to write intelligibly, therefore, you must know what is good usage in the language you use. You must know, that is, what meaning the best writers and speakers by general agreement assign to the words in good standing in the English language. What the meaning of a word is, what the standing of a word is, cannot always be told with ease and precision. Dictionaries, grammars, rhetorics, the best literature, as well as 'good sense and good taste, have all to be consulted in determining matters of good usage.

1

Usage, to be good, must be present, national, and reputable, a matter that will be made clear in the next three sections, which treat of

1. Present Usage,
2. National Usage, and
3. Reputable Usage.

SECTION 41

Good Usage

1. PRESENT USAGE

Good usage is present usage. In a living language such as ours, changes, more or less gradual, are constantly taking place. On the passing of old things, the names of those things go with them, or stay to take other meanings; on the discovery or invention of new things, new names are formed for them, or old names are revived with a change of meanings. Thus words put on new meanings, when old ones are worn out, as men put on

1 Dictionaries, grammars, and rhetorics are merely so many attempts at recording the particulars of good usage; the best literature of a language is always the court of last resort for deciding questions of usage.

new coats.

Like men, too, words are born, live, and die. But in this birth and death of words and of the meanings of words, it is always the present word and the present meaning that you must use if you are to write intelligibly to those now living.

In this matter of present usage, however, you are not likely to go far astray. Words that are quite obsolete, you will hardly be tempted to use. But you may be tempted to use obsolete meanings of words that are now used only in modern senses. This temptation will be all the greater if you are fresh from the study of Chaucer's poems or Shakspere's plays. Chaucer and Shakspere, remember, used only such words as were in present use when they wrote. You may be tempted also to take over into your prose certain words that are dead to our present prose, but living in our present poetry, such as "in sooth" for "in truth," "'tis" for "it is," "quoth "quoth" for "says," "ere" for "before," "perchance" for "perhaps," and the like. It is a good working rule, therefore, to avoid words which do not appear in the prose of the last fifty years or so, and to use words that do appear in the prose of the last fifty years or so only in the senses in which they are used to-day. It is in these two respects that you will be most helped by the knowledge that good usage is present usage.

Exercise 50

1. Make a list of the words in the following stanzas that are not in present use. Make another list of the

words now used in different spelling. The stanzas are taken from Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene, book i, canto i:

THE KNIGHT OF THE RED CROSSE

A gentle Knight was pricking1 on the plaine,
Ycladd 2 in mightie armes and silver shielde,
Wherein old dints of deepe wounds did remaine,
The cruel markes of many a bloudy fielde;
Yet armes till that time did he never wield:

His
angry steede did chide his foming bitt,
As much disdayning to the curbe to yield :
Full jolly knight he seemd, and faire did sitt,

3

As one for knightly giusts and fierce encounters fitt.

And on his brest a bloudie crosse he bore,

The deare remembrance of his dying Lord,

For whose sweete sake that glorious badge he wore,
And dead as living ever him ador'd :

Upon his shield the like was also scor'd,

For soveraine hope, which in his helpe he had :
Right faithfull true he was in deede and word,
But of his cheere did seeme too solemne sad;
Yet nothing did he dread, but ever was ydrad.

Upon a great adventure he was bond,
That greatest Gloriana to him
gave,
That greatest glorious Queene of Faerie lond,
To winne him worship, and her grace to have,
Which of all earthly things he most did crave;
And ever as he rode, his hart did earne
To prove his puissance in battell brave
Upon his foe, and his new force to learne;

5

Upon his foe, a dragon horrible and stearne.

2. Examine other poetical selections in this book, and make a list of the words not found in ordinary prose. 3. Examine a page or two of one of Shakspere's plays, and make a list of the words not in present use. Examine 1 Pricking, spurring on quickly. 2 Ycladd, clad. 4 Ydrad, dreaded. 5 Earne, yearn.

Giusts, tilts, justs.

the first eighteen lines of Chaucer's Prologue to the Canterbury Tales, and make a list of the words you do not understand.

SECTION 42

Good Usage

2. NATIONAL USAGE

Good usage is also national usage. National usage requires that you use only English words, and that you use only such English words as are used in America, — not in any one section of the country, nor by any one class of people, but by the best writers and speakers throughout the whole country.

To use words that are not English words shows snobbishness and a want of good sense. By English words is not meant merely such words as are natives of English soil. The English language has borrowed from foreign languages, often with no change of form, thousands of words that are now good English words. Such, for example, are "circus," from the Latin; "atlas," from the Greek; "figure," from the French; "schooner," from the Dutch; "piano," from the Italian; "mosquito," from the Spanish; "zinc," from the German; "algebra," from the Arabic; "tobacco," from the North American Indian. Aid," "air," "branch," "chair," "chief," "cherry,' “fade,” “fail," "lamp," "obey," "price," and "trunk” were taken from the French. Such words as these are every bit as good as the words "man," "mouse," "winter," "light," and so on, words spoken by the good king Alfred. Such words are now a part of the mother tongue. Words that are not English words are née for "born," mal de mer for "seasickness," morceau for "piece," fracas for

66

"brawl," ad libitum for "at pleasure," ad infinitum for "indefinitely," and so forth. To insert in your English writing such words as these last, words that are still felt to be foreign, shows snobbishness, if, by using such words, you think to be looked upon as superior to those who use none but good English words, and a want of good sense, if, by using foreign words, you think to be understood as readily as if you were to use their English equivalents.1

Along with foreign words should go English words used in Great Britain but not used in America. In the vast majority of cases, good usage in Great Britain is good usage in America, but there are a few exceptions. Here are some of the exceptions:

AMERICAN

men's furnisher

druggist

corn

grain (wheat, oats, etc.)

lemonade

pie

engineer

fireman

BRITISH haberdasher

chemist

maize

corn

lemon-squash

tart

engine-driver

stoker
guard

conductor

ticket agent

baggage car
railroad
freight-train

booking-clerk

luggage-van

railway
goods-train

1 It is safe to say that you will almost never have occasion, in the writing of school themes, to use a foreign expression. Experienced writers sometimes employ a foreign expression, owing to the lack of an English equivalent, to communicate with precision some nice distinction in ideas. This is seldom, however. "We shall have no disputes about diction," wrote Macaulay to the editor of the Edinburgh Review; “the English language is not so poor but that I may very well find in it the means of contenting both you and myself."