52 



Degraded Words. 



uncoramendable enterprises than in the practice of their appropriate 

 occupations ? 



VI. 



Our evil tendency to grumble and complain of our surroundings, 

 and to find fault with our fellow-man, has likewise been instrumental 

 in the degradation of a number of common expressions. Can it be 

 believed, for instance, that Iiomely would ever have come to mean 

 ugly among people cultivating a due spirit of contentment with 

 their daily lot ? The adjectives chronic and inveterate^ also, and 

 the nouns plight and predicciment ought to be as freely applicable 

 to desirable states and conditions as to the reverse. Dr. Cuyler 

 wrote, not long ago, in the Evangelist : " We pastors set great store 

 by chronic Christians;" but in present common usage it cannot be 

 denied that these terms are seldom heard except in relation to things 

 evil. A catastrophe^ too, is really only the final act of a drama, 

 whether tragic or comic, and has perhaps become so nearly the 

 synonym of disaster chiefly because we are so apt to take it for 

 granted, in our talk, if not in our real convictions, that things gen- 

 erally do turn out badly. 



"To censure'^'' was once merely to express an opinion, as in 

 Richard III. : " Will you go and give your censures in this business ?" 

 But our judgment of each other is so often uncharitably severe that 

 the meaning has become limited to unfavorable judgment only; and 

 it appears to me that criticise is going the same way — we apply it 

 much more frequently, I think, to the expression of blame than of 

 commendation. 



The epithet egregious might formerly have been coupled with the 

 name of the most distinguished philosopher, poet or statesman; but 

 we are so much readier at abusing our neighbors than praising them, 

 that the term epithet has dropped almost entirely its good use; and 

 we are so likel}^, in characterizing any person as at all peculiar, which 

 is all that egregious really signifies, to mean that he is peculiarily 

 disagreeable, that one rather expects now-a-days some highly dam- 

 aging appellation to follow, when a man is mentioned as " an egre- 

 gious — "and there the speaker pauses. 



YII. 



Man's propensity to over-reach his fellows when he can, and to 

 take unfair advantage of their necessities, has branded several words 

 with new opprobrium. To prevent is really only to get ahead of, or 



