“Calhoun had logic on his side”; add, however, the words “but his face was to the past,” and you spoil the sentence,—­for face gives a reflex connotation to side, slight perhaps and momentary, but disconcerting.  Think over the funny stories you have heard.  Many of them turn, you will find, on the outcropping of new significance in a phrase because of its environment.  Thus the anecdote of the servant who had been instructed to summon the visiting English nobleman by tapping on his bedroom door and inquiring, “My lord, have you yet risen?” and who could only stammer, “My God! ain’t you up yet?” Or the anecdote of the minister who in a sermon on the Parable of the Prodigal Son told how a young man living dissolutely in a city had been compelled to send to the pawnbroker first his overcoat, next his suit, next his silk shirt, and finally his very underclothing—­“and then,” added the minister, “he came to himself.”  Only by unresting vigilance can you evade verbal discords, if not of this magnitude, at least of much frequency and stylistic harm.

EXERCISE — Connotation

1.  Note the contrast in emotional suggestion that comes to you from hearing the words: 

“Sodium chloride” and “salt”
“A test-tube of H2O” and “a cup of cold water”
“A pair of brogans” and “a little empty shoe”
“Bump” and “collide”
“A brilliant fellow” and “a flashy fellow”
“Bungled it” and “did not succeed”
“Tumble” and “fall”
“Dawn” and “6 A.M.” 
“Licked” and “worsted”
“Fat” and “plump”
“Wept” and “blubbered”
“Cheek” and “self-assurance”
“Stinks” and “disagreeable odors”
“Steal” and “embezzle”
“Thievishness” and “kleptomania”
“Educated” and “highbrow”
“Job” and “Position”
“Told a lie” and “fell into verbal inexactitude”
“A drunkard” (a stranger) and “a drunkard” (your father).

2.  Make a list of your own similar to that in Exercise 1.

3.  Read the sentences listed in EXERCISE — Slovenliness III and IV.  What do these sentences suggest to you as to the social and mental qualifications of the person who employs them?

4.  Read the second paragraph of Appendix 2.  What does it suggest to you as to Burke’s social and mental qualifications?

5.  Suppose you were told that a passage of twenty-eight lines contains the following expressions:  “mewling and puking,” “whining schoolboy,” “satchel,” “sighing like furnace,” “round belly,” “spectacles on nose,” “shrunk shank,” “sans [without] teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.”  Would you believe the passage is poetry?—­that its total effect is one of poetic elevation?  Read the Seven Ages of Man (Appendix 4). Is it poetry?  How does Shakespeare reconcile the general poetic tone with such expressions as those quoted?

6.  What is wrong with the connotation of the following?