SLOVENLY SPEECH

Evening Star, Issue 26103, 17 May 1947, Page 12

SLOVENLY SPEECH

AGE OF VERBAL INACCURACY NOVELISTS ARRAIGNED With strange persistence many writers, who depend for expression on words, twist them out of their meaning. A mischievous itch seems to urge them to favour the modish, or out-of-the-way word, whether it is appropriate or not. Specific words are ‘wrenched into meaning something else, and sloppy custom wins a victory over nicety and common .sense; like those preposterous, but fashionable, women’s bats, which are no longer headgear, but clown’s kit; the product and symbol of caprice and frivolity, writes “ J.5.M.,” in Melbourne ‘ Age ’). Men whose professions make it impossible for them to misapply certain technical words are indifferent, to the fate of others not in their line, but quite as worthy of considerate treatment. No doctor misuses the word “ allergic,” but he may tolerate the misuse of “ alibi,” which earns deservedly a lawyer’s groans. A Cain-ish indifference to the fate of words undoubtedly exists. But here deriyation-citmg will not vindicate kicking against the improper use of words. If it did we would not bo in so bad a way, with custom being almost, the eventual arbiter. Still, there is virtue in resisting by protest (even in vain) the wrong use of particular, essential words. Two hundred years ago Horace Walpole complained that tlie word “ generally ” was gaining ground, at the expense of “ usually.” He foresaw the triumph of the verbal tare and the falling into “ innocuous desuetude ’’ of a fine, specific verb. MENTAL SMUDGINESS. In a recent novel a popular and complacent author writes of something having been done without unnecessary “ panoply.” He thinks it is a synonym for pageantry, or ceremony, or spectacular fuss of some kind, I asked a young woman what she thought “ panoply ”to mean. She said. “ Something which overhangs, juts out. A kind of rhyming slang for ‘canopy.’” That is the way, or one of the ways, it comes about, mental smu.dginess. Why not say ceremony, pageantry, or canopy, if either fits the case. For “ panoply ” means a, complete suit of armour, tin hat, gas mask, and all. In the noun it can be stretched to connote any splendid enveloping or surrounding array, material or ideal, but the verb “ to panoply ” means solely. “ to arm completely,” and the adjective “ panoplied ” “ clad in complete armour,” from the Greek “ pan ” —all, “ opla ” —arms.

This surprising author thinks it smart in place of the worthy word “ picturesque ’ to use the word for unworthy persons and episodes, “ picaresque.” Why? The near likeness in sound, seemingly. This would also account for the use by him -of “ exiguous ” (which means scanty in measure or number) for “ exigent,” urgent, pressing, demanding. Ilis heroine Being in need of immediate help, the writer decides that his readers will best understand her strait if he says that her need was “ exiguous.” He duhs those who are on her side “ protagonists.” He hazards that in this case “ pro ” stands for “ for ” as against “ant,” and scorns to glance at a dictionary to find the right meaning. He brands a clean but cobbled street as “ noisome,” guessing that it is composed of “ noise ” and “ some ”; not ascertaining, as he should, that it means “ an-lioy-some,” and is allied to “ nuisance,” derived from “ noisance,” and lias nothing to do with sound, but smell, and is so related to “ noxious.” HOMESICKNESS. In her own house the indolent heroine puts on a gramophone record of a nostalgic waltz. Yearning or wistful is meant, hut lie and liis public want “ nostalgic,” not knowing or caring that its real meaning is to do with “ nostalgia,” a form of melancholia caused by prolonged absence from one’s own home or country: severe homesickness. It comes from the Greek nostos, return home, and algos, pain. Neuralgia, nerve pain. One cannot very well suffer from homesickness in one’s own living room. Whenever he might well use either sarcastic, cynical, sneering, contemptuous, sardonic, derisive, lie scorns variety of choice and accuracy, and without favour employs “ ironic.” “ ‘ Get out of here, you cad! ’ he cried, ironically.” Sir' James Murray exyjains irony as “a figure of speech' in which the intended meaning is the opposite of that expressed by the words used, usually taking the form of sarcasm or ridicule in which laudatory expressions are used to imply condemnation or contempt.” It comes from the Greek ironeia—dissimulation, ignorance purposely affected. One of this writer’s characters, a youth who is congenitally not too bright, does something extra stupid even for him: the blunder of one owning an habitually torpid brain. He is made to say of this blunder, “ like a ‘ maniac ’ I put the letter into the wrong envelope.” “ Fool, goose, imbecile, or idiot ” was what he ought to have been made to say, but the novelist . deemed—and probably cor-

rectly—that his public would prefer “ maniac.” He discards “erudite” or esoteric ” because he confused “ erudite ” with “ recondite,” and displaces “ uninterested ” by “ disinterested,” thinking the latter to mean “ not interested.” What can be done with such a man? A huge block of tenements, housing a hundred quarrelsome. families, is “a ‘ phalanstery,’ the * enormity ’ of which dwarfs its _ neighbours.” Elsewhere the heroine already mentioned takes her ease “ restively ” in a chaise longue. WEDDING SANCTIONS. Another writer makes a woman, jealous of her half-sister, who wants to get married, persuade their mother, who holds the purse strings, to “ apply sanctions,” and so balk the wedding. Another equally culpable correspondent vies with him by writing, “ Wherever insufficient rations are available it is the Jews who have to do without,” when he might have said simply, “ When there is a shortage Jews must go without,” or “ wherever sufficient rations are not available.” But no, he has his own way of saying it, so the language suffers. Lately the word “ snood,” which means uniciuely the hair ribbon or fillet of a virgin, has been given to the ugly, revived hair net, which may be worn equally by maids, matrons, wives, de facto wives, and women of great and no importance. But these examples/of word misuse are only a few of the many so carefreely and irresponsibly bandied about in an era of amateur ascendency.