Words; Their Use and Abuse

by William Mathews

The fool hath planted his memory with an army of words.—Shakespeare.

In the commerce of speech use only coin of gold and silver.... Be profound with clear terms, and not with obscure terms.—Joubert.

The more you have studied foreign languages, the more you will be disposed to keep Ollendorff in the background; the proper result of such acquirements is visible in a finer ear for words.—T. W. Higginson.

Never be grandiloquent when you want to drive home a searching truth. Don’t whip with a switch that has the leaves on, if you want to tingle.—H. W. Beecher.

It is a trite remark that words are the representatives of things and thoughts, as coin represents wealth. You carry in your pocket a doubloon or a dollar, stamped by the king or state, and you are the virtual owner of whatever it will purchase. But who affixes the stamp upon a word? No prince or potentate was ever strong enough to make or unmake a single word. Cæsar confessed that with all his power he could not do it, and Claudius could not introduce even a new letter. He attempted to introduce the consonant V, as distinct from U, the Roman alphabet having but one character for both; but he could not make his subjects accept the new letter, though he could kill or plunder them at pleasure. Cicero tried his hand at word-coining; but though he proved a skilful mint-master, and struck some admirable trial pieces, which were absolutely needed to facilitate mental exchanges, yet they did not gain circulation, and were thrown back upon his hands. But that which defied the power of Cæsar and of Cicero does not transcend the ability of many writers of our own day, some of whom are adepts in the art of word-coining, and are daily minting terms and phrases which must make even Noah Webster, boundless as was his charity for new words, turn in his grave. It is doubtful, however, whether these persons do so much damage to our noble English language as those who vulgarize it by the use of penny-a-liner phrases. There is a large and growing class of speakers and writers, on both sides of the Atlantic, who, apparently despising the homely but terse and telling words of their mother tongue, never use a Saxon term, if they can find what Lord Brougham calls a “long-tailed word in ’osity or ’ation” to do its work.

What is the cause of this? Is it the extraordinary, not to say excessive, attention now given by persons of all ages to foreign languages, to the neglect of our own? Is it the comparative inattention given to correct diction by the teachers in the schools of to-day; or is it because the favorite books of the young are sensational stories, made pungent, and, in a sense, natural, through the lavish use of all the colloquialisms and vulgarisms of low life? Shall we believe that it is because there is little individuality and independence in these days, that the words of so few persons are flavored with their idiosyncrasies; that it is from conscious poverty of thought that they try to trick out their ideas in glittering words and phrases, just as, by means of high-heeled boots, a laced coat, and a long feather, a fellow with a little soul and a weak body might try to pass muster as a bold grenadier? Or is it because of the prevalent mania for the sensational,—the craving for novelty and excitement, which is almost universal in these days,—that so many persons make sense subservient to sound, and avoid calling things by their proper names? Or, finally, to take a more charitable view of the case, is it because it is impossible for inaccurate minds to hit the exact truth, and describe a thing just as they have seen it,—to express degrees of feeling, to observe measures and proportions, and define a sensation as it was felt? Was Talleyrand wrong when he said that language was given to man to conceal his thought; and was it really given to hide his want of thought? Is it, indeed, the main object of expression to convey the smallest possible amount of meaning with the greatest possible amount of appearance of meaning; and, since nobody can be “so wise as Thurlow looked,” to look as wise as Thurlow while uttering the veriest truisms?

Be all this as it may, in nothing else is the lack of simplicity, which is so characteristic of our times, more marked than in the prevailing forms of expression. “The curse and the peril of language in our day, and particularly in this country,” says an American critic, who may, perhaps, croak at times, but who has done much good service as a literary policeman in the repression of verbal licentiousness, “is that it is at the mercy of men who, instead of being content to use it well, according to their honest ignorance, use it ill, according to their affected knowledge; who, being vulgar, would seem elegant; who, being empty, would seem full; who make up in pretence what they lack in reality; and whose little thoughts, let off in enormous phrases, sound like fire-crackers in an empty barrel.” In the estimation of many writers at the present day, the great, crowning vice in the use of words is, apparently, to employ plain, straightforward English. The simple Saxon is not good enough for their purposes, and so they array their ideas in “big, dictionary words,” derived from the Latin, and load their style with expletives as tasteless as the streamers of tattered finery that flutter about the person of a dilapidated belle. The “high polite,” in short, is their favorite style, and the good old Spartan rule of calling a spade a spade they hold in thorough contempt. Their great recipe for elegant or powerful writing is to call the most common things by the most uncommon names. Provided that a word is out-of-the-way, unusual, or far-fetched,—and especially if it is one of many syllables,—they care little whether it is apt and fit or not.

With them a fire is always “the devouring element,” or a “conflagration”; and the last term is often used where there is no meeting of flames, as when a town is fired in several places, but when only one building is burned; the fire never burns a house, but it always “consumes an edifice,” unless it is got under, in which case “its progress is arrested.” A railroad accident is always “a holocaust,” and its victims are named under the “death roll.” A man who is the first to do a thing “takes the initiative.” Instead of loving a woman, a man “becomes attached” to her; instead of losing his mother by death, he “sustains a bereavement of his maternal relative.” A dog’s tail, in the pages of these writers, is his “caudal appendage”; a dog breaker, “a kunopædist”; and a fish-pond they call by no less lofty a title than “piscine preserve.” Ladies, in their classic pages, have ceased to be married, like those poor, vulgar creatures, their grandmothers; they are “led to the hymeneal altar.” Of the existence of such persons as a man, a woman, a boy, or a girl, these writers are profoundly ignorant; though they often speak of “individuals,” “gentlemen,” “characters,” and “parties,” and often recognize the existence of “juveniles” and “juvenile members of the community.” “Individual” is another piece of pompous inanity which is very current now. In “Guesses at Truth” mention is made of a celebrated preacher, who was so destitute of all feeling for decorum in language, as to call our Saviour “this eminent individual.” “Individual” is a good Latin word, and serves a good purpose when it distinguishes a person from a people or class, as it served a good purpose in the scholastic philosophy; but would Cicero or Duns Scotus have called a great man an eminens individuum? These “individuals,” strange to say, are never dressed, but always “attired”; they never take off their clothes, but “divest themselves of their habiliments,” which is so much grander.

“In the church,” says St. Paul, “I had rather speak five words with my understanding, that by my voice I might teach others also, than ten thousand words in an unknown tongue.” Not so think some of the preachers of the Gospel of the present day, if we may judge them by the language they use in their discourses. To give their sermons a philosophical air, or because simple language is not to their taste, they invest their discourses with the technicalities of science and philosophy. They never speak of so old-fashioned a thing as the will, but always of “volition”; duty, with them, is never duty simply, but always “moral obligation”; and their sermons abound in “necessary relations,” “moral and physical necessities,” “intellectual processes,” “laws of nature,” and “arguments a priori and a posteriori.” It was a preacher of this class, who having occasion to tell his hearers that there was not one Gospel for the rich and another for the poor, informed them that, “if they would not be saved on ‘general principles,’ they could not be saved at all.” Who can doubt that such language as this is not only poorly understood, if understood it is, by the ordinary hearer, but is far less effective than the simple Saxon words which might be used to convey the same ideas? Some years ago a white minister preached in a plain, direct style to a church of negroes in the South, whose “colored” pastor was greatly addicted to the use of high-flown language in his sermons. In the season of exhortation and prayer that followed, an old negro thanked the Lord for the various blessings of the Sabbath and the sanctuary, and especially, he added, “we thank Thee that to-day we have been fed from a low crib.” Would it not be well for preachers generally to remember that many of Christ’s flock are “little ones,” whose necks are short, and that they may consequently starve, if their food, however nutritious, is placed in too lofty a crib?

But preachers are not the only anti-Saxons of our day; we may find them in nearly all the classes of society,—persons who never tell us that a man is asleep, but say that he is “locked in slumber”; who deem it vulgar, and perhaps cruel, to say that a criminal was hanged, but very elegant to say that he was “launched into eternity.” A person of their acquaintance never does so low a thing as to break his leg; he “fractures his limb.” They never see a man fall; but sometimes see “an individual precipitated.” Our Latin friends,—fortunate souls,—never have their feelings hurt, though it must be confessed that their “sensibilities” are sometimes dreadfully “lacerated.” Above the necessities of their poor fellow-creatures, they never do so vulgar a thing as to eat a meal; they always “partake of a repast,” which is so much more elegant. They never do so commonplace a thing as to take a walk; they “make a pedestrian excursion.” A conjurer with them is a “prestidigitator”; a fortune-teller, a “vaticinator.” As Pascal says, they mask all nature. There is with them no king, but an “august monarch”; no Paris, but a “capital of a kingdom.” Even our barbers have got upon stilts. They no longer sell tooth-powder and shaving-soap, like the old fogies, their fathers, but “odonto,” and “dentifrice,” and “rypophagon”; and they themselves, from the barber-ous persons they once were, have been transformed into “artists in hair.” The medical faculty, too, have caught the spirit of the age. Who would suspect that “epistaxis” means simply bleeding at the nose, and “emollient cataplasm” only a poultice? Fancy one schoolboy doubling up his fist at another, and telling him to look out for epistaxis! Who would dream that “anheidrohepseterion” (advertised in the London “Times”) means only a saucepan, or “taxidermist” a bird-stuffer? Is it not remarkable that tradesmen have ceased “sending in” their “little bills,” and now only “render their accounts”?