THE SOCIETY OF PURE ENGLISH
The Society of Pure English, which was founded shortly before the war, and which during the war was temporarily suspended, has now begun to carry out its original purpose, and probably before this note appears its first two pamphlets will have been published. Pamphlet No. 1 will contain a list of the members of the Society and a reprint of the original prospectus, which was privately printed in 1913, and which contains a statement of the Society's aims in general terms. Pamphlet No. 2 will consist of a discussion by the Poet Laureate of a curious and hitherto almost unnoticed phenomenon of contemporary speech, the great increase, namely, of homophones, or words of the same sound but different meanings, in the English language. As the original prospectus shows, the Society does not in the least aim at the absurd project of "fixing" the language—its conception is rather that, since all living languages change and must change as life changes, an attempt should be made to guide this necessary process by acknowledged principles of tradition and taste.