NOTES ON STYLE 



fart 5 

 HISTORY AND USAGE OF THE WORD 



THE etymology of words which we are wont to use in a 

 figurative sense will often help us to form a right concep- 

 tion of the different shades of meaning attached to them by 

 custom. 



Style is derived from the Latin stilus ; and stilus was the 

 metal-pointed instrument with which the Romans wrote 

 upon their waxen tablets. When Cicero employed the phrase, 

 orationes pane Attico stilo scripta, he meant to praise the 

 diction of certain speeches which were written * almost with 

 an Attic pen,' or ' almost in an Attic style.' When he spoke 

 of stilus exercitatus, this was equal to ' the pen of a practised 

 writer,' or 'a practised style.' Stilo Plautino may be 

 indifferently translated ' with the pen of Plautus,' or ' in 

 the style of Plautus.' 



Thus, during the golden period of Latin literature, the 

 word stilus had already passed into the stage of metaphor. 

 The mechanical instrument of writing was taken to indicate 

 the manner in which anything was written, in the same way 

 as we speak of the palette, the burin, or the pencil of artists 

 to indicate the manner of their execution. 



Modern scholars, at the time when European culture was 

 still classical and Latin was the universal language, adopted 



