Chapter I: Vocabulary (2)

Either we know that _tache_ means stain, or we do not. If we do, we cannot admire our novelist’s superior learning: if we do not, we must be doubtful whether we grasp the whole of his possibly valuable meaning. His calculation is perhaps that we shall know it, and shall feel complimented by his just confidence in us.

When the normal convention governing the relations between victors and vanquished is duly re-established, it will be time to chronicle the conjectures relating to peace in some other part of a journal than that devoted to _faits divers_.--_Times._

It is true _The Times_ does not condescend to an Odds-and-Ends, or a Miscellaneous column; but many other English newspapers do, under various titles; and the _Times_ writer might have thrown the handkerchief to one of them.

But times have changed, and this procedure enters into the category of _vieille escrime_ when not employed by a master hand and made to correspond superficially with facts.--_Times._

In relation to military organization we are still in the flourishing region of the _vieilles perruques_.--_Times._

The users of these two varieties, who, to judge from the title at the head of their articles, are one and the same person must have something newer than _vieux jeu_. Just as that has begun to be intelligible to the rest of us, it becomes itself _vieux jeu_ to them. It is like the man of highest fashion changing his hat-brim because the man of middling fashion has found the pattern of it.

The familiar gentleman burglar, who, having played wolf to his fellows _qua_ financier, journalist, and barrister, undertakes to raise burglary from being a trade at least to the lupine level of those professions.--_Times._

It is quite needless, and hardly correct, to use _qua_ instead of _as_ except where a sharp distinction is being made between two coexistent functions or points of view, as in the next quotation. Uganda needs quite different treatment if it is regarded as a country from what it needs as a campaigning ground:

For this point must be borne constantly in mind--the money spent to date was spent with a view only to strategy. The real development of the country _qua_ country must begin to-day.--_Times._

The reader would not care to have my impressions thereanent; and, indeed, it would not be worth while to record them, as they were the impressions of an _ignorance crasse_.--C. BRONTË.

The writer who allows Charlotte Brontë’s extraordinarily convincing power of presentment to tempt him into imitating her many literary peccadilloes will reap disaster. _Thereanent_ is as annoying as _ignorance crasse_.

It was he who by doctoring the Ems dispatch in 1870 converted a _chamade_ into a _fanfaronnade_ and thus rendered the Franco-German war inevitable.--_Times._

We can all make a shrewd guess at the meaning of _fanfaronnade_: how many average readers have the remotest idea of what a _chamade_[6] is? and is the function of newspapers to force upon us against our will the buying of French dictionaries?

2. Among the diplomatic words, _entente_ may pass as suggesting something a little more definite and official than _good understanding_; _démenti_ because, though it denotes the same as _denial_ or _contradiction_, it connotes that no more credence need be given to it than is usually given to the ‘honest men sent to lie abroad for the good of their country’; as for _ballon d’essai_, we see no advantage in it over _kite_, and _flying a kite_, which are good English; it is, however, owing to foreign correspondents’ perverted tastes, already more familiar. The words italicized in the following quotations are still more questionable:

The two Special Correspondents in Berlin of the leading morning newspapers, the _Matin_ and the _Écho de Paris_, report a marked _détente_ in the situation.--_Times._

_Entente_ is comprehensible to every one; but with _détente_ many of us are in the humiliating position of not knowing whether to be glad or sorry.

All the great newspapers have insisted upon the inopportuneness of the _démarche_ of William II.--_Times._ (proceeding)

The _entourage_ and counsellors of the Sultan continue to remain sceptical.--_Times._

Mere laziness, even if the word means anything different from _counsellors_; but the writer has at least given us an indication that it is only verbiage, by revealing his style in _continue to remain_.

In diplomatic circles the whole affair is looked upon as an _acte de malveillance_ towards the Anglo-French _entente_.--_Times._

You have been immensely amused, cyrenaically enjoying the moment for the moment’s sake, but looking before and after (as you cannot help looking in the theatre) you have been disconcerted and _dérouté_.--_Times._

In spite, however, of this denial and of other official _démentis_, the Italian Press still seems dissatisfied.--_Times._

In this there is clearly not the distinction that we suggested between _denial_ and _démenti_--the only thing that could excuse the latter. We have here merely one of those elegant variations treated of in the chapter ‘Airs and Graces’.

3. It sometimes occurs to a writer that he would like to avail himself of a foreign word or phrase, whether to make a genuine point or to show that he has the gift of tongues, and yet not keep his less favoured readers in the dark; he accordingly uses a literal translation instead of the actual words. It may fairly be doubted whether this is ever worth while; but there is all the difference in the world, as we shall presently exemplify in a pair of contrasted quotations, between the genuine and the ostentatious use. The most familiar phrase thus treated is _cela va sans dire_; we have of our own _I need hardly say_, _needless to remark_, and many other varieties; and the French phrase has no wit or point in it to make it worth aping; we might just as well say, in similar German or French English (whichever of the two languages we had it from), _that understands itself_; each of them has to us the quaintness of being non-idiomatic, and no other merit whatever. A single word that we have taken in the same way is more defensible, because it did, when first introduced here, possess a definite meaning that no existing English word had: _epochmaking_ is a literal translation, or transliteration almost, from German. We may regret that we took it, now; for it will always have an alien look about it; and, recent in English as it is, it has already lost its meaning; it belongs, in fact, to one of those word-series of which each member gets successively worn out. _Epochmaking_ is now no more than _remarkable_, as witness this extract from a speech by the Lord Chancellor:

The banquet to M. Berryer and the banquet to Mr. Benjamin, both of them very important, and to my mind _epochmaking_ occasions.--LORD HALSBURY.

The verb _to orient_ is a Gallicism of much the same sort, and _the half-world_ is perhaps worse:

In his quality of eligible bachelor he had no objections at any time to conversing with a goodlooking girl. Only he wished very much that he could _orient_ this particular one.--CROCKETT.

High society is represented by ... Lady Beauminster, the half-world by Mrs. Montrose, loveliness and luckless innocence by her daughter Helen.--_Times._

The next extract is perhaps from the pen of a French-speaker trying to write English: but it is not worse than what the English writer who comes below him does deliberately:

Our enveloping movement, which has been proceeding _since several days_.--_Times._

Making every allowance for special circumstances, the manner in which these amateur soldiers of seven weeks’ service acquitted themselves compels one ‘furiously to think’.--_Westminster Gazette._

A warning may be given that it is dangerous to translate if you do not know for certain what the original means. To ask what the devil some one was doing in that _gallery_ is tempting, and fatal.

Appended are the passages illustrating the two different motives for translation:

If we could take this assurance at its face value and _to the foot of the letter_, we should have to conclude....--_Times._

It will be observed (_a_) that _literally_ gives the meaning perfectly; (_b_) that _to the foot of the letter_ is absolutely unintelligible to any one not previously acquainted with _au pied de la lettre_; (_c_) that there is no wit or other admirable quality in the French itself. The writer is meanly admiring mean things; nothing could possibly be more fatuous than such half-hearted gallicizing.

I thought afterwards, but it was _the spirit of the staircase_, what a pity it was that I did not stand at the door with a hat, saying, ‘Give an obol to Belisarius’.--MORLEY.

The French have had the wit to pack into the words _esprit d’escalier_ the common experience that one’s happiest retorts occur to one only when the chance of uttering them is gone, the door is closed, and one’s feet are on the staircase. That is well worth introducing to an English audience; the only question is whether it is of any use to translate it without explanation. No one will know what _spirit of the staircase_ is who is not already familiar with _esprit d’escalier_; and even he who is may not recognize it in disguise, seeing that _esprit_ does not mean spirit (which suggests a goblin lurking in the hall clock), but wit.

We cannot refrain from adding a variation that deprives _au pied de la lettre_ even of its quaintness:

The tone of Russian official statements on the subject is not encouraging, but then, perhaps, they ought not to be taken at the letter.--_Times._

4. Closely connected with this mistake of translating is the other of taking liberties with foreign phrases in their original form, dovetailing them into the construction of an English sentence when they do not lend themselves to it. In Latin words and phrases, other cases should always be changed to the nominative, whatever the government in the English sentence, unless the Latin word that accounted for the case is included in the quotation. It will be admitted that all the four passages below are ugly:

The whole party were engaged _ohne Rast_ with a prodigious quantity of _Hast_ in a continuous social effort.--E. F. BENSON.

German, in which so few Englishmen are at their ease, is the last among the half-dozen best-known languages to play these tricks with. The facetiousness here is indescribably heavy.

The clergy in rochet, alb, and other best _pontificalibus_.--CARLYLE.

The intention is again facetious; but the incongruity between a Latin inflected ablative and English uninflected objectives is a kind of piping to which no man can dance; that the English _in_ and the Latin _in_ happen to be spelt alike is no defence; it is clear that _in_ is here English, not Latin; either _in pontificalibus_, or _in other pontificalia_.

The feeling that one is an _antecedentem scelestum_ after whom a sure, though lame, Nemesis is hobbling....--TROLLOPE.

_Antecedens scelestus_ is necessary.

..., which were so evident in the days of the early Church, are now _non est_.--_Daily Telegraph._

All things considered, I wonder they were not _non est_ long ago.--_Times._

Such maltreatment of _non est inventus_, which seems to have amused some past generations, is surely now as stale and unprofitable as _individual_ itself.

5. A special caution may be given about some words and phrases that either are shams, or are used in wrong senses. Of the first kind are _nom de plume_, _morale_. The French for the name that an author chooses to write under is _nom de guerre_. We, in the pride of our knowledge that _guerre_ means war, have forgotten that there is such a thing as metaphor, assumed that another phrase is required for literary campaigning, thereupon ascertained the French for pen, and so evolved _nom de plume_. It is unfortunate; for we now have to choose between a blunder and a pedantry; but writers who know the facts are beginning to reconcile themselves to seeming pedantic for a time, and reviving _nom de guerre_.

The French for what we call _morale_, writing it in italics under the impression that it is French, is actually _moral_. The other is so familiar, however, that it is doubtful whether it would not be better to drop the italics, keep the _-e_, and tell the French that they can spell their word as they please, and we shall do the like with ours. So Mr. Kipling:

The Gaul, ever an artist, breaks enclosure to study the morale [_sic_], at the present day, of the British sailorman.--KIPLING.

In the second class, of phrases whose meaning is mistaken, we choose _scandalum magnatum_, _arrière-pensée_, _phantasmagoria_, and _cui bono?_

_Scandalum magnatum_ is a favourite with the lower-class novelist who takes _magnatum_ for a participle meaning _magnified_, and finds the combination less homely than _a shocking affair_. It is a genitive plural noun, and the amplified translation of the two words, which we borrow from the _Encyclopaedia_, runs: ‘Slander of great men, such as peers, judges, or great officers of state, whereby discord may arise within the realm’.

_Arrière-pensée_ we have seen used, with comic intent but sad effect, for a bustle or dress-improver; and, with sad intent but comic effect, for an afterthought; it is better confined to its real meaning of an ulterior object, if indeed we cannot be content with our own language and use those words instead.

_Phantasmagoria_ is a singular noun; at least the corresponding French monstrosity, _fantasmagorie_, is unmistakably singular; and, if used at all in English, it should be so with us too. But the final _-a_ irresistibly suggests a plural to the valorous writers who are impressed without being terrified by the unknown; so:

Not that such _phantasmagoria are_ to be compared for a moment with such desirable things as fashion, fine clothes....--BORROW.

_Cui bono?_ is a notorious trap for journalists. It is naturally surprising to any one who has not pushed his classics far to be told that the literal translation of it is not ‘To what good (end)?’ that is ‘What is the good of it?’ but ‘Who benefited?’. The former rendering is not an absolutely impossible one on the principles of Latin grammar, which adds to the confusion. But if that were its real meaning it would be indeed astonishing that it should have become a famous phrase; the use of it instead of ‘What is the good?’ would be as silly and gratuitous as our above-mentioned _to the foot of the letter_. Every scholar knows, however, that _cui bono?_ does deserve to be used, in its true sense. It is a shrewd and pregnant phrase like _cherchez la femme_ or _esprit d’escalier_. _Cherchez la femme_ wraps up in itself a perhaps incorrect but still interesting theory of life--that whenever anything goes wrong there is a woman at the bottom of it; find her, and all will be explained. _Cui bono?_ means, as we said, ‘Who benefited?’. It is a Roman lawyer’s maxim, who held that when you were at a loss to tell where the responsibility for a crime lay, your best chance was to inquire who had reaped the benefit of it. It has been worth while to devote a few lines to this phrase, because nothing could better show at once what is worth transplanting into English, and what dangers await any one who uses Latin or French merely because he has a taste for ornament. In the following quotation the meaning, though most obscurely expressed, is probably correct; and _cui bono?_ stands for: ‘Where can the story have come from? why, who will profit by a misunderstanding between Italy and France? Germany, of course; so doubtless Germany invented the story’. _Cui bono?_ is quite capable of implying all that; but a merciful writer will give his readers a little more help:

(Berlin) The news which awakens the most hopeful interest is the story of a concession to a Franco-Belgian syndicate in the harbour of Tripoli. There is a manifest desire that the statement should be confirmed and that it should have the effect of exciting the Italian people and alienating them from France. _Cui bono?_--_Times._

6. It now only remains to add that there are French words good in some contexts, and not in others. _Régime_ is good in the combination _ancien régime_, because that is the briefest way of alluding to the state of things in France before the Revolution. Further, its use in the first of the appended passages is appropriate enough, because there is an undoubted parallel between Russia now and France then. But in the second, _administration_ ought to be the word:

Throwing a flood of light upon the proceedings of the existing _régime_ in Russia.--_Times._

He said that the goodwill and friendship of the Milner _régime_ had resulted in the effective co-operation of the two countries.--_Times._

The word _employé_ is often a long, ugly, and unnatural substitute for _men_, _workmen_, or _hands_, one of which should have been used in the first two of the passages below. But it has a value where clerks or higher degrees are to be included, as in the third passage. It should be used as seldom as possible, that is all:

The warehouses of the Russian Steamship Company here have been set on fire by some dismissed _employés_.--_Times._

The _employés_ of the Trans-Caucasian line to-day struck work.--_Times._

The new project, Article 17, ordains that all _employés_ of the railways, whatever their rank or the nature of their employment, are to be considered as public officials.--_Times._

Finally, even words that have not begun to be naturalized may be used exceptionally when a real point can be gained by it. To say _chasseur_ instead of _sportsman_, _gun_, or other English word, is generally ridiculous. But our English notion of the French sportsman (right or wrong) is that he sports not because he likes sport, but because he likes the picturesque costumes it gives an excuse for. Consequently the word is quite appropriate in the following:

But the costume of the _chasseurs_--green velvet, very Robin-Hoody--had been most tasteful.--E. F. BENSON.

FALSE, UGLY, OR NEEDLESS FORMATIONS

1. As a natural link between this section and the last, the practice of taking French words and spelling them as English may stand first. With French words that fill a definite blank in English, the time comes when that should be done if it can. With some words it cannot; no one has yet seen his way to giving _ennui_ an English look. With _dishabille_, on the other hand, which appears in the dictionary with spellings to suit all tastes[7], many attempts have been made. This word, however, well illustrates the importance of one principle that should be observed in borrowing from French. Unless the need is a very crying one, no word should be taken that offers serious difficulties of pronunciation. In _déshabillé_ are at least two problems (_h_, and _ll_) of which an Englishman fights shy. The consequence is that, though its English history dates back some centuries, it is very seldom heard in conversation; no word not used in conversation becomes a true native; and _dishabille_ is therefore being gradually ousted by _négligé_, which can be pronounced without fear. As _dishabille_ is really quite cut off from _déshabillé_, it is a pity it was not further deprived of its final _-e_; that would have encouraged us to call it _dish-abil_, and it might have made good its footing.

_Naïveté_ is another word for which there is a clear use; and though the Englishman can pronounce it without difficulty if he chooses, he generally does prefer doing without it altogether to attempting a precision that strikes him as either undignified or pretentious. It is therefore to be wished that it might be disencumbered of its diaeresis, its accent, and its italics. It is true that the first sight of naivety is an unpleasant shock; but we ought to be glad that the thing has begun to be done, and in speaking sacrifice our pride of knowledge and call it _naivety_.

The case of _banality_ is very different. In one sense it has a stronger claim than _naivety_, its adjective _banal_ being much older in English than _naïve_; but the old use of _banal_ is as a legal term connected with feudalism. That use is dead, and its second life is an independent one; it is now a mere borrowing from French. Whether we are to accept it or not should be decided by whether we want it; and with _common_, _commonplace_, _trite_, _trivial_, _mean_, _vulgar_, all provided with nouns, which again can be eked out with _truism_ and _platitude_, a shift can surely be made without it. It is one of those foreign feathers, like _intimism_, _intimity_, _femininity_, _distinction_ and _distinguished_ (the last pair now banalities if anything was ever banal; so do extremes meet), in which writers of literary criticism love to parade, and which ordinary persons should do their best to pluck from them, protesting when there is a chance, and at all times refusing the compliment of imitation. But perhaps the word that the critics would most of all delight their readers by forgetting is _meticulous_.

Before adding an example or two, we draw attention to the danger of accidentally assimilating a good English word to a French one. _Amende_ is good French; _amends_ is good English; but _amend_ (noun) is neither:

Triviality and over-childishness and naivety.--H. SWEET.

Agrippa himself was primarily a paradox-monger. Many of his successors were in dead earnest, and their repetition of his ingenuities becomes _banal_ in the extreme. Bercher himself can by no means be acquitted of this charge of _banality_.--_Times._

It is significant that the only authorities for _banality_ in the _Oxford Dictionary_ are Sala, Saintsbury, Dowden, and Browning; but the volume is dated 1888; and though the word is still used in the same overpowering proportion by literary critics as opposed to other writers, its total use has multiplied a hundredfold since then. Our hope is that the critics may before long feel that it is as banal to talk about banality as it is now felt by most wellbred people to be vulgar to talk about vulgarity.

His style, which is pleasant and diffuse without being _distinguished_, is more suited to the farm and the simple country life than to the complexities of the human character.--_Times._

His character and that of his wife are sketched with a certain _distinction_.--_Times._

And yet to look back over the whole is to feel that in one case only has she really achieved that perfection of _intimism_ which is her proper goal.--_Times._

The reference to the English nonconformists was a graceful _amend_ to them for being so passionate an Oxonian and churchman.--MORLEY.

And in her presentation of the mode of life of the respectable middle classes, the most _meticulous_ critic will not easily catch her tripping.--_Times._

2. =Formations involving grammatical blunders.= Of these the possibilities are of course infinite; we must assume that our readers know the ordinary rules of grammar, and merely, not to pass over the point altogether, give one or two typical and not too trite instances:

My landlady entered bearing what she called ‘her best lamp’ _alit_.--CORELLI.

This seems to be formed as a past participle from _to alight_, in the sense of to kindle. It will surprise most people to learn that there is, or was, such a verb; not only was there, but the form that should have been used in our sentence, _alight_, is probably by origin the participle of it. The _Oxford Dictionary_, however, after saying this, observes that it has now been assimilated to words like _afire_, formed from the preposition _a-_ and a noun. Whether those two facts are true of not, it is quite certain that there is no such word as _alit_ in the sense of lighted or lit, and that the use of it in our days is a grammatical blunder.[8]

But every year pleaded _stronger_ and _stronger_ for the Earl’s conception.--J. R. GREEN.

Comparative adverbs of this type must be formed only from those positive adverbs, which do not use _-ly_, as _hard_, _fast_. We talk of _going strong_, and we may therefore talk of _going stronger_; but outside slang we have to choose between _stronglier_--poetical, exalted, or affected--and _more strongly_.

The silence that _underlaid_ the even voice of the breakers along the sea front.--KIPLING.

_Lie_ and _lay_ have cost us all some perplexity in childhood. The distinction is more difficult in the compounds with _over_ and _under_, because in them _-lie_ is transitive as well as _-lay_, but in a different sense. Any one who is not sure that he is sound on the point by instinct must take the trouble to resolve them into _lie over_ or _lay over_, &c., which at once clears up the doubt. A mistake with the simple verb is surprising when made, as in the following, by a writer on grammar:

I met a lad who took a paper from a package that he carried and thrust it into my unwilling hand. I suspected him of having _laid_ in wait for the purpose.--R. G. WHITE.

A confusion, perhaps, between _lay wait_ and _lie in wait_.

I am not sure that _yours_ and my efforts would suffice separately; but yours and mine together cannot possibly fail.

The first _yours_ is quite wrong; it should be _your_. This mistake is common. The absolute possessives, _ours_ and _yours_, _hers_, _mine_ and _thine_, (with which the poetic or euphonic use of the last two before vowels has nothing to do) are to be used only as pronouns or as predicative adjectives, not as attributes to an expressed and following noun. That they were used by old writers as in our example is irrelevant. The correct modern usage has now established itself. We add three sentences from Burke. The relation between _no_ and _none_ is the same as that between _your_ and _yours_. In the first sentence, modern usage would write (as the correct _no or but a few_ is uncomfortable) either _few or no_, or _few if any_, or _no rays or but a few_. For the second we might possibly tolerate _to their as well as to your own_; or we might write _to their crown as well as to your own_. The third is quite tolerable as it is; but any one who does not like the sound can write _and their ancestors and ours_. It must always be remembered in this as in other constructions, that the choice is not between a well-sounding blunder and an ill-sounding correctness, but between an ill and a well sounding correctness. The blunder should be ruled out, and if the first form of the correct construction that presents itself does not sound well, another way of putting it must be looked for; patience will always find it. The flexibility gained by habitual selection of this kind, which a little cultivation will make easy and instinctive, is one of the most essential elements in a good style. For a more important illustration of the same principle, the remarks on the gerund in the Syntax chapter (p. 120) may be referred to.

Black bodies, reflecting _none_ or but a few rays.--BURKE.

You altered the succession to _theirs_, as well as to your own crown.--BURKE.

They and we, and _their_ and our ancestors, have been happy under that system.--BURKE.

3. =Formations violating analogy.=

And then it is its panache, its careless _a-moral_ Renaissance romance.--_Times._

But she is perfectly natural, and while perfectly _amoral_, no more immoral than a bird or a kitten.--_Times._

_A-_ (not) is Greek; _moral_ is Latin. It is at least desirable that in making new words the two languages should not be mixed. The intricate needs of science may perhaps be allowed to override a literary principle of this sort; and accordingly the _Oxford Dictionary_ recognizes that _a-_ is compounded with Latin words in scientific and technical terms, as _a-sexual_; but purely literary workers may be expected to abstain. The obvious excuse for this formation is that the Latin negative prefix is already taken up in _immoral_, which means contrary to morality, while a word is wanted to mean unconcerned with morality. But with _non_ freely prefixed to adjectives in English (though not in Latin), there can be no objection to _non-moral_. The second of our instances is a few weeks later than the first, and the hyphen has disappeared; so quickly has _The Times_ convinced itself that _amoral_ is a regular English word.

There was no social or economic jealousy between them, no _racial_ aversion.--_Times._

Concessions which, besides damaging Hungary by raising _racial_ and _language_ questions of all kinds, would....--_Times._

The action of foreign countries as to their _coastal_ trade.--_Times._

Her riverine trade.--_Westminster Gazette._

It has been already stated that _-al_ is mainly confined to unmistakable Latin stems. There is _whimsical_; and there may be others that break the rule, though the _Oxford Dictionary_ (_-al suffix_, _-ical suffix_, _-ial suffix_) gives no exceptions. The ugly words _racial_ and _coastal_ themselves might well be avoided except in the rare cases where _race_ and _coast_ used adjectivally will not do the work (they would in the present instances); and they should not be made precedents for new formations. If _language_ is better than _linguistic_, much more _race_ than _racial_; similarly, _river_ than _riverine_.

What she was pleased to term their superior intelligence, and more _real_ and _reliable_ probity.--C. BRONTË (_Villette_, 1853).

It is absurd at this time of day to make a fuss about the word. It is with us and will remain with us, whatever pedants and purists may say. In such cases _obsta principiis_ is the only hope; _reliable_ might once have been suppressed, perhaps; it cannot now. But it is so fought over, even to-day, that a short discussion of it may be looked for. The objection to it is obvious: you do not rely a thing; therefore the thing cannot be reliable; it should be rely-on-able (like _come-at-able_). Some of the analogies pleaded for it are perhaps irrelevant--as _laughable_, _available_. For these _may_ be formed from the nouns _laugh_, _avail_, since _-able_ is not only gerundival (capable of being laughed at), but also adjectival (connected with a laugh); this has certainly happened with _seasonable_; but that will not help _reliable_, which by analogy should be _relianceable_. It is more to the point to remark that with _reliable_ must go _dispensable_ (with _indispensable_) and _dependable_, both quite old words, and _disposable_ (in its commoner sense); no one, as far as we know, objects to these and others like them; _reliable_ is made into a scapegoat. The word itself, moreover, besides its wide popularity, is now of respectable antiquity, dating at least from Coleridge. It may be added that it is probably to the campaign against it that we owe such passive monstrosities as ‘ready to be availed of’ for _available_, which is, as we said, possibly not open to the same objection as _reliable_.

I have heretofore designated the misuse of certain words as _Briticisms_.--R. G. WHITE.

Britannic, Britannicism; British, Britishism. Britic?

4. =Needless, though correct formations.=

The _sordor_ and filths of nature, the sun shall dry up.--EMERSON.

As _candeo candor_, _ardeo ardor_, so--we are to understand--_sordeo sordor_. The Romans, however, never felt that they needed the word; and it is a roundabout method first to present them with a new word and then to borrow it from them; for it will be observed that we have no living suffix _-or_ in English, nor, if we had, anything nearer than _sordid_ to attach it to. Perhaps Emerson thought _sordor_ was a Latin word.

Merely nodding his head as an _enjoinder_ to be careful.--DICKENS.

As _rejoin rejoinder_, so _enjoin enjoinder_. The word is not given in the _Oxford Dictionary_, from which it seems likely that Dickens invented it, consciously or unconsciously. The only objection to such a word is that its having had to wait so long, in spite of its obviousness, before being made is a strong argument against the necessity of it. We may regret that _injunction_ holds the field, having a much less English appearance; but it does; and in language the old-established that can still do the work is not to be turned out for the new-fangled that might do it a shade better, but must first get itself known and accepted.

_Oppositely_, the badness of a walk that is shuffling, and an utterance that is indistinct is alleged.--SPENCER.

This, on the other hand, is an archaism, now obsolete. Why it should not have lived is a mystery; but it has not; and to write it is to give one’s sentence the air of an old curiosity shop.

Again, as if to _intensate_ the influences that are not of race, what we think of when we talk of English traits really narrows itself to a small district.--EMERSON.

A favourite with those allied experimenters in words, Emerson and Carlyle. A word meaning _to make intense_ is necessary; and there are plenty of parallels for this particular form. But Coleridge had already made _intensify_, introducing it with an elaborate apology in which he confessed that it sounded uncouth. It is uncouth no longer; if it had never existed, perhaps _intensate_ would now have been so no longer, uncouthness being, both etymologically and otherwise, a matter of strangeness as against familiarity. It is better to form words only where there is a clear demand for them.

5. =Long and short rivals.= The following examples illustrate a foolish tendency. From the adjective _perfect_ we form the verb _to perfect_, and from that again the noun _perfection_; to take a further step forward to a verb _to perfection_ instead of returning to the verb _to perfect_ is a superfluity of naughtiness. From the noun _sense_ we make the adjective _sensible_; it is generally quite needless to go forward to _sensibleness_ instead of back to our original noun _sense_. To _quieten_ is often used by hasty writers who have not time to remember that _quiet_ is a verb. With _ex tempore_ ready to serve either as adverb or as adjective, why make _extemporaneous_ or _extemporaneously_? As to _contumacity_, the writer was probably unaware that _contumacy_ existed. _Contumacity_ might be formed from _contumax_, like _audacity_ from _audax_. The Romans had only the short forms _audacia_, _contumacia_, which should have given us _audacy_ as well as _contumacy_; but because our ancestors burdened themselves with an extra syllable in one we need not therefore do so in the other.

The inner, religiously moral _perfectioning_ of individuals.--_Times._

She liked the quality of mind which may be broadly called _sensibleness_.--_Times._

Broadly, or lengthily?

M. Delcassé, speaking _extemporaneously_ but with notes, said....--_Times._

And now, Mdlle St. Pierre’s affected interference provoked _contumacity_.--C. BRONTË.

It is often a very easy thing to act _prudentially_, but alas! too often only after we have toiled to our prudence through a forest of delusions.--DE QUINCEY.

_Prudent_ gives _prudence_, and _prudence_ _prudential_; the latter has its use: prudential considerations are those in which prudence is allowed to outweigh other motives; they may be prudent without being prudential, and vice versa. But before using _prudentially_ we should be quite sure that we mean something different from _prudently_. So again _partially_, which should be reserved as far as possible for the meaning _with partiality_, is now commonly used for _partly_:[9]

The series of administrative reforms planned by the Convention had been _partially_ carried into effect before the meeting of Parliament in 1654; but the work was pushed on.--J. R. GREEN.

That the gravity of the situation is _partially_ appreciated by the bureaucracy may be inferred from....--_Times._

_Excepting_, instead of _except_, is to be condemned when there is no need for it. We say _not excepting_, or _not even excepting_, or _without excepting_; but where the exception is allowed, not rejected, the short form is the right one, as a comparison of the following examples will show:

Of all societies ... _not even excepting_ the Roman Republic, England has been the most emphatically ... political.--MORLEY.

The Minister was obliged to present the Budget before May each year, _excepting_ in the event of the Cortes having been dissolved.--_Times._

The sojourn of belligerent ships in French waters has never been limited _excepting_ by certain clearly defined rules.--_Times._

_Excepting_ the English, French, and Austrian journalists present, no one had been admitted.--_Times._

Innumerable other needless lengthenings might be produced, from which we choose only _preventative_ for _preventive_, and _to experimentalize_ for _to experiment_.

On the other hand, when usage has differentiated a long and a short form either of which might originally have served, the distinction must be kept. _Immovable_ and _irremovable_ judges are different things; the shorter word has been wrongly chosen in:

By suspending conscription and restoring the _immovability_ of the Judges.--_Times._

6. =Merely ugly formations.=

_Bureaucracy._

The termination _-cracy_ is now so freely applied that it is too late to complain of this except on the ground of ugliness. It may be pointed out, however, that the very special ugliness of _bureaucracy_ is due to the way its mongrel origin is flaunted in our faces by the telltale syllable _-eau-_; it is to be hoped that formations similar in this respect may be avoided.

An ordinary reader, if asked what was the main impression given by the _Short History of the English People_, would answer that it was the impression of picturesqueness and _vividity_.--BRYCE.

In sound, there can be no question between _vividity_ with its fourfold repetition of the same vowel sound, its two dentals to add to the ugliness of its two _v_’s, and the comparatively inoffensive _vividness_.

We conclude with deprecating the addition of _-ly_ to participles in _-ed_. Some people are so alive to the evil sound of it that they write _determinately_ for _determinedly_; that will not do either, because _determinate_ does not mean _determined_ in the required sense. A periphrasis, or an adjective or Latin participle with _-ly_, as _resolutely_, should be used. _Implied_ is as good a word as _implicit_, but _impliedly_ is by no means so good as _implicitly_. Several instances are given, for cumulative effect. Miss Corelli makes a mannerism of this.

Dr. John and his mother were in their finest mood, contending _animatedly_ with each other the whole way.--C. BRONTË.

Where the gate opens, or the gateless path turns aside _trustedly_.--RUSKIN.

‘That’s not a very kind speech,’ I said somewhat _vexedly_.--CORELLI.

However, I _determinedly_ smothered all premonitions.--CORELLI.

I saw one or two passers-by looking at me so _surprisedly_ that I came to the conclusion....--_Corelli._

I stared _bewilderedly_ up at the stars.--_Corelli._

It should be added that to really established adverbs of this form, as _advisedly_, _assuredly_, _hurriedly_, there is no objection whatever; but new ones are ugly.

SLANG

The place of slang is in real life. There, an occasional indulgence in it is an almost necessary concession to our gregarious humanity; he who declines altogether to let his speech be influenced by his neighbours’ tricks, and takes counsel only of pure reason, is setting up for more than man. _Awfully nice_ is an expression than which few could be sillier; but to have succeeded in going through life without saying it a certain number of times is as bad as to have no redeeming vice. Further, the writer who deals in conversation may sometimes find it necessary, by way of characterizing his speakers, to put slang in their mouths; if he is wise he will make the least possible use of this resource; and to interlard the non-conversational parts of a book or article with slang, quotation marks or no quotation marks, is as bad as interlarding with French. Foreign words and slang are, as spurious ornaments, on the same level. The italics, but not the quotation marks, in these examples are ours:

When the madness motif was being treated on the stage, Shakespeare (as was the custom of his theatre) treated it ‘_for all it was worth_’, careless of the boundaries between feigning and reality.--_Times._

But even this situation ‘_peters out_’, the wife being sent away with her fate undecided, and the husband, represented as a ‘forcible-feeble’ person by the dramatist and as a feeble person, tout court, by the actor....--_Times._

M. Baron the younger is amusing as the ‘_bounder_’ Olivier.--_Times._

Asking ourselves this question about Mr. Thurston’s play, we find that it has given us a ha’porth of pleasure to an intolerable deal of boredom. With its primary postulate, ‘_steep_’ as it is, we will not quarrel.--_Times._

They will find no subtlety in it, no literary art, no profundity of feeling; but they will assuredly find breadth, colour, and strength. It is a play that hits you, as the children say, ‘_bang in the eye_’.--_Times._

They derive no advantage from schemes of land settlement from which the man who has broken the land in _gets ‘the boot’_, the voter gets the land, the Government gets the vote, and the London labour market gets the risk.--_Times._

The effect of using quotation marks with slang is merely to convert a mental into a moral weakness. When they are not used, we may mercifully assume that the writer does not know the difference between slang and good English, and sins in ignorance: when they are, he is telling us, I know it is naughty, but then it is nice. Most of us would rather be taken for knaves than for fools; and so the quotation marks are usually there.

With this advice--never to use slang except in dialogue, and there as little as may be--we might leave the subject, except that the suggestion we have made about the unconscious use of slang seems to require justifying. To justify it, we must attempt some analysis, however slight, of different sorts of slang.

To the ordinary man, of average intelligence and middle-class position, slang comes from every direction, from above, from below, and from all sides, as well as from the centre. What comes from some directions he will know for slang, what comes from others he may not. He may be expected to recognize words from below. Some of these are shortenings, by the lower classes, of words whose full form conveys no clear meaning, and is therefore useless, to them. An antiquated example is _mob_, for _mobile vulgus_. That was once slang, and is now good English. A modern one is _bike_, which will very likely be good English also in time. But though its brevity is a strong recommendation, and its uncouthness probably no more than subjective and transitory, it is as yet slang. Such words should not be used in print till they have become so familiar that there is not the slightest temptation to dress them up in quotation marks. Though they are the most easily detected, they are also the best slang; when the time comes, they take their place in the language as words that will last, and not, like many of the more highly descended words, die away uselessly after a brief popularity.

Another set of words that may be said to come from below, since it owes its existence to the vast number of people who are incapable of appreciating fine shades of meaning, is exemplified by _nice_, _awful_, _blooming_. Words of this class fortunately never make their way, in their slang senses, into literature (except, of course, dialogue). The abuse of _nice_ has gone on at any rate for over a century; the curious reader may find an interesting page upon it in the fourteenth chapter of _Northanger Abbey_ (1803). But even now we do not talk in books of _a nice day_, only of _a nice distinction_. On the other hand, the slang use makes us shy in different degrees of writing the words in their legitimate sense: _a nice distinction_ we write almost without qualms; _an awful storm_ we think twice about; and as to _a blooming girl_, we hardly venture it nowadays. The most recent sufferer of this sort is perhaps _chronic_. It has been adopted by the masses, as far apart at least as in Yorkshire and in London, for a mere intensive, in the sense of _remarkable_. The next step is for it to be taken up in parody by people who know better; after which it may be expected to succeed _awful_.

So much for the slang from below; the ordinary man can detect it. He is not so infallible about what comes to him from above. We are by no means sure that we shall be correct in our particular attribution of the half-dozen words now to be mentioned; but it is safe to say that they are all at present enjoying some vogue as slang, and that they all come from regions that to most of us are overhead. _Phenomenal_, soon, we hope, to perish unregretted, is (at least indirectly, through the abuse of _phenomenon_) from Metaphysics; _immanence_, a word often met in singular company, from Comparative Theology; _epochmaking_ perhaps from the Philosophic Historian; _true inwardness_ from Literary Criticism; _cad_ (which is, it appears, Etonian for _cadet_) from the Upper Classes; _psychological moment_ from Science; _thrasonical_ and _cryptic_ from Academic Circles; _philistine_ from the region of culture. Among these the one that will be most generally allowed to be slang--_cad_--is in fact the least so; it has by this time, like _mob_, passed its probation and taken its place as an orthodox word, so that all who do not find adequate expression for their feelings in the orthodox have turned away to _bounder_ and other forms that still admit the emphasis of quotation marks. As for the rest of them, they are being subjected to that use, at once over-frequent and inaccurate, which produces one kind of slang. But the average man, seeing from what exalted quarters they come, is dazzled into admiration and hardly knows them for what they are.

By the slang that comes from different sides or from the centre we mean especially the many words taken originally from particular professions, pursuits, or games, but extended beyond them. Among these a man is naturally less critical of what comes from his own daily concerns, that is, in his view, from the centre. _Frontispiece_, for face, perhaps originated in the desire of prize-ring reporters to vary the words in their descriptive flights. _Negotiate_ (a difficulty, &c.) possibly comes from the hunting-field; people whose conversation runs much upon a limited subject feel the need of new phrases for the too familiar things. And both these words, as well as _individual_, which must be treated more at length in the next section, are illustrations of a tendency that we have called polysyllabic humour and discussed in the Chapter _Airs and Graces_. We now add a short list of slang phrases or words that can most of them be referred with more or less of certainty to particular occupations. Whether they are recognized as slang will certainly depend in part on whether the occupation is familiar, though sometimes the familiarity will disguise, and sometimes it will bring out, the slanginess.

_To hedge_, _the double event_ (turf); _frontal attack_ (war); _play the game_, _stumped_ (cricket); _to run_--the show, &c.--(engine-driving); _knock out_, _take it lying down_ (prize-ring); _log-rolling_, _slating_, _birrelling_ (literature); _to tackle_--a problem, &c.--(football); _to take a back seat_ (coaching?); _bedrock_, _to exploit_, _how it pans out_ (mining); _whole-hogging_, _world policy_ (politics); _floored_ (1. prize ring; 2. school); _the under dog_ (dog-fighting); _up to date_ (advertising); _record_--time, &c.--(athletics); _euchred_, _going one better_, _going Nap._ (cards); _to corner_--a thing--(commerce)--a person--(ratting); _chic_ (society journalism); _on your own_, _of sorts_, _climb down_, _globetrotter_, _to laze_ (perhaps not assignable).

Good and sufficient occasions will arise--rarely--for using most of these phrases and the rest of the slang vocabulary. To those, however, who desire that what they write may endure it is suggested that, as style is the great antiseptic, so slang is the great corrupting matter; it is perishable itself, and infects what is round it--the catchwords that delight one generation stink in the nostrils of the next; _individual_, which almost made the fortune of many a Victorian humorist, is one of the modern editor’s shibboleths for detecting the unfit. And even those who regard only the present will do well to remember that in literature as elsewhere there are as many conservatives as progressives, as many who expect their writers to say things a little better than they could do themselves as who are flattered by the proof that one man is no better than another.

‘Skepsey did come back to London with rather a damaged _frontispiece_’, Victor said.--MEREDITH.

Henson, however, once _negotiated_ a sprint down his wing, and put in a fine dropping shot to Aubert, who saved.--_Guernsey Evening Press._

Passengers, the guild add, usually arrive at the last moment before sailing, when the master must concentrate his mind upon _negotiating_ a safe passage.--_Times._

To deal with these extensive and purely local breeding grounds in the manner suggested by Major Ross would be a very _tall order_.--_Times._

In about twenty minutes he returned, accompanied by a highly intelligent-looking _individual_, dressed in blue and black, with a particularly white cravat, and without a hat on his head; this _individual_, whom I should have mistaken for a gentleman but for the intelligence depicted in his face, he introduced to me as the master of the inn.--BORROW.

A Sèvres vase sold yesterday at Christie’s _realized_ what is believed to be the _record_ price of 4,000 guineas.--_Times._

You could not, if you had tried, have made so perfect a place for two girls to lounge in, to _laze_ in, to read silly novels in, or to go to sleep in on drowsy afternoons.--CROCKETT.

Mr. Balfour’s somewhat _thrasonical_ eulogies.--_Spectator._

A quarrelsome, somewhat _thrasonical_ fighting man.--_Spectator._

The _true inwardness_ of this statement is....--_Times._

We do not know what _inwardness_ there may be in the order of his discourses, though each of them has some articulate link with that which precedes.--_Times._

Such a departure from etiquette at the _psychological moment_ shows tact and discretion.--_Times._

He asserts that about four years ago there was quite an Argentine _boom_ in New Zealand.--_Times._

No treatment of slang, however short, should omit the reminder that slang and idiom are hard to distinguish, and yet, in literature, slang is bad, and idiom good. We said that slang was perishable; the fact is that most of it perishes; but some survives and is given the idiomatic franchise; ‘when it doth prosper, none dare call it’ slang. The idiomatic writer differs chiefly from the slangy in using what was slang and is now idiom; of what is still slang he chooses only that part which his insight assures him has the sort of merit that will preserve it. In a small part of their vocabulary the idiomatic and the slangy will coincide, and be therefore confused by the undiscerning. The only advice that can be given to novices uncertain of their own discrimination is to keep carefully off the debatable ground. Full idiom and full slang are as far apart as virtue and vice; and yet

They oft so mix, the difference is too nice
Where ends the virtue, or begins the vice.

Any one who can confidently assign each of the following phrases to its own territory may feel that he is not in much danger:

Outrun the constable, the man in the street, kicking your heels, between two stools, cutting a loss, riding for a fall, not seeing the wood for the trees, minding your Ps and Qs, crossing the _t_s, begging the question, special pleading, a bone to pick, half seas over, tooth and nail, bluff, maffick, a tall order, it has come to stay.

PARTICULAR WORDS

Individual, mutual, unique, aggravating.

To use _individual_ wrongly in the twentieth century stamps a writer, more definitely than almost any other single solecism, not as being generally ignorant or foolish, but as being without the literary sense. For the word has been pilloried time after time; every one who is interested in style at all--which includes every one who aspires to be readable--must at least be aware that there is some mystery about the word, even if he has not penetrated it. He has, therefore, two courses open to him: he may leave the word alone; or he may find out what it means; if he insists on using it without finding out, he will commit himself. The adjectival use of it presents no difficulty; the adjective, as well as the adverb _individually_, is always used rightly if at all; it is the noun that goes wrong. An _individual_ is not simply a person; it is a single, separate, or private person, a person as opposed to a combination of persons; this qualification, this opposition, must be effectively present to the mind, or the word is not in place. In the nineteenth, especially the early nineteenth century, this distinction was neglected; mainly under the impulse of ‘polysyllabic humour’, the word, which does mean _person_ in some sort of way, was seized upon as a facetious substitute for it; not only that; it spread even to good writers who had no facetious intention; it became the kind of slang described in the last section, which is highly popular until it suddenly turns disgusting. In reading many of these writers we feel that we must make allowances for them on this point; they only failed to be right when every one else was wrong. But we, if we do it, sin against the light.