Likely implies a probability of whatever character; liable, an unpleasant probability. One is likely to enjoy an evening, to go home to-morrow, to die; liable to be hurt, to attacks of melancholy.

Negligence is used of a habit or trait; neglect, of an act or a succession of acts.

We speak of the observation of a fact, of a star; of the observance of a festival, of a rule.

The act of a public officer when done in his capacity as officer is official; a person who forces his services upon one is officious.

A person may be sensible of cold, that is, may perceive cold, without being sensitive to cold, that is, troubled by cold.

The signification of an act is its meaning; the significance, its importance.

66

Vocation means 66 calling" or "profession;" avocation, something aside from one's regular calling, a by-work."

Womanly refers to the stronger side of woman; womanish, to her weaker side. A similar distinction is made between manly and mannish, childlike and childish.

II. Another class of improprieties comprises words that are used in a sense resembling the cor- A resemblance rect one.

in sense misleads.

We allude to an event not distinctly mentioned or directly referred to. Macaulay's allusions are said to imply unusual knowledge on the part of the reader.

Apparently is properly used of that which seems, but may not be, real; evidently, of that which both seems and is real.

Condign is properly used of punishment which is commensurate with the offence, but which is not necessarily severe.

Conscience, the moral sense, is improperly used for consciousness, the noun corresponding to conscious.

To demean (from the French démener) is improperly used in the sense of to debase, as if it came from "mean."

To discover is properly used in the sense of "to find or find out what previously existed;" to invent, in the sense of "to devise something new." The force of steam was discovered; the steamboat was invented.

To lease is improperly used in the sense of "to hire by lease.” It means "to let by lease: " the lessor leases to the lessee. This word is so frequently misused that one cannot always tell what is meant by an advertisement of "property to lease.".

Mutual is properly used in the sense of "reciprocal ; it is im properly used by Dickens in "Our Mutual Friend," — the friend. we have in common.

Flea (in the legal sense) is properly used of the pleadings cr the arraignment before a trial, not of the argument at a trial. A plea is always addressed to the court; an argument may be addressed either to the court or to the jury. A similar remark applies to the verbs plead and argue.

Premature is properly used in the sense of "too early ripe," as, "premature fruit," "a premature generalization," "intellect developed prematurely." It is improperly used to signify that which has not taken place and perhaps never will take place: thus, during the Crimean war, the newspapers spoke of the announcement of a certain victory by the Russians as premature, the fact being that the Russians had been beaten.

"Quite" says a recent writer, "is employed in every sense where greatness or quantity has to be expressed, and seems to me to be more injurious to the effect of literary composition than the misuse of any other single word. The enemy was quite in force,' 'Wounded quite severely,' 'Quite some excitement' (!), and so on ad infinitum. Somewhat akin to this is the word 'piece' to express distance: we say 'a piece of land,' or a piece of water;' but it is nothing less than a distortion of the word's1 use to say that you should not shoot at a rattlesnake unless you were off a piece,' or 'We are travelling quite a piece,' — which latter I heard said by a judge to a member of Congress when we were crossing the Mississippi, and, owing to the floating ice, were compelled to run a little way up the river." 2

เ

Some of the expressions quoted above as "United States Eng. lish" are peculiar to the United States, but others are at least equally common in England. Both Englishmen and Americans use quite in the sense of not quite. Quite should be used in the sense of "entirely," never for rather or very.

1 Query as to this use of the possessive.

2 Chambers's Journal, Dec. 20, 1873: United States English.

The word team is properly used by Shakspere in "a team of horse,” “the heavenly-harnessed team;"1 by Gray in "drive their team afield; "2 by Carlyle in "when a team of twenty-five millions begins rearing; " and by "plain people" in "He's a whole team," "He's a full team." The word is improperly used wher made to include a vehicle.

Terse (Latin tersus, "wiped "), as applied to style, is properly used in the sense of "clean, neat, free from impurities or superfluities." The word is improperly used for forcible.

The whole or the entire is improperly used for all; we may speak of "the whole army" or of "the entire army," but not of "the whole of General Grant's men."

III Some other improprieties are severely Improprieties commented upon by John Stuart Mill:

noted by

Mill.

"So many persons without any thing deserving the name of education have become writers by profession, that written language may almost be said to be principally wielded by persons ignorant of the proper use of the instrument, and 4 who are spoiling it more and more for those who understand it. Vulgarisms, which creep in nobody knows how, are daily depriving the English language of valuable modes of expressing thought. To take a present instance: the verb transpire formerly conveyed very expressively its correct meaning; viz., to become known through unnoticed channels, to exhale, as it were, into publicity through invisible pores, like a vapor or gas disengaging itself. But of late a practice has com. menced 5 of employing this word, for the sake of finery, as a mere synonyme of to happen: 'the events which have transpired in the Crimea,' meaning the incidents of the war. This vile specimen of bad English is already seen in the despatches of noblemen and viceroys; and the time is apparently not far distant when nobody will understand the word if used in its proper sense. In other

1 Two Gentlemen of Verona, act iii. scene i. Henry IV., part i act iii scene i.

2 Elegy written in a Country Churchyard.

8 The French Revolution, part i. book iii. chap. v.

4 Query as to this use of and.

5 See page 21.

cases it is not the love of finery, but simple want of education, which makes writers employ words in senses unknown to genuine English. The use of aggravating for provoking, in my boyhood a vulgarism of the nursery, has crept into almost all newspapers and into many books; and when the word is used in its proper sense, as when writers on criminal law speak of 'aggravating and extenuating circumstances,' their meaning, it is probable, is already misunderstood. It is a great error to think that these corruptions of language do no harm. Those who are struggling with the difficulty (and who know by experience how great it already is) of expressing one's self 1 clearly and with precision, find their resources continually narrowed by illiterate writers, who seize and twist from its purpose some form of speech which once served to convey briefly and compactly an unambiguous meaning. It would hardly be believed how often a writer is compelled to a circumlocution by the single vulgarism, introduced during the last few years, of using the word alone as an adverb, only not being fine enough for the rhetoric of ambitious ignorance. A man will say, 'to which I am not alone bound by honor, but also by law,' unaware that what he has unintentionally said is, that he is not alone bound, some other person being bound with him. Formerly, if any one said, 'I am not alone responsible for this,' he was understood to mean (what alone his words mean in correct English), that he is not the sole person responsible; but if he now used such an expression, the reader would be confused between that and two other meanings: that he is not only responsible but something more, or that he is responsible not only for this but for something besides. The time is coming when Tennyson's Enone could not say, I will not die alone,' lest she should be supposed to mean that she would not only die but do something else.

The

“The blunder of writing predicate for predict has become so widely diffused that it bids fair to render one of the most useful terms in the scientific vocabulary of Logic unintelligible. mathematical and logical term 'to eliminate' is undergoing a similar destruction. All who are acquainted either with the proper use of the word or with its etymology, know that to eliminate a thing is to thrust it out; but those who know nothing about it, except that it is a fine-looking phrase, use it in a sense precisely

1 Is this the proper pronoun ?

the reverse, - to denote, not turning anything out, but bringing it in. They talk of eliminating some truth, or other useful result, from a mass of details." 1

IV. Another class of improprieties comprises words used in a sense which they bear in a foreign English words tongue.

with foreign

meanings.

8

Concession is used in the sense of "legislative grant;" evasion in the sense of "escape;" impracticable in the sense of "impassable; " pronounced 2 (French prononcé) in the sense of "marked or "striking;" supreme (Latin supremus) in the sense of "last; resume in the sense of "sum up;" That goes without saying in the sense of “That's a matter of course." We read that a person assists 2 (is present) at a reception or a wedding; that a window gives upon (looks upon or opens upon) the lawn. "Much of truth is another Gallicism. In Pennsylvania dumb (German dumm) is sometimes used for "stupid," what for a (German was für ein) for "what kind of."

"The writers of telegrams," says Mill, "and the foreign correspondents of newspapers, have gone on so long translating demander by 'to demand,' without a suspicion that it means only to ask, that (the context generally showing that nothing else is meant) English readers are gradually associating the English word demand with simple asking, thus leaving the language without a term to express a demand in its proper sense. In like manner, transaction, the French word for a compromise, is translated into the English word 'transaction;' while, curiously enough, the inverse change is taking place in France, where the word compromis has lately begun to be used for expressing the same idea. If this continues, the two countries will have exchanged phrases."'

1 J. S. Mill: A System of Logic, book iv. chap. v. sect. iii. Not in some editions.

2 For these words authority is increasing, but it may be doubted whether they are yet in good use.

8 Trollope easily finds two equivalents for this borrowed expression. “Oh! of course, my dear fellow,' said the Honourable John, laughing, 'that's a matter of course.

We all understand that without saying it.""