The Project Gutenberg eBook of Words; Their Use and Abuse
Title: Words; Their Use and Abuse
Author: William Mathews
Release date: October 14, 2018 [eBook #58100]
Language: English
Credits: Produced by Turgut Dincer, John Campbell and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
file was produced from images generously made available
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TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE
Footnote anchors are denoted by [number], and the footnotes have been
placed at the end of each chapter.
Some minor changes to the text are noted at the end of the book.
WORDS;
THEIR USE AND ABUSE.
BY
WILLIAM MATHEWS, LL.D.,
AUTHOR OF “GETTING ON IN THE WORLD,” “ORATORY AND ORATORS,”
ETC., ETC.
Die Sprache ist nichts anderes als der in die Erscheinung tretende Gedanke und beide sind innerlich nur eins und dasselbe.—Becker.
CHICAGO
SCOTT, FORESMAN AND COMPANY
1907
Copyright, 1876,
By S. C. GRIGGS AND COMPANY.
Copyright, 1884,
By S. C. GRIGGS AND COMPANY.
Language and thought are inseparable. Words without thought are dead sounds; thoughts without words are nothing. To think is to speak low; to speak is to think aloud. The word is the thought incarnate.—Max Müller.
A winged word hath struck ineradically in a million hearts, and envenomed every hour throughout their hard pulsation. On a winged word hath hung the destiny of nations. On a winged word hath human wisdom been willing to cast the immortal soul, and to leave it dependent for all its future happiness.—W. S. Landor.
Words are things; and a small drop of ink, falling like dew upon a thought, produces that which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think.—Byron.
A dead language is full of all monumental remembrances of the people who spoke it. Their swords and their shields are in it; their faces are pictured on its walls; and their very voices ring still through its recesses.—B. W. Dwight.
Every sentence of the great writer is like an autograph.... If Milton had endorsed a bill of exchange with half-a-dozen blank-verse lines, it would be as good as his name, and would be accepted as good evidence in court.—Alexander Smith.
If there be a human talent, let it get into the tongue, and make melody with that organ. The talent that can say nothing for itself, what is it? Nothing; or a thing that can do mere drudgeries, and at best make money by railways.—Carlyle.
Human language may be polite and powerless in itself, uplifted with difficulty into expression by the high thoughts it utters, or it may in itself become so saturated with warm life and delicious association that every sentence shall palpitate and thrill with the mere fascination of the syllables.—T. W. Higginson.
Accustom yourself to reflect on the words you use, hear, or read, their birth, derivation, and history. For if words are not things, they are living powers, by which the things of most importance to mankind are actuated, combined, and harmonized.—Coleridge.
Words possess an endless, indefinable, tantalizing charm. They paint humanity in its thoughts, longings, aspirations, struggles, failures—paint it upon a canvas of breath, in the colors of life.—Anon.
Ye know not what hurt ye do to Learning, that care not for Words, but for Matter, and so make a Divorce betwixt the Tongue and the Heart.—Ascham.
Let him who would rightly understand the grandeur and dignity of speech, meditate on the deep mystery involved in the revelation of the Lord Jesus as the Word of God.—F. W. Farrar.
Words are lighter than the cloud foam
Of the restless ocean spray;
Vainer than the trembling shadow
That the next hour steals away;
By the fall of summer rain-drops
Is the air as deeply stirred;
And the rose leaf that we tread on
Will outlive a word.
Yet on the dull silence breaking
With a lightning flash, a word,
Bearing endless desolation
On its blighting wings, I heard.
Earth can forge no keener weapon,
Dealing surer death and pain,
And the cruel echo answered
Through long years again.
I have known one word hang star-like
O’er a dreary waste of years,
And it only shone the brighter
Looked at through a mist of tears,
While a weary wanderer gathered
Hope and heart on life’s dark way,
By its faithful promise shining
Clearer day by day.
I have known a spirit calmer
Then the calmest lake, and clear
As the heavens that gazed upon it.
With no wave of hope or fear;
But a storm had swept across it.
And its deepest depths were stirred.
Never, never more to slumber.
Only by a word.
Adelaide A. Procter.
PREFACE TO THE NEW EDITION.
The unexpected favor with which this work has been received by the public from year to year, since its publication in 1873, has made the author anxious to render it more worthy of regard. He has, therefore, carefully revised the work, corrected some errors, and added two new chapters, one on “Onomatopes,” the other on “Names of Men,” besides many pages on the subjects of the other chapters.
Professor G. P. Marsh, in his “Lectures on the English Language,” quotes the saying of a distinguished British scholar of the last century, that he had known but three of his countrymen who spoke their native language with uniform grammatical accuracy; and the Professor adds that “the observation of most persons acquainted with English and American society confirms the general truth implied in this declaration.” In this statement, made by one of the most eminent philologists of the day, is found, at least, a partial justification of works like the present, if they are properly written. The author is well aware that, in writing such a book, he is obnoxious to the complaint of Goethe, that “everybody thinks that, because he can speak, he is entitled to speak about language;” he is aware, too, that in his criticisms on the misuses and abuses of words, he has exposed himself to criticism; and it may be that he has been guilty of some of the very sins which he has condemned. If so, he sins in good company, since nearly all of his predecessors, who have written on the same theme, have been found guilty of a similar inconsistency, from Lindley Murray down to Dean Alford, Breen, Moon, Marsh, and Fowler. If the public is to hear no philological sermons till the preachers are faultless, it will have to wait forever. “The only impeccable authors,” says Hazlitt, “are those who never wrote.”
It is hardly necessary to add that the work is designed for popular reading, rather than for scholars. How much the author is indebted to others, he cannot say. He has been travelling, in his own way, over old and well worn ground, and has picked up his materials freely from all the sources within his reach. Non nova, sed nové, has been his aim; he regrets that he has not accomplished it more to his satisfaction. The world, it has been truly said, does not need new thoughts so much as it needs that old thoughts be recast. There are some writers, however, to whom he has been particularly indebted; they are Archbishop Trench, the Rev. Matthew Harrison, author of “The Rise, Progress, and Present Structure of the English Language,” Professor G. P. Marsh, and especially Archdeacon F. W. Farrar, the last of whom in his three linguistic works has shown the ability to invest the driest scientific themes with interest. A list of the books consulted will be found on pages 479, 480.
CONTENTS.
| CHAPTER I. | |
| The Significance of Words | 1 |
| CHAPTER II. | |
| The Morality in Words | 62 |
| CHAPTER III. | |
| Grand Words | 105 |
| CHAPTER IV. | |
| Small Words | 139 |
| CHAPTER V. | |
| Words without Meaning | 158 |
| CHAPTER VI. | |
| Some Abuses of Words | 177 |
| CHAPTER VII. | |
| Saxon Words, or Romanic? | 194 |
| CHAPTER VIII. | |
| The Secret of Apt Words | 210 |
| CHAPTER IX. | |
| The Secret of Apt Words (continued) | 229 |
| CHAPTER X. | |
| Onomatopes | 242 |
| CHAPTER XI. | |
| The Fallacies in Words | 257 |
| CHAPTER XII. | |
| The Fallacies in Words (continued) | 295 |
| CHAPTER XIII. | |
| Names of Men | 323 |
| CHAPTER XIV. | |
| Nicknames | 345 |
| CHAPTER XV. | |
| Curiosities of Language | 367 |
| CHAPTER XVI. | |
| Common Improprieties of Speech | 424 |
| Index | 481 |