^°'- ^^1 General Notes. 7 1 



1903 J t '■ 



parts of compound words. Or, to put it still better, compound words are 

 either printed as a single word or their elements are treated as separate 

 words, generally the latter. But in publications which allow the hyphen 

 its time-honored function, great diversit_y is met with in the manner of its 

 use in just the class of cases to which Dr. Doran has called our attention. 



In discussing this matter by letter with Dr. Doran, I stated that I should 

 greatly prefer current usage to his rules, and write Gyrfalcon and Sparrow 

 Hawk instead of Gyr-falcon and Sparrow-Hawk. 1 should also write not 

 only such names as Redpoll, Yellowthroat, and Bluebird without the 

 hyphen, but also Kingbird, Nighthawk, and Meadowlark in the same 

 way, as against King-bird, Night-Hawk, and Meadow-Lark, as required bj' 

 his rules. 



This, of course, brought up the question of what is ' curient usage ' ; 

 and Dr. Doran replied that he would determine current usage, or "good 

 usage," or "general usage" by such authorities as the ' Century Diction- 

 ary,' the ' Standard Dictionary,' Murray's great ' English Dictionarj',' 

 and Newton's 'Dictionary of Birds,' and states, no doubt correctly, that 

 his rules conform to those employed in these authoritative works. In 

 other words, hard-and-fast rules are followed for the determination of 

 what phrases are properly to be written as compound words, requiring 

 the use of the hyphen. The ' Century,' he admits, writes ' Kingbird ' 

 while all the others write 'King-bird.' "One can hardly," he says, "be 

 said to go counter to good usage, with such authorities as these on his 

 side; there are no better in the English-speaking world."' 



But is there not another side to the subject? The form words linally 

 take in a language is reached by a process of change, or through ' evolu- 

 tion,' by the survival, perhaps not of the fittest, but of the form most 

 favored. Many compound words now almost universally printed as one 

 word without a hyphen, were originally used as two separate and distinct 

 words, and later as a hyphenized compound word, and later still as a 

 single word without any hyphen. For example, the word handbook is 

 still current in three forms — hand book, hand-book, and handbook, 

 though the first is now rare. Many similar cases must occur to every- 

 one, especially among words that are comparatively new, owing their ori- 

 gin to recent inventions and discoveries requiring the coining ot new 

 terms to indicate new processes, forces, and substances. 



Frequency of use of a compound word has obviously much to do with 

 its form. It is common to write 'forehead' 'fore-neck,' and ' hind neck,' 



' I trust there is no breach of courtesy in thus referring to a private corre- 

 spondence. Dr. Doran has expressed the hope that a subject so important 

 will be fully discussed, and for this reason preferred to publish his criticism of 

 the A. O. U. Check-List vernacular names in 'The Auk'; and has further- 

 more had the kindness to suggest that I should publish my views on the sub- 

 ject in the same issue of this journal. 



