Good usage is the only real authority in the choice of reputable words; and to determine, in every case, what good usage dictates, is not an easy matter. Authors, like words, must be tested by time before their forms of expression may become a law for others. Pope, in his Essay on Criticism, laid down a rule which, for point and brevity, has never been excelled:
“In words, as fashions, the same rule will hold;
Alike fantastic, if too new or old;
Be not the first by whom the new are tried,
Nor yet the last to lay the old aside.”
Campbell, in his Philosophy of Rhetoric, says that a word to be legitimate must have these three signs of authority:
1. It must be reputable, or that of educated people, as opposed to that of the ignorant or vulgar.
2. It must be national, as opposed to what is either local or technical.
3. It must be present, as opposed to what is obsolete.
Any word that does not have these three qualities may, in general, be styled a barbarism.
ANGLICIZED WORDS
Many foreign words, in process of time, become so thoroughly domesticated that their translation, or the use of an awkward equivalent, would be a greater mark of pedantry than the use of the foreign words. The proper use of such terms as fiat, palladium, cabal, quorum, omnibus, antique, artiste, coquette, ennui, physique, régime, tableau, amateur, cannot be censured on the ground of their foreign character.
OBSOLETE WORDS
Some writers affect an antiquated style by the introduction of such words as peradventure, perchance, anon, behest, quoth, erewhile. The use of such words gives a strange sound to the sentence, and generally indicates that the writer is not thoroughly in earnest. The expression is lowered in tone and is made to sound fantastic.