Locutius in Fabrica. 



quantity of what I venture to think rather wooden-headed criticism 

 has been expended on the use of the same verb to signify approve or 

 sanction, as in the common expression, to endorse a candidate or a 

 movement. It seems to be forgotten that in the usual application of the 

 term — the endorsing of a note or a check — we have always in mind, 

 not only the fact that something is actually written on the back of the 

 paper in question, but also and chiefly the far more important fact 

 that the writer of the endorsement, in putting down his name, agrees 

 to warrant and defend the holder of the document against loss result- 

 ing from his confidence in it. In other words, he may be said to 

 lack up the original maker. And just as it is indisputably good 

 English to speak of a man's friends as backing him, so is it absolutely 

 good English to speak of a lawyer -endorsing a layman's opinion about 

 a legal question, or a scholar endorsing the positions maintained in a 

 book on classical subjects. To object to such use of language as this, 

 is to push grammatical criticism to an extreme that is likely only to 

 render it ridiculous, though if the critics could persuade the people to 

 follow them, it would result in a senseless limitation of our choice of 

 words — a real and by no means inconsiderable injury to the language. 



