Many words that are both national and present are not permitted, since they are not reputable. They are used, but wrongly so; used by the careless and the uneducated. A great number of such expressions are perfectly well understood wherever English is spoken, but if one employs them one will be set down as careless or ignorant; for example, ain’t is intelligible to all, but its use is known to be a mark of vulgarity; such a word is called a vulgarism. Most slang consists of vulgarisms, though some slang finally becomes reputable English. Reputable words are those employed by the best writers. By best is meant writers who have literary distinction, and who know and regard the structure and history of English literary words. In this day, when everybody scribbles and prints, there are countless writers whose usage is not really reputable. The newspapers, though they have done much to free modern English from pedantry, are not usually reputable in usage. The English of very many novelists is in bad repute. Even certain writers of eminence, such as Dickens and Thomas Hughes, are guilty of using unreputable words and senses of words. Such essayists as Matthew Arnold and John Fiske; such writers of fiction as Thackeray, Hawthorne, Stevenson, and Henry James; such historians as Green and Parkman—these men are in general safe models in matters of usage.
To sum up, then; if we would be understood, and would be reckoned as educated persons, we must use words that are reputable, national, and present. Good usage is the employment of such words and, senses of words as the body of reputable writers sanction by their own practice to-day. Notice that the body of reputable writers is specified. No one author makes good use, any more than one swallow makes a summer. When a critic wishes to prove by authority that a given expression is English, he must be able to quote it from many authors.
The Dictionary.—A dictionary is a codification of good usage. Indeed, a large dictionary codifies also much bad usage, explaining in the case of the latter the particular form of badness, whether local usage, or colloquial usage, or vulgar usage. Such a dictionary also outlines the history of each word, so far as this is known; it can here be learned what was standard English yesterday, what three centuries ago. A dictionary habit is indispensable to every one. When in doubt about the present meaning or pronunciation of a word, or curious as to its history, look it up. Have an abridged dictionary of your own,—the less abridged the better,—but consult also the unabridged books frequently. Every author rediscovers the charm that lies in the dictionary. To find that charm, every word of the given explanations should be read, and the system of diacritical marks, which show syllabification, accent, vowel, and consonant sounds, should be studied.
Barbarisms.—Lord Chesterfield writes to his son: “The first thing you should attend to is, to speak whatever language you do speak, in its greatest purity, and according to the rules of grammar; for we must never offend against grammar, nor make use of words which are not really words.”
A word that is not in a good dictionary, or is there branded as provincial or as vulgar, is not really a word, and should not be used. An expression that has not been recognized by good use is called a barbarism. Often such terms are incorrectly formed, as when they are coined by ignorant persons; often they are corruptions of words. Motorneer is wrongly coined; slick is corrupted from sleek. Motorneer is made up of motor plus the ending er. The ne is left over from the discarded steam engine, for motorneer is made by false analogy from engineer. The proper word is motorman. If there is need for a new word in the language,—and the need often arises in these days of invention,—its component parts should be from the same tongue, and it should be formed by strict analogy, on the model of some correct, accepted word. Examine such a word as shadowgraph, which the more careless newspapers began to use as soon as the “Roentgen rays” were discovered. Shadow is English; graph is Greek,—a termination that should be added only to a Greek word. Various correct formations have been proposed for the ray-picture—scotograph, radiograph, skiagraph, etc. It remains to be seen which one of these words will become established. Examine the word electrocution. It is formed on the false analogy of execution. Execution is from the Latin ex + sequor, meaning “to follow up,” or, so to speak, “to chase down.” The man who invented electrocution could not have known that sequor was a part of execution. He merely tied together electro and cution, thinking perhaps that cution meant cutting or killing. Electro is from the Greek (meaning “amber,” the substance by rubbing which some one discovered electricity), and in strictness should not be joined to a Latin termination, even if that be correct. We might easily have had a good English word for death in the electrical chair; but as matters stand, there is no one recognized word for this idea.
Other barbarisms are: burglarize, to enthuse (a bad coinage from enthusiasm), an invite, double entendre and nom de plume (two expressions which are neither accepted French nor accepted English), walkist, a combine, preventative (for preventive), reportorial, managerial, to suicide, gent, pants (the trade name, but not the literary), photo, prof., spoonsful. Words brought into the English from other languages, and not yet recognized by good use, are also barbarisms. Such words are said to be not yet Anglicized. They are referred to as alienisms, and most may be classified as Latinisms, Hellenisms (or Greek words), Teutonisms (chiefly German words), Gallicisms (French words). A word peculiar to America is an Americanism; one peculiar to England is a Briticism. Some Americanisms and Briticisms are not really barbarisms, but are warranted by the canon of national use.
The following words are as yet alienisms: artiste, sobriquet, beau monde, faux pas, entre nous, etc. Certain other words are Anglicized: amateur, omelette, etiquette, litterateur, etc. The temptation to sprinkle foreign words unnecessarily into one’s English reaches most persons sooner or later. It should be withstood. The English language is rich enough to furnish forth any man’s vocabulary.
Many words that may finally become good English are not yet accepted. To be on the safe side one should say: point of view, not standpoint; upon, not onto; written permission, not a permit; he doesn’t, not he don’t.[30]
In the list given above it is remarked of pants that it is a trade name (for what are ordinarily known as trousers or pantaloons). Commercial English and literary English are two different things; and while a careful novelist would hardly write about wheatena, or flexibone, or autoharp, he might talk about them in the shops. Yet these words are not correctly formed; and the same thing is unhappily true of other trade names.