BEGINNINGS OF RHETORIC AND COMPOSITION CHAPTER I GOOD ENGLISH DEFINED WORDS are or are not words for the purposes of English prose composition according as they are or are not in use at the present time, in all parts of the country, and in the works of authors of established reputation. The English that is in PRESENT, NATIONAL, and REPUTABLE USE is GOOD ENGLISH. Present Use. Words in present use are to be distinguished both from those which were once, but are no longer, good English and from those which have not yet secured admission to the language. The former class includes words that are obsolete (entirely out of use), or obsolescent (passing out of use), or archaic (old-fashioned). The latter class includes would-be words of all kinds, from those which have for years vainly tried to get into the language to those which have just been invented by persons of limited vocabularies or of lazy minds. An old word may be revived on occasion, and may, if it supplies a real need, reëstablish itself in present use; a new word, or an old word in a new form or a new sense, may in course of time become a permanent part of the language. In both cases, time alone can decide. A word that is in present use may be very old, as "cart"; or comparatively new, "omnibus"; or very new, bicycle." It may have come from the Anglo-Saxon, as "tooth"; from the Latin, "quorum"; from the Greek, "dogma"; from the French, "etiquette"; from the Dutch, "yacht"; from the Arabic, "alkali"; from the North American Indian, "succotash"; from a caricature in a political campaign, “gerrymander"; from the name of an inventor, "daguerreotype"; from a character in fiction, "quixotic"; from the inventive brain of a chemist, "gas"; or from an unknown source, “caucus.' English will no doubt be enriched in the future, as it has been in the past, by words from other languages; but it will probably reject, as it has rejected in the past, many candidates for admission. Among the foreign expressions that cannot now be regarded as English, but that may in time be naturalized, are: abattoir for "slaughter-house," al fresco for "outdoor," bas-bleu for "blue-stocking," bête noire for "bugbear," coup de soleil for "sunstroke," élan for "impetuousness," mal de mer for "seasickness." Words may be in present use for verse or for historical novels, but not for ordinary prose: e.g.1 carven for "carved," doff for "take off," don for "put on," dole for "grief," enow for "enough," ere for "before," erst or whilom for "once" or "former," hath for "has," ken for "range of vision," kine for "cows," shoon for "shoes," sooth for "true," steed for "horse," stilly for "still," twain2 for “two," vale for "valley," welkin for "sky," wot for "know." National Use. — A word is in national use if it is understood, and understood in the same sense, by intelligent persons in all parts of the country. A word that, either in itself or in the meaning given to it, is peculiar to one section of the country is not national: e.g. barge for a kind of omnibus, gums for “indiarubber overshoes," hobo for "tramp," prairie-schooner for 1 E.g., exempli gratia, "for example." 2" Mark Twain," the pseudonym of Mr. Clemens, was originally a phrase which the pilots of the Mississippi steamboats shouted when they took soundings. They found that "twain" could be heard farther than "two." |