6

welcomed under proper conditions of population and public opinion. I 'annexion' rather than annexation.' Where a word is so say much used, better save a syllable, especially as the shorter is the better."

For two or three days after the publication of this letter, some of the local journals followed Mr. Sumner's lead; but in a week his suggestion was forgotten.

Such is the fate of all attempts to stem the current of usage, when it strongly sets one way.

CHAPTER III.

BARBARISMS.

THE offences against the usage of the English language are: (1) Barbarisms, words not English; (2) Solecisms, constructions not English; (3) Improprieties, words or phrases used in a sense not English.1

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 never established themselves in the language; (3) new formations from words in good use.

66

SECTION I.

OBSOLETE Words.

'Language, like every thing else in the world, is subject to change. It is not so much men as times that differ. Events go on; with them, ideas, words, all the forms of a language, are subject to one and the same law. The expressive words, the happy turns of phrase, used in the Middle Ages, are sometimes regretted; but people forget that time leaves behind it only that which is no longer used." 2

1 See, for the corresponding excellences, p. 2.

2 X. Doudan: Mélanges, tome i.; De la Nouvelle École Poétique.

Swift's strange

Yet Swift maintained that "it is better a language should not be wholly perfect than that it proposal. should be perpetually changing;" that, therefore, "some method should be thought on for ascertaining and fixing our language for ever, after such alterations in it as shall be thought requisite ; 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

The fashion

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 useless when out of fashion, and that they will inevitably go out of fashion with the things of language. which they name. When, for instance, the invention of gunpowder put an end to hawking and archery, it also rendered most of the words in the vocabularies descriptive of those sports obsolete in both their literal and their figurative meanings.

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 ceremonial; but, on ordinary occasions, the former are as much out of place as the latter. Those who, knowing the present fashions, wilfully disregard them, are guilty of affectation; those who do not know them show their ignorance.

1 A Proposal for Correcting, Improving, and Ascertaining the English Tongue. (1712.)

66

Examples of such affectation are: volcano pronounced with the Italian a,1 discomfortable (for "uncomfortable "), withouten,2 muchly,2 bragly,2 bullkin,2 commonweal3 (for commonwealth "), mote (as "so mote it be "), otherwhere, adit (as "their adits and exits" 5), whiles, litten, twifold, soothly," in the like sort.

6

6

Examples of such ignorance are: beholden for "obliged," afeared for "afraid," axe for "ask," obleeged for "obliged," collegiate (as a noun) for "collegian," contráry for "contrary," party for "person."

SECTION II.

NEW WORDS.

The exigencies of expression 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 archery useless, introduced a vocabulary of its own. So, too, the nation which excels in an art or science

Words of for

furnishes to other nations many of the terms of eign origin. that art, the name of a new thing being usually adopted at the same time with the thing.

Almanac, alcohol, chemistry, tariff, come to us from the Arabic; corral, alligator, cargo, embargo, sierra, stampede, ranch, cigar, from the Spanish; canoe, squaw, wigwam, tomahawk, from the North American Indian; yacht, from the Dutch; pagoda, nabob, pundit, jungle, from Hindostan; taboo, from Polynesia; panic, sycophant, from Greece; caste, commodore, from Portugal; chess, shawl, from Persia; hurricane, from the West Indies. The French language has contributed to the English many of the terms of warfare (abatis), of diplomacy (envoy), of fashionable intercourse (etiquette),

1 "A sort of shibboleth of the English nobility." Fitzedward Hall: Modern English, p. 319.

2 F. W. Newman: Translation of Homer; quoted by Matthew Arnold: Essays in Criticism, p. 385.

8 Swinburne: Essays and Studies.

4 Archbishop Trench: Lectures on Plutarch.

5 Sir Arthur Helps: Social Pressure.

6 William Morris: Translation of The Eneids.

8 E. A. Freeman. For other examples, see p. 17.

7 Morris: Jason.

of cookery (omelette), of the fine arts (amateur); and it has borrowed from the English words relating to nautical affairs (brick from "brig"), or political affairs (budget),' to home life (confortable), and to manly sports (jockei).

Obstacles to

This privilege of borrowing from our neighbors should not, however, be carried beyond the limits prescribed by good usage,-limits fixed by necessity or the general convenience. Even within these limits, the introduction of a foreign word is attended with seritheir intro- ous drawbacks. Time sometimes more, sometimes less is required for such a word to become familiar; and it will never, perhaps, quite throw off its foreign air. A native word, moreover, is one of a numerous family; but a French or a German word often comes alone, and rarely, if ever, is accompanied by all the words of the same origin with itself.

duction.

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; and if a new derivative were required, an Englishman would naturally form it from to exhibit, a Frenchman from exposer.

Though these inconveniences constitute no sufficient objection to the use either 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, however, the temptation to strut in borrowed finery is often too strong to be resisted.

Borrowed

"We need only glance into one of the periodical representatives of fashionable literature, or into a novel of the day, finery. 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 1 Originally from the French bougette (leather bag), now obsolete. 2 Query as to this preposition.