Slips of Speech : a Helpful Book for Everyone Who Aspires to Correct the Everyday Errors of Speaking eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 164 pages of information about Slips of Speech .

Slips of Speech : a Helpful Book for Everyone Who Aspires to Correct the Everyday Errors of Speaking eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 164 pages of information about Slips of Speech .

  “In words, as fashions, the same rule will hold;
   Alike fantastic, if too new or old;
   Be not the first by whom the new are tried,
   Nor yet the last to lay the old aside.”
  ________________________________________________
_________________

20

Barbarisms

Campbell, in his Philosophy of Rhetoric, says that a word to be
legitimate must have these three signs of authority:  1.  It must be reputable, or that of educated people, as opposed to
    that of the ignorant or vulgar. 2.  It must be national, as opposed to what is either local or
    technical. 3.  It must be present, as opposed to what is obsolete.

Any word that does not have these three qualities may, in general, be styled a barbarism.

Anglicizedwords

Many foreign words, in process of time, become so thoroughly domesticated that their translation, or the use of an awkward equivalent, would be a greater mark of pedantry than the use of the foreign words.  The proper use of such terms as fiat, palladium, cabal, quorum, omnibus, antique, artiste, coquette, ennui, physique, regime, tableau, amateur, cannot be censured on the ground of their foreign character.

Obsoletewords

Some writers affect an antiquated style by the introduction of such words as peradventure, perchance,
  ________________________________________________
_________________

21

anon, behest, quoth, erewhile.  The use of such words gives a strange sound to the sentence, and generally indicates that the writer is not thoroughly in earnest.  The expression is lowered in tone and is made to sound fantastic.

Newwords

A word should not be condemned because it is new.  If it is really needed it will be welcomed, and soon find a permanent place.  Shakespeare, Addison, and Johnson introduced many new words, to which their names afterward gave a sanction.  Carlyle, Coleridge, Tennyson, and Browning have introduced or given currency to new words, and made strange ones familiar.

New words are objectionable when they are employed without proper authority.  The chief sources of supply of the objectionable kind are the current slang of the street and the sensational newspaper.  They are often the result of a desire to say things in such a manner as to reflect smartness upon the speaker, or to present things in a humorous or picturesque way.  That they are frequently very effective cannot be gainsaid.  Sometimes they are coined in the heat of political or social discussion, and, for a time, express what everybody is talking about; but it is impossible to tell whether they will live beyond
  ________________________________________________
_________________

22

the occasion that produced them.  So long as their usage is doubtful it is safer not to employ them.

Slang

Slang is somewhat like chicken-pox or measles, very

Copyrights
Project Gutenberg
Slips of Speech : a Helpful Book for Everyone Who Aspires to Correct the Everyday Errors of Speaking from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.