The Press Saturday, September 24, 1921. The Latest English Dictionary.

Press, Volume LVII, Issue 17259, 24 September 1921, Page 10

The Press Saturday, September 24, 1921. The Latest English Dictionary.

Since the days of Archbishop Trench, no scholar has discoursed more agreeably on words and their whimsical ways than has Professor Ernest Weekley. And in one respect, at lea6t from the latter-day standpoint, the professor is a pleasanter companion than the archbishop. He is less set on edification in the Pauline sense of that admirable word which has so fatal an allure for the mind ecclesiastical, and is very much more concerned with his matter, whatever it may be, than with the moral it can be compelled to yield. Surnames and proper names in general form a wide and fruitful field, which Professor Weekley has made peculiarly his own, and, greatly daring, he ha's compiled single-handed, and recently published, an etymological dictionary of modern English. This scholarly and original work is furnished, as anyone familiar with the professor's writings would anticipate, with a bright and witty, if occasionally combative, preface, find unlike too many dictionaries, is a most pleasant book to Drowse in. Writing for what he calls "the educated "man (and woman) in the street," the professor makes no insidious attempt to "ascertain the pronunciation," aa Boswell has it, by the free use of the strange and unattractive symbols so dear to the hear of the phonetician, nor does he deliquesce in definition. "I learn," so runß a passage in the preface, "from the New "English Dictionary that to kiss is " 'press or touch with the lips (at the " same time compressing and separating them) in token of affection, or " greeting, or as an act of reverence'; "and from Skeat, that twenty " is 'twice ten.' So much know- " ledge I assume every reader to p05"6683." "6683." But the space eo saved h filled with the most wide and varied information upon a thousand points of interest, and with a wealth of quotation, ranging chronologically from "the "venerable Bede to Mr Horatio Bot"tomley," admirably well-chosen and simply invaluable to the amateur of phrase and fable. Surprises lurk in every page, and the illustrative matter is as fresh and unhackneyed as the rare definitions and occasional comments. Dull must he be of soul—it is the pleasant fashion of the day to "annex" convenient phrases without too scrupulous a use of inverted commas—who remains unmoved on learning that, the word "waist" was originally applied to the male of the species, and indicated "the "region of greatest circumference," and could one ask for happier contemporary comment than the professor's note on that hard-worked word, "bour"geois"? "From the time of the '.'Frencn Revolution," he . writes, " Bourgeois has undergone the same " eclipse as our middle class, being con T "temptuously applied by 'intellec- " 'tuab' "—a good deal is conveyed to those "that understand by that happy brace of commas 1 —"to those who pay " their way and look after their child"ren." One can easily imagine the joy with which Mr Weekley must have transferred to his most hospitable notebook this startling excerpt from the Trust-deed of Bethel' Chapel, .Sheffield: "Under no 'circumstances whatever "shall any preacher be allowed to oc- " oupy the pulpit who wears trousers," and who wbuld refuse sympathy to the exasperation which found relief in the assertion "unquestionably" is made use of in popular philosophy: "usually " in reference to some hazy recollection "of an amateur theory propounded in " the correspondence column" P ' It seems that Lewis Carroll was not, after all, the inventor of portmanteau ?ords. Nature had been before him. rofessor Weekley gives us "Btraif," a charming blend of "stray" and "waif," which lie culled from the pages of Cowell's "Interpreter," and hazards the wide conjecture that "chump"' in the Bense of "thick-head" js probably a telescoping of "chunk" and "lump." This is the more probable that language is always a rigid economist of materials. Could economy go further than when the name Attila, a diminutive Gothio equivalent of the infantile "daddy," was bestowed on the terrible King of the HunsP From Attila to "pagan" is but a step, and on the evolution of meaning in "pagan".Mr l Weekley has new and interesting views to offer. The word, which originally meant "xustio" or "yokel," is generally thought to have gained its modern meaning from the fact that paganism lingered unduly long in rural districts. But the professor reminds us that "paganus" was the Soman soldiers' equivalent to the modern semi-contemp-tuous use of the word "civilian," and suggests that it was thence applied by metaphor to those who were not "good" "soldiers of Christ." This is as may be, but the characteristic comment is worth quoting. "Thus the sense haa "developed from that of the Kipling"esque 'lousy civilian,' or the more " modern 'damned conshy.' " Some may, of course, find such a passage over vivacious for a learned lexicographer. For them Mr Weekley has a word in season. "If some of the more aus"tere," he writes, "are scandalised by " an occasional tone of levity, most un- " becoming in such a work, I would re"mind them that its production has " coincided with the sombre tragedy of " the war, and the sordid tragedy of "the peace, and that even a lexioo- " grapher may , sometimes say, with " 'Figaro,' <H me presse de rire de tout " 'de peur d'etre oblige d'en pleurer.'" It is, we think, sufficiently apparent from these random selections that the new Dictionary is as full of fine miscel-, laneouß feeding as the proverbial sheep's head. Those who prefer order and the beaten road will find their needs catered for in the professor's . earlier books, j . where all waywardness is eliminated j

and the matter duly marshalled under appropriate heads. Or they might do worse than read his delightful essay, published in a recent issue of "Corn- " hill," on "National Sport and Na- " tional Metaphor." For there, among other things, they will learn that our metaphors owe but little to modern sports, and will light on the amazing fact that Sir Thomas Elyot, Kt., in hu "Boke Named the Gouvernour," classed football with ninepins and quoits as a game, "to be utterly objected of all ''noble men," being nothing else "but " beastly furie, and extreme violence."