VARIATIONS IN MEANING OF TER*MS. 483 



most be said to be principally wielded by persons ignorant of the proper 

 use of the instrument, and who are spoiling it more and more for those 

 who understand it. Vulgarisms, which creep in nobody knows how, are 

 daily depriving the English language of valuable modes of expressing 

 thought. To take a present instance: the verb transpire formerly con- 

 veyed very expressively its correct meaning, viz., to become known through 

 unnoticed channels — to exhale, as it were, into publicity through invisible 

 pores, like a vapor or gas disengaging itself. But of late a practice has 

 commenced of employing this word, for the sake of finery, as a mere syno- 

 nym of to happen: "the events which have transpired in the Crimea," 

 meaning the incidents of the war. This vile specimen of bad English is 

 already seen in the dispatches of noblemen and viceroys ; and the time is 

 apparently not far distant when nobody will understand the word if used 

 in its proper sense. In other cases it is not the love of finery, but simple 

 want of education, which makes writers employ words in senses unknown 

 to genuine English. The use of " aggravating " for " provoking," in my 

 boyhood a vulgarism of the nursery, has crept into almost all newspapers, 

 and into many books ; and when th^ word is used in its proper sense, as 

 when writers on criminal law speak of aggravating and extenuating cir- 

 cumstances, their meaning, it is probable, is already misunderstood. It is 

 a great error to think that these corruptions of language do no harm. 

 Those who are struggling with the difficulty (and who know by experience 

 how great it already is) of expressing one's self clearly with precision, find 

 their resources continually narrowed by illiterate writers, who seize and 

 twist from its purpose some form of speech which once served to convey 

 briefly and compactly an unambiguous meaning. It would hardly be be- 

 lieved how often a writer is compelled to a circumlocution by the single 

 vulgarism, introduced during the last few years, of using the word alone 

 as an abverb, onli/ not being fine enough for the rhetoric of ambitious ig- 

 norance. A man will say " to which I am not alone bound by honor but 

 also by law," unaware that what he has unintentionally said is, that he is 

 not alone bound, some other person being bound with him. Formerly, if 

 any one said, " I am not alone responsible for this," he was understood to 

 mean (what alone his words mean in correct English), that he is not the 

 sole person responsible; but if he now used such an expression, the reader 

 would be confused between that and two other meanings : that he is not 

 onl]/ responsible but something more ; or that he is responsible not only 

 for this but for something besides. The time is coming when Tennyson's 

 CEnone could not say, " I will not die alone," lest she should be supposed 

 to mean that she would not only die but do something else. 



The blunder of writing predicate for predict has become so widely dif- 

 fused that it bids fair to render one of the most useful terms in the sci- 

 entific vocabulary of Logic unintelligible. The mathematical and logical 

 term "to eliminate "is undergoing a similar destruction. All who are ac- 

 quainted either with the proper use of the word or with its etymology 

 know that to eliminate a thing is to thrust it out: but those who know 

 nothing about it, except that it is a fine-looking phrase, use it in a sense 

 precisely the reverse, to denote, not turning any thing out, but bringing it 

 in. They talk of eliminating some truth, or other useful result, from a 

 mass of details.* A similar permanent deterioration in the language is 



* Though no such evil consequences as take place in these instances are likely to arise from 

 the modern freak of writing sanatory instead of sanitary, it deserves notice as a charming 

 specimen of pedantry ingrafted upon ignorance. Those who thus undertake to correct the 



