AT FAULT.
It is rather a serious matter that our public companies, and especially our railway companies, are doing their best to degrade our language. I am not going to be squeamish and object strongly to the use of the word Metropolitan, though I think it indefensible. Still, it is too bad of them to persist in using the word bye-laws for by-laws—so establishing solidly a shocking error. The word bye has no existence in England except as short for be with you, in the phrase Good-bye. The so called by-laws are simple laws by the other laws, and have nothing to do with any form of salutation. In a bill of the Great Western Railway I find the announcement that tickets obtained in London on any day from December 20th to 24th will be available for use on either of those days—this either meaning the five days from the 20th December to the 24th inclusive. Either of five! After this I am not surprised that, in a contribution of my own to a daily paper, the editor gravely altered the
phrase the last-named, applied to one of three people, to latter. In a railway advertisement I read a day or two ago, “From whence.” Now, what is the good of such fine words as whence and thence if they are thus to be ill-used? Surely the railway companies might have some one capable of seeing that their grammar has some pretence to correctness.
—Gentleman’s Magazine.