresses mere existence.
It predicates of its subject either simple absolute
existence or whatever attribute follows it. To be
find to exist, if not perfect synonymes, are more
nearly so, perhaps, than any two verbs in the lan-
guage. In some of their meanings there is a
shade of difference, but in others there is none
whatever ; and the latter are those which serve
_-ji present purpose. \Vhen we say, He, being
forewarned ol danger, fled, we say, He, existing
forewarned of danger, fied. When we say that

354 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

a thing is done, we say that it exists done. When
we say, That being done I shall be satisfied, we
say, That existing done I shall be satisfied. Is
being done is simply exists existing done. To say,
therefore, that a thing is being done is not only
to say (in respect of the last two participles) that a
process is going on and is finished, at the same
time, but (in respect of the whole phrase) that
it exists existing finished ; which is no more or
other than to say that it exists finished, is finished,
is clone ; which is exactly what those who use the
phrase do not mean. It means that if it means
anything ; but in fact it means nothing, and is the
most incongruous combination of words and ideas
that ever attained respectable usage in any civilized
language.

This absurdity is cloaked by the formation of to be
from parts of three verbs, which gives us such
dissimilar forms as is for the present tense, was
for the past, and being for the present participle.
It seems as if in is being there were two verbs.
We may be sure that if the present participle of
to be were formed like that of to love (loving)
we should never have heard the phrases bes being
done or is ising done, bes being built or is ising
built. This nonsense is hidden from the eye and
deadened to the ear by the dissimilarity in form of
is and being. We may rightly use to have as a
complement to itself, and say have had, or even had
had, because we can have having, possess posses-
sion. But we cannot be being, exist existence.
To be being is merely to be ; nothing more or less.
It is being is simply equal to it is. And in the

IS BEING DONE. 355

supposed corresponding Latin phrases ens factus
est* ens (edificatus est (the obsoleteness of ens as
a participle being granted) , the monstrosity is not ID
the use of ens with factus, but in that of ens with
cst. The absurdity is in Latin just what it is in
English, the use of is with being, the making of
the verb to be a complement to itself.

But it is strongly urged, and speciously main-
tained, that to be and to exist are not synonymes
when the former is used as a so-called auxiliary
verb. In the words of one critic, "The verb is, as
a copula between a subject and a predicate, is no
synonyme with the verb exist. It does not affirm
the existence of either subject or predicate. It is
simply the sign of connection, the coupler, direct-
ing the reader to think subject and predicate in
unity."

That there is a difference between the significa-
tion of a verb used independently, and that which it
has as a so-called auxiliary, seems to me, with my
present light, a mere fiction of the grammarians,
whose rules are, in my judgement, valuable only in
those rare instances in which they conform to rea-
son and common sense, in behalf of which I have
dared to do battle.

This very notion that the verb is a copula, ful-
filling the functions of a coupler in a sentence, is
one of those against which, in boyhood, I beat my
o apprehensive head in vain. Now, apprehending
it I believe it to be the merest linguistic fiction with
which man ever was deluded. The verb ie the life
of the sentence. A sentence is an assertion, direct
9r hypothetical ; and it is the verb, and tbo verb only,

WORDS AND THEIR USES.

which asserts. Assertion is its peculiar and exclu
sive characteristic. True, in asserting it does con-
nect subject and predicate ; but this is an incidental,
and we might almost say an unessential, function
of the verb, whose office is to move the sentence, to
be the engine that propels the train of thought, and
not the coupling that keeps it together.

The substantive verb to be expresses existence;
and whether used by itself or in connection with a
participle or an adjective, it does nothing more.
But existence may be simple and absolute, or it may
be modified by the relations of its subject to some
condition or quality. In the sentence " Socrates is,"
simple existence is predicated of Socrates ; but in
this, "Socrates speaks," a certain act, that is, ex-
istence together with a certain condition of exist-
tence, is predicated of him. For it is as true now
as it was when Aristotle said it, as true of English
as of Greek, that the assertion " Socrates speaks "
is equivalent to the assertion " Socrates is speaking."
No\v, it seems to me clear that the difference be-
tween w Socrates is " and w Socrates is speaking " is
merely that the former predicates simple existence
of Socrates, and the latter, existence and something
more. The participle speaking modifies, both by
limitation and expansion, the assertion of the verb
is. " Socrates is speaking " is equivalent to " Soc-
rates exists speaking." So when we say that a
man is loved, is hated, is condemned, we say merely
that the loved, hated, or condemned condition is
that in which he exists. And even the sentence
"the man is dead" is equivalent, neither more noi
less, to the other, " the man exists dead." If the

IS BEING DONE. 357

last example should provoke, even in those who
accept its predecessors, a smiling doubt, and a sus-
picion that this example is fatal to my view of the
meaning of to be, it must be by reason of a mis-
apprehension of the meaning of the verb exist as it
is used in this construction. If exist must mean
literally is alive, and nothing else, we cannot accept
the sentence "the man exists (is alive) dead," as
the equivalent of "the man is dead." But an objec-
IKHI resting upon this assumed ambiguity can be
quickly set aside. The existence predicated by the
substantive verb to be is not necessarily one of life,
but one that is predicable alike of things animate
and inanimate. We say that a planet, a country,
a town exists, or that it does not exist, i. e., that it
is, or is not ; as Virgil made vEneas say fuit Ilium,
or as we might say, using the verb to be in two
tenses to express the same fact, The man was, and
is not; in which sentence was predicates an exist-
ence past, and ts not, a negative existence present ;
a negative existence being no more a contradiction
in terms than a negative affirmation. So when we
say. The man is dead, we merely predicate of him
a dead existence, which so far as he is concerned
is no existence at all in this world, as far as we
know ; but so far as we are concerned with him as
the subject of speech, is a mere change in the con-
dition of his existence. With a ruined city or a
dead man before us, the existence of either palpa-
ble, though changed in its condition, we say, The
city exists no more, or, The city is (exists) ruined.
The man exists no more, or, The man is (exists)
dead. To this sense of the word exist* lile is no!

358 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

r

more essential in the one case than in the other.
This construing may easily be lidiculed, but I am
quite sure that it will outlive any ridicule that it
may provoke, and that it affords the only reasona-
ble explanation of the intimate signification of such
phrases as those which have just been given in
illustration.

Home Tooke, as if to leave an example not to be
set aside of the identity of is and exist, wrote the
following remarkable sentence in his dialogue r Of
Prepositions." B. asks whether good-breeding or
policy dictated a certain sharp criticism upon Dr.
Johnson and Bishop Lovvth. H. replies, —

" Neither. But a quality which passes for brutality and il?
nature; and which, in spite of hard blows and heavy burdens,
would make me rather chuse in the scale of beings to exist a
mastiff or a mule than a monkey or a lap-dog." — Div. of Put:,
I. 370, ed. 1798.

Now, can any man who has preserved ali his
senses doubt for a moment that " to exist a mastiff or
a mule " is absolutely the same as " to be a mastiff
or a mule?'' And can such a person believe that in
the phrases, to be a mule, to be stubborn, and to be
beaten, there is the least shade of difference in the
meaning of the verb to be ? that it has one mean-
ing when it is followed by the noun, mule, and the
name when it is followed by the adjective, stubborn,
but another when it is followed by the participle,
beaten, which is but a kind of adjective? If there is
such a difference, then the verb must have the former
meaning before the adjective afraid in the sentence,
Ke is afraid. But afraid is merely the perfecl
participle of the verb affray — affrayed, afrayed, the

IS BEING DONE. 359

same as the old participle afcared, from the Anglo-
Saxon afacran , and how and when did the verb
to be change its meaning by the mere contraction
of affray ed into afraidl

But it is said that the use of is with being involves
no absurdity, because here being does not mean
existing, but continuing. In illustration of which,
the phrase, The anvil is being struck is given.
That, we are told, is equivalent to, The anvil is con-
tinuing struck. "Being struck implies a process,
a continuity of some sort beyond a simple instant.
Is affirms the being struck of the anvil." Let us
examine that position, and see if it relieves us of
confusion and ambiguity. Keeping to Noah's ark,
let us say, The ark being finished, the hippopotamus
declined entering it. Does that mean, the ark con-
tinuing finished, etc. ? The bond being given, Shy-
lock lent the mone}r. Does that mean the bond
continuing given, etc.? Plainly it does not, cannot
mean, in either case, that, or anything like that.
We find ourselves landed in the confusion and the
ambiguity of assuming that in, "The ark being
prepared," being has one meaning, and in, " The
ark is being prepared," another. But if we hold
to reason, and regard being as always meaning
existing, and preparing, building, as verbal sub-
stantives that mean a process, we have no confu-
sion, neither ambiguity nor absurdity. The ark
being prepared, means the ark existing prepared ;
and, While the ark was in preparing, or was pre-
paring, means while the ark was in process of prep-
aration. Is there a man of sense who can speak
, who does not understand, In the building

360 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

of the house to mean in the process of the erection
of the house? It is safe to say, not one. The
verbal substantive in ing, or, if you pltasc, the
present participle used substantively, expresses, to
the apprehension of all men, a process. And such
phrases as being built, being done, must be used
absolutely, in a participial sense, as, The house
being built, he went into it; The thing being done,
it could not be helped ; or they must be used sub-
stantively. For example, the following passage from
the first book of Young's " Night Thoughts : " —

" Of man's miraculous mistakes this bears
The palm : That all men are about to live,
Forever on the brink of being born."

Here being born is a substantive, equivalent to
birth, as much a substantive as any single word in
any language. Which may be shown thus : —

Forever on the brink of

We can say, His being born at that time was
fortunate, as well as, His birth at that time was
fortunate. But, to meet the last and most specious
suggestion which has been made in favor of the
is-being or to-be-being phraseology, that is merely
predicates of its subject the being and the following
participle — we cannot say, He was birth ; and no
more can we correctly say, He was being born.
And so we may say, The anvil's being struck was
evident; in which being struck means the blow
which the anvil received, and which thus is the
anvil's blow ; but we cannot correctly (/. e., logical
ly, in accordance with reason and common sense^

IS BEING DONE. 361

eay, The anvil was being struck, any more than we
can say, The anvil was blow. If we wish to say
that the anvil is in the continued recipience of
blows, and do not wish to say substantively, The
anvil is in striking, or a striking, or striking, we
may with perfect propriety and clearness of ex-
pression say, The anvil is struck, as Hamlet said
Polonius "is eaten." Is struck does not mean has
been struck, as is eaten does not mean has been
eaten : both express present continuous recipience
of action.

These comparisons and this reasoning are perti-
nent to the consideration of what has been said in
defence of the phrase is being done, because that
phrase is not an idiom which came into the lan-
guage in its unconscious formative stages, but the
deliberate production of some pedantic writer of
the last generation, who sought to make, in the
words of one of his apologists, " a form of expres-
sion which should accurately represent the form of
thought," that thought being one which has been
fully expressed among all civilized peoples for thou-
sands of years ; and the result of his labors is, as
might have been expected, a monstrosity, the illogi-
cal, confusing, inaccurate, unidiomatic character
of which I -have at some length, but yet imperfect!}',
set forth. The suggestion has been made that, in
the phrase under examination, is means becomes,
and that the house, is being built means, the house
is becoming built. Now, if any man chooses to
say, The house is becoming built, I, for one, shall
make po objection other than that he is setting aside
a healthy and sufficient idiom, which has grown
up naturall}- with the language, and is, in fact, rrv

362 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

eval with its birth, for a new phrase which has
nothing of force or of accuracy in its favor. But
that is does, or by any possibility can, mean be-
comes, that the verb of existence, the substantive
verb, can in any way represent or be represented
by another verb, the radical thought in which is
motion toward, entrance into, is, I confess, beyond
my comprehension.

The question is thus narrowed simply to this :
Does to be being (essc ens) mean anything more or
other than to be ? Does it so mean logically, accord-
ing to the common sense of men, and the spirit and
analogies of the language? For as to what it may
be made to mean, what men may agree to accept it
as meaning, there is nothing to be said. Beef, for
a good reason, means the flesh of the ox, and stcak^
for a like reason, flesh in large slices ; and therefore
beefsteak means the flesh of the ox in large slices.
But there is no telling whether by the labors of those
who wish to "slough off" old, uncouth forms, and to
make " the form of expression accurately represent
the form of thought," people may not be led to agree
that it shall mean plum-pudding.

What then should we do? Should we say, While
'.he boy was whipping, The room \vas sweeping,
The dinner was eating, The cow was milking, The
meat is cooking? Yes: why not? Why not, as
well as, The bell is tolling, The grain is ripening,
The bread is baking? Could there be a more absurd
affectation than, instead of, The tea has been draw-
ing five minutes, to say, The tea has been being
drawn live minutes? Been being — is that sense, or
English? — except to children, who say that they
have been being naughty, thereby saying only tha/

IS BEING DONE. 363

they have been naughty. Yet the tea draws noth-
ing, it is drawn ; the bread bakes nothing, it is baked ;
the grain ripens nothing, it is ripened. But when
we say that, The tea is drawing, we do not say that
it is an agent drawing anything, but that it is itself
in drawing. And so with regard to all the other
examples given, and all possible examples. In
Goldsmith's "Citizen of the World" (Letter XXI.)
is the following passage, descriptive of a play : —

"The fifth act began, and a busy piece it was; scenes shift-
ing, trumpets soundirg, drums beating, mobs hallooing, carpets
spreading, guards bustling from one door to the other; gods,
lemons, daggers, rags, and ratsbane."

Read the second clause of the sentence according
to the formula /s being done. " Scenes being shifted,
trumpets being sounded, drums being beaten, mobs
hallooing, carpets being spread," and so forth. By
this change the very life is taken out of the subject.
No longer a busy piece, it drags its wounded and
halting body along, and dies before it gets to rags
ind ratsbane.

If precise affectation can impose upon us such a
pjrase as t's being done for is doing, it must needs
drive all idioms kindred to the latter from the lan-
guage. Our walking sticks, our fishing rods, and
our fasting days, because they cannot walk, or fish,
or fast, must be changed into to-be-walked-with
sticks, to-be-fished- with rods, and to-be-fasted-on
days ; and our church-going bells must become for-
(o-church -go bells, becaus? they are not the belles
that go to church. Such ruin comes of laying pre-
sumptuous hands upon idioms, those sacred myste
ries of language ,

364 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

CHAPTER XII.

A DESULTORY DENUNCIATION OF ENGLISH
DICTIONARIES.*

A DICTIONARY is an explanatory word cat-
x~\. alogue ; and a perfect one will contain the
entire literary and colloquial vocabulary of a lan-
guage ; that is, every simple word, and every com-
pound word with a single and peculiar meaning,
having the authority of usage respectable for an-
tiquity, generality, or the eminence of the user.
It would seem that such a catalogue could be
certainly made, patient research and a not very
remarkable degree of learning being the only requi-
sites to its making. But, in fact, an absolutely
perfect dictionary of any living language does not
exist, and perhaps will never exist, for the reason
that it cannot be produced.

* In the first sentence of this chapter as it was originally published (in the " Gal-
axy" for May, 1869), I mentioned that, but a short time before the writing of it, I
iad heard, for the first time, of Trench's pamphlet, " On some Deficiencies in our
English Dictionaries," of which I had until then in vain sought a sight, either as a
bwy ?r or a borrower. Since that time — owing to the kindness at one of the proprie-
tor of Rrotherhead & Company's Library — I have had an opportunity of reading
the aran's criticism. The differences between my reverend predecessor's presentation
of the E abject and my own arise chiefly from the difference of the ideals we each had
tn mind. His dictionary is a philological history of the langu.igc, with illustrp.ti re
Bcamr-l ;« : mine, » hand-book of every-day reference for the general reader. I have
wodi£ed none of my opinions since reading Archbishop Trench s pajiplilet ; bat
iave obtained the advantage of citing his judgement in support of my own OB
x feral important points.

ENGLISH DICTIONARIES. 365

Bailey's "Universal Etymological English Dic-
tionary " was the first worthy attempt at the making
of a word-book of our language; and it was a
very creditable work for the time of its publication,
A. D. 1726. For those who care to do more about
language than to see how M the dictionary " says
a word should be spelled, or what it means, Bailey's
work has never been entirely superseded. There
was some reason that the compiler should say that
he had enriched his book with "several thousand
English words and phrases in no English dictionary
before extant ; " for the English dictionaries that pre-
ceded his were so small and deficient, that, as repre-
sentations of the vocabulary of our language, they
were of little worth. But the boasting of subsequent
dictionary-makers, like most other boasting, is
empty and ridiculous in proportion to the magnitude
of its pretensions. When we are told that Web-
ster's Dictionary contains sixteen thousand words
not found in any similar preceding work, and then
that the Imperial Dictionary contains fifteen thou-
sand words more than Webster's, and yet again
that the Supplement to the Imperial Dictionary
contains twenty thousand words more than the
body of the work, we might well believe that our
language spawns words as herrings spawn eggs,
\nd that a mere catalogue of its component parts
would soon fill a shelf in an ordinary library, were
it not that when we come to examine these additions
of thousands and tens of thousands of words thus
set forth as made in each new dictionary, and in
each new edition of each dictionary, we find tha*
not one in a hundred of the added words, hardly

366 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

one in a thousand, is really a before uncatalogued
item of the English vocabulary. Our estimate of
the worth of an addition that proceeds by columns
of four figures is further lowered by the discovery
that these dictionaries, with all their ponderous bulk
and verbal multitudinousness, do not fully represent
the English of literature or of common life ; that
they give no aid to the reading of some of our
standard authors ; that while they .set forth, with
wearisome superfluity and puerile iteration, that
upon which every one who has sense and knowl-
edge enough to use a dictionary at all, needs no
information, they pass by as obsolete, or vulgar,
or colloquial, or what not, that upon which people
of intelligence and education do need instruction
from the special students of language ; and that,
while they spot their pages with foreign words and
phrases, the use of which by some \vriters has
shown, with a superficial knowledge of other
tongues, a profound ignorance of their own, — they
neglect home-born words that have been in use
since English was written or spoken.

That works to which the foregoing objections can
be justly made — as they may be, in a greater or
'.ess degree, to even'' existing English dictionary —
can have no real authority, is too plain to need
insisting upon with much particularity. As to
dictionaries of the present day, that swell every
few years by the thousand items, the presence
of a word in one of them shows merely that its
compiler has found that word in some dictionary
older than his own, or in some not low and
.ndrcent publication of the day ; the absence ol

ENGLISH DICTIONARIES.

a word from any one of them showing merely that
it has not been thus met with by the dictionary-
maker. Its presence or its absence has this signifi-
cance, and no more. Word-books thus compiled
have the value which always pertains to large col-
lections of things of one kind, even although the
things may be intrinsically and individually of little
worth ; but the source of any authority in such
word-collections it would be difficult to discover.
Upon the proper spelling, pronunciation, etymology,
and definition of words, a dictionary might be made
to which high and almost absolute authority could
justly be awarded. And the first and the second
of these points are determined, with a very near
approximation to such merit, in the works of
Ogilvie, Latham, Richardson, Worcester, and that
which is strangely enough called Webster's.

With one exception, Etymology is the least valua-
ble element in the making of a dictionary, as it is
of interest only to those who wish to study the
history of language. It helps no man in his use of
the word bishop to know that it comes from two
Greek words, e-pi> meaning upon, and scofios, mean-
ing a looker, still less to be told into what forms those
words have passed in Spanish, Arabic, and Persian.
Yet it is in their etymologies that our dictionaries
have shown most improvement during the last
twenty-five years ; they having profited in this
respect by the recent great advancement in the ety-
mologica" department of philology. The etymolo-
gies of words in our recently publisned dictionaries,
although, as I have said before, they are of no great
value for -the purposes for which dictionaries are con-

368 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

suited, are little nests (sometimes slightly mare-ish)
of curious and agreeable information, and afford a
very pleasant and instructive pastime to those who
have the opportunity and the inclination to look
into them. But they are not worth, in a dictionary,
all the labor that is spent on them, or all the room
they occupy. The noteworthy spectacle has lately
been shown of the casting over of the whole ety-
mological freight of a well-known dictionary, and
the taking on board of another. For the etymolo-
gical part of the last edition of "Webster's American
Dictionary," so called, Dr. Mahn, of Berlin, is re-
sponsible. When it was truly called Webster's Dic-
tionary, it was in this respect discreditable to scholar-
ship in this country, and even indicative of mental
supineness in a people upon whom such a book could
be imposed as having authority. And now that it
is relieved of this blemish, it is, in this respect,
neither Webster's Dictionary nor K American," but
Mahn's and German.

Dictionaries are consulted chiefly for their defini-
tions ; and yet, upon this point, all our English
dictionaries are more or less misleading and confus-
ing. And they are so in a great measure because
the desire to multiply words has its counterpart
in the desire to multiply definitions, in defiance of
simple common sense. Minuteness of division and
variety of signification have been sought, that the
book might be big, and its definitions be styled
copious. They have been marshalled one after the
other in single file, that their array might be the
more imposing ; and to increase the impressivenesi
of the spectacle, they are solemnly numbered

ENGLISH DICTIONARIES.

A.nd so, at last, we are seriously told that, ijr
instance, fall, as a verb, has twenty-eight meanings,
and as a noun nineteen — all as well-defined and
several as the two-and-seventy stinks that Cole-
ridge found in the City of Cologne — besides thirty-
eight which it has in established phrases ! But this
simple word is far over-passed, in the multitude and
variety of the meanings assigned to it, by another,
run, which would seem to express always one sim-
ple thought, as clearly and absolutely as is possible
in language. We are actually told that run, as
a verb transitive, has fifty-six distinct meanings,
thirteen as a verb intransitive, and fourteen as a
noun, besides twenty-seven in current phrases. To
each one of these a special paragraph is given,
so that the line stretches out like that of Banquo's
progeny in the witches' cave ; and by the tenuity
of its sense, it vanishes away into nothing, like the
receding figures in a perspective diagram. Here
are some of these definitions of fall, as they are
given in Webster's Dictionary. Of the verb, —

5. To die, particularly by violence.

6. To come to an end suddenly, to vanish, to perish.

7. To be degraded, to sink into disrepute, etc., etc.

8. To decline in power, wealth, or glory, to sink into weak
ness, etc., etc.

26. To sink, to languish, to Become feeble or faint.
10. To sink, to be lowered.

n. To decrease, to be diminished in weight or value.

17. To happen, to befall, to come.

18. To light on, to come by chance.
20. To come, to arrive.

l». To come unexpectedly

27. To be brought forth.

28. To issue, to terminate.

24

3/O WORDS AND THEIR USES.

Of the noun, —

3. Death, destruction, overthrow.

4. Ruin, destruction.

5. Downfall, degradation, loss of greatness.

6. Declension of greatness, power, or dominion.

7. Diminution, decrease of price or value, depreciation, as the
fall of prices, the fall of rents, the fall of interest.

8. Declination of sound [whatever that may be], a sinking
of tone, cadence, as the fall of the voice at the close of a sen-
tence.

Of run we find the following among the fifty-six
meanings given of it as a transitive verb : —

3. To use the legs in moving, to step, as children run alone or
run about.

4. To move in a hurry — The priest and people run about.
8. To contend in a race, as men and horses run for a prize.

13. To be liquid or fluid.

14. To be fusible, to melt.

15. To fuse or melt.

18. To flow, as words, language, or periods.

21. To have a course or direction.

24. To have a continued tenor or course.

29. To proceed in succession.

31. To proceed in a train of conduct.

36. To extend, to lie in continued length, as veins.

37. To have a certain direction — The line runs east and west.
46. To pass or fall into fault, vice, or misfortune, as to run into

vice, to run into mistakes.

48. To have a general tendency — Temperate climates run into
moderate governments.

51. To creep, as serpents run on the ground.

52. To slide, as a sled or sleigh runs on the ground.

53. To dart, to shoot, as a meteor in the sky.

54. To fly, to move in the air, as the clouds run from N. E. to
S. W.

Of run, the noun, we have these among other
discriminated meanings : —

2. Course, motion, as the run of humor.

3. Flow, as a run of verses to please the ear.

4. Course, process, continued series, as the run of events.

ENGLISH DICTIONARIES. 371

Words would be wasted in showing the absurdity
of a system of definitions which gives such results
as this ; which not only sets forth mere metaphorical
uses of words as instances of their use in different
senses, but in the metaphorical use, regards the ap
plication of a word in one sense to two objects as
its use in two senses ; as, for instance, to fall, to
die by violence, and, also, to come to an end
suddenly ; run, to pass or fall into vice, and, also,
to have a general tendency. Let the reader, who
wishes to see to what lengths this mania for copious
definition can lead those upon whom it seizes, ex-
amine the words work, turn, free, live, life, light,
•wood, head, make, lay, break, cast, cut, give, go,
have, heart, heavy, high, hold, -put, raise, serve,
set, so, stand, take, to, and almost any other such
simple words in Webster's Dictionary. Let him
turn to Johnson's, and see that wooden is defined
first as K made of wood,'' and next as K clumsy,
awkward," two passages, of which the following
is one, being quoted as support for the latter
definition : —

" When a bold man is out of countenance, he makes a very
Vrooden figure on't."

But ivooden does not here mean clumsy or awk-
ward; it only suggests clumsiness and awkward-
ness ; and it verily has that suggestion in its power,
because it means made of wood, and means, and
can mean, nothing else. The use of -wooden in
this instance brings vividly to mind how like a
wooden figure, a figure-head, a man appears who
has lost his self-possession. Its very value as an epi-
Jliet consists in that it does not mean clumsy and

372 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

awkward. In the following passage in " Robinson
Crusoe," Defoe furnishes an example of this use of
(.he same word more pertinent than either of the
two which have been cited in dictionaries : —

" Well, this I conquered by making a wooden spade : . . . .
but this did my work in a wooden manner."

A wooden spade could, of course, serve Robin-
son Crusoe's needs only in a wooden manner ; but,
saying this in the person of his hero, Defoe also
artfully suggests the clumsy insufficiency of his
homely tool ; and his meaning is conveyed com-
pletely and impressively, because it is suggested,
and not literally told. Defoe's use of this won! is
here worthy of Shakespeare himself, who attains
many of his happiest reaches of language in this
manner. He makes, in w The Tempest," a like use
of the very word in question, when Fernando,
carrying logs, says, —

" [I] would no more endure
This wooden slavery, than to suffer
The flesh-fly blow my mouth."

Here -wooden at once expresses literally the object
of the speaker's labor, and suggests its dull oppres-
siveness ; and it does the latter at the will of the
poet, just because without that will it does only the
former.

If we may say that -wooden means clumsy, awk-
ward, dull, oppressive, we may as well say that
oak means courage, because of the phrase " hearts
of oak," or that gold means innocence, because we
speak of " the age of gold," or that iron means
hard or hardness, because iron-heat ted is used ic
the sense of hard-hearted, unfeeling, cruel.

ENGLISH DICTIONARIES. 373

Webster is not wholly responsible for the vicious
system of definition upon which he labored with
such conscientious thoroughness. This system
originated with Dr. Johnson ; and it is mere justice
to say that, although Webster carried it to an
extreme which is both extravagant and injurious,
he improved upon his model, and displaj^ed a
power of discrimination, and an ability for the
exact expression of nice distinctions, much surpass-
ing that of " the great lexicographer."

Johnson's Dictionary was not only a work of
great research — it was a work original in its de-
sign and its execution ; and it is the model of the
great English dictionaries, except Richardson's,
that have been since compiled. They are all
founded upon Johnson's ; but his was founded upon
no other : it was the result of a critical examination
of a range of English literature wider than had
ever before been examined by one man for any
purpose. It was almost inevitable that a dictionary
made in such a manner should, with its great
merits, have all the faults by which those merits
are counterbalanced, and particularly this one of
superfluous, over-subtle, misleading definitions.
Johnson undertook to present a full vocabulary of
the language gathered from the writings of its
principal authors in all departments of literature,
and to define each word of that vocabulary accord-
ing to the various senses in which he found it used.
Considering the end in view, the method adopted
was the best, if not, indeed, the only one, for its
attainment ; and the labor was gigantic. But it
was hardly avoidable that, in compiling and defin-

J7^ WORDS AND THEIR USES.

ing a vocabulary in this manner, the various appli-
cations of words used by various authois in the
same sense should be accepted as uses of those
words in different senses ; and particularly that
various metaphorical applications of words having
but one real meaning should be discriminated by
different definitions. The collection of passages
for the illustration of definitions would naturally
lead to this false distinction of significations. And
as to the remainder of his task, Johnson, although
a scholar, and a thinker of singular clearness and
force, was not a philologist, even according to the
crude and rudimentary philology of his day ; nor
was his mind so constituted as to fit him for the
quick perception of analogies and the patient
tracing of verbal vestiges hidden by the drift of
centuries, which are necessary to the successful
prosecution of philological inquiry. The conse-
quence was, that he produced a work that was at
once very convenient and very pernicious. I will
not say, with him who yet remains the greatest
philologist that has made the English language his
peculiar study, HorneTooke, that Johnson's Diction-
ary is a disgrace to the English people ; but there
seems to be no reason for disputing Tooke's judge-
ment, that Johnson's system was unscientific and
vicious, and that a dictionary ought to be made
cf a very different kind from anything ever yet
attempted anywhere. ("Diversions of Purley," i..
401.) Now, all that has since been done in the
making of English dictionaries is merely to build
upon Johnson's foundation, and to work on his plan
with the increased materials and the larger knowl-

ENGLISH DICTIONARIES. 37$

edge provided by the development of the language
and by the investigations of modern philology.

In one respect, the makers of later dictionaries
have followed, to a monstrous extreme, a fashion
set by Johnson — that of introducing compound
words, and words formed from others simple and
well known, by the addition of the prefixes dis, un,
mis, re, etc., the meaning and force of which are as
generally understood as that of s in the plural and
in the possessive case. The catalogues of these
words, with which our dictionaries are blown up
into a bloated emptiness of bulk, are an offence
to the common sense of any reader, even the hum-
blest, and cause him to pay for that which he does
not need, while they fill five times the room that
would be required by that which he does need.
Open almost any dictionary, the Imperial, Web-
ster's, or Worcester's, — but Webster's is the most
superfluous and obtrusive in this respect, because it
carries to the furthest extreme the vicious" plan
of vocabulary-making and definition introduced by
Johnson, — open it at random, and see how it is
loaded down with this worthless lumber. Of
words formed by joining milk and some other
word together, there are twenty-two, of which
number are milk-pail, milk-pan, milk-porridge,
milk-score, milk-ivhite. And yet milk-punch, milk-
train, and milk-poultice are omitted ! Straw fur-
nishes twelve compound words, so called, of which
are straw-color, straw-colored! straw-crowned,
straw-cutter, straw-stuffed! and even straw-hat !
Yet in vain will Margery Daw look for straw-bed^
or Recorder Hackett seek the word straw-bail.

WORDS AND THEIR USES.

Of words, so called, made by the union of heart
with another, there are acutally sixty-nine paraded ,
heart itself having sixteen distinct meanings as-
signed to it simply, and eleven in established
phrases. Among these compounded words are heart*
ache, heart-appalling, heart-consuming, heart-cor-
roding (why not heart-destroying, and heart"
crushing?}, heart-expanding, heart-shaped (which
we are informed means " having the shape of a
heart"), heart-piercing (which means "piercing
the heart ") , heart-sick (which means " sick at
heart"), heart-thrilling, heart-whole, and the like;
and yet heart-entrancing, heart-enticing, and heart-
bewitching, as well as heart-blood, are omitted.
Why? Gentle Webster, tell us why! Surely a
dictionary, of all things, should be "in concatena-
tion accordingly."

After being told that head, simple of itself, has
thirty-one distinct meanings (it has but one of the
thirty-one), we are presented with it in combination
with other simple words thirty-seven times ; of
which manner of dictionary-making here are a
few examples : head-ache (which the inquirer will
learn means " pain in the head "), head-dress, hcad-
frst (which we are told means " with the head
foremost." Why not "with the head first?" that
would be more in keeping), headless (of which we
not only learn that it means " without a head," but
for which we are given the high authority of Spen-
ser as warranting us to say a headless body, neck,
or carcass) ; head-strong, head-work, and head-
workman also appear. We find sixty-seven com
pounds of horse, such as horse-breaker, horse-deal

ENGLISH DICTIONARIES. 377

tr, horse-flesh, horse-jockey, horse-keeper, horse-
race, and (important) horse-racing, horse-shoe^
horsc-stcalcr, horse-thief, and horse-stealing, horse"
•whip, horse-whipped: and horse-whipping twice.
Why were there not sixty-eight compounds? for
horse-marine, alas ! is absent.

Sea is repeated in combination with other words
one hundred and fifty-seven tknes ! the combined
words being all printed at full length, each in a line
by itself, with definitions to use them withal.
Else, indeed, how could a man, after being told
what sea means, compass the meaning of sea-bank,
sea-bar, sea-bathed, sea-breeze, sea-captain, sea-
coast, sea-man, sea-resembling (which means M like
the sea ") ; sea-shell, sea-shore, sea-side, sea-thief,
sea-water, or sea-weed? And yet, in defiance of
Cooper and Marryatt, and Admiral Farragut and
the Navy of the United States being set at nought,
sea-cook is not to be found, nor yet sen-lubber.
Again why? Webster, why? for you give us cook
and give us lubber, as you give us bank, and
breeze, and captain, and shell, and shore, and side,
and thief, and wafer. Why, therefore, sea-captain,
md not sea-cook 1 why sea-thief, and not sea-lub-
ber? We are told what ear-deafening means, but
•are left in ignorance as to ear-stunning. Tooth-
drawer is deemed worthy of explanation, but tooth-
filler pines in neglect. Dining having been de-
\ined, and room, we are nevertheless told that din-
ing-room is a room .to dine in ; and yet wre are
heartlessly left to our own resources to discover the
meaning of breakfast-room, breakfast-time, tca~

WORDS AND THEIR USES.

room, tea-time, supper-room, and supper -time ; and
although we are told what banquet means, and what
room, and also (perhaps therefore) what a ban-
qucting-room is, and what a hall is, yet as to
what those banquet-halls are, visions of which float
through the stilly night, we are left to guess from
the poet's context, or to evolve from the depths of
our own moral consciousness. We are told the
meaning first of apple, and then gravely informed
of that of apple-harvest, of apple-John, apple-pie,
apple-sauce, apple-tart, and even of apple-tree.
But we learn nothing about apple-butter, apple-
dumpling, applc-ptiddingand. apple-slump, as to two
of which information is more needed than of any
other compounds of apple, the only words of all
these compounds which have properly a place in a
dictionary being applc-john, apple-butter, and ap-
ple-slump. Thus, and properly, we have cranberry,
but we do not find cranberry-sauce ; currant, but not
currant-jelly ; strawberry, but not strawbcrry-tccd-
$ream, or strawberry-short-cake; short-cake be-
mg a good example of the sort of compound word
that should be given in dictionaries. Perhaps the
most audacious of all these presentations of simple
words in couples as words with individual claims to
places in an English vocabulary, is the array in
which self is shown in conjunction with some noun,
adjective, or participle. Of these there are actually
in Webster's Dictionary one hundred and ninety-
six. Not one, of all this number, from the first,
iclf-abased, to the midmost, self-denial, and the
last, self-wrong, has a right to a place in an Eng-
lish dictionary ; for in every case self, in the simple

ENGLISH DICTIONARIES. 379

primitive sense it always preserves, is a mere adjec-
tive, qualifying the word that follows it ; and there
is no reason why, if the combinations thus detailed
should appear in a dictionary, all other possible com-
binations of self should not also be presented. 1'he
list is either entirely superfluous or very defective.
In fact, such an array is an affront to the under-
standing of English-speaking people.

But what need of the further working of a mine
of absurdity so rich that its product is not worth
taking out, and so homogeneous that one specimen
is just like another? Let the reader turn the pages
himself, and think as he turns. Besides such com*
pounds as those just cited, let him remark the ar-
ray of words joined to the common adverbs and
adjectives that come correctly from the lips of the
most ignorant man a hundred times daily. Of
ever, thirty-four. (Why not three hundred and
forty?) Ever-active is present, and ever-silent^
absent: we have ever-living, but why not ever-
running! Of out, over, less, after, counter, all>
]>ack, free, foot, fore, high, and the like, the com-
pounds swarm upon the page. Finally, let him,
not inspect, but take a bird's-eye view (for life is
short) of the hordes that troop under the standards
cf dis, and mis, and in, and inter, and un, and re,
and sub, and ex, and the like, not one in a hundred
.»f which has any more right to a place in a dic-
tionary than one man has to enlist under two
uames and draw two rations ; or than a Fenian
has to stir up insurrection in Ireland as an Irish-
man, and to vote (twices in New York as what
..e calls an " American citizen.'1 Upon *his pom?

380 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

Johnson's successors have bettered his instruction?
with a vengeance ; for they have more than dou-
bled his array of words with particle prefixes.
Rather, they have bettered Johnson's practice, and
set at naught his instructions. For on this point
he taught much more wisely than he practised. It
is one upon which a few examples will serve our
purpose. For instance, agree, agreeable, appear,
approve, arm, being given in a dictionary, upon
what supposition or pretence of need can disagree,
disagreeable, disappear, disapprove, and disarm
be given ? We are properly told all about trust ;
and could there be a better reason why not a word
is needed upon distrust? And yet we have, in all
such cases, not only the simple word, and also the
simple word with the prefix, but all the inflections
and derivatives of both : trust, trusted, truster,
trustful, trustfully, trustfulness, trustily, trusti-
ness, trusting, and trustingly, and then soberly dis-
trust, distrusted, distruster, distrustful, distrust-
fully, distrustf ulncss, distrustily, distrustiness,
distrusting, and distrust ingly* In like manner are
paraded the combinations of all the other particle
prefixes. Of words compounded with dis Johnson
gave 637, Webster gives 1334; of words com-
nounded with un Johnson gave 1864, Webster gives
3935 » these two prefixes heading a catalogue of
more than 5000 words', so called, and such com-
pounds as univitty, unsoft, and unsuit, going to
make up the multitude.* In Webster's Dictionary,

* The counting for this statement, and some others in this chapter, was carefiillj
irad? for me by one whom I have learned to rely upon ; and although it may be no
ixaetly correct, I am *urc that it is nearly enough »o for our purpose.

ENGLISH DICTIONARIES. 381

the Imperial, and Worcester's, compounds like
those previously noticed comprise one tenth of the
vocabulary, from which, nevertheless, words used
by English authors of repute, and by English-
speaking people the world over, are omitted. If
we did not know by what contrivances dictionaries
are sold, and how thoughtlessly they are bought
and consulted, we might well wonder that books
thus made up had not long ago been scouted out
of use and out of sight. Here is page after page,
from the beginning of the book to the end, filled
with matter that is worse than worthless, the very
presence of which is an affront to the common
sense of common people. For no man who has
intelligence enough and knowledge enough to need
a dictionary at all, or to know what one is, requires
one in which arm and disarm, arrncd and unarmed,
take, and retake, bent and unbent, bind and unbind,
and the like pairs, are both given. To say the
least, the latter are mere superfluity, cumbering the
pages on which they appear. And yet it is largely
by the insertion of compound, or rather of double
words (for they are few of them really compound-
ed), like dining-room, heart-consuming, and tooth-
draivcr, and of words with particle prefixes, that
dictionary-makers sustain their boasts that their
books contain so many more thousand words than
those of their predecessors, or than their own of
previous editions. Dictionaries made in this man-
ier are the merest catalogues of all possible ver-
bal and syllabic combinations, — notably and neces-
sarily incomplete catalogues, too , for there is no
end to word-making of this kind. The compound-

382 \VOKDS AND THEIR USES.

ing of the A'ords already in the language may go
on ad infinitum, and on such a plan of lexicogra-
phy the introduction of a new verb or noun would
have consequences too numerous, if not too serious,
to mention.*

Another way of increasing the bulk, impairing
the worth, and diminishing the convenience of dic-
tionaries, is the hauling into them — as with a drag-
net— of all the technical words that can be cap-
tured. Johnson began this vicious practice. Ir
his work we find polysyndeton, ecphractick, stria,
zocle, quadriphyllous, and many of like sort. His
successors and imitators have improved upon him —
Webster, as usual, far outdoing all. " His Dic-
tionary," — as Archbishop Trench remarks, w while
it is scanted of the barest necessaries which such
a work ought to possess, affords, in about a page
and a half, the following choice additions to the
English language : zeoliiiform, zinkifcrous, zinky,
zoophytological, zumosimeter , zygodactylous, zy-
goniatic, with some twenty more." Thus far
Trench. But it should be added that such words
as these, and those given from Johnson, are no
part of the English language. They belong to no
language. They are a part of the terminology

* "Again, there is a defect of true insight into what are the proper bounds and
. tails of a dictionary, in the admission into it of the innumerable family of com-
pound epithets, such as cloud-capped, heaven-saluting, ficnuer-emvovcn, and the
jk-;. . . . Here is,in a great part, an explanation of the twenty thousand words whiJi
ae [Webster] boasts are to be found in liis pages, over and above those included in
the latest edition of Todd. Admitting these transient combinations as though thej
weie really new words, it would have bean easy to have increased his twenty thou-
»and by twenty thousand more.

^Richardson very properly excludes all these : where he errs, it is, perhaps, in thi
opposite extreme, in neglecting some true and perruanent coalitions." — Trend
'' On -fence Dc/icietiLU'S in cur English Dittionarits."

ENGLISH DICTIONARIES. 3$3

common to science and to scientific men of all
tongues and nations. When technical words, like
zenith and nadir, have passed from technical into
general use, they may claim a place in an English
dictionary, but not before.

I have spoken of the book called " Webster's
American Dictionary " in terms that are not applied
to a thing that is a model of its kind. But as
I have already said, in its present form, it* objec-
tionable traits, are due merely to the fact that in it
a radically vicious plan is followed to an absurd ex-
treme. Whatever was once peculiar to a book bear-
ing its title was bad in itself and pernicious in its
effects. But as the years have gone on during
which the book has been forced into use by busi-
ness combinations of publishers and printers,
adroitly and ceaselessly employed, it has been
modified, piece by piece, here and there, and al-
ways in its characteristic features, until now those
features have altogether disappeared. As it laid
aside its peculiar traits it ceased to have peculiar
rau]ts ; its ofFensiveness passed away with its indi-
viduality. When it was Webster's, and was " Amer-
ican," it was a book to laugh at and be ashamed of;
but now, having, by the protracted labors of able
scholars in both hemispheres, been purged of its
singularities in orthography and etymology, and
oartly in definition, and having ceased to be Web-
ster's (except in regard to definitions) and Amer-
ican (except as to the place of its publication) , it
has become as convenient and trustworthy a com-
pilation of its kind as any other now before the
public. For heiween such dictionaries asWorce*

384 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

ter's, the Imperial, and Webster's in the last edition,
there is not a choice worth the toss of a copper.
In their labor-saving, thought-lulling convenience,
as in their serious faults, their many and grave de-
ficiencies, and their needless, inconvenient, and
costly cumbrousness, they are alike.

It is always easier to criticise, and particularly to
find fault, than to make or to plan that which will
bear criticism. Yet we all must criticise, and we
all do find fault, from our uprising to our down-
lying, from birth to death, or else what is bad would
never be good, and what is good would never be
better. Nor is it necessary that we should be able
to cook our dinners, to make our clothes, or to com-
pile, or even plan, our dictionaries, that we should
know and declare whether they are well cooked,
made, or planned. As to a dictionary, I will ven-
ture to sketch the plan of one ; such a one as has
not been made, and as I presume to hope Home
Tooke had in mind when he wrote the passage
which I have quoted.

A dictionary, or better, a word-book, made for
the use of those to whom its language is vernacu-
lar, should be very different in its vocabulary and
'n its definitions from the lexicon of a foreign
.ongue. So a grammar written for the use of those
born to its language-subject, should omit countless
items, great and small, that must be carefully set
forth for the instruction of foreigners. But one
jjreat vice of our dictionaries, as of our grammars,
is, that they are planned and written as if for men
who know nothing of their own language; the fact
being that the most ignorant of those who take uy

ENGLISH DICTIONARIES. 385

dictionary and grammar have a ki owledge of
their mother tongue that a life's study of both.books
can neither give nor take away. In making a lex-
icon of a foreign tongue, it must be assumed that
the person consulting it is ignorant of the combi-
nations, the idioms, the inflections, contractions, and
all the minute variations of its simple words, which
are matters of the earliest knowledge to those to
whom the language is vernacular. This difference
between what is needed in a vernacular word-book
and a foreign lexicon being constantly borne in
mind, the first end sought in making a dictionary
should be the inclusion of all simple English words
used by writers of repute since the formation of the
language, at about A. D. 1250, beginning with the
works of Wycliffe, Chaucer, and Gower. The
omission of any such word would be a defect in the
dictionary. The plea of obsoleteness is no justifi-
cation for such an omission. There is no obsolete-
ness in literature.* The old, irregular orthography
is not to be followed, nor need the old inflections
be given ; but a professed dictionary of the English
language which docs not contain all the simple
words and their compounds of deflected meaning,

* " In regard of obsolete words, our dictionaries have no certain rule of admission
<r exclusion. But how, it maybe asked, ought they to hold themselves in regard
lif these? This question has been already implicitly answered in what was just said
tcgarding the all-comprehensive character which belongs to them. There are seme,
indeed, who, taking up a position a little different from theirs who would have them
contain only the standard words of the language, yet proceeding on the same inad-
equate view of their object and intention, count that they should aim at presenting
>e body of the language as now existing; this and no more; leaving to archaic
glossaries the gathering in of words that are current no longer. But a little refiec-
lion will show how untenable is this position ; how this rule, consistently carried out,
would deprive a dictionary of a large part of its usefulness. . . .

" It is quite impossible, with any consistency to make a stand anywhere, or to
admit any words now obsolete without including, or at least attempting f» includs
iDL" — Trench, "On Dtfirunfia" etc.

25

386 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

which are used by an English poet of such emi-
nence as Chaucer, is not what its name pretends
it to be. The addition of such of these words as
are now omitted from our dictionaries would not in
crease their bulk appreciably, as may be seen by an
examination of the glossaries to our authors froir
• Chaucer to Spenser. And besides, it is to be remeni"
bered that the voluminousness of the dictionary,
as it is at present known to us, is to be abated
materially by the next provision of our plan, which is,
that of compound or double words and words formed
by particle prefixes only those have a proper place
in a dictionary in which (i) the combination has
acquired a meaning different from that of the mere
union of its elements, or (2) one of the elements is
known, or used, only in combination. Thus, if
disease had continued to mean only dis and ease,
or the negation of ease, as it does in the following
lines from Chaucer's " Troilus and Creseide," —

" And therewithal! Creseide anon he kist,
Of whiche certain she felt no disease," —

there would be no need of it in an English dic-
tionary made for men to whom English is their
mother-tongue. But it has acquired a modified
and an additional meaning, and therefore should be
given as a distinct \vord. So should disable, be-
cause able is unknown as a verb ; and, for a like
reason, llowell's distcr (Letters, Book I., Sec. 3,
Letter 32) ; but in an English dictionary in which
Inter appears, disinter has no proper place. So
breakfast, having come to mean something less, or
nacre, or other than the mere breaking of fast, must
be given. But to give breakfast-room, or dining-

ENGLISH DICTIONARIES. 387

room, is as Jibsurd as to give joint-stock-company,
which Webster does ; and \\l\y joint-stock-company-
limited should not as well be given, it would be as
difficult to discover, as why we are instructed upon
fiddle-string and fiddle-stick, but are left in our
native ignorance as iojiddle-boiv, and in utter dark-
ness upon the subject of the fitting tail-piece of
this list — fiddle-stick' s-cnd. Words like after-
thought, counter-act, and tin-sound have no place
in a dictionary, exxept, perhaps, in a list of com-
pounds under after, counter, and un ; but words
like aftermath, counterfeit, and uncouth, in which
one element is known only in composition, should
of course be defined. Double words, like black
smith and white-smith, in which one of the ele-
ments has a deflected or perverted signification,
should be given ; but what good end, for any hu-
man creature with wit enough to find a word in a
dictionary, is gained .by giving such double words
as silver-smith, gold-smith, copper-smith ?

Nor does vulgarity more than obsoleteness justify
.he omission of any English word. Dictionaries are
mere books of reference, made to be consulted, not
to be read. In the bear-baiting days of Queen
Elizabeth it might be said, without offence of a
vile, dull man, that he was " not fit to carry guts to
a bear." Nowadays a man who used, in general
society, the simple English word for which some
New England "females" elegantly substitute in-
'ards, would shock many of his hearers. But this
/s no good reason for the omission of the word from
a dictionary. Through mere squeamishness, words,
once in general use, are shunned more and more,

588 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

until at last they are regarded as gross and low,
when the things and thoughts of which they are the
mere names are, and always must remain, on the
same level. If need be, no one hesitates now to
speak of intestines. Home Tooke has well said,
"It is the object for which words are used and the
manner of their use that give that use its character ;"
and also that what are called vulgar words are rt the
oldest and best authorized, the most significant and
widely-used words in the language." No man need
use them or seek them in a dictionary unless he
chooses to do so.*

Although words obsolete in the speech of the
day should be given, provincial words are. out of
place in a dictionary of standard and established
English, f

Proper names are no part of language ; and
whether words formed upon proper names, such as
Mohammedanism, Mormonism, Swedenborgian,
have claim to recognition as a part of the English lan-
guage is at least very doubtful. Their inclusion in a
dictionary might be defended on the ground that it
vould be convenient to have them there ; but on the

* "A dictionary, then, according to that idea of it which seems to meaione capa-
_.e of being logically maintained, is an inventory of the language ; much more in-
leed, but this primarily ; and with this only at present we will deal. It is no task
jf the maker of it to select the good words of language. If he fancies that it is so,
and begins to pick and choose, to leave this, and to take that, lie wil! at once go
astray. The business which he has undertaken is to collect and arrange all words,
vkhcthcr good 01 bad, whether they commend themselves to his judgement or other-
•vise, which, with certain exceptions hereafter to be specified, those writing in the
anguaga have employed. He is an historian of it, not a critic." — Trench. ''On
Same Deficiencies, " etc.

t " Let n^.e observe here, that provincial or local words stand on quite a different
footing from obsolete. We do not complain of their omission. In my judgement,
we should, on the contrary, have a right to complain if they were admitted ; and il
.» an oversight that some of our dictionaries occasionally find room for them, n
their avowed character of provincial words ; when, indeed, as such, they have HI
*"ght to a place in a dictionary of the English tongue. ' — Trench, " On Sc-tnt
Dijicifnciet," .-He,

ENGLISH DICTIONARIES. 389

same grounds a chronological table, a list of post-
offices, or the best recipes for curing corns, might
well be given. A dictionary of the English language
is not an encyclopaedia of useful information.*

Definitions, unless we would have them sprout
into the multitudinous absurdities which have been
already held up to the light in this chapter, must be
formed upon the principle, which is axiomatic in
language, that a word can have but one real mean-
ing. Of this, all others — the all being few — are
subsidiary modifications ; and of this meaning, the
metaphorical applications being numberless, un-
ascertainable, dependent upon the will and the taste
of every writer and speaker in the language, have
no proper place in a dictionary. This renders quo-
tation in support of definition generally superfluous.
The maker of a dictionary for genera^ use, /'. £., a
hand word-book, is not called upon to give a brief
history and epitome of his language, with the pur-
pose of illuminating his pages or of justifying his
vocabulary.

Figures, diagrams, and the like (first used, not
in this county, but in England by Bailey), are not
only superfluous in a dictionary, but pernicious.
Language is the subject-matter of a dictionary ; its
function is to explain words, not to describe things.
The introduction of a figure or a diagram is a con-

" It is straiige that Johnson's strong common sense did not save him from falling
Lite; this error , but it has not He might well have spared us thirteen closely printed
lines on an opal, nineteen on a rose, twenty-one on tLi almug-tree, as many on the
Mr-pump, not fewer on the natural histojy of the armadillo, and rather more than
lixty on the pear. All tnis is repeated by Todd, and in an exaggerated form by
Webster, from whom, for instance, we may learc of the camel, tha; it constitutes tb«
riches of the Arabian, that it can sustain abstinence from drink for many days, ar. i it
111, tw 'nty-Sve lines of its natural histoiy." — Tronth. " On Sums l*>tfic Unties " 1C

39O WORDS AND THEIR USES.

fession of an inability which does not exist. The
pictorial illustrations with which dictionaries have
lately been so copiously defaced, merely to catch
the unthinking eye, are entirely out of place. They
pertain to encyclopaedias. And, indeed, the dic-
tionaries of the last crop, such as the Imperial,
Worcester's, and the so-called Webster's, are too
much like encyclopaedias to be dictionaries, and too
much like dictionaries to be encyclopaedias. Their
pictures are as much in place as a fall of real water
would be in a painting of Niagara; which, doubt-
less, would also be pronounced " a very popular
feature."

In giving the etymology of an English word it
is not necessary, and is rarely proper, to trace it
beyond the Anglo-Saxon, Norman-French, Latin,
Greek, or other word from which it is directly de-
rived. A dictionary is a word-book of reference,
not a treatise on general philology. To what pur-
pose is it that a man who consults a dictionary for
the meaning, the form, or the sound of a word in
the English language, is informed that before the
existence of his language, or since, a word with
which the object of his search has possibly some
remote connection, had, or has, in another language,
the same, a like, or a different meaning? Whether
the word should be traced from its primitive mean-
ing down to that which it has in present usage, or
from the present usage (which is that for which a
dictionary is chiefly consulted) up to its primitive
meaning, is not quite clear. The latter arrange-
ment seems to be the more natural and logical.

In orthography the usage of the- best writers,
modified, if at all, by a leaning toward analogy, ii

ENGLISH DICTIONARIES. 397

the only guide to authoritative usefulness, as even
the publishers of Webster's Dictionary have at last
been obliged in practice to admit.

In pronunciation the usage of the most cultivated
people of English blood and speech is absolute, as
far as their usage itself is fixed. But the least val-
uable part of a dictionary is that which is given
to orthoepy. Pronunciation is the most arbitrary,
varying, and evanescent trait of language ; and it is
so exceedingly difficult to express sound by written
characters, that to convey it upon paper with cer-
tainty in one neighborhood for ten years, and to
the world at large for one year, is practically im-
possible.*

Upon the plan thus lightly sketched, an English
dictionary might be made which would give a vo-
cabulary of the language from its formation, with
full and exact definitions, etymology, and pronun-
ciation, and which yet would be a convenient hand-
book, in clear typography, and which could be sold
at half the price now paid for " the best," whichever
that Tnay be.

* With the request that I should give some attention to the subject of elocution — a
request made chiefly by readers who seem to suffer under the stated preaching of the
gosoel — I cannot comply. According to my observation, elocution cannot be taught ',
and systems of elocution are as m"di in vain as the physicians immortalized on tha
gravestone that fascinated the young eyes of David Copperfield. The ability to
«penk wilh g:ace and force is a gift of nature that may be improved by exercise and
observation, but very little, if at all, by instruction. What can be profitab'y *»U
s.jwn this subject has been -veil said by Mr. Giuld hi his book "Good Eiit'iah."

WOKDb AKD TilUiK USES

CHAPTER XIII.

"JUS ET NORMA LOQUENDI."

'rTTALKING down the Bowery one morning of
VV last spring, I met a lad who took a papei
from a package that he carried and thrust it into my
unwilling hand. I suspected him of having lain in
wait for the purpose ; for on looking at the paper I
found on it a printed announcement in these words:

Being about to inaugurate my Sample Room at No. — Bowery
on the i6th instant, I invite ray friends to be present at a Free Lunch
on that occasion.

N. B — Liquors and everything first class.

A— B— .

It is probable that neither this young gentleman
nor his employer had given his days and nights to
the perusal of the first edition of a certain book,
which need not be named upon this page, or they
would not have singled out its author for the unex-
pected honor of an invitation to the inauguration of
a " sample-room.'' And yet possibly, even in that
case, they, knowing the proverbial impecuniosity of
literary men, might have supposed that, considering
the tempting terms on which entertainment wa«
proffered, I might be induced to be present on that
occasion. However that might be, I did not scorr
the invitation, but, for purposes of my own which
have taken me to places even less to my liking than

"JUS ET NORMA LOQUKNDI." 393

a " sample-room," on the appointed day I was pres-
ent at the inaugural ceremonies, which I observed
were of a very interesting nature to those who took
part in them. I will confess, too, as Doctoi Johnson
once did, that at the early hour at which I made my
visit I was impransus ; but how much I ate and drank.
I shall never tell ; and as to how many brethren of my
craft were also present, I shall ever preserve a discreet
silence. Far be it from me to reveal to a curious and
unsympathizing world how the priests of literature
eke out their scanty means, and supply the wants of
nature from the deodands of such inaugural sacrifices.
I remained long enough to discover that, whether
the liquors were first-class or not, the language was.
Among the choice morsels with which I was regaled
was the remark of a gentleman with a pallid face,
and a heavy mustache very black in the mass and
very red just at the roots, who wore a dirty shirt con-
fined by a brilliant pin worth at least five thousand
dollars. Evidently disgusted with either the quality
or the quantity of his entertainment, he said as he
swaggered out, " Blessid is them wot don't expect
nawthin' ; for them's the ones wot won't git dis-
appointed." Another gentleman, who as plainly was
better pleased with his luncheon, replying for him-
self and a companion to an inquiry as to how he had
fared, said, " Other fellers goes in for the fried liver,
but me and him comes down orful on the corn beef."
I was not surprised tc hear another free-luncher as-
sert with emphasis that his host was a perfect gentle,
•nan, and that ne wished he would inaugurate every
Jay. Soon after which I departed, no less pleased
with my entertainment than he with his! I had
17*

394 WORDS AND Til KIR USES.

gotten all I came for ; and at how many receptions
at which luncheon is also free (although that, of
course, is never thought of), can a man say as much
as he goes away, leaving "society" behind him?

Now, if the first mentioned of my convives had
uttered his apophthegm in the form, Blessed are they
who expect nothing, for they will not be disap-
pointed, and if the other had said, He and I come
down awfully on the corned beef, and the remainder
of the company had discoursed in like manner, I
confess that the entertainment would have lacked for
me the seasoning that gave it all its savor. Their
talk afforded me the enjoyment of an inward laugh.
But why was it so ridiculous? Merely because
it was at variance with cultivated usage ? I
think not. It seems to me that the amusing element
in such a use of language is absurdity — the absurd-
ity which is the consequence of incongruity. Their
meaning was as unmistakable as if their sentences
had been constructed by a pedagogue ; but with this
intelligibility there was a confusion due to the
heterogeneous incongruity of the words with their
position and their real significance. The combina-
tion of singular verbs with plural nouns, the use of
words expressing an object in the place of those
which express a subject, of those which express the
quality of a thing to tell the manner of an act — this
incongruity was the cause of the laughable absurdity.
To a certain extent, indeed, the violation of usage
was at the bottom of this absurdity ; for if usage had
not made the verb is singular, and the pronoun them
objective, the word awful expressive of quality, and
wrn a substantive, and so forth, there would hav«

"JUS ET NORMA LOQUENDI." 395

been no incongruity. But here the point to be ob-
served is, that usage does not act arbitrarily. It is
guided, almost governed, by a union of the forces of
precedent and reason.

Within certain limits usage has absolute author-
ity in language. To assert this is not to lay down a
law, or to set up a standard, but merely to recognize
a fact. For as the only use of language, outside of
Talleyrandic diplomacy, is to express, and not to
conceal, our ideas, and as language which does not
conform to the general usage of those to whom it is
addressed cannot convey to them the meaning of the
speaker or of the writer, such language fails to fulfil
the first, if not the only, condition of its being. It has
been said that the usage which controls language is
that of great writers and cultivated speakers. To a
certain extent this is true ; but it is not true with-
out important qualification. For the very necessity
A'hich controls communication by words, that is, the
making of a thought common to the speaker and the
hearer by means of a medium which has a common
value to both, is binding upon the great writers and
the cultivated speakers themselves. A man who
uses words that are unknown, or familiar words in
senses that are strange, or who, using familiar words
in accepted senses, puts them together in an inco-
herent succession, which jars and interrupts rather
than easily leads the train of thought, will fail to
convey his meaning, whatever may be his mental
gifts or his culture. Ideas and facts may be new or
strange ; but the language in which they are uttered
must be old in fact or familiar in form, or they can-
not be imparted.

396 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

This is so manifestly true as to be almost truism ;.
and yet old words do pass out of use ; new words do
come into use ; the construction of language does
change, although slightly and slowly, in the lapse of
years. Are these changes the work of the great
writers and the most cultivated speakers of a lan-
guage? It will be found upon examination that
they are not — that the very few writers who can
justly be called great, or even distinguished, and
the comparatively small class ot cultivated speak-
ers, contribute to such changes only in proportion to
their actual numbers, even if in that degree. The
disuse of old words, the adoption of new ones, and
changes in phraseology and in the structure of the
sentence are, or thus far have been, an insensible,
unconscious process, going on among the whole mass
of those who speak the language in which they occur.
These changes are made in speech ; for writing does
little in this respect ; in which its chief, if not its only,
function is to fix and record that which has already
taken place in speech. Upon this point I hope that
I shall be excused for repeating what I said some
years ago, that the student of language, or the mere
intelligent observer of the speech of his own day
cannot but notice how surely men supply themselves
with a word, when one is needed. The new vocal
sign is sometimes made, but is generally found. A
lack is felt, and the common instinct, vaguely stretch-
ing out its hands, lays hold of some common, 01
mayhap some forgotten or rarely used, word, and
putting a new stamp upon it, converts it into cur
rent coin of another denomination, a recognized rep.
resentative of a new intellectual value. Purists maj

"JUS ET NORMA LOQUEND1.'' 397

fret at the perversion, and philologists may protest
against the genuineness of the new mintage, but in
vain. It answers the needs of those who use it ; and
that it should do so is all that they require.* It is
in a language thus made that all writers, great cr
small, are obliged to write, that all speakers, culti-
vated or uncultivated, must needs utter their daily
wants, their thoughts and feelings. Indeed, the er-
cellence of speech and writing is in no small meas-
ure determined by the taste and judgment with which
speaker or writer, yielding to the new and clinging
to the old in language, conforms to usage with the
discretion insisted upon in Pope's terse injunction :

In words, as fashions, the same rule will hold,
Alike fantastic if too new or old :
Be not the first by whom the new are tried,
Nor yet the last to lay the old aside.

" Essay on Criticism" Part II.

Yet Pope himself elsewhere says that great writ-
ers, " the men who write such verse as we can read,"
in the severe selection of their language, will

Command old words that long have slept to wake,
Words that wise Bacon or brave Raleigh spake ;
Or bid the new be English ages hence ;
For use will father what's begot by sense.

Second Epistle of tJie Second Book of Horace.

Thus Pope himself, who affected preciseness in
the use of language (and who yet in this very pas-
sage, for instance, was incorrect in his use of it, as
precisians often are), on the one hand recognizes not
only right but propriety in the use of words that
tvould be classed by lexicographers as obsolete, and

* "An Essay toward the Expression of Shakespeare's Genius " 1805.

398 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

on the other, sets at naught the purist's horror ol
neologism. And indeed there seems to me nothing
weaker than that purism which shrinks from a word
or a phrase merely because it is new. If there are to
be no new words, how can language express more
than the first and lowest needs of human nature .
Without neologism language could not grow, could
not conform itself to the new needs of new genera-
tions. The question as to a word is not, Is it new ?
but, Is it good ? And Pope has given us the test by
which to try new words and phrases. They must be
begotten by sense. But one parent of language must
be precedent. The language of one generation brings
forth the language of the next, as surely as the
women of one generation bring forth the men of the
next. Hence, indeed, the language spoken by a
people is its mother tongue. True and sound lan-
guage is therefore the product of precedent and rea-
son ; in other words, it is the normal development
of germs within itself. All other speech is monstrous
and illegitimate. If an unreasonable and monstrous
change establishes itself, men must needs submit as
to any other effective usurpation. They have no
choice. But in the discussion of a proposed change,
or of one that is beginning to effect itself, our test ol
its normality must be reason ; because there is no
other by which to determine its conformity to it?
proper type. The same rule applies to that which is
n use, and which it is proposed to drop or modify
For if we make the use of eminent writers and culti-
vated speakers authoritative, we shall soon find our-
selves involved in a conflict not only of use with rea>
&on; and of use with precedent, but of use with itself

"JUS ET NORMA LOQUENDI." 399

The gift of judgment, imagination, fancy, humor, or
of all these, does not necessarily make a man correct
in his use of language, although such use does gen-
erally accompany one or more of those intellectual
qualities. Great errors in language might be justified
by the authority of great writers. The saying that
in that case they are not errors, is a mere begging
cf the question. Words and phrases may have been
used by great writers, and yet be out of the line of
normal development of the language ; and on the
other hand, a word or a phrase may have been used
only once by a writer without genius and of inferior
rank, or may not have been used at all, and may yet
be a normal growth in speech, and perfectly good
English. An accomplished and thoughtful writer on
language recently offered as complete justification of
the use of proven, as the past participle of prove, the
fact that it had been used by Mr. Lowell. It implies
no diminution of our delight in Mr. Lowell's poe-
try, in his criticism or his humor, if we admit that
his use of language may not be invariably correct.
Since the death of Hawthorne probably no writer of
our language is more irreproachable in this respect
than the author of " Venetian Life," " Italian Jour-
neys," and " Suburban Sketches," which make us
long to be more indebted to the same dainty pen ;
yet Mr. Howell's pa^es have furnished a few ex-
amples of incorrect English — incorrect not because
other good writers had not used them, but because
they do not conform to the acquirements of reason
and precedent in the English language. Mr. Lowell
has said that the objection to illy is "not an etymo-
logical objection/ but that it is inconsistent with

J.OO WORDS AND THEIR USES.

good usage. Illy is not so violently at variance v;ith
etymology as some persons seem to think that it is.
But if it were so, good usage would not thereby make
it correct ; the usage would only in so far cease to be
good (for sometimes it is " so much the worse for the
facts''), although, like many other strong tyrants, it
might force base coin into circulation.

Leaving out of consideration for . the present
Shakespeare and the dramatists who immediately
preceded and followed him — those chartered liber-
tines of language — let us see where the pilotage of
eminent usage would land us. And I will say that
my examples have not been curiously sought out, but
are merely transfers of memorandums made on the
margins and fly-leaves of books as I read them.

First, consider the following use of both by Chau-
cer, a poet second only to Shakespeai e :

O chaste goddesse of the woodes greene,

To whom bothe heven and erthe and see is scene.

The Knight's Tale, /. 439.

Now for such a use of both the "authority," that
is the example, of Chaucer, can be of no more
weight than that of an anonymous advertisment in a
newspaper. Etymology and usage, including that
of Chaucer himself in other passages, make the mean
ing of both, two taken together ; and it is impossi-
ble that the same word can mean two and three.
If fifty passages could be produced from the works
of Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare and Milton, in
which both was applied to three objects, such a use
oi it by others might be excused, but it could not be
justified. The case is extreme, but therefore ol
value ; it brings the point out sharply ; and by suet
examples a point to be established has its best illus

"JUS ET NORMA LOQUENDI. 4<51

tration. And there it is ; both used by one of our
greatest poets to mean three taken together. It is
indeed possible to conceive of botKs being brought
to mean three or three hundred, and the latter as
well as the former. For that matter, let the present
generation agree that both shall mean fifty-six, and
the succeeding generation agree to the same, and it
will thenceforth so mean until like general consent
shall assign to it some other meaning. But such is
not the way in which words are fitted to thoughts,
even by usage ; which itself conforms generally to
reason, and follows a line of logical connection and
normal growth.

The word practitioner, which has already (p. 216,)
been remarked upon as abnormal and indefensible,
RTSO affords an illustration of the point under dis-
cussion. It is not a new word, its use dating back
at least three hundred years. Bishop Latimer, ac-
cording to Richardson, uses it in his sermon on the
Lord's Prayer, applying it to Satan : " Consider
how long he hath bin a practitioner ;" and I find it
in "The Gardener's Labyrinth" (Ed. 1586), more
than once. For example : " Sundrie practitioners
mixed the bruised leaves of the cypress tree, &c."
(p. 32.) We have legitimate words with which the
formation of this one seems to be analogous. Wi-
cliffe writes, " For how manye weren possession-
ens of feldis, &c.," and Sidney, " Having been of
:>ld freedmen and possessioners." I venture to say
that Wicliffe and Sidney might much better have
written possessors ; but still there is a noun possession
.rom which possessioner may be properly formed.
So from redemption we have redemptioner, and from
Probation, probationer. Bu' there is no noun prac-

fO2 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

tition, from which to form practitioner, and there-
fore even Latimer cannjt make it a normal pro-
duct of our language. As to my conjecture that it
was formed in imitation of the French practicien, I
nave since found the following interesting and con-
firmatory passage in Stephen's " World of Won-
ders" (A. D. 161 6) ;

" What reason is it then that Lawyers should make them such
good sport for nothing? Or that they should be weary of taking
before they bfc weary of giving ? And I am easily induced to
thinke, that when they were called Pragmatidens, that is, Pragma-
titioners (by the original word), things were not so out of square ;
but since that a sillable of their name was clipped away, and they
called Practiciens, that is, Practitioners, they knew well how to
make themselves amends for this curtailing of their name, as well
upon their purses who were not in fault, as upon theirs who were
the authors thereof." p. 129.

I have pointed out in a previous chapter Pope's
use of the perfect participle for the past tense, begun
foi began, sprung for sprang, and of the weak pret-
erite for the strong, as thrived for tJirove, sJiined for
sJione, and the like. An attempt has been made to
justify this use, partly on the ground of Pope's
authority as an eminent poet, and partly on the
ground of usage more or less extensive. What this
pie; is worth will appear on comparison of various
passages in works of the same author. For instance ;

Not with such majesty, such bold relief,
The forms august of king or conquering chief.
E'er swelled on marble, as in verse have s/iin'd
(In polished verse) the manners and the mind.

First Epistle, Second Book of Horace.

And again, this passage in the " Essay on Man*

If parts allure thee, see how Bacon shin'd,
The wisest, brightest, meanest of mankind.

"JUS ET NORMA LOQUENDI." 403

This would seem to give Pope's authority in favor
of — I shined, they shined. the sun shined. But when
WQ read the following passage from the third book
of the same essay,

Alike or when or where they shone or shine,
Or on the Rubicon or on the Rhine,

we see that the evidence of the former passages is
merely that when Pope wanted a rhyme he would
not hesitate to give a strong verb a weak preterite,
regardless of law, analogy, or usage. When that
need did not press him, or he wished to gain a con-
trast of sound, he wrote correctly.

The following couplet from the " Essay on Crit-
icism" I have cited before for its striking use of the
participle instead of the preterite :

A second deluge learning thus o'err««,

And the monks finished what the Goths begun.

So in "Windsor Forest" we find,

And now his shadow reach'd her as she run,
His shadow lengthened by the setting sun.

Shall we then on Pope's authority say, When she
came home, I run to meet her? The gentlemen who
assisted at the inauguration of the " sample-room"
would thus be sustained in a use of language very
common with them. But no ; for in the ' Essay on
Mm" we read :

True faith, true policy united ran ;

That was but love of God, but this of man.

And again, in the same poem :

In each how guilt and greatness equal nut,
And all that raised the hero sunk the man.

4.04 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

Thus, as before, we see that Pope's rule in lan-
guage was rhyme, not reason ; usefulness, not usage
as we find that it was in the following passage from
the same book of the same essay, where he does not
hesitate to use began and begun interchangeably,
caring nothing for correctness, but only for rhyme:

Till drooping, sickening, dying, they began,
Whom they rever'd as God, to mourn as man ;
Then looking up from sire to sire explor'd
Our first great father, and that first ador'd ;
Or plain tradition that this all begun,
Conveyed unbroken faiths from son to son.

Pope's writings are so filled with this inconsist-
ency, or rather this consistent disregard of correctness
in favor of rhyme, rhythm, or desired assonance or
dissonance, that it would be superfluous to follow
him further on this track. He writes at pleasure —
you rid or you rode, they writ or they wrote, you was
or you were. His authority is evidently nothing
worth in this respect ; and the same may be said of
poets generally, who, if they can make themselves
understood, and get the flow and the sound of their
verses to please their ears, shrink little from any
perversion of the form, or even of the sense, of lan-
guage. This is particularly true of the poets who
preceded Dryden ; but even Tennyson, in his most
carefully finished poem, " In Memoriam," writes
tbus:

Then echo-like our voices rang ;

We sung, tho' every eye was dim,

A merry song we san^ with him
Last year ; impetuously we sang.

XXX.

To turn to prose writers, there is hardly any con.

"JUS ET NORMA LOQUENDI." 405

fusion or mutilation of the preterite or the perfect
participle that is not supported by the u authority"
of Swift, who, in the " Tale of a Tub/' has *' they
writ and sung'' for they wrote and sang ; " if a crue)
king had not arose" for had not arisen ; " the trea-
tises wrote" for written ; for all of which his author-
ity has just as much weight as it has for such a use
of language as " the perfection of writing correct?
which we find in the same book, and which does nc>t
exhibit the perfection of writing correctly. Because
Gibbon produces such a passage as this,

Either a pestilence or a famine, a victory or a defeat, an oracle of
the gods or the eloquence of a daring leader were sufficient to impel
the Gothic arms —

and Junius such a one as this,

Neither Charles nor his brother were qualified to support such a

system —

are we to take their authority as a justification of
the use of either and neither with were ? Here fol-
low three passages from eminent writers ; the first
from Macaulay's " Essay on Milton," the second
from the same writer's " History of England," the
third from Junius's " Letters to Woodfall " :

Skinner, it is well known, held the same political opinions witA
bis illustrious friend.

During the last century no prime minister has become rich ir«
jffice.

This paper should properly have appeared to-morrow.

Does the eminence of the writers make such a use ol
language authoritative? Certainly not. Here rea-
son comes in and sets aside the weight of authority,
however eminent. Either and neither are essentially
separative, and therefore they cannot be correctl)

fo6 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

used with plural verbs. Same expresses identity
and therefore cannot properly be used in correspond
ence to "with, which means nearness, contact, and
implies duality, severalnesa. TJie last century is
time completely past, to express events in which, a
present perfect verb cannot be logically used. Have
appeared expresses a perfected action, and therefore
it cannot be correctly predicated of something in the
future — to-morrow.

The taking of isolated passages from the works
of eminent writers, as examples of a use of language
which has their sanction, is not to be defended. It
is unfair, unreasonable ; for writers, like other men,
are to be judged by their general practice, not by
the occasional lapses to which they, like all other
men, are subject. And it is in part to illustrate the
unsoundness of conclusions drawn from such rare
or solitary instances, that these examples are here
brought forward. It is too common to see an abnor-
mal or illogical use of language defended on the
ground that it may be found in the writings of some
author of deserved reputation.

As the example of eminent writers, when it is
inconsistent with reason arid analogy, is not author-
itative, so good usage, that is, continuous use by
writers of repute and people of culture, is not neces-
sary to the recognition of a word or a phrase as good
English. A good new word brings its own creden-
tials, and is as good English the first day that it is
spoken or written as after a hundred years of the
best usage. But it is also true that many a bad
word, like many a bad man, is well received and
must be recognized merely because it has forced its

"JUS ET NORMA LOQUEXDI." 407

tvay among its betters, and has been adopted foi
convenience sake. It is enough if the new word is
normally formed upon a sound stem and conveys its
intended meaning clearly. For example, the word
streeted, which I have previously cited as having
been used by James Howell in his " Letters," and
probably nev,er before or since, is good English, not
because he was a writer of uncommon power or pu-
rity, which he was not, but because it is formed ac-
cording to a law (so to speak) which permits the for-
mation of adjectives participial in form from nouns,
and which has come down to us from the Anglo-
Saxon. Thus, in Wyatt's u Request of Cupid " :

Weaponed thou art, and she unarmed silteth.

Weaponcd, although unheard in these days, is good
English now, was good English when Wyatt used it
three hundred and twenty-five years ago, and would
have been good English then even if six hundred
years before wacpencd had not meant male, i.e., weap-
on-bearing. If it were used to-day for the first time, it
would be as good English, as utterly beyond reproach
or exception, as if it had continued in constant use
these thousand years.

In Mr. Lowell's "Cathedral" a word occurs.
undisprivacied, which when the poem appeared was
made the occasion of many sneers from philological
witlings. It probably had never been used before,
and therefore those purists denounced it as a neolog-
'sm So it is, in the newness of its form, but not in
:he essence of its formation. It is good English;
but not because Mr. Lowell used it. His use would
not make undisprivacied English any more than it

4-08 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

could do the same for proven. It is English because
its meaning is clear and its formation normal. Its
meaning is, — has not been robbed of privacy ; and
it is as correctly formed as undisturbed. I do not
know whether Mr. Lowell hesitated to use the wonl
in question ; but I am pretty sure that he did r t
No man who felt in him any mastery of language
would be likely to hesitate a moment over such a
word. But the fact is, that he approached it grad-
ually. He did not begin with privacied, which,
although unknown to dictionaries, is perfectly good
English, meaning possessed of privacy. But assum-
ing privacied, he wrote in the " Fable for Critics" :

But now, on the poet's disprivaded moods,
With do this and do that the pert critic intrudes.

Disprivaded is as unknown to dictionaries as pri-
varied or undisprivacicd ; but its meaning — having
had privacy taken away — is clear, and its formation
is as normal as that of dispriscd or disgusted. Then
came the double prefix in the " Cathedral " —

Play with his child, make love, and shriek his mind,
By throngs of strangers undisprivacied.

It may be asked, As un here merely cancels the
dis to which it is prefixed, how does undisprivacifd
differ from privacied, and what necessity justifies the
use of the former ? To this the reply is, that although
the un merely cancels the dis, there is in disprivaded
a suggestion of an active and unpleasant taking a\v. y
of privacy, and that therefore an undispriva tied man \\
one who has escaped that injury from those who arc
willing to inflict it, while in privacied there is no sucb
Ynplication All this comes at once by intuition tc

"JUS ET NORMA LOQUENDI." 409

men who are masterful in language, or ready and
true in its apprehension.

Another author of high and well-deserved repute,
Mr. Charles Reade, affords an example of the unique
use of a word apparently formed in a mood similar
co that which led Mr. Lowell to undisprivacied, but
which is really formed upon an exactly opposite prin-
ciple. In that charming story, " Peg Woffington/
there is this passage :

Mrs. Vane . . . wore a thick mantle and a hood that concealed
her features. Of these Triplet disbarrassed her. — Chapter XIII.

Now disbarrassed is not English, and never could
be, except in virtue of a usage to which it quite
surely will never attain. The word is made on the
assumption that as em (i. e., in or on], combined with
barra^s, conveys the idea of personal encumbrance,
dis (i. e., away, from) prefixed to the same stem would
convey the opposite meaning. But the fault in this
formation is that there is no such English stem as
barrass, nor can such a stem be properly assumed,
as in the case of privacied. Our word embarrass is
adopted, as a. whole, directly from the French ; and
't, as a wholt , conveys a simple idea, that of encum-
brance, the reverse of which must be expressed by
disembarrassed. Not because it is new, but because
it is obscure and badly formed, disbarrassed must be
rejected, although it is found in perhaps the best
book of an English novelist whose vivid style and
creative genius will secure his works a fame that will
endure when the memory of men who use language
much more correctly will be forgotten. Undispriva-
cud would be English if, instead of being first used
oy the author of the " Commemoration Ode " and the

4-10 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

" Biglow Papers," it had been introduced in the re
porting columns of a penny newspaper. These two
neologisms, similar in kind and purpose, brought for
ward by two writers of eminence, under similar cir-
cumstances, have a directly diverse fate.

A finer example of the introduction of a sound,
good, new, and purely English word, could not be
found than in the following passage in Doctor John
C. Peters's paper on " Pathology and Therapeutics";

Again, to a starving person we would first administer homoeopath-
ically such small quantities of food as would enhunger, if not almost
starve a hearty person.

Dr. Peters has such well-won eminence as a phy.
sician that he can afford to have it said that, notwith-
standing the generally clear and correct style of his
medical writings, he has not the authority in litera-
ture that he has in medicine. Enhunger receives no
literary sanction from his use of it ; but although it
seems (strangely, I must confess) never to have been
used before, it has as robust an English constitution
as any word in the Bible or in Shakespeare.

It is chiefly to those debauchers of thought and
defilers of language, the newspapers, that we owe the
verbal abominations that are creeping — nay, rather
rushing into common use — use unhappily not always
confined to those who inaugurate "sample-rooms" or
assist at those solemn rites. Nor are these hideous
exciescences upon our mother tongue confined to
Ihe reporter's columns. In the correspondence of a
paper of high position — correspondence not without
evidence of fine appreciation and of some literary
taste — that. is the worst of it — I met with this sen
Sence about Pompeii :

"JUS ET NORMA LOQUENDI." 411

Even now, when the city has been dead, buried eighteen hundred
jrears, and resurrect ionized, one is startled by an air of gayety that
clings to it.

This is bad enough, v;orse if possible than its
forerunner, resurrected; but what shall be said of tlu
sin of the writer of the following passage in a lead-
ing article in a journal of the very highest position in
the country:

And what are the misnomered Republicans doing but seeking lo
perpetuate in the Southern States the social nuisance of class distirc.
tions ?

What social nuisance could be greater than a
newspaper which deliberately sets before fifty thou-
sand readers — unsuspecting, receptive, and confiding
— the printed example of the use of such an execra-
ble compound as misnomered ! By what process did
a man who has been able to command the right to
use a pen in the leading columns of a first-rate jour-
nal reach that depth of degradation in language,
compared to which cant is classical and slang ele-
gant? He meant misnamed ; nothing more or less.
But because he must have "finer bread than is made
of wheat," and because there is a noun misnomer, he
makes from it that hideous verb. Now again it is
to be observed that rcsurrcctionized and misnomered
are not outcasts because they lack the sanction of
usage or the authority of eminent writers. They are
no newer, nor "ess sanctioned by use, good or bad,
rude or cultured, than undisprivacied or streeted or
tnhungcred, no stranger to the common ear than
weaponed. But the latter are sound and healthy
growths ; the forn ir are fungi, m instrous and pes-
tilent.

18

f!2 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

Long established usage not being an essential
condition to the recognition of a word or a phrase as
correct English, does such usage of itself make that
correct which will not bear the tests of reason and
analogy ? Observation justifies the answer that it
does not. Latham's judgment, that as whatever is,
in language, is right, whatever was and is net, was
wrong, is unsound ; not only unsound in its conclu-
sion, but incorrect in its premise. In language, as in
every other manifestation of man's intellectual and
moral nature, that which is may be wrong ; and that
which was and is not, may have been right. Owing
to the peculiar function of language as the only
means of communication between man and man,
whatever is, must be accepted, in a certain degree at
least. A writer or speaker cannot be justly censured,
as for a personal fault, because he uses words and
phrases which are current in his day. But custom
has thus sanctioned not a little, in all languages, the
incorrectness of which is discernible, and has been
discerned, not only by the critical and the highly
cultured, but by men of ordinary intelligence and of
not more than ordinary carefulness or carelessness in
speech. The mere fact that a word or a phrase has
long been in good and in general use is presumptive
evidence in its favor, and therefore a complete justi-
fication of its use by any individual, but not proof
that it is a normal product of the language of which
it practically forms a part. Words and phrases
come into being, we hardly know how ; and quickly
caught up from one to another, they pass into use
unchallenged, and good or bad, right or wrong, sooc
become fixed as recognized parts of speech. RareJj

"JUS ET NORMA LOQUENDI." 413

is there such reluctance as there was two hundred
and fifty years ago in regard to its, or such protract-
ed aversion and discussion as there has been of late
in regard to is being* But in this way, words and
forms of speech creep into use which, although they
are not idioms, cannot be justified by either reason
or analogy.

Neologism is not reprehensible if the de\iation
from precedent is in the line of normal movement
which is a very different matter, for instance, from

* This " continuing passive present" seems to be fastened upon
us ; those who inaugurate " sample-rooms," or who report the proceed-
ings on those occasions, being instant in its use, and seizing every op-
portunity of airing their precision. In the report of a case of a forlorn
damsel, I have met " while she was being paid attention to," instead
of while she was made love to, or, while she was courted ; elsewhere,
"while this narrative was being proceeded with,'' instead of while this
story was told ; and, " the Democrats of Kentucky are being much ex-
ercised at a prospective failure," etc., and even in the London Spec-
tator, " Precisely the same scene in a milder form is being witnessed
before Paris." The following passage from a leading article in a
New York journal clearly illustrates the peculiar absurdity of this
phrase :

" History has never moved with strides more gigantic than she has
done during the six weeks just closed, and behind the encircling walls
and bristling cannon of Paris there may at this moment be transacting
a more momentous drama than has been seen there since the coup cfetai
of 1851, and a more imposing one than has been witnessed since the
head of a king went down as the gage of battle to a confederation of
tings. ' What will ihey say in Paris ? ' ts to-day in every one's mouth,
vKile the answer is being flashed across to serve for to-morrow's ad-
airation or blame."

The writer felt that it became him to say " is being flashed across"
, at just before he had written " there may be transacting," and nor,
there may be being transacted, which, according to the formula, is ab-
le lutely required. Is bting was very well, and more than well, it was
Ira; but he instinctively shrank from V being: and yet in thut ia
Ihc gist of this whole question.

t 14 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

the substitution of one part of speech for another.
The preterites and participles of the strong verbs
again furnish us with apt illustrations. The original
formation of the past participles of those verbs is in
en, as ride, rode, ridden ; but the language in its ten-
dency to contraction and simplification has been
steadily, although very slowly, dropping this syllable.
For example, fight, fougJit, foug}it(cii), drink, drank,
drnnk(eii),get,gat, got(ten), begin, began, bcgun(iteii), to
which category might consistently be added zvrite,
wrote, writ(tcii}. Therefore, / have writ is normal ;
and the question between writ as a past participle
and written is merely one of usage. But the use of
writ as a preterite, and that of wrote as a participle,
have no such justification. Both are abnormal and
monstrous. Yet those perversions have the support
of such eminent writers as Addison and Pope, Swift,
Prior and Sterne. Addison has, " I remember two
young fellows who rid" etc. (Spectator, No. 152);
and Pope, " statesmen farces writ"" '; and of course
the Pope-lings all wrote in the same fashion, which,
indeed, was very prevalent in the last century among
the most eminent writers and cultivated people.

But there are phrases and forms of" expression
which have been in use for centuries among both
the learned and the ignorant, the cultured and the
rude, and which have passed or are passing out of
use, not by way of an unthinking conformity to
capricious fashion, but because of a perception that
they arc at variance with reason. One of these is
the double negative which, by Anglo-Saxon and
early English speakers and writers, was universally
used to strengthen a negation. It may be that the
change was in a measure due to the attempt tc

"JUS ET NORMA LOQUENDI." 415

Construct a grammar of the English language upon
that of the Latin, in which two negatives were
equivalent to an affirmative. But it seems to me
that it was chiefly owing to a deliberate conformity
to the requirements of logic, which in the process
of time was inevitable, and which, once attained,
will never be abandoned until language comes to
be informed by the rule of unreason. If " There
is not any reason," predicates the entire absence of
reason, surely " There is not no reason," predicates
exactly the reverse. The case, instead of being at
all high, subtle or mysterious, seems to be one of
the simplest that can be put before any reasonable
creature. It is even stronger than that as to the
double superlative, which went out in company
with the double negative about the beginning of
the seventeenth century. For as to the double su-
perlative the question is almost one of mere super-
fluity. Look for a moment at this passage in. Bish-
op Tunstall's Palm Sunday Sermon (A. D. 1539), a
piece of English well worth study :

" It was harde suffering that He suffered for wicked men. It
was more harde that He suffered of wicked men. And the most
hardest of all was that He suffered with wicked men."

When Tunstall wrote it was the custom to double
the comparative as well as the superlative. But
here we have " more hard," and yet " most hard-
est." Now can there be a doubt that if more hard
expresses the comparative degree, most hard equal-
ly expresses the superlative ? and, vice versa, that if
the learned and clear-headed Tunstall. was right in
Anting most hardest, he was wrong, or at least in-

II 6 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

sufficient, in writing more hard ? We may be sure
that it is owing to such perception and such rea-
soning, first on the part of* careful and thoughtful
writers — who generally do, in very deed, evolve
their language from the depths of their own con-
sciousness, although some are content with fishing
theirs from the shallows of usage — and afterwards
on the part of the cultivated, and then of people in
general, that the use of the double comparative and
superlative, as well as of the double negative, dis-
appeared from English speech.

Under a like influence of reason another old usage
has given up its hold on the language, and we may
be sure forever — the separation of the limiting
adjective from the word which it modifies. Thus
Bunyan makes Interpreter's minstrel sing, " The
Lord is only my support." Now Bunyan meant
not. that the Lord was nothing but a support to the
singer, but either that the Lord and none other was
his support, or that the Lord was his single and
sufficient support. Nowadays we write more cor-
rectly, The Lord only is my support, or The Lord is
my only support ; both of which phrases express
one fact indeed, but not the same conception of the
fact. The former use of only and similar adjectives,
was the general one, even in literature, until a com-
paratively recent period, and a remnant of it still
exists in common speech. Shakespeare even makes
a page in "As You Like It" say that hawking and
spitting and saying we are hoarse are " the only
prologues to a bad voice," an assertion seeming sc
absurdly at variance with the fact that I was
tempted to transpose only and read " only the pro-
ngues to a bad voice." But Shakespeare, I arc

"JUS ET NORMA LOQUENDI.' 417

sure, wrote " the only," etc., according to the inex-
act usage of his time. So we hear now sensible,
educated, farmer folk say, " That is most an excel-
lent apple" (I heard it but a short time ago), or
" That was most a capital sermon," instead of a
most excellent, a most capital. And in old sermons
and moral essays phrases like " so oft to wallowe
in such his wickednesse " are common. Modern
usage, which requires that the adjective, or modify-
ing word or phrase, shall not be separated from the
word or phrase which it modifies, is a deliberate
conformity to the characteristic logical structure oi
the English sentence.

Another phrase " sanctioned " by universal usage
is disappearing under our eyes at this day before
the advance of reason — ivhethcr or no. It is now
seen, to cite for instance an old story, that there
will be Divine service at this meeting-house on
next Wednesday evening whether [it rains] or
[rains] not ; and therefore whether or no is doomed.
Now fifty or a hundred or two hundred years ago
wJictJier or not would have been the correct form
and good English, just as it is now, although whetlier
or no, being in universal use, was admissible.

Yet another example of the so-called authoritative
misuse of language is the use of had in the phrases, 1
had rattier, You had better. This has the sanction of
usage for centuries, not only by the English-speaking
people generally, but by their greatest and most
careful writers. Nothing, however, among the few
enduring certainties of language is more certain than
ihat had expresses perfected and past possession.
How, then, consistently with reason, and with its
constant and universally accepted meaning, in every

J.l8 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

other connection, can it be used to express future
action r* A perception of this incongruity, and a con-
sequent uneasiness as to the use of these phrases, is
becoming common, and it is safe to say that they
will, ere long, begin to be dropped in favor of a mor*
logical and self-consistent phraseology. Had rather
will probably yield to would rather, and had better
to might better. In like position is the use of the
present perfect and the perfect infinitive, thus : If
I had have done, I was ready to have gone, which
is supported by th-e best usage of centuries. Bishop
Jewell writes, " the church was ready to have fallen."
There seems to be no doubt that this is logically in-
correct. Jewell meant that the church was ready to
fall ; we should say, If I had done, I was ready to
go ; and we may be sure that, ere long, this phrase-
ology will be deliberately substituted for the other
on logical grounds.

I pass over right away in the sense of immedi-
ately, which is in common use here among the most
cultivated people, merely with the mention of it as
altogether unjustifiable on any ground, and as hav-
ing no affinity whatever with straiglitway. It is an
undoubtable Americanism, one of the very few words
or phrases, not slang, which can be properly so
called. Different to is as exclusively British. It has
come into use since the Commonwealth and the
Restoration, and it pervades British speech and liier-
iture even of the highest class, producing such com-
binations as the following :

The words la man! ere Gottica appear to have been first applied bj
she Italian writers, to distinguish the previous <;tyle of architecture tc
Jinl then in vogue. — London AtheniTttm, Nov. 9, 1859.

It is true that England stands to America, in point of power, some

"JUS ET NORMA LOQUENDI."

thing different to that of Athens to the Rome of Cicero. — London
Spectator Nov 25, 1865.

A word used in both countries, but more com-
monly with us, lengthy, is a marked example illustra-
ting my present position. It is illogical, at variance
with analogy, and it is entirely needless, as it has
usurped — who knows how or why ? — the rightful
place of a good and well-connected English word,
which does properly express that which lengthy ex-
presses only on sufferance, and by reason of general
but unjustifiable usage. And yet even Mr. Lowell
not only uses it but speaks well of it, as a word "civ-
illy compromising between long and tedious" which
we have "given back to England." It is true that
English does need such a word, and therefore had it
before there could have been Americanisms. For
did not Puritan sermons precede Presidents' mes-
sages ? Adjectives expressing likeness in quality are
formed in English from immaterial nouns, by a suffix
which would have at once occurred to Mr. Lowell if
he had used, instead of the Romance word tedious,
the Anglo-Saxon ^^vearisome or tiresome. The family
is numerous — lonesome, wholesome, irksome, handsome,
loathsome, frolicsome, burdensome, and the like. And
so from Anglo-Saxon times to very modern days we
have had the analogous word longsome, meaning, so
long as to be almost wearisome or tedious. It is
common with the Elizabethan writers, so well known
to Mr. Lowell, and Prior is .cited for, its use by Web-
ster, Bishop Hall, in his " Defence of the Humble
Remonstrance," writes : " They have had so little
mercy on him as to put him to the penance of their
longsome volume." It is manifest that writers who

UO WORDS AND THEIR USES.

use wearisome, irksome, and burdensome can have no
consistent objection to longsome, which has long and
eminent usage in its favor, and which Mr. Lowell
might well bring up again, as Tennyson has brought
up rathe. The objection to lengthy seems to be well
taken. As to our having given the latter back to
England, it may be said that an instance of the use
of the word before England gave her people and
her language to America has not yet been produced,
and, according to my observation, does not exist.

Another error common among cultivated writers
and speakers is the use of adverbs with the verb to
look, as, He looked wretchedly, She looked beauti-
fully. It might as well be said that the grass looks
greenly, or the man looks bluely. A man who lives
wretchedly will probably look wretched ; a woman
who is formed and dressed beautifully will look
beautiful. The error is the consequence of a confu-
sion of look in the sense to direct the eye, and look
in the sense of to seem, to appear. The same per-
sons who say that a man looked wretchedly, or a
woman looked beautifully, would not say that he
seemed wretchedly, or she seemed beautifully. In
the phrases, He looked well, She seemed ill, well and
ill are not really adverbs. Such phrases as, I had
rather, You had better, Had have done, Ready to
have fallen, Right away, Different to, and Looked
wretchedly, have, it need hardly be said, nothing in
common with such as. We made the land, The ship
stood up the bay, He took his journey (Jewell writes
''tooke his progresse"), They came in thick, He took
her to wife, A house hard by, He took up with her
He did it out of hand, I won't put up with it

"JUS ET NORMA LOQUENDI." 421

Given to hospitality, Stricken in years. The latter
are truly idiomatic, and generally metaphorical;
and, although they defy analysis, they are not, like
the former at variance with themselves and defiant
of reason.

This healthy tendency toward logical correctness
in language is liable to perversion ; a perversion to
which we owe such phrases as " is being built," and
" written over the signature." The former is due
to an inability to perceive that a word formed upon
a verb by the suffix ing (e. g., building} may be either
a verbal noun or a participle, and have a passive or
an active signification according to its place in the
sentence and the words with which it is connected,
and that the combination of the present participle
with the perfect, (e.g., being built, having been], logi-
cally expresses action or being which is complete
at the time spoken of. The latter is the produc'
of a prim and narrow righteousness of mind inca
pable of sympathy with that free, figurative use of
words which gives strength and richness to much
of the daily speech of simple folk, and which is so
characteristic of the nervous and vivid phraseology
of the Elizabethan period. Both these incapacities
are illustrated in the following dialogue. It is said
to have taken place somewhere in Massachusetts,
and it was published in the newspaper from which
I -jiiote it " for the benefit of grammarians."

Old Gentleman. — "Are there any houses building in your village ? "

Young Lady. — " No, Sir. There is a new hiuse being built for
Mr. Smith, but it is the carpenters who are building."

Gentleman. — True ; I sit corrected. To be building is certainly
t different thing from to be being built. And how long has Mr.
Smith's house been being built ? "

Lady. — (Looks puzzled a moment, and then answers rather al>
'uptly.) " Nearly a year."

4.22 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

Gentleman. — ' How much longe: do you think it will be being
built?"

Lady. — (Explosively.) " Don't know."

Gentleman. — " 1 should think Mr. Smith would be annoyed by
its being so long being built, for the house he now occupies being
old, he must leave it, and the new one being only being built, in-
stead of being built as he expected he cannot — "

At this point, it is said, the young lady disap-
peared ; and here I return from my digression.

If, then, novelty is not a tenable ground of objec-
tion to a word or a phrase, and long usage is not in
itself full justification, and if the example of writers
eminent for the instruction or the pleasure they
give is not authoritative when they disregard rea-
son and analogy, what is the rule or standard by
which language may be tested, and the appeal to
which is final? The question is answered in the
putting of it. There is no such absolute rule.
Usage gives immunity to use ; but the court that
pronounces Judgment upon language is a mixed
commission of the common and the critical, before
whom precedent and good usage have presump-
tive authority, on the condition that they can bear
the test of criticism, that i«', of reason. To that
test they are continually subjected, and before it
they are compelled frequently to give way. Usage
is not a guarantee of correctness ; criticism is inca-
pable of creation. By the former, acting instinc-
tively, language is produced and has its life. By
the latter, it is wrought toward a logical precisior
and symmetrical completeness, which it constantly
approximates, but which, owing to its unstable na-
ture and the uncontrollable influences to \vhich i
yields, it can never perfectly attain.

CONCLUSION. 42 ^

CONCLUSION.

IT is not for lack of material at hand that I here
ex>d this series of articles, which has stretched
out far beyond the not very definite limits of my
original design. I have passed by some subjects
unnoticed that I purposed to take in hand, but I
have also been led whither I did not think of going
when I set out. If my readers have lost anything,
they have also gained something in the event. That
it snould be so was hardly to be avoided. To go
directly to a fixed point, which is the only object
of one's journey, is easy ; but a tour of observation
is generally brought to an end with some proposed
object left unattained, through the failure of time
and means, and often by the weariness of the ob-
servers. If those who have gone with me, in some
cases as my confiding fellow-students, in others as
my sharp and vigilant censors, — a sort of linguistic
detective police, — do not rejoice at the termination
of our word-tour for the latter reason, I have been
more fortunate, either in my subjects or in their
treatment, than I could have reasonably hoped to
be. If I have seemed to neglect the important for
the trivial, and to ask my readers to give time and
attention to the consideration of minute distinctions
which they have thought might better be occupied
with the discussion of gre at principles, or at least with

424 WORDS AND TIIEIU USES.

the .nvestigation of the laws of speech, it should be
remembered that linguistic discussion, from its very
nature, must be minute ; that the widest difference
in the meaning of words and of sentences may be
made by the slightest changes ; that the wealth of
language is a sum of trifles ; that that which is in a
great measure determined by arbitrary usage can-
not be judged upon general principles ; and that that
cannot be tried by its conformity to law for which
no law has yet been established. This, true of all
languages, is particularly true of English, which is
distinguished among the outcomings of Babel for its
composite character and its unsystematic, although
not unsymmetrical, development. It is, I suspect,
less a structure and more a spontaneous growth
than any other language that has a known history
and a literature. Through all languages, as through
all connected phenomenons, there may be traced
certain continuous or often-repeated modes of gen-
eral development, which may be loosely called
laws ; and upon those there have been attempts,
more or less successful, to found a universal gram-
mar or system of speech formation. But upon this
field of inquiry I have not professed to enter ; having
devoted myself to the consideration of what is pecu-
liar to our mother-tongue, rather than to what she
has in common with others. Even in this respect,
what I have written is at least as far from being
complete as my object in writing was from com-
pleteness.

The series has been honored by an attention thai
gratified and cheered me as I wrote. I owe much
to my critics ; not only to those who have given me

CONCLUSION. 425

A favorable hearing and insured it foi me from
others, but to those who have endeavored to sting
me with sneers and overwhelm me with ridicule,
partly from a sense of duty to their language and
their kind, and partly that they might show their
readers that, with all my deficiencies, I had the
merit of being the occasion of the display of superior
knowledge, if not of superior courtesy, in others.
To the latter, indeed, I stand more indebted than
to the former ; for it is not from our friends that we
learn, but from our enemies. They show us where
we are weak. And, besides, few of mine have
failed, while giving me instruction in English, to
furnish me with the most valuable means of im-
provement in the use of language — exan pies of
false syntax for correction. Of these, however, I
have not availed myself publicly for the instruction
of others, although I might have crucified most of
my critics upon crosses made out of their own heads.
And, indeed, in my search for examples I have
generally turned from the writings of my immediate
contemporaries and countrymen to those of other
generations and other countries, or to the anony-
mous pages of public documents and newspapers.

Many letters have come to me with welcome
questions, objections, suggestions, of which I have
had time and opportunity to notice very few, to my
regret. Among the remarks I have made, none
was so fruitful of letters of information as my mere
passing allusion to the slang phrase "a continental
ilanm." The number of " The Galaxy " in which it
was made was hardly published before I received
i letter informing me of the existence in this coun-

f26 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

try, at the remote period of seventy or eighty years,
of a paper currency called continental, and that this
currency was worthless, and that hence — and so
forth, and so forth. This was soon followed by
others to the same effect, their numbers increasing
as the time wore on. They came to me from the
north, south, east, west, and middle ; from Pas-
sarnaquoddy and the Gulf; from Squam Beach and
Lower California. I might almost say or sing that
they were sent from Greenland's icy mountains,
from India's coral strand, to tell me that there had
been Continental money in this land. They came
to me at "The Galaxy" office, at my own office, at
my house. Like Pharaoh's frogs in number and in
pertinacity, the}' climbed up into my bed-chamber,
and I have the satisfaction of knowing that, like the
frogs, some of them went into my oven. I dreaded
meeting my friends in the street ; for I felt that
there was not one of them that did not long to lead
me quietly aside, even if he did not do so, and say,
" About that continental damn, I think I can set
you right. After the Revolution there was a vast
Amount of paper money circulating through the
country. This was called the Continental currenc}'',
and, as it proved to be worthless — " and so forth,
and so forth. Really, I hope my friends will not
misapprehend me when I say that it is generally
safe to assume that the court knows a little law. I
had heard, before the coming of this year of grace
.869, that, after the Revolution, there was a vast
amount of paper money circulating through the
country ; that this was called Continental currency
that it proved worthless — and so forth, and so forth,

CONCLUSION. 427

Vet I do not incline to the opinion that hence comes
our "continental damn." The phrase seems to me
a counterpart, if not a mere modification of others
of the same sort — a tinker's damn, a trooper's
damn ; and as the troops of the colonies were called
Continentalers, or Continentals, during the war,
and for many years afterward, it seems to me much
more probable that the phrase in question was, at
first, a Continental's damn, from which the sign of
the possessive was gradually dropped, than that an
adjective was taken from money and used to qualify
a curse ; and still more probable that the epithet
was added in that mere disposition toward the use
of vague, big, senseless phrases that moulds the
speech of such as use this one.

Among the propositions and requests that have
been elicited by the articles embodied in this vol-
ume, is one which comes to me from many quar-
ters, and which one correspondent puts in the
following attractive form to the editors of " The
Galaxy": "Could not he [/. e., the present writer]
be induced to prepare a book for schools which
would embody his ideas and all that it would be
necessary for scholars to learn in regard to the
use and construction of language, and so save
many cries and tears that go out over the pres-
ent unintelligible books that pass for grammars?
I am sure that a future generation, if not the pres-
ent, vould rise up and bless his name." This re-
quest is made by a teacher, as it has been by
others of the same honorable profession. I answer,
that I would gladly act on this suggestion if it were
probable that any responsible and competent pub-

WORDS AND THEIR USES.

lisher would make it prudent for me to do so. It
would be delightful to believe that the next genera-
tion would rise up and call me blessed ; but I am
of necessity much more interested in the question
whether the present generation would rise up and
put its hand in its pocket to pay me for my labor.
Any one who is acquainted with the manner in
which school-books are " introduced " in this coun-
try knows that the opinions of competent persons
upon the merits of a book have the least possible
influence upon its coming sufficiently into vogue to
make its publication profitable ; and publishers, like
other men of business, work for money. One of
the trade made, I know, — although not to me, — an
answer like this to a proposition to publish a short
series of school-books : " I believe your books are
excellent ; but supposing that they are all that you
believe them to be, after stereotyping them I should
be obliged to spend one hundred thousand dollars
and more in introducing them. I am not prepared
to do this, and therefore I must say, No, at once.
The merit of a school-book has nothing to do with
its value in trade." And the speaker was a man of
experience. Provoked by the ineptness of a school-
book which fell into my hands, I went once to an
intelligent and able teacher, in whose school I
knew it was used, and calling his attention to the
radical faults in the book, — faults of design which
I knew there was no need that I should point out to
him in detail, — I asked him why he used for f'e
mentary instruction a book so fitted to mislead his
scholars. His answer was, "All that you say is
true. I know that the book is a very poor one : but

CONCLUSION 429

*ve are ordered to use it. What can I do ? " Now,
one of the body that gave this order was, at that
time, a neighbor of mine — a coarse, low-minded,
entirely uneducated man, who was growing rapidl}
rich. He was about as fit to pronounce upon the
merits of a school-book as Caligula's horse was for
the consulship. The publication of elementary
school-books and dictionaries is one of the most
profitable branches of the trade, if books can be " in-
troduced " into general use ; but otherwise it is not so ;
and publishers manage this part of their business just
as railway companies and other corporations do —
with a single eye to profit. A railway company,
managed by men of respectable position, finds itself
Threatened with a law restraining its privileges, or
desires the passage of a law increasing them. Its
agents make a calculation somewhat in this form :
To submit to the threatened law, or to do without the
one that is desired, will involve the loss of so much
money ; to defeat the law in one case, or to obtain
it in the other, by spending money to influence votes,
will cost so much less. The latter course is taken,
without scruple or hesitation. With the company it
is a mere matter of business ; the morals of the ques-
tion are the concern of the other parties to the ar-
rangement.*

* That these strictures made in " The Galaxy " of May, 1869, were just and timelv,
is shown by the following articles, which subsequently appeared in "The .Ainericdu
Booksellers' Guide " (January, 1870), and "The Evening Mail " (March 3, 1870).

"A PROTEST ADDRESSED TO PUBLISHERS OF SCHOOL-BOOKS

" In the last number of the GUIDE we reprinted from the Brooklyn " Eagle " the lit*
I school-books adopted by t!ie Hoard of Education "-f that city, and the prices at
nuich the books were furnislie'1 by the pub'ishers. These prices were about one
iiid of those at which the boons are regularly sold. They were furnished at the
iedut~ prices to influence the Board of Education of Brooklyn to adopt them ovai

WORDS AND THEIR USES.

Now, were such a grammar and such a dictioriaiy
published as some readers of these articles would
like to have, and should they be received with

other bocks that were offered, and thereby to secure their introduction into the
schools.

" This case is only one example of what is being done all over the country by tht
agei.ts of the school-book houses. The prices of the books sold to Brooklyn, al-
though much less than first cost, are better than are obta;ned in the majority of case*
of what is called 'first introduction.' Introduction is usua"y effected by exchan-
ging new books for the old ones in use. The house whose books are thus thrown out
naturally seeks the first opportunity in any quarter to exchange its books for those
of its rival.

"The introduction of school-books has become a source of bribery and corruption,
which is paralleled only in the municipal politics of our largest city. Boards of Educa-
tion are completely demoralized. Cases are known of exchanges of books being
made in some cities as often as once a year. We shall not refer to the damaging
effect of such changes upon the progress of education. Pupils are little more than
made acquainted with the rudiments of a study as presented in a text-book, and pre-
pared to follow out the method of the author, when, lo I another text-book n put
into his hands, and he is compelled to discard the old and take up a new system
But a few changes of this kind is required to muddle the clearest intelligence.

"It is because of its effect upon the trade that we desire to protest against thii
system of bribery, and the damaging reduction of prices all over the country. In tht
first place, it causes a direct loss to publishers ; and, secondly, it ruins the busmesa
in school-books of the local booksellers.

"It is estimated that the loss caused to publishers by this unscrupulous and cor-
rupt competition annually amounts to over five hundred thousand dollars. Nothing
is really gained by this wasteful expenditure, as the same books would be sold in
about the same proportion if it was entirely discontinued. What is gained in one
place by unfair means is lost in another by the same means. Whether publisher*
confine themselves to fair methods or foul, as the same agencies are open to all, the
effects will in general be about equal. If this vast sum were saved to be employed
in legitimate channels, better prices could be paid to authors and better work obtained,
more could be spent upon the mechanical execution of books, they could be offered
lower, and, lastly, publishers would realize more money, and their business would
lest upon a securer basis.

" But the greatest injury is done to the local booksellers, who sell the larger por-
tion of the books. By publishers offering their books through periodical travelling
agents at one half the retail prices, the trade of the booksellers is not only taken out
of their hands at particular times, but their customers are dissatisfied to pay the
regular retail prices at any time. This has become such a source of dissatisfaction
that we almost wonder at retail booksellers undertaking to supply school-books at
all. They might compel publishers to deal directly in all cases with the schoo's,
and we doubt if the ruinous prices would, if this were done, be long continued.

" We ac'.vise some honorable combination among the leading houses to put an end
to this great and growing evil, which is subversive not only of educational progresi,
but of commercial integrity. Such a combination is possible, and such penaltiel
might be assessed against offenders, by mutual consent, as would redeem the businesf
from its present repulsive aspect." — A nterican Booksellers' Guide.

". . . . Next to the copyright reft rm, the one thing needed by the publishing trad
* lie abolition of the present outrageously wasteful system of "introducing " school

CONCLUSION. 43 f

favor, they would at once provoke the hostility —
cool, vigilant, business-like — of men who have
many hundreds of thousands of dollars invested in
books — in whole systems of books — planned
upon radically different principles. Until some man
on horseback comes and purges the commonweal,
it always will be necessary to fight these men with
their own weapons. And even then there is the
fight in newspapers, by articles, advertisements,
and opinions from eminent gentlemen. I have
been behind the scenes enough to know thoroughly
how all this business is managed, and I would tell
on very slight provocation. Why, even already
the priests of the present idols have begun to de-
nounce a certain pestilent fellow, and their crafts-
men to cry, Great is Diana of the Ephesians !

To publish, with any chance of success, a book
intended for use in public schools has become a
serious commercial and political undertaking ; and,

books. As our readers probably know, it is the almost universal custom of school-
book publishers, for the sake of getting their scries used and ousting books of rival
houses, to furnish the former — ai least the first lot — at even below cost price, and to
take the old books in part pay, sending them to the junk dealers. Teachers are in-
duced, by the smooth-tongued agents of these houses and the large commissiont
which they offer, to change books so frequently that their pupils are in a constant
state of perplexity, while the waste of books is terrible, and all the publishers have
their profits more than half eaten up by the necessary outlays and recriminations.
There are two houses in this country each of which loses probably between two and
three hundred thousand dollars a year in this way, while the total loss to publishers
cannot be much less than a million dollars. We are glad to be able to state that a
novpment,is now on loot, which bids fair to succeed, ioward doing away with this
gicat evil. Representatives of such houses as IJurnes, Harper, Appleton, Sheklon,
tic., of this ciiy, have issued an invitation to twenty-one firms in New York, thir-
lt*n in Phi'adelj hia, ten in Doston, and sixteen elsewhere, to send representatives to
meet in this city the i6th of M.irdi, and continue in session until some arrangement
t made, looking to more sensible and profitable relations between school-book pub-
jshers." — Evening Mail.

The proposed meeting was held, and measures were taken which may possibly pu1
in cud to this reproach to the book trade, and to the schools, public and private,
throughout the country.

IP WORDS AND THEIR USES.

if nothing more is expected for it than its introduc-
tion into private schools, even then it should be in
the hands of publishers sufficiently wealthy and
adroit to make it the interest of teachers to adopt
the book in their schools. For if it were left to go
upon its mere merits, it would, if good, of course
meet with a certain sale among intelligent and hon-
orable teachers ; but this would be too small to cause
it to be regarded by any enterprising publisher as
profitable investment of money and labor. For these
reasons I fear that I must be content with dropping
what I have written as seed into the ground, hoping
that it may have life enough to grow and bring forth
fruit, although in that case others will reap the har-
vest. Sic vos* non vobis.

APPENDIX.

I.

HOW THE EXCEPTION PROVES THE RULE.

THE few people who care to say only what they
mean, and who therefore think about what they say
and what others say to them, must sometimes be puzzled
by the reply often made to an objection, " Well, he, or
that, is an exception, and you know the exception proves
the rule." This is uttered with calm assurance, as con-
clusive of the question at issue, and is usually received
in silence — with an air of indifferent acquiescence on
the part of the thoughtless, but on the part of the more
thoughtful with a meek expression of bewilderment.
The former are saved from the trouble of further mental
exertion, and they are content ; the latter feel that they
have been overcome by the bringing up of a logical canon
which always stands ready as a reserve, but the truth of
which, admitted as indisputable, they would' like very
much to be able to dispute. In fact, this pretentious
maxim infests discussion, and pervades the every-day talk
of men, women, and children. It appears in the writings
of historians, of essayists, and of polemics, as well as in
those of poets, novelists, and journalists. A legislator
;vill use it to destroy the effect of an instance brought
"orward which is directly at variance with some general
assertion that he has made. " The case so strongly

433

WORDS AND THEIR USES.

insisted upon by the honorable gentleman does appar-
ently show that all women do not desire the passage of
A law permitting them to wear trousers. I admit the
preference of Miss Pettitoes for. petticoats. But, sir, her
case is an exception, and we all know that the exceptior
proves the rule." It enters even into the word-skirmish of
flirtation. " How dare you assert," says Miss Demure to
Tom Croesus, defiance on her lip and witchery in her eye,
14 that women nowadays are all mercenary! Don't you
know that is an insult to me ? " u Ah, but, Miss Demure,"
replies the weakly-struggling Croesus, "you're an excep-
tion ; and you know the exception proves the rule."
Whereupon the lady submits with charming grace to the
conqueror, having within her innocent breast the consol-
ing conviction that she is playing her big fish with a skill
that will soon lay him gasping at her feet. There is no
turn which this maxim is not thus made to serve ; and
this use of it has gone on for a century and more, and
people submit to the imposition without a murmur.

An imposition the maxim is, of the most impudent
kind, in its ordinary use ; for a mere exception never
proved a rule ; and that it should do so is, in the very
nature of things, and according to the laws of right rea-
son, impossible. Consider a moment. How can the
fact that one man, or one thing, of a certain class, has cer-
tain traits or relations, prove that others of the same class
have opposite traits and other relations? A says, " I, and
C, and D, and X, and Y, and Z are white ; therefore all
-he other letters of the alphabet are white." " No, they
are not," B answers, " for I am black." " O, you are an
exception," A rejoins, " and the exception proves the
yule." And A and most of his hearers thereupon regard
the argument as concluded, at least for the time being.
The supposed example is an extreme one, but it serve*
none the less the purposes of fair illustration. For 01
what value, as evidence, upon the color ot the alphabet

APPENDIX.

435

a the fact that B is black? It merely shows that one
.etter is black, and that any other may be black, except
those which we know to be of some other color. But
of the color of the remaining twenty-three letters it tells
'is nothing; and so far from supporting the assertion that
because A, C, D, X, Y, and Z are white, all the other let-
ters are white, it warrants the inference that some of them
may be black also. And yet clay after day, for a hundred
and fifty years,* men of fair intelligence have gone on
thoughtlessly citing this maxim, and yielding to its au-
thority when used exactly as it is used in the case above
supposed.

For instance, the following passage is from a leading
article in the " New York Tribune : " —

" The business of printing books is now leaving the great
cities for more economical and more desirable locations. The
exceptions rather prove the rule than invalidate it."

How do the exceptions either prove or invalidate the
rule? In what way does the fact that there are some
printing offices in Boston, New York, and Philadelphia
prove that printers generally choose the smaller towns or
the country? Plainly, one of these facts has no relations
whatever to the other.

In u Loth air," Mr. Disraeli makes Hugo Bohun say
that he respects the institution of marriage, but thinks
that " every woman should marry, but no man," and to
the objection that this view would not work practically,
"eply, —

" Well, my view is a social problem, and social problems are
the fashion at present. It would be solved through the excep-
tions, which prove the principle. In the first place, there are
your swells, who cannot avo'd the halter — you are booked
when you are born ; and then there are moderate men, like
myself, who have their weak moments," etc , etc.

• The date of its first appearance in literature or the records of colloquial speech
[ do not profess to know ; but I cannot recollect an instance of its use earlier thai
tie day* of the Queen Anne essayists.

4.3^ WORDS AND THEIR USES.

Perhaps Mr. Bohun or Mr. Disraeli could explain how
the fact that the natures or the circumstances of some
men are such that they are likely to many " proves the
principle " that men should not marry. But >o the eye
of unassisted reason, it is merely evidence in favor of the
positive proposition, that whatever men should do, seme
will marry : it does nothing toward showing that other
men should, or should not, either marry or do anything
else. If the proposition were that only men of cer-
tain natures and circumstances should marry, and it
were found that in general only they did marry, there
would at least be a connection between the facts and
the proposition ; which, in Mr. Bohun's argument, there
is not.

The London " Spectator," in one of the few discrimi-
nating judgements that have recently been published of
Dickens's genius, thus supports the opinion that he was
unable to express the finer emotions naturally : —

" In the delineation of remorse he is, too, much nearer tke
truth of emotion than in the delineation of grief. True grief
needs the most delicate hand to delineate [it] truly. A touch
too much, and you perceive an affectation, and therefore miss
the whole effect of bereavement. But remorse, when it is
genuine, is one of the simplest of passions, and the most diffi-
cult to overpaint. Dickens, with his singular power of lavish-
ing himself on one mood, has given some vivid pictures of this
passion which deserve to live. Still, this is the exception,
which proves the rule. He can delineate remorse for murder,
because there is so little real limit to the feeling, so litt's dangei
Df passing from the true to the falsetto tone."

Now, in what way does the fact that Dickens had the
power of delineating one of the simple passions prove that
he had not the power of delineating the more complex ?
Plainly, it does nothing — can do nothing of the sort,
anless by the introduction, as a premise, of the postulate
that writers who can delineate simple passions cannot
delineate the complex ; which is not true, and which it

APPENDIX. 437

not implied. Such passages as this are mere examples
of the habit into which the most intelligent writers and
critics have fallen of regarding an exception not mere-
ly as an exception, a phenomenon which is the conse-
quence of exceptional conditions, and there an ends
but as a proof of the rule which they wish to establish.,
and which the " exception " would otherwise seem to
invalidate.

This habit has arisen, it would seem, out of a slight
perversion of a word. For, although an exception does not
and cannot prove a rule, the word exception being used
in its ordinary sense, the exception does prove the rule,
the word being used in its proper sense. The fallacious
use of the maxim is based on the substitution of a real
substantive, that is, a substantive meaning a thing, for a
verbal substantive, that is, a substantive meaning an act.
The maxim, as we have it, is merely a misleading trans-
lation of the old lav/ maxim, Exceptio probat regulam-^
which itself is, if not mutilated, at least imperfect. Now,
Exceptio probat rcgidam does not mean that the thing
excepted proves the rule, but that the excepting proves
the rule. Exceptio was translated, and rightly enough,
exception. But what was the meaning of that word
when the translation was made ? What is its primitive
meaning now? It is the act of excepting or excluding
from a number designated, or from a description. Ex-
ceptio in Latin, exception in English, means not a person
or a thing, but an act ; and it is this act which proves a
rule. But we, having come to use exception to mean
the person or the thing excepted, receive the maxim
as meaning, not that the excepting proves the rule, but
the person or thing excepted ; and upon this confusion
of words we graft a corresponding confusion of thought.
The maxim, in its proper signification, \s as true as it is
untrue in the sense in which it is now almost universally
used.

4-38 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

I have said that, if not mutilated, it is at least imper
feet. I am unable to cite an instance of its use in any
other form than that under which it is now known ; but
it exists in my mind, whether from memory or from an
unconscious filling up of its indicated outlines, in this
form : Except io probat rcgulam, de rebus non exceptis;
5. e., the excepting proves the rule concerning those things
which are not excepted. The soundness of the maxim
in this form, and the reason for its soundness, will be
apparent on a moment's consideration. Suppore that,
in z book of travels, we should find this passage : u Here
I saw large flocks of birds in the cornfields cawing and
tearing up the young corn. In one flock, two of these
birds were white." The conclusion warranted by this
account would be, that there were crows, or birds like
crows, in the country visited by the writer, and that these
crows were generally black. The writer would not have
said that the birds were black, but his exception of two
which were white would go to prove that, "as a rule"
(according to our idiom), the birds were black, or at least
not white. His exception of the two would prove the
rule as to the others. Exceptio probat regulam^ de rebus
non exceptis. Again, if we knew nothing about the ele-
phant, but were to learn that the King of Siam, when he
wished to ruin a courtier, distinguished him by sending
him a white elephant, — a present which he could not
"eftise, although the provision for the proper lodging of
the beast and attendance on him was sure to eat up a
private fortune, — we should be told nothing about ele-
phants in general ; yet we should know, without further
information, that they were dark colored, because of the
implied exception of the white elephant.

The maxim in question is akin to another recognized
in law : Exprcssio unius, exclusio alterius; i. e., the
expression of one (mode or person) is the exclusion of
mother. This maxim is no legal fiction or refinement

APPENDIX.

!t is dictated b} common sense, and is a guide of action
in daily life. If we see on the posters of a museum or a
circus, " Admission for children accompanying their par-
ents, Fifteen cents," we know at once that children with-
out their parents are either not admitted at all, or nv. st
pay full price. Children themselves act intuitively upon
the reasoning embodied in this maxim. If a parent or u
teacher should go to a room full of children, and say,
"John may come and take a walk with me," they would
know, without the telling, that all except John were ex-
pected to remain. They know this just as well as any
lawyer or statesman knows that, when a constitution pro-
vides for its own amendment in one way, that very provis-
ion was meant to exclude all other methods. The child
and the statesman both act in accordance with the maxim,
Expressio unhis, exclusio alterius. Both this maxim
and the one which is the subject of the present article are
founded upon the intuitive perception common to men
of all times and races, and which is developed, as we
have seen, in the very earliest exercise of the reasoning
powers, that an exclusive affirmation implies a corre-
sponding negation.

A rare modern instance of another and really logical
use of the maxim, that the exception proves the rule, is
furnished by Boswell in one of his trivial stories about
Doctor Johnson. It was disputed one evening, when the
Doctor was present, whether the woodcock were a mi-
gratory bird. To the arguments in favor of the theory
of migration, some one replied that argument was of
little weight against the fact that some woodcocks had
been found in a certain county in the depth of winter
Doctor Johnson immediately rejoined, " That supports
the argument. The fact that a few were found shows
that, if the bulk had not migrated, many would have
oeen found. Except io probat regulam"

Johnson himself affords another example of the same

WORDS AND THEIR USES.

use of the maxim. In the Preface to his edition of
Shakespeare's works, he opposes and ridicules those
critics who have supposed that they discovered in Shake-
speare imitations of ancient writers, and that these were
evidence of great learning. He says, —

" There are a few passages which may pass for imitations.
but so few that the exception only confirms the rule. He ob-
tained them from accidental quotation or by oral communica-
tion, and, as he used what he had, would have used more if he
had obtained it."

Yet another instructive example of the use of this
maxim is found in the following passage from Cowper'a
" Tirocinium, or Review of Schools : " —

" See volunteers in all the vilest arts,
Men well endowed with honorable parts,
Designed by Nature wise, but self-made fools;
All these, and more like these, were made at schools.
And if by chance, as sometimes chance it will,
That, though school-bred, the boy is virtuous still,
Such rare exceptions, shining in the dark,
Prove rather than impeach the just remark.
As here and there a twinkling star descried
Serves but to show how black is all besiue."

According to the common use of the maxim, the infer-
ence from this passage would be, that a few virtuous
school-bred men prove, not what they are evidence of,
that virtuous men may be bred at school, but that the
rule is, that school-breeding is dangerous to virtue ! But
they prove that, if they prove it at all, by " shining in the
dark ; " that is, the surrounding vileness points them out
as peculiar and solitary : it excepts them ; and this ex-
cepting (exceptio) as to them proves the rule as to the
mass.

The common use of this maxim is worthy only of
idiots, for it involves idiotic 'easoning ; a good example

APPENDIX. 44 1

»f which would be the application of the maxim to the
following criticism of two political conventions : —

" We dare say, if the truth were all known, there wcmld be little
to choose between the two conventions in point of morals or
manners. Doubtless there were high-minded and able gentle
men in both, but we fear such were the exception, and not thf
rule."

Now, if the exception proves the rule, those excep-
tions, that is, those high-minded and able gentlemen
would of themselves be evidence that the rest were not
able and high-minded. Another characteristic example
would be the following: — It is declared that all men are
totally depraved. But we find that A is not totally de-
praved. But this only shows that A is an exception, and
his not being totally depraved proves the rule of total
depravity. That such an application of the maxim should
be made day after day for generations among people of
.noderate sense is striking evidence, on the one hand, of
the way in which the modification of meaning in a word
may cause a perversion of an established formula of
thought ; and, on the other, of the supineness with which
people will submit to the authority of a maxim which
sounds wise and has the vantage-ground of age, partic-
ularly if they cannot quite understand it, and it saves
them the trouble of thinking. Let any man invent such
a maxim, and use well good opportunities of asserting it,
and he may be pretty sure that his work, if not himself,
will attain a very considerable degree of what is called
immortality. The failure of such a maxim to be accepted
as conclusive would be a sign ef the decline of that peculiar
mode of reasoning which would insist upon this failure
itself as an exception that proved the rule to which it did
not conform, and of the reestablishment of that other
mode which claims that, in general, the excepting proves
the rule concerning that which is not excepted.

14.2 WORDS AND THEIR USES

II.

CONTROVERSY.

PERHAPS the following letter, which was published
in "The Round Table" of Febniary 27, 1869, and
the reply, which appeared in the next number of the
same paper, may interest, or at least amuse, some of the
readers of this volume. I may say here without impro-
priety, I hope, that the articles on Words and their Uses
which appeared in " The Galaxy " were, as is customary
with me, written in haste and under the pressure of a cry
for copy from the printing office. Although the series
extended through two years, not one of them was begun
before that cry was heard, or was ready one hour before
the last minute when the article could be received ; and
the manuscript was sent off to the printer with the ink
damp upon the last page. It was put in type that day,
and the next was stereotyped. Throughout the whole
series I did not rewrite a single page, or, I believe, a sin-
gle sentence. I generally saw a proof, which I corrected
at my business office within the hour of its receipt ; bu*
sometimes I did not. One of those cases in which I did
not see a proof was made the occasion of the following
communication. I do no* offer this confession as an
excuse or defence of any essential error. A critic car
concern himself only with what is produced : he canno'
take into consideration the circumstances of its produc
lion, even if he knows them. It would have been wel'
if the articles had been written more deliberately, and
corrected more carefully ; but had I waited till I coulo

APPENDIX. 443

do that, they would, in all probability, not have been
written at all ; which alternative is doubtless the one that
would have been preferred by my censor. In choosing
a specimen of the attacks to which these articles subjected
me (from all of which I tried to learn something, but to
only two or three of which I made any reply), I have
taken his, because he was very much the ablest and most
learned of my critics : —

STAND-POINT, ETC.

To THE EDITOR OF THE ROUND TABLE.

SIR : I noticed in your issue of January 9 a letter from
"J. B." upon the word stand-point, condemning it as an
exploded heresy, and moralizing upon the " total depravity
of human nature " which after such an explosion could
still countenance the heresy. Your correspondent informs
the world that " Mr. White recently in the " Galaxy," and
Mr. Gould, at greater length, in " Good English," have
thoroughly analyzed and exposed " " the literary abor-
tion." Such language, so unlike that of a man of schol-
arship or culture, led me to think that perhaps your
correspondent did not know very much of etymology
after all, and that his pitying contempt might be nothing
more than a cloak for sciolism or ignorance. So, being
somewhat interested in the fate of the word stand-point,
I gave "J. B.'s" letter a second reading, and found my
suspicions verified. He says, —

" The two words stand and point cannot be grammatically
joined together ; the first word must be changed to a participle in
order to make them legally united. Stand/w^-point is English."

From this it is evident that "J. B." thinks the former
half of the word standing-point to be a participle ; so
also of turning-point, landing-place, etc. What will
he say when it is suggested to him that in each of these
compounds'the former element is a substantive, and not
B participle, and that a participle placed before a noun in

f44 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

English, whether to form a compound or not, always
qualifies the noun — becomes, in fact, an adjective?
Jump ing-jack, dancing-girl, are examples of com
pounds formed of a qualifying participle and a noun, fof
dancing-girl means a girl who dances. Stumbling-
block, on the contrary, does not mean a block that stum-
bles, nor does turning-point mean a point that turns, or
landing-place a place that lands. The words mean re-
spectively a block which causes stumbling (stumbling is
used as a noun i John ii. 10), a point at which turning
(or a turn) takes place, a place for landing (zrrdisembar-
kation). On the same analogy is formed the word stand-
ing-point, which means not a point which stands, but a
point where one takes his stand, standing being a noun,
and not a participle. But stand, as the phrase " takes
his stand" shows, is as good a noun as standing, and
has the additional advantage of not being ambiguous, as
the latter is. " J. B.," however, evidently thinks that in
the word stand-poiat, stand must necessarily be part of
a verb, inasmuch as he talks about turning it into a par-
ticiple. Now he must know, for he has read Mr. White's
remarks in the Galaxy, that stand-point is an Anglicized
form of the German Standpunkt. If he were acquainted
with German, he would know that in that word the for-
mer element. Stand, is a noun ; were it a verb, the word
would be Stehpunkt, on the analogy of Drehbank, Wohn-
•zimmer, and so forth. This being so, why, if we may
say play-ground, bath-room, death-bed, may we not say
stand-point? Even supposing the former half were a
verb, why might we not admit the compound on the
analogy of go-cart, wash-tub, thresh-old, dye-house)
So much for the form of the word. But "J. B.'' pro
ceeds : —

" Standing-point is English; but the difficulty with that is,
lhat nohodv can be fooled into believing that it means ' point ol
view.' Hence it cannot replace stand-point, -which people foo
themselves into believing does mean ' point of view.' "

APPENDIX. 445

S'ow, it is well to remark that point of view is not an
indigenous English expression any more than stand-
point is. It is simply a verbal translation of the French
point de vue, and cannot plead analogy in justification
of its adoption to the same extent as stand-point can
View-point or viewing-point would be more correct.
[ am aware that we can say point of attack; but that,
also, is a translation of the French point d'attaque. So
far, then, as the origin and form of the expressions stand'
point and point of view are concerned, stand-point has
a decided advantage. It is also the more convenient ex-
pression, and the only thing, therefore, that remains to
be decided with regard to it is, whether it gives any in-
telligible signification. When I say, " Viewed from a
scientific stand-point, it is false " ( Vom wissenschaftli-
chen Standpunkt angesehen, ist es falscli), what do I
mean ? Simply, " Viewed from the position occupied
by science, it is false." Here stand-point has not the
meaning of point of view ; and, indeed, I doubt whether
it ever has precisely. There is no other word in the
English language that will exactly express the meaning
of stand-point, as any one may convince himself by try-
ing to express otherwise the phrase, " The stand-point
of philosophy is different from that of science." " The
philosophical point of view is different from the scientific "
has quite a different signification.

After convincing myself of the inaccuracy of "J. B.';s"
remarks on the word stand-point, I thought I should like
to know what Mr. White had to say about it. Accord,
iiigly, I procured a copy of the number of the Galaxy
containing the article in which his remarks on the word
occur. These I found very temperate, and I regretted
that I could not agree with him. But when I came to
rer.d the rest of his article, I found so many indications
of want of profound knowledge and scholar-like accuracy,
ttifti '. bade my regrets farewell. To give an instance 01

WORDS AND THEIR USES.

two. In speaking of the word telegram, which he doei
not seem to know is altogether an incorrect formation,
he says, —

"If engrave (from en and grapho) gives us rightly engrave*
and engraving, photograph or photograve should give us pho-
tographer and photographing, and telegraph, telegrapher, and
telegraph ing. "

This would be true if engrave did come from iv and
y^iqrw/ but it does not, and only a person profoundly
ignorant of English etymology could have supposed that
it did. In the first place, the existence of the verb grave
as a verb (see Chaucer, '; Tiuiius and Creseide," Book II.,
Proeme, line 47, " Eke some men grave in tre, som in
stone wall." Ibid, Book III., line 1468, etc.) and the
form of the participle engraven might have sufficed to
convince Mr. White that the word engrave was of Saxon
origin. A very common verb in Anglo-Saxon is grafan
(conj. grafe, grof,grafen), e.g., Psalm Ixxvii. 58 [Eng-
lifh version Ixxviii. 58] : —

" Sva hi Iiia .yire oil aveahtan,
f>onne hi oferhydig up-ahofan
and him vohgodu vorhtan and grdfatt"

Theformsg-raueand igrauen occur in 'L
grauea, graucn (and graucd) in Middle-English, and
grave, graved, graven (and. graved) in Modern English.
It is only in comparatively recent times that the compound
engrave has replaced the simple verb. It is no doubt
true that grave is from the same root as yo^m, but that
is quite a different thing from saying that it is derived
from yo<jL(f:(a. It is the same as the Moeso-Gothic gralan
(see Ulfilas, Luke vi. 48. Galeiks 1st mann timijandiu
razn. saei grob jah gadiupida, etc.), Old Saxon bigraban,
Old Frankish greva (whence modern French graver),
Swedish grdfva, graf, Danish grave, German graban,
Spanish grabar. I hope this is sufficient to show tha

APPENDIX. 447

the word engrave is not of Greek origin. But apart
from these considerations, Mr. White ought to have known
at what period Greek words began to be transferred di-
rectly into English. In the year 1500 there were proba-
bly but four men in all England who knew anything of
Greek.

Under the head of Enquire, Enclose, Endorse, Mr.
White says, —

" A much-respected correspondent urges the condemnation of
these words, and the advocacy of their disuse, because they are
respectively from the Latin inquire, inclttdo, and in dorsum, and
*i.votAd, therefore, be written inquire, inclose, indorse. He is in
error. They are, to be sure, of Latin origin, but remotely ; they
came to us directly from the French enquirer, encloser, and en-
dosser"

There is, no doubt, a verb endosser, but who ever heard
of such monstrosities as enquirer and encloser? Only
writers who, in their ignorance of French and of the
primary principles of etymology, coin them out of their
own brain. The French verbs corresponding to enquire
and enclose are enquerir and enclore. These are writ-
ten with various orthographies, it is true, but never as Mr.
White writes them. His remark notwithstanding, Chau-
cer and his contemporaries wrote enqucst, enquere, sel-
dom enqtiyre.

Mr. White very modestly confesses, —

"My having in Sanskrit, like Orlando's beard, is a youngei
brother's revenue — what I can glean from the well-worked fields
of my etders and betters."

That he might have said as much, or even more, of his
English and French, judging them by the particular arti-
cle under consideration, I think I have shown abundantly.

I am almost tempted to leave his Latin unimpeached, to
spare him " the most unkindest cut of all ; " but I cannot

II a perdu son latin. Un jei the head of the word Re>
liable, he says, —

27

WORDS AND THEIR USES.

" This view of laughable seems to be supported by the fad
that the counterpart of that adjective, risible, is not formed from
the verb rideo — to laugh (although, of course, derived from it);
but from the noun risum — a laugh, or laughter."

I should like to ask Mr. White, first, whether he knows
that ridto means I laugh at as well as I laugh', second,
whether he does not know that adjectives in bills are
sometimes formed from the stem of the supine as well a?
from that of the present of verbs ; third, in what Latis
author he ever found the noun risum, meaning a laugh oi
laughter ; fourth, what risibilis means in Latin.

It would be easy to show ignorance of languages on
the part of public instructors by many more examples,
but I think the above will suffice to make evident the fact
that their knowledge is often of the flimsiest kind. There
are, unfortunately, in this country a large number of pe.
sons who get a reputation for learning simply because
they have the presumption to write on learned subjects ;
their statements pass among the multitude unchallenged,
because the country lacks a learned class, which, by its
very presence, might deter sciolists from disgracing them-
selves by exhibitions of ignorance and presumption. I
wait and hope for better tilings.

Yours very faithfully, & 4

January 30, 1*69.

MR. GRANT WHITE CONFESSES.

To THE EDITOR OF THE ROUND TABLE.

SIR : The " Round Table " of February 27, which
reached me only this morning, contains a communica-
tion, the purpose of which is, first, to maintain that stand-
point is a nice English compound, and last (this being
ihe gist of the matter), to make the little argument oa
stand-point the start-point of a tilt against me, overthrow*
ing entirely my credit for knowledge of Latin, French,
English, and other things in general, and ending in •

APPENDIX. 449

denunciation of "the public instructors" and " the mul
titiule" of "this country;" which goal, when comforta-
bly reached, is my assailant's sit-point.

That your readers may know whom I mean, I will say
that the article to which I refer is signed with the strange
characters " O 4" which, as nearly as I am able to dis-
cover, are two Greek letters, named theta and delta.
Even to a person less ignorant than I am, these charac-
ters would only conceal the identity of an assailant who
calls me out by my own name. But perhaps hb hid his
full terrors in kindness to me, or it did not suit his own
purpose to let me know who it is that is hunting me foi
the amusement of the public ; for in the latter case I
might have seen that I was what the more learned boys
at my school called a " fov xw" and have come down at
once, thus spoiling sport.

As to stand-point, I shall have no dispute with him.
I shall merely ask to be allowed to say " from a scientific
point of view," instead of " viewed from a scientific stand-
point," and "the position of philosophy," instead of "the
stand-point of philosophy." But I hope that it will not
be looked upon by " O /I " as an instance of my presump-
tion, that I protest against his telling "J. B." that he
" must know,ybr he has read Mr. White's remarks in
the Galaxy, that stand-point is an Anglicized form of
the German Stand-punkt" That I said no such thing
as to the origin of the compound in question, will be seen
oy this repetition from the " Galaxy " of what I did say : —

" STAND-POINT. — To say the best of it, this is a poor com-
pound. It receives some support, but not full justification, from
the German Stand-punkt"

" & 4 " may think that because two similar word-corn-
L'inalions or phrases exist in two languages, one must be
formed by a mere phonetic cnange (in this case an An-
^licization) of the other. Such is not my view of the
formation of language. If your correspondent will con-

4-50 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

fiult some elementary philological work, he will learu
that like forms of expressioi are found in languages which
are not only without kindred, but without contact ; and
that such forms, being developed according to menta.
laws common to the race, are said to support each other.
Your correspondent again misrepresents me by saying
that I do not seem to know " that telegram is altogether
an incorrect formation." Here is what I did say : —

"TELEGRAM. — This word, claimed as an 'American' inven*
tion, has taken root quickly, and is probably well fixed in the
language. It is convenient, and is correctly enough formed to
pass muster."

I have mistaken the force of my language if it did not
convey to my readers, every one of them, that in my
judgement telegram is an incorrectly formed word, but
that the irregularity is of a kind not worth making a point
about.

"0 4 " says, in relation to my remarks on the etymol-
ogy of enquire, enclose, and endorse, —

"There is, no doubt, a verb endosser, but who ever heard of
such monstrosities as enquirer and encloser? Only writers who,
in their ignorance of French and of the primary principles of
etymology, coin them out of their own brain."

Certainly I neither heard nor coined them. The mere
turning to " Webster's Unabridged " would have saved me
from such a blunder. " 0 ^/'s " letter seems like the fruit
of a frequent consultation of that work, the learning of
which may be had by any one in a few minutes for a few
dollars, even in a copy, like mine, of the old edition.
To say nothing of knowledge, I must have been very
lazy, or very imprudent, not to turn to that cheap " cram,"
if I did nothing more. I wrote enquerir, enclore, and
endosser.*

* The mode and spirit of this critic's attacks— I will not say their purpose, for
Kncerely believe that lie did not mean to be dishonest — may be inferred from the ba
lh*t he again held me rp as a i/retemioi J ignoramus because in the passage quoteo

APPENDIX. 451

Having ruthlessly shown that I know nothing of En£-
jsh, or French, or "the primary principles of etymcV
ogy," he is " almost tempted " to let me oft* without fin
ther exposure. But an opinion I hazarded upon the for
mation of laughable is too much for his self-denial, and
he says of me, "// a $erdu son latin" 1 cannot be
sufficiently grateful for the tenderness and the delicacy
that led him to couch in a language unknown to me the
terroi s of the sentence it became his duty to pronounce.
But the designs of benevolence are sometimes defeated,
and the mysteries of learning are not always impenetra-
ble. I have discovered — in what way is my own secret
— that the meaning of this awful denunciation is, that I
have lost my Latin.* But even here is hidden balm ; even
here, benign concession. What I have lost I must once
have had. I confess that I have lost something, perhaps
without compensating gain, since a body of learned men
sent me out from them with a certificate that I was an
ingenuous youth, of faultless morals, imbued with humane
tetters. (If they had but known what they were doing !)
But nevertheless I shall endeavor to answer these abstruse
questions : —

" I should like to ask Mr. White, first, whether he knows that
video means I laugh at as well as 1 laugh ; secoYid, whether he
does not know that adjectives in tilt's are sometimes formed

from "Gil Bias" (p. 321 of this volume) sans, t&moigna, <ftt', (tait, and content*
were printed in "The Galaxy" dans, tenwigna, y', etait, and content. It would
seem that a minute's reflection would have shown him that as I must have written out
the passage from the original, I had only to copy the letters that were before me, and
•>e surely correct, even if I were as ignorant of French a- I am of the language of the
Man in the Moon.

* My judge does not quote the words in which he condemns me, perhaps because
he assumed that all his readers would know their origin. Of this, perhaps, I alone
imong them am ignorant. The earliest use of the phrase '.hat I remember is in the
following passage of the "Recueil General des Caquets de I'Accouchfe." 1625.

" Que voulez vous ma Commere, dit une Rousse du mesme »**ier, ainsi va la fortune,-
. un monte, 1'autre descend : pour moy ie ne 1'ay iamais esprouv^ favorable & mes da-
iirs, i'ay dix enfans en nostre logis, don' !e plus grand n'a que xij ans, il me met hors du
lens, i'avois fait venir un Pedan de TU'iiversit^ pour le tenir en bride: mais il y
perdu son latin, il [s] seront en fin contraints d'aller deraacder I'aumofine si le tempi
•fi." — La Second* Joumie. p. 6a.

4-52 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

from tl,e stem of the supine as well as from that of the present
of verbs; third, in what Latin author he ever found the noun
risum, meaning a laugh or laughter; fourth, what ristbilis meant
in Latin."

I do, or did, know that the secondary meaning of rideo
is to laugh at, to deride. I do, or did, know that adjectives
in bills are not only sometimes, but often, formed upon the
stem of the supine ; but also that they are sometimes
made from nouns. Risibilis (which I have heaid it
whispered is not the best Latin) is, of course, the coun-
terpart of risible, or was when I went to school ; and as
to risum, at that time I met with the following line in a
Latin author — Horace — who was held up to me as a
poet of some repute : —

" Spectatum admissi risum teneatis amici?"

and this risum I translated, without reproach, " laugh-
ter ; " parsing it as the accusative case or objective form
of risus. Horace asked the question in regard to the
picture of " a meermaiden vot hadn't god nodings on,"
which some Roman Barnum seems to have exhibited in
the Forum ; but it has since been applied to other spec-
tacles, as " & 4 " may find on the publication of the next
" Round Table."

It is upon engrave, however, and my passing assump-
tion that its origin is en and grapho, that your corre-
spondent lays himself most largely out, here seeming to
put avi that he knows into one article — something I never
do if I can help it. To prove, what I cast no doubt upon,
that th? word grave is to be found in Teutonic tongues
at a period before the revival of learning, he musters the
Anglo-Saxon, the Old Saxon, the Prankish, Swedish,
Danish and German forms of the word. Here, indeed,
is an immense display of erudition ; which, alas ! is some-
thing quite beyond me, as, again, all this is in that blessed
and wonderful book " Webster's Unabridged," which is a

APPENDIX. 453

rery present help in time of trouble to gentlemen who
wish to appear learned in etymology — a book which I
confess, with tears, that I have shamefully neglected, and
with a painful sense of wasted opportunities, when I see
the prodigious erudition that its perusal has developed in
the other boy. I am also told that Chaucer uses grave
in such phrases as " some men grave in tre," which, to a
man who, having read Chaucer for pleasure from his boy-
liood, has within the last six months re-read every word
of him and of Gower carefully and critically, is valuable,
nay, invaluable information.

My executioner also piously finds a grave for me in
sacred ground — Ulfilas's Mreso-Gothic translation of the
Gospels — a very interesting and philologically instructive
remnant of early Christian scholarship, the many lacunae
in which are much to be deplored. But the example
cited by " 0 ^/," " saei grob jah gadiupida," is not the
happiest he might have chosen, as it presents only the
strong preterite of the Moeso-Gothic verb, with a change
of the vowel. The following seems more to the purpose :
" grab an ni mag, bidyan skatna mik" Luke xvi. 3) ; i. e.y
I may not dig, to beg shames me. For grave seems al
ways to have meant, to dig, to make a hole, to scratch.
Very long before the time of Ulfilas and his Mceso-Goths,
Homer used it in the Iliad. First thus : —

" rpa<£aj fv im/B/ct jirurry OvpoipOipa jroAAd." — Z., 1. 169.

Here yQ&yas it> nlvnxi means, writing upon a tablet ;
but in the next passage in which grave occurs, it means,
to scratch deep, to wound : —

" BiJ/ro ydp tapov iovpl, npoa<t> Terpa^/tevos aid,
"A/cpov IxtllylitjV •yptytv &f ol farif a^pij
IlovlviapavTas." — P., 1. 599.

Here I'qbyev dt ol Gviiov a/Qig means, pierced to the
bone. Thus, even in Greek, to write, /. e., scratch in
wax, seems to be only the secondary meaning of g

4-54 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

which has not changed its signification or its form tor
three thousand years, and which, in my ignorance, 1
think, went, with other words and some letters, westward
and northward through Dacia into Western Europe.

My Greek initialed censor says I " ought to have known
at what time Greek words began to be transferred directly
into English." I confess I ought, for I learned it long
ago ; and he tells me that in the year 1500 there were
probably but four men in England who knew anything
of Greek. In very deed I had heard something of this
kind before ; and I connected with it the fact that the
word engrave does not appear in English before that
time. The old English-formed participle graven I know,
but the English-formed participle engraven I do not
know in literature three hundred and fifty years old. I
am inclined to the opinion, not only that grave is a direct
descendant, as it is a perfect counterpart, of 7?<igcw, but
that the appearance of engrave in English is a conse-
quence of an acquaintance with the Greek compound
tfyoijufu; just as (to cite an extreme case in illustration),
although we find asperge in French, spargen in Old-
German, and spcrage in English before the year 1500,
asparagus, not known in English before that date, is a
direct descendant and counterpart of the Greek doTrci^ayos,

The editor of the " Round Table," with courteous jus-
tice, offers me the opportunity of defending myself. Far
be it from me to do so. Rather, lest I should be justly
placed, to use the words of my accuser, among " that
large number of persons" who, " in this country," "get
a reputation for learning merely because they have the
presumption to write on learned subjects," let me at once
confess my utter ignorance of the subject on which I have
been writing. Yet it was not until I had read the " Round
Table " this morning that I fully appreciated the flagran-
cy, ths bra/enness, of my imposture. Nevertheless, may
it not be accepted as a plea in misericord iam that I make

APPENDIX. 455

no pretension to the " profound learning " of my accuser,
but only to some knowledge, yet very imperfect, of the
English language?

I have, however, managed to discover, as I think, by
the aid of a gentleman who hath the tongues, and whose
services I have secured, at an enormous expense, for this
occasion only, what the Greek characters of your corre-
spondent's signature " 0 ^ " stand for. They are, prob-
ably, 1 am told, the initial letters of Q&QOTOS 4vaxo).ovt
meaning fastidious confidence, or, in the simple English,
more becoming to, one like me, and more to my taste,
peevish boldness.

Your correspondent has now the field to himself.
Having confessed all that he has accused me of, I assure
him that it shall be his fault if I trouble him hereafter
I am, sir, your obedient servant,

RICHARD GRANT WHITE.

BAY RIOGM, THK NAUOWS, L. L, March i, 1869.

INDEX.

A, broad ah sound of, 62.
abortive, 85.
accommodated, 34.
accouchement, 178.
accountable, 228.
a-doing, 343.
Adjectives, 203.
Adjectives in en, 259.
adopt, 86.
affable, 86.
aftermath, 387.
after-thought, 387.
againbite of inwit, 21.
aggravate, 87.
agree, 380.
agreeable, 380.
agriculturalist, 215.
ah-am, 242.
airs, 171.
ale-house, 154.
alike, 88.
Alford, Dean, 44.
tllude, 89.
allow, 90.
a-making, 343.
amenities, 33.
American English, 8, 44.
American style, 47.
tnchorable, 225.

and so forth, 209.

animal, 91.

answerable, 228.

antecedent, 91.

appear, 380.

Apple, 378.

apple-butter, 3781

apple-John, 378.

apple-slump, 378.

approve, 380.

apt, 92, 97.

Aristotle, 356.

arm, 380.

armory, 132.

article, 143.

artist, 93.

as, 136.

Ascham's " Schoolmaster," 341

as well, 184.

ate, 143.

authoress, 204.

auxiliary verbs, 310.

available, 227.

aviary, 132. '

awful, 162, 185.

axed, 17.

B.

Bad, 242.
bade, 120.

457

INDEX.

Bailey's Dictionary, 365.'

bakery, 132.

balance, 94.

banquet, 378.

banquet-halls, 378.

banqucting-room, 378-

banting, 201.

bar-room, 154.

Barrow, 344.

basin, 83.

battlemented, 114.

*>e, 242, 353.

bear, 115.

become, 124.

beggary, 132.

begun, 119, 120.

being built, 338.

being done, 7.

belfry, 132.

ben, 17.

Beranger, 29.

beseeched, 123.

betide, 236.

bidden, 120.

Big words for small thoughts, 28.

bindery, 132.

bird, 231.

bishop, 367.

blacksmith, 387.

blasphemy, 104.

blew, 121.

Bolingbroke, 340.

joth, 88, 261.

bountiful, 94.

bowl, 83.

Brazen, 259, 261.

breakfast, 386.

breakfast- room, 377.

ureakfast-time, 377.

bren, 231.

ore w- house, 232.

brid, 231.

bring, 95.

Briticisms, borne, 183.

British English, 8, 44.
i broad ah sound of a, 62.
i brother, 230.

bub, 230.

bub and bubby, 230.

Bunyan, 64.

burn, 231.

buttery, 132.

c.

Cablegram, 234.

Calculate, 96.

calibre, 97.

cant, 85.

captain, 152.

caption, 98.

captivate, 98.

case, 317.

casemated, 114.

casuality, 229.

casualty, 229.

catch, 99.

catched, 123.

Caxton, 16.

cerse, 231.

character, 99.

chastity, 100.

Chaucer's "well of English on

defiled," 20.
chemise, 176.
child, 179.
Christmastide, 236.
Christtide, 236.
Cicely, 230.
Cicero, 27.
Cis, 230.

230.

INDEX.

459

citizen, zoo.

clarionet, 101.

clayen, 261.

coldine, 213.

comfortable, 223.

commence, 185.

common, 172.

companionable, 223.
explainable, 225.

complete, 170.

composite character of Eng-
lish, 393.

compounds with prefixes and
suffixes, 379.

compound words, 386.

confectionary, 132.

confined, 178.

conjunction, 324.

connection, 133.

conscience, 21.

consider, 101.

Constitution of the United
States, 36.

consummate, 102.

tontend, 141.

continence, 100.

continental damn, 231, 394.

Continentals, 396.

controversialist, 215.

convene, 103.

conversationalist 215.

convinced, 145.

convoke, 103.

cook-stove, 232.

copper-smith, 387.

copula, 355.

Cotton's Montaigne, 345.

counter-act, 387.

counterfeit, 387.

couple, 102.

covetousness. IOA..

cranberry, 378.
crime, 104.
criticism, 26.
crockery, 132.
Cromwell, Oliver, 13.
Crusoe, Robinson, 572.
currant, 378.

D.

Decimated, 105.

defalcation, 106.

default, 106.

definitions, 368.

Defoe, 372.

despair, 216.

diagrams, 223, 389.

Dickens, 339.

dictionaries, authority ,of, 366.

Dictionaries, English, 364.

Dictionary, Bailey's, 364.

Dictionary, Johnson's, 373.

Dictionary, plan of, 384.

did, 1 20.

digged, 123.

dining, 377.

dining-room, 377.

directly, 186.

dirt, 106.

dis> 379> 38o.

disable, 386.

disagree, 380.

disagreeable, 380.

disappear, 380.

disapprove, 380.

disarm, 380.

disease, 386.

disinter, 386.

disposable, 225.

disremember, 150.

dister, 186.

INDEX.

distrust, 380.
divine, 106.
do, 1 20.
dock, 107.
donate, 205, 229.
donation, 229.
done, 1 20.
done gone, 350.
Don Quixote, 348.
downward, 211.
drank, 121.
dress, 107.
drive, 192.
drunk, 121.

E.

Ecphractick, 382.

editorial, 109.

effectuate, 141.

eg, 242.

eggs, 17.

ego, 242.

either, 261.

either and neither, 261.

electropathy, 212.

en, 239, 240.

enceinte, 177.

enclose, 206.

endorse, 206.

endure, 115.

English, composite character

of, 393-

English Dictionaries, 364.
English, pure, 19.
English sentence, 280.
enquire, 206.
enthused, 207.
epigram, 233.
epigraph, 233.
esquire, 109.

L'etat, c'est moi, 250.
etymology, 7, 279, 367, 39C.
evacuate, 109.
eventuate, 141.
ever, 379.
ever-acting, 379.
evergreens, 216.
ever-living, 379.
ever-running, 379.
every, no.
ewer, 83.
example, 112.
excellent, 112.
except, 112, 216.
executed, in.
exemplary, 113.
exist, 306, 353.
expect, .112.
experience, 112.
experienced, jij.
experiment, 113.
experimentalize, 214.
exponential, 217.
extend, 115.
extraordinary, 379.
eyren, 17.

F.

Fall, 369.
fashionable, 223.
father, 62.
female, 179.
female relation, 134,
fellowship, 209, 32i<
fetch, 95.
fiddle-bow, 387.
fiddle-stick, 387.
fiddle-string, 387.
figures, 389.
first rate, 257.

INDEX.

40!

flee, 11$.
Florio, 352
flown, 123.

fly, "5-

forcible, 223.
Forster, John, 48.
forward, 211.
Froude, 48.

G.

Gambling, 104.

gat, 121.

gender, 319.

General, 152.

gent, 211.

gentleman, 180.

get, 116.

Gil Bias, 321.

glass, 62.

go-cart, 232.

gold, 372.

golden, 259, 261.

gold-smith, 387.

good, 109, 242.

goods, 143.

gotten, 118.

government, 296.

governments, 203.

Gower, 122.

gown, 108.

gram, 234.

Grammar, English and Latin,

274, 276.

Grammarless Tongue, 295.
graph, 234.
gratuitous, 124.
grocery, 132.
groggerv, 1^2.
grow, 124.
frown, 123.

gubernatorial, 21;.
gums, 5.

H.

Hall, Bishop,34O.
have, 35, 117.
Hawthorne, 46.
head, 376.
heart, 376.
help, 125, 126.
help-meet, 126.
her, 246.
hers, 246.
herself, 251.
himself, 247, 249
his-self, 249.
Hob, 230.
honorable, 152.
horse, 376.
humane, 127.
humanitarian, 127.
hydropathy, 212.

I.

I, 242, 243.

I am going to town to-morrow

305-

I go to town to-morrow, 305.
ice-cream, 127.
ice- water, 127.
ich, 242.
idleness, 105.
ik, 242.
ill, 109, 196.
impassionable, 33.
in'ards, 387.
inaugurate, 34, 128.
indorse, 129.
Indian-opathist, 212.

4.62

INDEX.

infinitive mood, 307.

infirmary, 132.

inflection, 280.

influence of language, 5.

initiate, 128.

inmates, 129.

inquirable, 225.

inst., 169.

integrity, 33.

inter, 386.

intercess, 229.

intercessed, 202.

intercession, 229.

intrinsecate, 221.

introduce, 147.

inwit, againbite of, 21.

irregular orthography, 385

iron-hearted, 372.

Is being done, 334.

ist, 214.

it is me, 250.

its, 241, 244.

itself, 251.

ize. 214.

J-

Jar, 82.

jeopardize, 214.

Jew, 130.

Jewel, Bishop, 339.

jewelry, 131.

iewry, 132.

Joan, 230.

Johnson, Dr., 340.

Johnson's Dictionary, 373.

joint-stock-company, 387.

joint-stock-company- limited,

387,
fonson's (Ben) Grammar, 334.

tug, 82.

juvenile, 107.
juxtapose, 258.

King, 14.
kinsman, 133.
kinswoman, 134.

L.

Lady, 180.
landed, 114.

language, influence of, 5.
last, 62.

Latin elements of modern Eng-
lish, 20.

Latin sentence, 280.
laughable, 223.
laundry, 132.
lay, 116, 134, 158.
leaden, 259.
leader, 109.
leading article, 109.
leathern, 259.
leave, 109, 134.
leg, 181.
leisurable, 223.
lethal, 31.

lexicon of a foreign tongue, 384
liable, 92.
library, 132.
lie, 116, 134, 158.
like, 136, 138.
likely, 92, 97.
limb, 181.
liveable, 228.
)ive through, 115.
loan, 137.
locals, 203.
.ocate, I3&

INDEX.

love, ii 8, 138.
Lowell, 45.
lui, 250.
lui-mfime, 250

M.

Macaulay, 339.

Mahan, Dr., 368.

manufacturer, 139.

marriageable, 223.

marry, 139.

Marsh, 46, 264.

Maxima debetur puero reveren-

tia, 284.
mealtide, 236.
meet, 126.
mention, 89.
mew, 123.

militate, 141. '

milk, 375.
Milton, 340.
mis, 379.
misrecollect, 150.
mistook, 1 20.
Misused Words, 80.
Mohammedanism, 388.
.iioi, 250.
moi-mfime, 250.
Moll, 230.
moneyed, 114.
monogram, 233
monograph, 233.
monthly, 107.
Mormonism, 3?8.
Morte d'Arthur, 210.
now, 122.
murder, 105.
•ly-self, 249.

28

N.

Nadir, 383.
nasty, 198.
ne, 17.

necessitate, 141.
neighborhood, 172.
neither, 261.
newspaper, 4.
newspaper, English, z&.
normal, 34.

o.

Oak, 372.

oaten, 259.

obituary, 107.

objectionable, 223.

obnoxious, 142.

observe, 142.

obsoleteness, 385.

o'err«», 120.

oppose, 141.

orthography, 279, 390.

orthography, irregular, 385.

our, 246.

ours, 246.

ourselves, 249.

outer, 170.

out-take, 216.

ovations, 86.

over the signature, 190.

overshoes, 5.

P.

Painter, 93.
pants, 211.
paragraph, 233.
Parsons's lines upon a bust of
Dante, 289.

4-64

INDEX.

part, 145.
partially, 143
partly, 143.
partook, 143.
party, 143.
pastor, 62.
patron, 144.
pea, 247.
pell-mell, 145.
perfect, 170.
persuaded, 145.
petroleum, 215.
philosophic, 107
photogram, 234.
piers, 107.
piety, 150.
pise, 247.
pison, 246.
pitcher, 82.
place, 138.
poetess, 204.
point of view, 233
polysyndeton, 383.
Pope, 119.
porringer, 83.
portion, 145.
posted, 129.
pot, 82.
pottery, 132.
practitioner, 216.
predicate, 6, 146.
prefixes and suffixes, com-
pounds with, 379.
present, 147.
presidential, 217.
preventative, 229
preventive, 229.
proceed, 129.
progress, 33.
pronouns, 239.
pronouns, antiquity of, 3fi

pronunciation, 391.
proper names, 388.
prosody, 279.
prove, 115, 118.
proven, 118, 220.
provincial words, 388.
prox., 169.

pueri amabant puellam, 181
pure English, 19.

Q;

Quadriphyllous, 382.
quite, 147.
Quixote, Don, 348-

R.

Railroad Depot, 148.

ratiocinate, 141.

real estate, 150.

recollect, 150.

receptions, 86.

recover, 129.

recuperate, 129.

regard, 102.

relation, 133.

reliable, 220.

religion, 150.

remit, 151.

remorse of conscience, 21.

repudiate, 129.

reputation, 99.

residence, 129.

restive, 152.

resurrected, 229.

resurrection, 229.

retire, 182.

reverend, 153.

ride, 192.

right, 194.

INDEX.

465

-iparian, 216.
Rob, 230.
Robin, 230.
rode, 121.
rooster, 182.
rose, 1 20.
rubbers, 5.
run* 369> 370-

S.

Sample-room, 7, 154.
sanctuary, 129.
sat, 134.
Savage, 120.
say, 89, 142.
Scaliger, 27.
school-books, 397.
sea, 377.
seasonable, 223.
section, 155.
see, 175.
self, 248, 378^
send, 151.
sentence, 280, 355.
set, 116, 134.
settle, 138, 191.
sew, 123.

Shakespeare, 372.
shall and will, 264,
shamefaced, 230.
shamfast, 230.
fihe, 243.
shew, 122.
fihined, 123.
shirt, 176.
shoe-hsrn, 232,
short-cake, 378.
should, 266.
chow, 122.
shrubbery, 133.

sick, 196.

Sidney's Astrophcl and Stella.

290.

signature, over the, 190.
silvern, 261.
silver-smith, 387.
sin, 104.
Sis, 230.
Sissy, 230.
sitten, 1 20.
sit, 134, 156.
six-hole premium, 204.
skedaddle, 242.
slang, 4, 42, 85.
slavery, 132.
smock, 176.
smuggling, 104.
snew, 121.
snown, 121.
sociable, 161.
social, 161.
some, 251.
sot, 157.

SOW, 122.

special, 162.
splendid, 162.
stand-point, 231.
state, 163.
station, 149.
stay, 197.
steadfast, 230,
stereogram, 23 f.
Stern, 119.
stop, 197.
storm, 163.
strake, 123.
straw, 375.
strawberry, 378.
striae, 382.
strike, 123.
stonen, 261.

4-66

INDEX.

stole, 1 20.
style, 47, 63.
suffer, 1-5.

suffixes, compounds with pre-
fixes and, 379.
suggest, 279.
supervise, 129.
supper-room, 378.
supper-time, 378.
suppose 102.
Swedenborgian, 388.

T.

Talented, 114.

tangential, 217.

tankard, 82.

tavern, 154.

tern, 163.

teached, 123.

tea-room, 377.

tea-time, 378.

technical words, 782.

technical words in general use,

383-

telegram, 233.
telegraph, 233, 242
tenses, 304.
thalagram, 234.
the boys loved the girl, 281.
themselves, 247, 249.
think, 102.
those-sort, 168.
threaden, 259.
thrived, 123.
through, 115.
tid, grund's no in, 237.
tider you go, the tider you

come, 235.
tinker's damn, 396.
dine and tide, 235.

toi, 250.

toi-meme, 250.

Tooke, Home, 358, 374.

Tooke, Home, on vulgai words.

388.

tooth-drawer, 377.
tooth-filler, 377.
toward, 211.
to wit, 309.
transmit, 129.
transpir* 6, 163.
treasonable, 223.
Trench, 364.
trial, 215.

Troilus and Creseide, 288.
Trollop, Anthony, 67.
Trollop, Mrs., 67.
Trooper's damn, 396.
true-seeming, 216.
truism, 168.
trust, 380.
trustworthy, 224.
truth-like, 216.
try, 115, 215.
turgid morality, y

u.

Ult, 169.
un, 380.
uncouth, 387.
undergo, 115.
understonden, 17.
unrepentable, 227.
unsoft, 380.
un-sound, 387.
unsuit, 380.
unwitty, 380-
upward, 211-
usage, 4.
us-selven 249.
utter, 170.

INDEX.

467

V.

Variance, 141.
Venerable Bede, 154.
ventilate, 171.
veracity, 171.
Verb, 355.

verbs, auxiliary, 310.
very, 182.
vice, 104.
vicinity, 171.
violincello, 101.
voices, 313.
vrai scrub 1 able, 2l6.
vulgar, 172.
vulgar words, 387,

w.

Wanhope, 216.

wash-tub, 232.

waxen, 259.

way, 148.

Webster, Daniel, 46.

well of English undefined, 20.

were, 35.

wharfs, 107.

whatever is, is right, 15-

wheaten, 259.

white-smith, 387.

widow-woman. 173.

witness, 175.

woman, 179.

Women's style, 66.

wooden, 371.

word can have but one rea..

meaning, 389.
word, definition of, 199.
words arbitrary sounds, 13.
Words that are not words, 199,
words, compound, 386.
words, provincial, 388.
words formed upon propel

names, 388.
would, 266.

Y.

Yarnen, 26 1.
Yo el Rey, 250.
Young's " Night Thoughts.
360.

z.

Zenith, 383.
zeolitiform, 382.
zinkiferous, 382.
zinky, 382.
zocle, 382.
zoophytological, 382.
zumosimeter, 382.
zygodactylous, 382.
zygomatic, 382.

&c., &c., 208.

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