Locutius in Fabrica. 



Then there is aggravating for exasperating. The distinction has 

 been pointed out a thousand times. Everybody knows that to aggra- 

 vate is to make worse. A man's crime maybe aggravated by the 

 circumstances; to say that the man himself is aggravated, means, not 

 that he is annoyed, but that, being an evil at best, he is made a 

 greater nuisance than he has been. Yet it is surprising how many 

 influential writers, especially in England, insist on confounding the 

 terms. Dickens does so over aud over again in Great Expectations : 

 "The Romans must have aggravated one another very much with 

 their noses;" "Mr. Wopsle's Roman nose aggravated me;" "This 

 was so very aggravating, the more especially as I found myself making 

 no way against his surly obtuseness;" "Words cannot state the 

 amount of aggravation and injury wreaked upon me by Trabb's boy.'' 

 I read the other day in the Mark Lane Express of persons who "jerk 

 the reins in that aggravating manner." A pamphlet, lately published 

 in London, and relating to a certain class of books in the British 

 Museum, is entitled "Aggravating Ladies." Most surprising of all 

 perhaps is the following, from the Westminster Review (October, 1881, 

 p. 284, Scott edition): "The selections from the Giaour are exceed- 

 ingly aggravating." It must however be admitted that the blunder is 

 not exclusively British, for whoever reads that excellent book, " The 

 Calling of a Christian Woman," issued only last year by the Rev. 

 Morgan Dix, S. T. D., rector of Trinity Church, New York, will find 

 on page 22 a reference to "the words of St. Paul, peculiarly aggra- 



Among the great number of other verbal mallets which are often 

 foolishly misused as hammers, the following may be mentioned — the 

 list might be indefinitely extended, but it is the present purpose 

 merely to illustrate the principle : 



Executive for secret, in the phrase "executive session." It is gen- 

 erally understood that when the Senate engages in what is properly 

 enough called " executive business," as the consideration of appoint- 

 ments or treaties, spectators are excluded; and from this has arisen a 

 ridiculous custom on the part of various voluntary associations and 

 committees of resolving to "go into executive session" when it is only 

 meant that private business is to be taken up with closed doors. The 

 blunder is doubtless largely due to the usual preference of ill-trained 

 minds for fine and high-sounding words. 



Restive for uneasy.-- Here is a word which shares with enjoin the 

 remarkable bad fortune of having been completelv reversed in mean- 

 ing by bad usage. A restive horse is a lazy horse that wants to rest, 

 and by no means, as sometimes seems to be supposed, a nervous 

 horse that wants to o-o. 



