40 



Degraded Words. 



(exemplified in the watchman's ejaculation, " pitiful sight ! " on dis- 

 covering the dead body of Juliet), or else " full of pity, tender," as 

 in the tliree instances in which only the word occurs in King James' 

 Bible. Now it needs no conjecture to discover the reason and method 

 of this gradual drifting in meaning from good to bad. Whoever 

 has heard a " pitiful " story of his woes from a wandering solicitor 

 of charity, and, moved with compassion, has looked into the case 

 only to find an impudent attempt at deceit, has the explanation before 

 him in characte*rs which he may run that readeth. The " pitiful " 

 stor}^ becomes a provocative of scorn and indignation; and the 

 ignominy of the transaction attaches itself indissolubly to the word 

 that described its first appearance, dragging down with it the inno- 

 cent adjective, and fitting it for companionship with actions and 

 conditions diametrically opposite to those with which it originally 

 found place. 



Yet if misery loves company, there is no lack of consolation for 

 jntiful, in this unfortunate relegation to infamous uses. At least 

 three other adjectives have traveled far in the same direction and by 

 much the same route — apparent, plausible and specious. The first 

 of these commonl}-, though of course not always, the transformation 

 as yet being incomplete, but commonly, carries with it in these days 

 at least an insinuation that the thing to which it is applied is not 

 really quite what it seems — that we must not be surprised in fact if 

 the truth of the matter turns out to be very different from its apparent 

 condition. This insinuation is, so to speak, a fungus of comparatively 

 recent growth upon the real meaning of the word, gradually fostered 

 beyond doubt by a series of painful discoveries. Bailey's whole de- 

 finition of apparent^ in 1764, was "that plainly appears, certain, 

 evident, manifest, plain, visible." Thus we still say an " heir ap- 

 parent," meaning an heir beyond question or dispute, but as far as 

 common usage is concerned, we should hardly employ a word like 

 certain as a synonym of apparent, the present practice being rather 

 to consider the two adjectives as almost contradictory of each other. 



As regards plausible and specious, they are manife^ly only the 

 English forms of the Latin plausibilis and speciosus,^ of which the 



' Of course everybody knows tbat many words of classical derivation have 

 come into English, not directly, but through living European languages, chiefly 

 the French ; but that fact is of no consequence for the present purpose, so long 

 as they have preserved enough of their original form to be recognized as the same. 



