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doubt; but so, for that matter, is its parent, the universally accepted 

 verb rely, and still more so the unchallenged noun reliance, consisting 

 as this does of an English root with a French prefix and suffix, like an 

 old, well-worn spoke-shave with a pair of bran new handles. (As to 

 the other objection to reliable — that we do not rely a thing but rely 

 upon it, and therefore the adjective ought to be rely-upon-able, any 

 comment may safely be deferred until people begin saying laugh-at- 

 able instead of laughable; the principle is the same in both cases.) 

 Fault is perpetually found with talented, on the ground that parti- 

 ciples ought not to" be formed from nouns ; and perhaps they ought 

 not, in a strictly logical and regular language ; but a tongue that 

 already includes diseased, gifted, lettered, bigoted, turreted, landed, 

 towered, blooded, cultured, acred, steepled, mitred, coped, tippeted, booted, 

 spurred, horned, unprincipled and loidowed, will hardly suffer much 

 by admitting one more formation of the same anomalous kind. Stand- 

 point, wash-tub, shoe-horn, cook-stove and go-cart {boot-jack might have 

 been added) are set down as abominations, "slovenly and uncouth," 

 by a popular writer on correctness in speech, because they do not con- 

 form in their structure to a somewhat complicated canon which he 

 lays down as the law for making « compounds of this kind." His 

 argument is a complete non-sequitur. .The laws relating to the devel- 

 opment of a language are to be deduced from the history of that 

 development, just as the so-called laws of nature are merely generalized 

 statements of observed facts. And in regard to these expressions, 

 which our acceptance of his canon would require us to condemn, it 

 must be noticed that they are not only briefer (always an advantage) 

 but actually clearer than those which the critic would substitute for 

 them. The meaning of a cooking-stove, to be sure, is not greatly 

 liable to misapprehension ; nor perhaps is that of a washing tub; but 

 booting jack is open to the manifest objection that it is not for booting 

 but for un-booting, so to speak, that the implement is designed, while 

 shoeing horn suggests an entirely wrong idea — we do not speak of the 

 process of dressing our feet as "shoeing" them ; and what sort of a 

 description of the well known nursery machine would it be to call it a 



ThTfact of' the matter seems to be that while of course it is desir- 

 able that the development of the language should proceed on regular 

 lines and in conformity with logical principles, yet it is by no means 

 essential to the usefulness of a word that it should be thus formed; 

 and if only the word is useful, we can well afford to admit it to our 

 already heterogeneous vocabulary, the vocabulary being all the more 

 serviceable in many ways on account of the variety and lack of unity 

 among its constituent parts. The important question in all such 



