A STANDS FOR

Evening Star, Issue 20119, 8 March 1929, Page 6

A STANDS FOR

QUOTATIONS WANTED Mr Onions, who is editing the supplemeut to the Ox lord Lnghsh Dictiouary, writes to the ‘Manchester Guarmight bo supposed that tor the letter A there was little to add beyond “aeroplane” and “ appendicitis, ; and perhaps “automobile” and ‘ aviation”; and the thirty pages (already in type) of additions under the hrst letter of the alphabet will, 1 UnnK, surprise any who arc not in the habit oi observing the almost daily accretions to the English vocabulary. A begins with “aasvogel. which u supported l*v references to itider hlaggard and Uudyard Kipling, and ends with “ azygospore,” a botanical tcini now, it is' true, rarely used but which must lie recorded for completeness sake. These are the alphabetical termini of a multitude of common colloquialisms, of technicalities that have become public currency, of the labels of discoveries and inventions, of the names of exotic plants and garments, ol religious, political, and social movements, of terms of sport and of the new psychology, and so on, Ihere aie, for instance, to put or get it acioss, auto-suggestion, autopiano, auto-ei otism, autogiro, accent in art, to go all out, nppeception, the all red hue, ngapemone, apache, adenoids, aspidistra, aerobatic, alpha rays, drug addict, airbath, airworthy, ndurol, Ashkenazim, Anglicist, Anglophobiac, angels on horseback, the spiritistic apport, and accelerometer. . And some w'ords or meanings must be marked obsolete even in this supplement of modernisms, as, for example, the older sense of “ aerodrome, ’ now’ expressed by “ aeroplane,” and the original sense of “ aeroplane,” which was plane or wing; and “ animatogvaph one of the early names of the old cinema, is as dead as Queen Anne.