A Word About Words

I was talking lately with a French lady, who admitted that English was a much richer language than her own, and that it had words to express ideas and actions which must go unexpressed in French, or be rendered by circumlocutions. The conversation made me realize more deeply than usual how hard it would be to have the operations of one’s mind shut within the limits imposed by any narrower vocabulary than that furnished by our mother tongue, our great verbal inheritance from the literature and life of many different races and ages. Yet it is of this same English speech that Mr. Howells has said, in a recent critical paper: “ From its grammatical simplicity and inflexibility, our language on the imaginative and critical side is always in danger of becoming povertystricken ; any one who employs it to depict or characterize finds the phrases thumbed over and worn and blunted with incessant use.” Think for a moment of the vast sum of human experience that must have been heaped up, Pelion upon Ossa, before the phrases of our varied language could ever have become “ thumbed over and worn and blunted ” almost out of significance. Words must be used many times to say what they were not created to say, before they lose meaning. Mr. Howells goes on to rejoice over the advent into literature of those “ bold locutions" which spring from the inmost core of the people’s need of self -revelation. Such terms and such words are indeed of very different metal from the slang and cant which give utterance to the affectations, the vulgarities, or the capricious humors of the “upper classes,”and which often express nothing but the desire of feverish beings to be witty over subjects about which they do not wish to be serious. Still, it must be confessed that real words are sometimes struck out even amid this baser coinage. For all these, as well as for those “ bolder locutions,” let every one be grateful who recognizes the fact that the necessity for human nature to interpret and declare itself is not wholly foreign to the obligation under which this same burdened human nature lies to perfect itself.

I know very well that as the grouping together of letters does not always make a verbal entity, neither will an old word always stay alive, however it be rhymed and rhythmed into a sort of make-believe vitality by sighing young poets whose eyes are turned backward rather than forward. Still it is possible that something may be done to keep good words under such culture as will prevent their death, and a consequent increase in difficulty of expression for thought. I have not much to say on this point to men of genius. They generally succeed in making any language utter what they think and feel. They have a certain modeling power over words, and can constrain them to their will. But I would like to remind my brethren among the commoner sort of folk that they and I have a special interest in the preservation and multiplication of good synonyms, since, unless words are plenty and easily malleable in their nature, we among the lesser gifted ones of earth cannot use them with effect, — and yet we too have things we need to say.

Let us see, then, what we can do to help ourselves, and first let us make a stand against the proof-reader. I have heard it said that that worthy gentleman is apt to consider improper anything which is unusual. He is as much alarmed at a deviation from the ordinary fashion as is a stylish dressmaker. Never shall I forget one occasion when he put his mark of disapproval on a word I had used. The trouble was that I had employed it correctly, although it was one which nearly everybody blunders in using; so I suppose it looked strange to him, and he did not stop to think why it bore an aspect of unfamiliarity. At another time, he let a gross error of mine pass unrebuked, because that also was a common mistake, and his perceptions were drugged by custom. I suffered, however, when I became conscious of my fault as it grinned at me in horrible, unchangeable type. On yet another occasion, I regret to say, his penciled sign frightened me so that I crossed out an antique monosyllable which I had brought in to serve in place of a more modern synonym, which, though strong like Issachar, had like him been goaded and loaded “overmuch and overlong.”

I deeply repented this weak concession, and yet such is my awe of this critical personage that I dare not promise in public that I will never sin in like manner again, or that I will maintain my prerogative in mine ancient tongue, though he assail it with many red or blue crayons.

I would, however, conjure my brothers and sisters of the writing fraternity, if they can cope with the proof-reader, not to fear those dreadful letters Obs., with which the dictionary-makers seek to bury out of good company many noble words with which Shakespeare and Spenser made mirth and spoke wisdom. What was fit for those authors to use may still, at a pinch, help us in the nineteenth century. I would indeed go further, if I might, and plead with the dictionary-makers themselves that they should in future omit those condemnatory letters from their columns. Let them still tell us what great masters have employed certain words, that we may be stimulated thereby to emulate the knowledge possessed by these writers as to the essential significance of syllables, and that we may recognize the skill with which those syllables have been in former days subordinated to the highest purposes of thought and art in literature; but let them spare us the sight of those discouraging italics, Obs., just as we begin to glow with a sort of intellectual passion for a word, and would fain seize upon it for our use.

The sight of those three condemnatory letters — the very abbreviation has something of contempt in it — makes us think of stupid fashions in speech ; it makes us doubt, and while we doubt inspiration flies away and fancy grows pale. Language then becomes a question of times, of mode, of manners, and not what it should be, a question of power and fitness, of usefulness and beauty.