A First Book in Writing English

by Edwin Herbert Lewis

4. It is impossible for me to disassociate from my mind the conception that such a course would be disastrous to the ambitions of the team.

5. Public sentiment would not permit an individual or an infinitesimally small minority to clog the wheels of progress in order to prevent the escape of a few dollars from the individuals composing the obstructive element.

6. Let us indeed refrain from any course of action which will militate against the onward march of the civilizing power of the public schools of this great and growing nation.

7. While the birds were carolling their sweetest strains and the grass hung heavy with water-pearls, Peter Brant was taking his life. A more seductive place to die in than the little garden back of 7000 Congress street is inconceivable.

Literal and Figurative Words.—Before it can be decided how far the young writer should use figures of speech, it is necessary to find out the real difference between a literal word or statement and a figurative word or statement. If figures are always mere embellishments of language, the journeyman had better shun them anxiously; for his true object is to express his thought, not to decorate it. If, however, some figures are not embellishments but ordinary building-material, the case is different.

When, on seeing biscuits for the first time, a child refers to them as moons, he is not making an effort to adorn his language. He is unconsciously using a figure of speech because he does not know the literal, proper, conventional name, biscuit. If the child had formerly lived in a country where apples grew but potatoes did not, the first time he saw a potato he would probably call it a ground-apple. As a matter of fact there are people that have gone through some such experience with potatoes. The French word pomme de terre indicates this.

Most words were once figures of speech, that is, tropes. A trope, from the Greek word τρέπω, to turn, is merely the turning away of a word from its ordinary meaning to give a name to some new idea. The root of many a word shows the figure that was used to express a given new idea. The root spir- means to breathe. Since the inability to breathe is one part of the process of death, the expression to breathe out became a figurative expression for the whole idea of “to die.” In expire, applied to death, the idea of breathe is usually not felt. The figure is forgotten, and we therefore call it a root-figure, or radical figure. As may be seen from the roots of the Curious Words on [page 191], language is figurative through and through.

This is true not only of language already made, but of that which is daily making. In every mind shades of thought are constantly occurring for which there are either no names, or none which the mind can learn in the interval before expression is necessary. If the exact word is not at hand, a comparison must be made. The shade of thought must be named by telling what thing in the reader’s experience it is like.

Does the attempt at comparison result in a vague, inexact phrase, or in an exact one? The youth who declares that his lesson is as “hard as thunder,” has expressed himself but vaguely. The same is true of the young lady who declares that it rained “like anything.” Let us examine briefly the chief kinds of tropes, and note whether they are necessarily less clear and exact than literal statements.

A person sees an accident, and reports that “a score of hands” picked up the injured boy. Here is synecdoche. The “hands” stand for the persons—a part for the whole; a “score” probably stands for a dozen,—the whole number of hands in the group of people, for the smaller number that actually touched the boy. Or, the “score” may be called hyperbole, that is, exaggeration. A critic might say that either figure is inexact here. True, in a way. But if the writer had reported that he seemed to see a score of hands, the phrase would be faithful to his thought. We may take the seemed for granted, and reply to the critic that for exact purposes in a law court, “seemed to see a score of hands” might be nearer the truth than an attempt at greater precision.