Would God, whether or no, never so good, whereabouts, many a, to dance attendance, to scrape acquaintance, whether easy to parse or not, are easy to understand, are facts in language. Currying favor may at once defy grammatical analysis and smell of the stable; but what other expression sums up the low arts by which a toady seeks to ingratiate himself?

In the use of language, there is only one sound principle of judgment. If to be understood is, The only sound as it should be, a writer's first object, his principle. language must be such as his readers understand, and understand as he understands it. If, being a scholar, he uses Latinisms or Gallicisms known only to scholars like himself; if, being a physician or a lawyer, he uses legal or medical cant; or if, living in Yorkshire or in Arkansas, he writes in the dialect of Yorkshire or in that of Arkansas;-his work, even if not partially unintelligible, will be distasteful to the general public. If he is so fond of antiquity as to prefer a word that has not been in good use since the twelfth or the seventeenth century to one only fifty years old but in good use to-day, he is in danger of being shelved with his adopted contemporaries; if, on the other hand, he is so greedy of novelty as to snatch at the words of a season, of which few survive the occasion that gave them birth, his work is likely to be as ephemeral as they. By avoiding vulgarity and pedantry alike, a writer, while commending himself to the best class of readers, loses nothing in the estimation of others; for those who do not speak or write pure English themselves understand it when spoken or written by others, but rarely understand more than one variety of impure English.

The reasons, in short, which prevent an English author from publishing a treatise in Greek, Celtic, or

French, or in a dialect peculiar to a place or a class, prohibit him from employing any expression not familiar to the great body of cultivated men in Englishspeaking countries, and not sanctioned by good defined. use, that is, by reputable, national, and present use reputable as opposed to vulgar or affected; national as opposed to foreign, local, or professional ; present as opposed to obsolete or transient.

Good use

Reputable use is fixed, not by the practice of those whom A or B deems the best speakers or writers, but by that of those whom the world deems the best, not the little world in which A or B moves, but the world of intelligent people, those who are in the best repute, not indeed as to thought, but as to expression,

Reputable

use.

the manner of communicating thought. The practice of no one writer, however high he may stand in the public estimation, is enough to settle a point; but the uniform, or nearly uniform, practice of reputable speakers or writers is decisive. Their aim being fully and promptly to communicate what they have to say, they use the language best adapted to that purpose; and their use, in its turn, helps to fix the forms they adopt.

Among common expressions that are not in reputable use are the following: on tick; with vim; neck-handkerchief ("neckerchief "); swingeing (as in "a swingeing bill"); I allow ("maintain "); I reckon, calculate, guess, or fancy (when used to express opinion, expectation, or intention); shaky; no great shakes ("of little account"); bogus; a new dodge; to qualify (in the sense of "to take an oath of office"); to wire or to cable ("to telegraph "); to skedaddle.

These are specimens of large classes of expressions that, whether in more or less general use, whether met in all circles but the highest, in all parts of England or of America, or only in one place or one circle, are far from being reputable.

National use is fixed by speakers and writers of national reputation. That reputation they National use. could not enjoy, if they were readily under

stood by the people of only one district or the members of only one class. Using language intelligible in every district and to every class, they serve to keep the common fund of expression in general circulation. Even in matters of pronunciation and accent, the standard, though difficult to find, can be found in the con current practice of the most approved poets and public speakers and of the most cultivated social circles.

Among provincialisms that should be avoided are the following: The pronunciation of " news as nooz; of "were" and "weren't" as waur and waurn't, or wair and wairn't; of "sewing" as sueing; of "neighbor" as neebor; of "chamber ” as chamber. The use of shew for "showed;" proven for "proved;" india-rubbers or gums for "over-shoes;" vest for "waistcoat;" slice (current in some parts of England and in south-eastern Massachusetts) for "fireshovel;" folks for "people" or "family;" flit, flitting, for "move" or "remove," and "moving" or "removing;" yon for" that;" to hail from, in the sense of "to report as one's home;" part for "region" (as "Switzerland is a mountainous part"); this for "this place; in this connection for "in connection with this subject; "I'll be back to rights" for "presently;" right off, right away, for "immediately;" "it rains right (for "very") hard;" right here (for "at this point"); a smart sprinkle, a smart chance, a smart boy, for "a heavy shower," "a good chance," " a bright boy;" bully or crack for "excellent;" bummers for "camp-followers;" fetch up for "bring up" (as a child); "I should admire (for "like") to see; to stop for "to stay;" ilk for "same,' as "Bradwardine of that ilk," " meaning "Bradwardine of Bradwardine,” -or for "kind,"

66

1

as Tyler and others of that ilk; "disremember; boughten (as distinguished from "home-made "); lumber for "timber;" The States for "The United States;" elective or optional (for "elective," or "optional, studies ").

1 Scott: Waverley, vol. ii. chap. xiv.

8

GRAMMATICAL PURITY.

lived but not good we

[BOOK I.

Instances of expressions that have come from professional into more or less general, but not into good, use are the following: From the law, aforesaid or said (as "the said man "), on the docket, entail (in the sense of "bring "), "and now comes (at the beginning of a paragraph), I claim (in the sense of "maintain") that; from the pulpit, on the anxious seat, phylactery, advent, hierarchy, neophyte; from medicine, affection (as "an affection of the liver "); from commerce, balance (as "the balance of the day was given to talk "), "in his line," A No. 1; from the Congressional dialect, to champion ("support") a measure, to antagonize, two measures contending for precedence in the order of legislation are said to antagonize each other, a senator is said to antagonize (“oppose") a bill or another senator; from mathematics, to differentiate (in the sense of "to make a difference between "); from a school in political economy, wage and wage-fund (" wages, wages-fund"), to appreciate and to depreciate (in the sense of "to rise," or "to fall, in value "); from the stock-market, to aggregate (in the sense of "to amount to," as "the sales aggregated1 fifty thousand shares”), to take stock in, above par; from mining, to pan out, hard pan, to get down to bed rock, to strike a bonanza or to strike oil (in the sense of "to succeed"), these diggings ("this section ").

The following are instances of foreign expressions to which English equivalents are preferable: née ("Casaubon born Brooke "1 is preferable), on the tapis (carpet), coup de soleil (sunstroke), trottoir (sidewalk), motif (motive), morceau (piece), émeute (riot), fracas (brawl), abattoir (slaughter-house), feux d'artifice (fireworks), dépôt (station), gamin (street boy, street Arab), chevalier d'industrie (adventurer), bas bleu (blue-stocking), derailment (said of a train thrown off the track).3

Words in good use in the United States are to be preferred by an American to those not heard out of Great Britain: as coal to coals, pitcher to jug, honor to honour, railroad cars to carriages, horse railroad to tramway, trunks to boxes, wharves to wharfs. An Englishman, on the other hand, should, as matter of national use, prefer the English to the American form.

Present use is determined neither by authors who wrote so long ago that their diction has become antiquated, nor by those whose national reputation is not George Eliot: Middlemarch.

1 See also p. 60.

See, for other examples, p. 22.

firmly established. Not even the authority of Shakspere, of Milton, or of Johnson, though supported by the uniform practice of his contemporaries, justi- Present use. fies an expression that has been disused for

fifty years; nor does the adoption by many newspapers of a new word, or of an old word in a new sense, establish it in the language. In both cases, time is the court of last resort; and the decisions of this court are made known by recent writers of national reputation.

The exact boundaries of present use cannot, however, be fixed with precision. Dr. Campbell, writ- Its ing in the last century, held that no word boundaries. should be deemed in present use which was not to be found in works written since 1688, or which was found only in the works of living authors; but in these days of change, words come and go more rapidly. New things call for new names; and the new names, if generally accepted, will, in a few years, come with the new things into present use. The history of gas, steam, mining, of the railroad, of the telegraph, abounds in familiar instances. When, on the other hand, the study of mental and moral philosophy received, in the early part of the century, an impulse from Germany, words long disused were recalled to life.

“Reason and understanding, as words denominative of distinct faculties; the adjectives sensuous, transcendental, subjective and objective, supernatural, as an appellation of the spiritual, or that immaterial essence which is not subject to the law of cause and effect, and is thus distinguished from that which is natural, words revived, not invented, by the school of Coleridge."1

are all

Again words may be in present use in poetry which are obsolete, or almost obsolete, in prose.

1 Marsh English Language, lect. viii.

punctuation