CHAPTER II. VIOLATIONS OF GOOD USE. OFFENCES against good use are: (1) BARBARISMS, words or phrases not English; (2) IMPROPRIETIES, words or phrases used in a sense not English; (3) SOLECISMS, constructions not English. SECTION I. BARBARISMS. BARBARISMS are: (1) words which, though formerly in good use, are now obsolete; (2) words, whether of native growth or of foreign extraction, which have not established themselves in the language; (3) new formations from words in good use. Readers of books written three centuries ago may regret that some of the words in those books have disappeared from the vocabulary of the present obsolete generation; but the fact that they have disap- words. peared goes to show that they are no longer useful. Valuable as they may have been in their day, they are now barbarisms. Yet Swift maintained that "it is better a language should not be wholly perfect than that it should be perpetually changing;" that, therefore, "some method should be thought on for ascertaining and fixing our language forever, after such alterations in it as shall be thought requi site;" and that, to this end, "no word which a society shall give a sanction to, be afterward antiquated and exploded, because then the old books will yet be always valuable according to their intrinsic worth, and not thrown aside on account of unintelligible words and phrases, which appear harsh and uncouth only because they are out of fashion."1 Strange that so shrewd a man as Swift should not have drawn the natural inference from his last expression, should not have perceived that words, like things, are as a rule of little value when out of fashion, and that a word inevitably goes out of fashion with that which it names! When, for instance, the introduction of firearms into the field of sport put an end to hawking, it also rendered obsolete many words in the vocabulary of hawking. The analogy suggested by Swift's expression is, indeed, complete. Old-fashioned words give stateliness to poetry, as brocades and knee-breeches give dignity to a ceremony; but on ordinary occasions the former are as much out of place as the latter. Those who use obsolete or obsolescent words because they do not know the present fashion in language, show their ignorance; those who know the fashion but refuse to follow it are guilty of affectation. Examples of such ignorance are: party 2 (person), collegiate (collegian), afeard (afraid), unbeknown (unknown), axe (ask), to suspicion (suspect), for to, as, "I started for to go." Examples of such affectation are: agone, in the like sort, to suffrage, meseemeth,5 otherwhere, commonweal' (commonwealth), adit, as in "their adits and 1 Jonathan Swift: A Proposal for Correcting, Improving, and Ascertaining the English Tongue. (1712.) 2 See Notes and Queries: Sixth Series, vol. ii. p. 274. 8 Student's theme. 4 E. A. Freeman. 6 William Morris: The Story of the Glittering Plain. • Archbishop Trench: Lectures on Plutarch. 7 A. C. Swinburne: Essays and Studies. "1 mote, as in "So mote it be." Gotten may come under exits; These New words. The In times of intellectual ferment like ours, novelties in language are constantly coming to the surface. novelties, of which some are and some are not destined to become English, popular writers are too eager and scholars too slow to accept. scholar may retard the necessary growth of the language; but the popular writer runs the risk of disfiguring his pages with expressions that will be either disagreeable or unintelligible to the next generation. It is the exigencies of expression that determine what words shall come into a language as well as what words shall go out of it. Thus the invention of gunpowder, at the same time that it rendered the vocabulary of hawking useless, introduced a vocabulary of its own. So, too, we have borrowed new things from nations which excel in one or another particular, and with the new things their names. Words of foreign origin. Shrub (a drink), sofa, come to us from the Arabic; cargo, embargo, stampede, ranch, cigar, sherry, siesta, matador, from the Spanish; imbroglio, macaroni, vermicelli, piano, and many musical terms, from the Italian; moccasin, squaw, wampum, wigwam, tomahawk, from the North American Indian; yacht, buoy, sloop, and other nautical terms, from the Dutch; toddy, from the Hindoostanee; cockatoo, gong, gutta-percha, from the Malay; taboo, from the Polynesian; acrobat, ambrosia, euphony, panic, theism, from the Greek; caste, from the Portuguese; attar (of roses), shawl, sherbet, from the Persian; hammock, from the West Indian. The French language has contributed to the English many of the terms of warfare, as abatis; of diplomacy, as envoy; of fashionable intercourse, as etiquette; of cookery, as omelette; of the fine arts, as amateur; and it has borrowed from the English some nautical terms, as brick 1 Sir Arthur Helps: Social Pressure. (hrig); some political terms, as budget;1 some words relating to home life, as confortable; some relating to manly sports, as jockey. Convenient as the practice of borrowing from one's neighbors may be, it should never be carried beyond the limits prescribed by good use, — limits fixed by necessity or by general convenience. Even within these limits, the introduction of a foreign word is attended with serious drawbacks. Time-sometimes more, sometimes lessis required for such a word to become familiar, and it may never quite throw off its foreign air. A native word, moreover, is usually one of a numerous family; but a foreign word often comes alone, and rarely brings with it all the words of the same origin. Even if exposition should finally supplant exhibition, we should still be unable to say to expose, exposants, expositor, instead of to exhibit and the cognate words. If a new derivative were required, an Englishman would naturally form it from to exhibit, as a Frenchman would form it from exposer. Borrowed &nery. Though these inconveniences constitute no sufficient objection to the use of a foreign expression which has been naturalized or of one which supplies an obvious need, they should in all other cases be decisive. Unfortunately, the temptation to strut in borrowed finery is often too strong to be resisted. "It is difficult to believe either in the moral rectitude or in the mental strength of a man or a woman addicted to the quoting of odd scraps of odd French. When we take up the latest work of a young lady novelist, and find scattered through her pages soubriquet and double entendre and à l'outrance and artiste and other choice specimens of the French which is spoken by those who do not speak French, we need read no further to know that the mantle 1 Originally from the French bougette (leather bag) 2 Comfortable" came to us from the French confort, and has now gone back to the French with the English meaning. of George Eliot and Jane Austen has not fallen on the fair author. ess's shoulders. Even Mrs. Oliphant, a novelist who is old enough to know better, and who has delighted us all with charming tales of truly English life, is wont to sprinkle French freely through her many volumes, not only in her novels, but even in her unnecessary Life of Richard Brinsley Sheridan, whom she rashly credited with Jaieté du coeur (sic).”1 On this subject Punch gives some sound "advice to an actor": "Do not call your part a rôle; it is not English.... And do not call the wings the coulisses. Do not style yourself an artist, or an artiste, as the case may be, and do not speak of applause, however loud and genuine, as a perfect furore. Do not describe a performance given at three o'clock in the afternoon as a matinée, and do not call a burlesque a travestie or extravaganza. When a concert or mixed entertainment is given between more solid pieces at a benefit, there is no occasion to describe it as a melange, or inter Borrowed verbal finery is perhaps less common than it was a generation ago; but it still appears in writings that find many readers. "We need only glance into one of the periodical representatives of fashionable literature, or into a novel of the day, to see how serious this assault upon the purity of the English language has become. The chances are more than equal that we shall fall in with a writer who considers it a point of honor to choose all his most emphatic words from a French vocabulary, and who would think it a lamentable falling off in his style, did he write half-adozen sentences without employing at least half that number of foreign words. His heroes are always marked by an air distingué; his vile men are sure to be blasés; his lady friends never merely dance or dress well, they dance or dress à merveille; and he himself when lolling on the sofa under the spirit of laziness does not simply enjoy his rest, he luxuriates in the dolce far niente, and wonders 1 The Saturday Review, Jan. 26, 1884, p. 113. 2 Punch, Dec. 23, 1882. |