SOON DEADd

Evening Post, Volume CXII, Issue 123, 20 November 1931, Page 7

SOON DEADd

"FLAPPER WORDS"

SPEECH CLEANSES ITSELF

HOW LANGUAGE GKOWS

Tho speech of the plain people is characteristically candid, and its candour is strengthened by colloquialisms; but the speech itself does not necessarily become vulgar thereby, although, when the mind is roused, words may be plentiful and then it is not particular in its choice of them, writes Frank Vizetelly in the "New York Times." The speech fostered by "flapporoerauy" led a carefree life. It welcomed any word — "dimbox," "shifter," "snuggle-pup," or , what not—that came its way, but when tired of it dropped it. Ten years from now the cant of flapperocracy will be as dead as the dodo; "applo sauce" will once more be the pleasant concoction of apples served at the table and few of our children will remember what a " butrer-and-egg-man " was. The English language is a pretty good language still. It keeps itself clean automatically. We owe a good many of the novelties in word-coinage to the plain people; but, in greater number, terms of a different type" have been . coined by scholars and specialists in the arts and sciences, created by inventors, or introduced by journalists and travellers." Enriched by the efforts of these people as the language has been, it was made richer by disputations from which the ■word "educate" was itself not free. Three hundred years after its introduction the word "educational," when used as a part of the title of a periodical, aroused protest and'was derided as unscholarly. It caused the learned Archbishop of Dublin, himself master in the use of words, to term it "an offensive novelty," and the editor of "The Literary Churchman" to deprecate the use to which it had been put. Before'the words "conscious?' .and "strenuous" were .finally .adopted they were held up to derision, but they won their way into the language. NOT KINDLY. Public opinion is not always kindly disposed toward terms that win places in the dictionaries, and some of these terms have faced captious criticism in consequence. Devery's "chesty" and Roosevelt's ' "Chinafication" were among these. To one' not living in the United States at the time it may perhaps be permitted to hazard the belief that Cleveland's '^innocuous desuotude" sent many a reader of the President's message .to a dictionary for enlightenment that unfortunatoly it did not supply. Tho "experiment noble in purpose" that we owe ,to President Hoover the Press was not slow to twist into "noble experiment" for purposes far less noble than the original, no matter what may be said ■to the contrary, and tho apostles of demijohn rule were quick to dip their ' pens into the gall and aloes and give VWicker-sham-ite " to an expectant ■world. "Normalcy" was hastily tacked on to President Harding, who merely used a word that had already been in use in mathematical' science for nearly a century, and it returned to the pages of the dictionary witn a different signification. The Rooseveltian "pussyfooted" met with, the approval of one section1 of the Press that accepted it as a fitting term to the state of the. political party to which the section was opposed, but it was shunned by tho opposition Press. "Bother," "bantam," "coax," ".rampage," and "humbug" are words about which the purists used to quarrel, but wh.o condemns them now? If virility of language.is to.be preserved,- we must continue to embrace" the'best thatthereis in speech. Tho cauldron of usage is the refining pot into which all words must go for purification. There they, may bob up and down, as the massseethes or simmers, or oven boil over and out of the pot, to become outcasts of the linguistic family. This is what has happened to. the vocabulary of flapperdom in which little, was worth saving. BEAUTY.NOT ENOUGH. But' there is andther side to the canvas—beautiful,words arrayed neatly make a pleasing .picture by themselves, but alone they do not hold the interest. To create.-interest a' definite purpose and strength to carry it out in fitting words. ar.e essential. Expressive English',can be produced only by the skilled. -.■'-, "To blurt out' one's mental reactions as they come is comparatively easy," said J. B. Priestley, and it is very much harder to write a correct report of a street accident than to dash off such stuff as this: "Ineffably cataclysmic he watched the swallows rippling in. Wave after wave, would they engulf him? Detachedly he beheld the lapwings, lap, lap, lap, lay a ripple farthering up the beach. Footprints on the sands of crime. No. Peck, peck, peccadilloes. Lapses of lapwings fluttering over the shore. He lay back on the beach; was it under the beech; memories of rumpled protesting petticoats swept aside the beech no beseeching he besought silence to break. No breach." I believe him. Some writers who make use of this mode 'of expression - imagine that they »re creating a new school in the world of fiction. Far froni it, for -they are merely ending an, old one—one nx>w so old, so mechanical, - and- so- full of pedantry that nothing can save it from putrefaction. "Week after week a mixture of sordid sentiment and sensationalism has been dished up that, while momentarily enthralling, has not contributed to the awakening of initia-' tive or ability to produce clearly original ideas, but has produced mental reactions that have led to the retail-, ing of the silly and often graceless episodes and escapades common ; to life. As a remedy for existing conditions, an eminent litterateur not long ago recommended that our children be allowed to select their own reading and so acquire' a good education.