Locutius in Fabrica. 121 



Here, aa in the case of numerous, we may be said to lack a gimlet and 

 find ourselves compelled to bore holes, blunderingly and unsatis- 

 factorily, with the blade of a pen-knife. 



Then there are not a few adverbs which one meets in foreign tongues 

 and finds so useful that he wonders at himself for never having noticed 

 the absence of corresponding words in English. Familiar example* 

 are fmmdlich and hoffentlich in German. 

 " He received me friendlily," convenient i 

 do so, neither kindly nor cordially quite answering the purpose. Nor 

 . can one say: "The doctor has hopeably given the right medicine." 

 If you presume he has done so, you may say presumably; if you are 

 sure of it, you have undoubtedly; but if you only desire to express a 

 pretty strong hope, you must cast your sentence in another mould. 



At" the same time, we have certainly bad words enough — bad, not 

 because they are irregular in form or composed of incongruous ele- 

 ments, but because they are for some other reason (adopting Noah 

 Webster's sententious expressiou) nonsensical. Helpmeet is one of these 

 monsters. The result of a stupid blunder in running together a noun 

 and an adjective that stand separate in the familiar verse in Genesis, it 

 can hardly be called a word at all; it means nothing in particular, and 

 is worse than useless. Dissever, disannul, unravel, lesser, and similar 

 feeble attempts at unnecessary emphasis, are other instances ; sever, 

 annul ravel less, answer the purpose completely, with the advantage 

 of smaller bulk; 'the addition of the extra syllable is like giving a 

 screw-driver two handles. Equally useless for the most part is the 

 school-ma'amish insistence upon indicating, by the addition of ess, the 

 feminine gender in a number of nouns indicative of occupation or 

 position. Sometimes of course the sex of the person referred to has a 

 direct bearing upon her relations to her calling, as in the case of an 

 actress, whom it is often doubtless well to discriminate, in speech as in 

 thought, from an actor. But it can hardly be maintained that any 

 such necessity exists in the case of a woman who may happen to be an 

 editor, a postmaster, a manager, or a poet. Yet we read not infre- 

 quently of editresses and postmistresses ; the dignified Westminster 

 Review finds poet not sufficiently distinct when the poet is a woman, 

 and gives its sanction to poetess ; and the Illustrated London News, 

 which often devotes a considerable portion of one of its most enter- 

 taining departments to discussions of colloquial English, its meaning 

 audits proprieties, is actually guilty of ma nageress -'^Here as before 

 the extra syllable is merely i 



uld not 1 

 1 actually do better. 



along just as well without it 



Another class of bad words — bad because they do not meai 

 they are supposed to mean — is exemplified in gasometer. T 

 16 



