The King's English

Comparative adverbs of this type must be formed only from those positive adverbs, which do not use -ly, as hard, fast. We talk of going strong, and we may therefore talk of going stronger; but outside slang we have to choose between stronglier—poetical, exalted, or affected—and more strongly.

Lie and lay have cost us all some perplexity in childhood. The distinction is more difficult in the compounds with over and under, because in them -lie is transitive as well as -lay, but in a different sense. Any one who is not sure that he is sound on the point by instinct must take the trouble to resolve them into lie over or lay over, &c., which at once clears up the doubt. A mistake with the simple verb is surprising when made, as in the following, by a writer on grammar:

A confusion, perhaps, between lay wait and lie in wait.

The first yours is quite wrong; it should be your. This mistake is common. The absolute possessives, ours and yours, hers, mine and thine, (with which the poetic or euphonic use of the last two before vowels has nothing to do) are to be used only as pronouns or as predicative adjectives, not as attributes to an expressed and following noun. That they were used by old writers as in our example is irrelevant. The correct modern usage has now established itself. We add three sentences from Burke. The relation between no and none is the same as that between your and yours. In the first sentence, modern usage would write (as the correct no or but a few is uncomfortable) either few or no, or few if any, or no rays or but a few. For the second we might possibly tolerate to their as well as to your own; or we might write to their crown as well as to your own. The third is quite tolerable as it is; but any one who does not like the sound can write and their ancestors and ours. It must always be remembered in this as in other constructions, that the choice is not between a well-sounding blunder and an ill-sounding correctness, but between an ill and a well sounding correctness. The blunder should be ruled out, and if the first form of the correct construction that presents itself does not sound well, another way of putting it must be looked for; patience will always find it. The flexibility gained by habitual selection of this kind, which a little cultivation will make easy and instinctive, is one of the most essential elements in a good style. For a more important illustration of the same principle, the remarks on the gerund in the Syntax chapter (p. 120) may be referred to.

3. Formations violating analogy.

A- (not) is Greek; moral is Latin. It is at least desirable that in making new words the two languages should not be mixed. The intricate needs of science may perhaps be allowed to override a literary principle of this sort; and accordingly the Oxford Dictionary recognizes that a- is compounded with Latin words in scientific and technical terms, as a-sexual; but purely literary workers may be expected to abstain. The obvious excuse for this formation is that the Latin negative prefix is already taken up in immoral, which means contrary to morality, while a word is wanted to mean unconcerned with morality. But with non freely prefixed to adjectives in English (though not in Latin), there can be no objection to non-moral. The second of our instances is a few weeks later than the first, and the hyphen has disappeared; so quickly has The Times convinced itself that amoral is a regular English word.

It has been already stated that -al is mainly confined to unmistakable Latin stems. There is whimsical; and there may be others that break the rule, though the Oxford Dictionary (-al suffix, -ical suffix, -ial suffix) gives no exceptions. The ugly words racial and coastal themselves might well be avoided except in the rare cases where race and coast used adjectivally will not do the work (they would in the present instances); and they should not be made precedents for new formations. If language is better than linguistic, much more race than racial; similarly, river than riverine.

It is absurd at this time of day to make a fuss about the word. It is with us and will remain with us, whatever pedants and purists may say. In such cases obsta principiis is the only hope; reliable might once have been suppressed, perhaps; it cannot now. But it is so fought over, even to-day, that a short discussion of it may be looked for. The objection to it is obvious: you do not rely a thing; therefore the thing cannot be reliable; it should be rely-on-able (like come-at-able). Some of the analogies pleaded for it are perhaps irrelevant—as laughable, available. For these may be formed from the nouns laugh, avail, since -able is not only gerundival (capable of being laughed at), but also adjectival (connected with a laugh); this has certainly happened with seasonable; but that will not help reliable, which by analogy should be relianceable. It is more to the point to remark that with reliable must go dispensable (with indispensable) and dependable, both quite old words, and disposable (in its commoner sense); no one, as far as we know, objects to these and others like them; reliable is made into a scapegoat. The word itself, moreover, besides its wide popularity, is now of respectable antiquity, dating at least from Coleridge. It may be added that it is probably to the campaign against it that we owe such passive monstrosities as ‘ready to be availed of’ for available, which is, as we said, possibly not open to the same objection as reliable.

Britannic, Britannicism; British, Britishism. Britic?

4. Needless, though correct formations.

As candeo candor, ardeo ardor, so—we are to understand—sordeo sordor. The Romans, however, never felt that they needed the word; and it is a roundabout method first to present them with a new word and then to borrow it from them; for it will be observed that we have no living suffix -or in English, nor, if we had, anything nearer than sordid to attach it to. Perhaps Emerson thought sordor was a Latin word.

As rejoin rejoinder, so enjoin enjoinder. The word is not given in the Oxford Dictionary, from which it seems likely that Dickens invented it, consciously or unconsciously. The only objection to such a word is that its having had to wait so long, in spite of its obviousness, before being made is a strong argument against the necessity of it. We may regret that injunction holds the field, having a much less English appearance; but it does; and in language the old-established that can still do the work is not to be turned out for the new-fangled that might do it a shade better, but must first get itself known and accepted.

This, on the other hand, is an archaism, now obsolete. Why it should not have lived is a mystery; but it has not; and to write it is to give one’s sentence the air of an old curiosity shop.

A favourite with those allied experimenters in words, Emerson and Carlyle. A word meaning to make intense is necessary; and there are plenty of parallels for this particular form. But Coleridge had already made intensify, introducing it with an elaborate apology in which he confessed that it sounded uncouth. It is uncouth no longer; if it had never existed, perhaps intensate would now have been so no longer, uncouthness being, both etymologically and otherwise, a matter of strangeness as against familiarity. It is better to form words only where there is a clear demand for them.

5. Long and short rivals. The following examples illustrate a foolish tendency. From the adjective perfect we form the verb to perfect, and from that again the noun perfection; to take a further step forward to a verb to perfection instead of returning to the verb to perfect is a superfluity of naughtiness. From the noun sense we make the adjective sensible; it is generally quite needless to go forward to sensibleness instead of back to our original noun sense. To quieten is often used by hasty writers who have not time to remember that quiet is a verb. With ex tempore ready to serve either as adverb or as adjective, why make extemporaneous or extemporaneously? As to contumacity, the writer was probably unaware that contumacy existed. Contumacity might be formed from contumax, like audacity from audax. The Romans had only the short forms audacia, contumacia, which should have given us audacy as well as contumacy; but because our ancestors burdened themselves with an extra syllable in one we need not therefore do so in the other.

Broadly, or lengthily?

Prudent gives prudence, and prudence prudential; the latter has its use: prudential considerations are those in which prudence is allowed to outweigh other motives; they may be prudent without being prudential, and vice versa. But before using prudentially we should be quite sure that we mean something different from prudently. So again partially, which should be reserved as far as possible for the meaning with partiality, is now commonly used for partly:[9]

Excepting, instead of except, is to be condemned when there is no need for it. We say not excepting, or not even excepting, or without excepting; but where the exception is allowed, not rejected, the short form is the right one, as a comparison of the following examples will show:

Innumerable other needless lengthenings might be produced, from which we choose only preventative for preventive, and to experimentalize for to experiment.

On the other hand, when usage has differentiated a long and a short form either of which might originally have served, the distinction must be kept. Immovable and irremovable judges are different things; the shorter word has been wrongly chosen in:

6. Merely ugly formations.

The termination -cracy is now so freely applied that it is too late to complain of this except on the ground of ugliness. It may be pointed out, however, that the very special ugliness of bureaucracy is due to the way its mongrel origin is flaunted in our faces by the telltale syllable -eau-; it is to be hoped that formations similar in this respect may be avoided.

In sound, there can be no question between vividity with its fourfold repetition of the same vowel sound, its two dentals to add to the ugliness of its two v’s, and the comparatively inoffensive vividness.

We conclude with deprecating the addition of -ly to participles in -ed. Some people are so alive to the evil sound of it that they write determinately for determinedly; that will not do either, because determinate does not mean determined in the required sense. A periphrasis, or an adjective or Latin participle with -ly, as resolutely, should be used. Implied is as good a word as implicit, but impliedly is by no means so good as implicitly. Several instances are given, for cumulative effect. Miss Corelli makes a mannerism of this.

It should be added that to really established adverbs of this form, as advisedly, assuredly, hurriedly, there is no objection whatever; but new ones are ugly.

Slang

The place of slang is in real life. There, an occasional indulgence in it is an almost necessary concession to our gregarious humanity; he who declines altogether to let his speech be influenced by his neighbours’ tricks, and takes counsel only of pure reason, is setting up for more than man. Awfully nice is an expression than which few could be sillier; but to have succeeded in going through life without saying it a certain number of times is as bad as to have no redeeming vice. Further, the writer who deals in conversation may sometimes find it necessary, by way of characterizing his speakers, to put slang in their mouths; if he is wise he will make the least possible use of this resource; and to interlard the non-conversational parts of a book or article with slang, quotation marks or no quotation marks, is as bad as interlarding with French. Foreign words and slang are, as spurious ornaments, on the same level. The italics, but not the quotation marks, in these examples are ours:

The effect of using quotation marks with slang is merely to convert a mental into a moral weakness. When they are not used, we may mercifully assume that the writer does not know the difference between slang and good English, and sins in ignorance: when they are, he is telling us, I know it is naughty, but then it is nice. Most of us would rather be taken for knaves than for fools; and so the quotation marks are usually there.

With this advice—never to use slang except in dialogue, and there as little as may be—we might leave the subject, except that the suggestion we have made about the unconscious use of slang seems to require justifying. To justify it, we must attempt some analysis, however slight, of different sorts of slang.

To the ordinary man, of average intelligence and middle-class position, slang comes from every direction, from above, from below, and from all sides, as well as from the centre. What comes from some directions he will know for slang, what comes from others he may not. He may be expected to recognize words from below. Some of these are shortenings, by the lower classes, of words whose full form conveys no clear meaning, and is therefore useless, to them. An antiquated example is mob, for mobile vulgus. That was once slang, and is now good English. A modern one is bike, which will very likely be good English also in time. But though its brevity is a strong recommendation, and its uncouthness probably no more than subjective and transitory, it is as yet slang. Such words should not be used in print till they have become so familiar that there is not the slightest temptation to dress them up in quotation marks. Though they are the most easily detected, they are also the best slang; when the time comes, they take their place in the language as words that will last, and not, like many of the more highly descended words, die away uselessly after a brief popularity.

Another set of words that may be said to come from below, since it owes its existence to the vast number of people who are incapable of appreciating fine shades of meaning, is exemplified by nice, awful, blooming. Words of this class fortunately never make their way, in their slang senses, into literature (except, of course, dialogue). The abuse of nice has gone on at any rate for over a century; the curious reader may find an interesting page upon it in the fourteenth chapter of Northanger Abbey (1803). But even now we do not talk in books of a nice day, only of a nice distinction. On the other hand, the slang use makes us shy in different degrees of writing the words in their legitimate sense: a nice distinction we write almost without qualms; an awful storm we think twice about; and as to a blooming girl, we hardly venture it nowadays. The most recent sufferer of this sort is perhaps chronic. It has been adopted by the masses, as far apart at least as in Yorkshire and in London, for a mere intensive, in the sense of remarkable. The next step is for it to be taken up in parody by people who know better; after which it may be expected to succeed awful.

So much for the slang from below; the ordinary man can detect it. He is not so infallible about what comes to him from above. We are by no means sure that we shall be correct in our particular attribution of the half-dozen words now to be mentioned; but it is safe to say that they are all at present enjoying some vogue as slang, and that they all come from regions that to most of us are overhead. Phenomenal, soon, we hope, to perish unregretted, is (at least indirectly, through the abuse of phenomenon) from Metaphysics; immanence, a word often met in singular company, from Comparative Theology; epochmaking perhaps from the Philosophic Historian; true inwardness from Literary Criticism; cad (which is, it appears, Etonian for cadet) from the Upper Classes; psychological moment from Science; thrasonical and cryptic from Academic Circles; philistine from the region of culture. Among these the one that will be most generally allowed to be slang—cad—is in fact the least so; it has by this time, like mob, passed its probation and taken its place as an orthodox word, so that all who do not find adequate expression for their feelings in the orthodox have turned away to bounder and other forms that still admit the emphasis of quotation marks. As for the rest of them, they are being subjected to that use, at once over-frequent and inaccurate, which produces one kind of slang. But the average man, seeing from what exalted quarters they come, is dazzled into admiration and hardly knows them for what they are.

By the slang that comes from different sides or from the centre we mean especially the many words taken originally from particular professions, pursuits, or games, but extended beyond them. Among these a man is naturally less critical of what comes from his own daily concerns, that is, in his view, from the centre. Frontispiece, for face, perhaps originated in the desire of prize-ring reporters to vary the words in their descriptive flights. Negotiate (a difficulty, &c.) possibly comes from the hunting-field; people whose conversation runs much upon a limited subject feel the need of new phrases for the too familiar things. And both these words, as well as individual, which must be treated more at length in the next section, are illustrations of a tendency that we have called polysyllabic humour and discussed in the Chapter Airs and Graces. We now add a short list of slang phrases or words that can most of them be referred with more or less of certainty to particular occupations. Whether they are recognized as slang will certainly depend in part on whether the occupation is familiar, though sometimes the familiarity will disguise, and sometimes it will bring out, the slanginess.

To hedge, the double event (turf); frontal attack (war); play the game, stumped (cricket); to run—the show, &c.—(engine-driving); knock out, take it lying down (prize-ring); log-rolling, slating, birrelling (literature); to tackle—a problem, &c.—(football); to take a back seat (coaching?); bedrock, to exploit, how it pans out (mining); whole-hogging, world policy (politics); floored (1. prize ring; 2. school); the under dog (dog-fighting); up to date (advertising); record—time, &c.—(athletics); euchred, going one better, going Nap. (cards); to corner—a thing—(commerce)—a person—(ratting); chic (society journalism); on your own, of sorts, climb down, globetrotter, to laze (perhaps not assignable).

Good and sufficient occasions will arise—rarely—for using most of these phrases and the rest of the slang vocabulary. To those, however, who desire that what they write may endure it is suggested that, as style is the great antiseptic, so slang is the great corrupting matter; it is perishable itself, and infects what is round it—the catchwords that delight one generation stink in the nostrils of the next; individual, which almost made the fortune of many a Victorian humorist, is one of the modern editor’s shibboleths for detecting the unfit. And even those who regard only the present will do well to remember that in literature as elsewhere there are as many conservatives as progressives, as many who expect their writers to say things a little better than they could do themselves as who are flattered by the proof that one man is no better than another.

No treatment of slang, however short, should omit the reminder that slang and idiom are hard to distinguish, and yet, in literature, slang is bad, and idiom good. We said that slang was perishable; the fact is that most of it perishes; but some survives and is given the idiomatic franchise; ‘when it doth prosper, none dare call it’ slang. The idiomatic writer differs chiefly from the slangy in using what was slang and is now idiom; of what is still slang he chooses only that part which his insight assures him has the sort of merit that will preserve it. In a small part of their vocabulary the idiomatic and the slangy will coincide, and be therefore confused by the undiscerning. The only advice that can be given to novices uncertain of their own discrimination is to keep carefully off the debatable ground. Full idiom and full slang are as far apart as virtue and vice; and yet

Any one who can confidently assign each of the following phrases to its own territory may feel that he is not in much danger:

Particular Words

Individual, mutual, unique, aggravating.

To use individual wrongly in the twentieth century stamps a writer, more definitely than almost any other single solecism, not as being generally ignorant or foolish, but as being without the literary sense. For the word has been pilloried time after time; every one who is interested in style at all—which includes every one who aspires to be readable—must at least be aware that there is some mystery about the word, even if he has not penetrated it. He has, therefore, two courses open to him: he may leave the word alone; or he may find out what it means; if he insists on using it without finding out, he will commit himself. The adjectival use of it presents no difficulty; the adjective, as well as the adverb individually, is always used rightly if at all; it is the noun that goes wrong. An individual is not simply a person; it is a single, separate, or private person, a person as opposed to a combination of persons; this qualification, this opposition, must be effectively present to the mind, or the word is not in place. In the nineteenth, especially the early nineteenth century, this distinction was neglected; mainly under the impulse of ‘polysyllabic humour’, the word, which does mean person in some sort of way, was seized upon as a facetious substitute for it; not only that; it spread even to good writers who had no facetious intention; it became the kind of slang described in the last section, which is highly popular until it suddenly turns disgusting. In reading many of these writers we feel that we must make allowances for them on this point; they only failed to be right when every one else was wrong. But we, if we do it, sin against the light.

To leave no possible doubt about the distinction, we shall give many examples, divided into (1) right uses, (2) wrong uses, (3) sentences in which, though the author has used the word rightly, a perverse reader might take it wrongly. It will be observed that in (1) to substitute man or person would distinctly weaken the sense; in the sentence from Macaulay it would be practically impossible. The words italicized are those that prove the contrast with bodies, or organizations, to have been present to the writer’s mind, though it may often happen that he does not actually show it by specific mention of them. On the other hand, in (2) person or man or he might always be substituted without harm to the sense, though sometimes a more exact word (not individual) might be preferable. In (3) little difference would be made by the substitution.

Some apology is due for so heaping up instances of the same thing; but here, as with other common blunders to be treated of later, it has seemed that an effect might be produced by mere iteration.

The word mutual requires caution. As with individual, any one who is not prepared to clear his ideas upon its meaning will do well to avoid it; it is a very telltale word, readily convicting the unwary, and on the other hand it may quite easily be done without. Every one knows by now that our mutual friend is a solecism. Mutual implies an action or relation between two or more persons or things, A doing or standing to B as B does or stands to A. Let A and B be the persons indicated by our, C the friend. No such reciprocal relation is here implied between A and B (who for all we know may be enemies), but only a separate, though similar relation between each of them and C. There is no such thing as a mutual friend in the singular; but the phrase mutual friends may without nonsense be used to describe either A and C, B and C, or, if A and B happen to be also friends, A and B and C. Our mutual friend is nonsense; mutual friends, though not nonsense, is bad English, because it is tautological. It takes two to make a friendship, as to make a quarrel; and therefore all friends are mutual friends, and friends alone means as much as mutual friends. Mutual wellwishers on the other hand is good English as well as good sense, because it is possible for me to be a man’s wellwisher though he hates me. Mutual love, understanding, insurance, benefits, dislike, mutual benefactors, backbiters, abettors, may all be correct, though they are also sometimes used incorrectly, like our mutual friend, where the right word would be common.

Further, it is to be carefully observed that the word mutual is an equivalent in meaning, and sometimes a convenient one for grammatical reasons, of the pronoun each other with various prepositions. To use it as well as each other is even more clearly tautological than the already mentioned mutual friendship.

Correct, if mutual is confined to understanding: they no longer understand each other.

Slightly clumsy; but it means that they would get advantage from each other by drawing together, and may stand.

Indefensible.

A nerve cannot respond to each other; nerves can; a common nerve would have done; or mutually sensitive nerves.

Right or wrong according to what is meant by desire. (1) If it means that King Edward and M. Loubet desired, that is, had a yearning for, each other, it is correct; but the writer probably did not intend so poetic a flight. (2) If it means that they merely desired a meeting, it is wrong, exactly as our mutual friend is wrong. The relation is not one between A and B; it is only that A and B hold separately the same relation to C, the meeting. It should be common desire. (3) If desire is here equivalent to request, and each is represented as having requested the other to meet him, it is again correct; but only politeness to the writer would induce any one to take this alternative.

Wrong. The hands are not busy with or upon each other, but with or upon the work. As commonly would be ambiguous here, equally or alike should be used, or simply both. Mutually serviceable, again, would have been right.

This surprising sentence means that Vanity Fair was lent to Paradise Lost, and Paradise Lost to Vanity Fair. If we further assume for politeness’ sake that mutually is not mere tautology with to each other, the only thing left for it to mean is by each other. The doubt then remains whether (1) Paradise Lost was lent to Vanity Fair by Paradise Lost, and Vanity Fair to Paradise Lost by Vanity Fair, or (2) Paradise Lost was lent to Vanity Fair by Vanity Fair, and Vanity Fair to Paradise Lost by Paradise Lost. This may be considered captious; but we still wish the author had said either, They lent each other books, or, Books were lent by them to each other.

A thing is unique, or not unique; there are no degrees of uniqueness; nothing is ever somewhat or rather unique, though many things are almost or in some respects unique. The word is a member of a depreciating series. Singular had once the strong meaning that unique has still in accurate but not in other writers. In consequence of slovenly use, singular no longer means singular, but merely remarkable; it is worn out; before long rather unique will be familiar; unique, that is, will be worn out in turn, and we shall have to resort to unexampled and keep that clear of qualifications as long as we can. Happily it is still admitted that sentences like the three given below are solecisms; they contain a self-contradiction. For the other regrettable use of unique, as when the advertisement columns offer us what they call unique opportunities, it may generally be assumed with safety that they are lying; but lying is not in itself a literary offence, so that with these we have nothing to do.

To aggravate is not to annoy or enrage (a person), but to make worse (a condition or trouble). The active participle should very rarely, and the rest of the active practically never, be used without an expressed object, and that of the right kind. In the sentence, An aggravating circumstance was that the snow was dirty, the meaning is not that the dirt was annoying, but that it added to some other misery previously expressed or implied. But, as the dirt happens to be annoying also, this use is easily misunderstood, and is probably the origin of the notorious vulgarism; since it almost inevitably lays a writer open to suspicion, it is best avoided. Of the following quotations, the first is quite correct, the other five as clearly wrong; in the fifth, aggrieved would be the right word.