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POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



world great fortunes are sometimes 

 very suddenly made and names be- 

 fore obscure spring into world-wide 

 notoriety, so, in the realm of lan- 

 guage, a word of very uncertain 

 ancestry and no social repute may 

 assert its right to recognition and 

 take its place among the best. 



It does not follow from this that 

 it can ever be a matter of indiffer- 

 ence what words we use or what 

 tricks we play with language, any 

 more than it can be a matter of in- 

 difference what personal habits we 

 adopt. Language is the clothing of 

 our thoughts, and as such it may 

 exhibit the same qualities which at- 

 tach to the clothing of our bodies. 

 It may be marked by neatness and 

 propriety, or by slovenliness and 

 want of taste. Some men are over- 

 dressed, and some affect over-fine 

 language. Some go after the latest 

 novelties in the tailoring world, and 

 some after the latest slang, assert- 

 ing thereby their resolution to be up 

 to date. It is needless to draw the 

 parallel further, but it is evident 

 that there is wide scope in the 

 choice of language for the exhibi- 

 tion of personal preference and per- 

 sonal character. We think it safe 

 to say that the interests of a lan- 

 guage, considered as an instrument 

 of thought, will be best promoted 

 by those who pay due respect to its 

 established forms, and only counte- 

 nance such neologisms as make good 

 their claim to acceptance by sup- 

 plying a real want. Mr. Archer, in 

 the article we have referred to, 

 states, and we do not doubt with 

 truth, that the English language has 

 been greatly enriched and strength- 

 ened by the fact that it has been 

 spoken and written by millions of 

 people on this side of the Atlantic, 

 leading an intense and vigorous life 

 of their own, under conditions very 

 different in many respects from 

 those pr(»vailing in the mother coun- 

 try. The language moves with a 

 freer step, beats with a stronger 



pulse, and assumes a more imperial 

 bearing from the fact that it ex- 

 presses the activity and sums up the 

 life of the foremost communities 

 of the human race in both hemi- 

 spheres. 



A great classical scholar not 

 long ago wrote a letter to an Eng- 

 lish weekly newspaper expressing a 

 very contemptuous estimate of the 

 French language, as being only a de- 

 graded form of Latin. He thought it 

 a great disgrace to the language that 

 it had no better word for " much " 

 than heaucoup, which, as he learned- 

 ly explained, came from two Latin 

 words meaning " fine " and " blow." 

 The most cursory examination of 

 any language will show that it 

 abounds in just such verbal devices. 

 We do not in English put the words 

 " great " and " stroke " together, 

 but, using them separately, we say 

 " a great stroke " of luck and of 

 many other things when there is no 

 question of " striking " at all. In 

 the same way we would say " a great 

 hit," when there is no question of 

 hitting, except by remote analogy. 

 Languages grow rich and flexible 

 precisely by the adoption of such 

 convenient combinations. What 

 they may originally have meant be- 

 comes a matter of little moment 

 when once they have become thor- 

 oughly accepted and thoroughly ex- 

 pressive. After they have become 

 welded together, as sometimes hap- 

 pens, in one word, it is an advantage 

 rather than otherwise if the sepa- 

 rate meanings of their constituent 

 parts become lost to all except the 

 professional etymologist. As long 

 as the separate parts retain their 

 separate meaning some sense of in- 

 congruity will sometimes arise in 

 connection with the use of the term. 

 Thus to say " a handful of corn " is 

 all right, but one might feel that it 

 was not all right to say " a mere 

 handful of men." Yet it would be 

 futile to criticise the expression 

 which has become idiomatic Eng- 



