Transferred Epithet. This is the shifting of a qualifying word from its proper subject to some allied subject. Examples:
"The little fields made green
By husbandry of many thrifty years."
"He plods his weary way." "Hence to your idle bed!" By this figure the diction is rendered more terse and vigorous; it is much used in verse. For the sake of conciseness, it is used in prose in such phrases as the lunatic asylum, the criminal court, the condemned cell, the blind asylum, the cholera hospital, the foundling asylum, and the like.
"Still in harmonious intercourse they lived
The rural day, and talked the flowing heart."
"There be some who, with everything to make them happy, plod their discontented and melancholy way through life, less grateful than the dog that licks the hand that feeds it."
Transpire. This is one of the most frequently misused words in the language. Its primary meaning is to evaporate insensibly through the pores, but in this sense it is not used; in this sense we use its twin sister perspire. Transpire is now properly used in the sense of to escape from secrecy, to become known, to leak out; and improperly used in the sense of to occur, to happen, to come to pass, and to elapse. The word is correctly used thus: "You will not let a word concerning the matter transpire"; "It transpires [leaks out] that S. & B. control the enterprise"; "Soon after the funeral it transpired [became known] that the dead woman was alive"; "It has transpired [leaked out] that the movement originated with John Blank"; "No report of the proceedings was allowed to transpire"; "It has not yet transpired who the candidate is to be." The word is incorrectly used thus: "The Mexican war transpired in 1847"; "The drill will transpire under shelter"; "The accident transpired one day last week"; "Years will transpire before it will be finished"; "More than a century transpired before it was revisited by civilized man."
Trifling Minutiæ. The meaning of trifles and of minutiæ is so nearly the same that no one probably ever uses the phrase trifling minutiæ except from thoughtlessness.
Trustworthy. See [Reliable].
Try. This word is often improperly used for make. We make experiments, not try them, which is as incorrect as it would be to say, try the attempt, or the trial.
Ugly. In England, this word is restricted to meaning ill-favored; with us it is often used—and not without authority—in the sense of ill-tempered, vicious, unmanageable.