CHAPTER VII.

WORDS THAT ARE NOT WORDS.

WHAT

HAT is a word? Every one knows. The most ignorant child, if it can speak, needs no definition of word. Probably no other word in the language is so rarely referred to in dictionaries. Until I began to write this chapter, and had framed a definition of word for myself, I had never seen or heard one, that I remember. Yet, if any reader will shut this book here, and try to tell exactly what a word is, and write down his definition before he opens the book again, he may find that the task is not so easy as he may have supposed it to be. Dr. Johnson's definition is, "a single part of speech," at the limited view and schoolmasterish style of which we may be inclined at first to smile. Richardson's first definition is, "anything spoken or told." But this applies equally to a speech or a story. His second is, "an articulate utterance of the voice," which is really the same as Worcester's, "an articulate sound." But this will not do; for baclomipivit is an articulate sound, but it is not a word, and I hope never will be one in my language; and I and you are not articulate sounds, and yet they are words. Webster's definition is,

"An articulate or vocal sound, or a combination

of articulate and vocal sounds, uttered by the human voice, and by custom expressing an idea or ideas."

Here plainly, fulness and accuracy of definition have been sought, but they have not been attained. The definition, considering its design, is superfluous, inexact, and incomplete. The whole of the first part of it, making a distinction between articulate and vocal sounds, and between such sounds and a combination of them, is needless and from the purpose. The latter part of the definition uses custom vaguely, and in the word idea fails to include all that is required.

A word is, an utterance of the human voice which in any community expresses a thought or a thing. If there is a village or a hamlet where ao expresses I love, or any other thought, and babo means bread, or anything else, then for that community ao and babo are words. But words, generally, are utterances which express thoughts or things to a race, a people. Custom is not an essential condition of wordship. Howells, in one of his letters (Book I. Letter 12), says of an Italian town, "There are few places this side the Alps better built and so well streeted as this." Strceted was probably never used before, and has probably never been used since Howells used it, two hundred and forty years ago. But it expressed his thought perfectly then to all English-speaking people, and does so now, and is a participial adjective correctly formed. It is unknown to custom, but it has all the conditions of wordship, and is a much better English word than very many in "Webster's Dictionary." And, after all, Johnson's definition cov◄

ers the ground. We must dismiss from our minds our grammar-class notion of a sort of things, prepositions, nouns, adverbs, and articles, the name of which is part-of-speech, and think of a single part of speech. Whatever is a single part of any speech is a word.

But as there are books that are not books, so there are words that are not words. Most of them are usurpers, interlopers, or vulgar pretenders; some are deformed creatures, with only half a life in them; but some of them are legitimate enough in their pretensions, although oppressive, intolerable, useless. Words that are not words sometimes die spontaneously; but many linger, living a precarious life on the outskirts of society, uncertain of their position, and a cause of great discomfort to all right thinking, straightforward people.

These words-no-words are in many cases the consequence of a misapprehension or whimsical perversion of some real word. Sitting at dinner beside a lady whom it was always a pleasure to look upon, I offered her a croquette, which she de.. clined, adding, in a confidential whisper, "I am Banting." I turned with surprise in my face, (for she had no likeness to the obese London upholsterer,) and heard the naif confession that she lived in daily fear lest the polished plumpness which so delighted my eye should develop into corpulence, and that therefore she had adopted Banting's system of diet, the doing of which she expressed by the grotesque participie banting. She was not alone in its use, I soon learned. And thus, because a proper name happened to end in ing, it was used as a participle

formed upon the assumed verb bant. In fact, I have since that time often heard intelligent women, speaking without the slightest intention of pleasantry, and in entire simplicity and unconsciousness, say of one or another of their friends, "O, she bants," or "She has banted these two years to keep herself down." The next edition of "Webster's Dictionary" will probably contain a new verbBant, to eschew fat-producing food.

Another example of this mode of forming words is afforded by the following political advertisement, which I found in a Brooklyn newspaper:

and certain of his

"Notice. I am intercessed by Mr. friends to withdraw my claims for the supervisorship of this Ward. I have only to say to the citizens of the 13th that I run for the office upon the recommendation and support of many influential citizens, amounting to me as much as is claimed by the so-called regularly nominated candidate. I shall run for the office as Democratic Supervisor, despite intercessions or browbeating, and if elected shall make it my sole duty to attend to the inter ests of property-holders and rights of the country.

J-S K

-G."

I have given the advertisement entire, because it shows that the writer is a man of intelligence and some education; and yet such a man not only supposes that intercession means simply entreaty, — losing sight entirely of the vicarious signification which is its essential significance (its primitive meaning being, going between), — but that it is from a verb intercess; or else he boldly forms intercess from intercession, and uses it apparently without the least hesitation or compunction. His honesty of purpose should win him forgiveness for less venial errors; but at this rate, and with this style of word-formation, where shall we stop? For

intercess, although it is yet rather raw and new, is as good a word as others which are in not infrequent use among people of no less intelligence and general information than his. In this chapter some of these words will be examined, and also some others against which purism has raised objections which do not seem to be well taken.

ADJECTIVES are used as substantives with clearness and force when they thus give substantive form to an abstract quality, as, Seek the good, eschew the evil; the excellent of the earth; speak well of the dead. But the use of the adjective part of a compound-designating phrase as a noun is to be avoided upon peril of vulgarity and absurdity, and generally produces a word-no-word of the most monstrous and ridiculous sort. For example, a large gilded sign in Wall Street announces that Messrs. A & B are "Dealers in Governments; " but if any gentleman in want of the articles should step in and ask to be supplied with a republic and two monarchies, he would then probably learn that Messrs. A & B dealt not in governments, but in government securities. In like manner the editor of a Southern paper, carried out of the orbit of high journalistic reserve by the attractions of two ladies unknown to fame, begins thus an article in their glory :

"For the first time during the existence of this paper we notice a theatrical representation editorially. We generally leave that matter to our locals; but really the Worral sisters —!"

What "a local" is might well puzzle any reader who had not the technical knowledge that would