WANTED: A WORD.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXXVI, Issue 3993, 25 July 1913, Page 8

WANTED: A WORD.

TO DESCRIBE THE GIRL YOU ARE UOING TO MARRY. (By BARRY PAIN in the “Daily Chronicle.”)

We have a word in English to express most ordinary relationships. You can speak of your sister, your cousin, your aunt, your grandpapa. As a matter of fact, near relations make a shockingly dull subject for conversation ; but that is not ihe point. You can speak of your sister’s beauty (if any), or your father’s wealth (if any), or your uncle’s rheumatism, or, in these days of conversational latitude, your aunt’s appendix. But there is no one word in our language by which you can. express the person whom you have arranged to marry. “Betrothed” is quite a good word, but it has the misfortune to be poetry. A young and beautiful person who is about to marry another young and beautiful person may speak of his or her betrothed. A middle-aged couple contemplating matrimony c inno t use the word. A spotty-faced girl, with her hair in a tight bun, and no other personal attractions, could not possibly use it. “Intended” is another impossible word for a precisely opposite reason. It is deliberately, shyly, hideously, vulgarly comic, dome people go to France to find their word, and this is a national disgrace to us. Then comes in periphrasis. A man may say “the girl whom I am going to marry,” if he has got the time to say it and; the patience to endure the clumsiness of it. There is no one word to satisfy us.

A SERIOUS MATTER. This is a serious matter. Matrimony must be encouraged. We do not want a declining birth-rate. And here, at the very first step towards matrimony, wo have our wretched language interposing a difficulty. Many a man is now living single simply because his nice sense of the value of words would not permit him to enter into any relationship for which no one word could be used. .

I do not know who does the necessary repairs and extensions for this language. They get done somehow. When we took to flying, we had to find a word for the machine which flew and for the man in it. Long ago we wished to speak of a vehicle propelled by an internal combustion engine, and the word was forthcoming. Some useful words have been' produced which even now are not known to the genera] public. Take the word “damateur,” for instance. You grasp the meaning at once. You ask Smith if Jones is not very musical. “Not particularly,” says Smith; “lie’s only a damateur.” In the same way the man who tells a falsehood out of sheer politeness is described as a “poliar.” Genius, it has been well observed, consists in making one word do where two didi before. I do not say that this work of repairing and extending the language has always been done well; If pressed, I will admit that it is generally done disgracefully. But that is no reason why it should not bo done at all. I want the man whose business it is to‘do it to eome out of hiding and get to work. It is not much

to ask. AvSSt qne word only by which the engaged person may be designated. It must not dbe a sickly Avoid, it must not be comic, it must not bo scientific, it must not be imported. It is a disgrace that there is oiio. Avoid Avhich we can use when Ave break our bootlace, and that there is not one word by which Ave can describe the girl whom avc are going to make happy.

WORDS THAT WON’T DO

There is a saying that if you want a thing done properly you should do it yourself. It is probably of all sayings the most vain and the most imbecile. Let any man who does not believe that try to cut his own hair. I have found almost universally that if I want a thing done properly I must get somebody else to do it for me. I have found it so in the case of this wanted word. My first attempt led me to the discovery that it might be necessary to invent two words —one for the woman and one for the man.

I had thought of the Avoid “selection,” and it will not do at all. The man selects, or.likes to think,that he does. The woman is selected. Noav, you cannot call any rvoman your selected. You cannot designate the woman you love by a term you have taken straight out of the advertisement of cigars. I had thought, also, of the terms “mortgagor” and “mortgagee,” hut in the flight from poetry one does not Avish to stumble into the purely legal. “Accepter” and “accepted” are no better. Bills can be accepted, and a man whose Christian name was William would not like a girl to speak of him as her accepted Bill.

I came back to the conclusion that there ought to bo one Avoid Avhich could be used for either the man or the Avoman. The thought came to me that someAvhere in the dictionary there must be just the A'ery word for the case. There is a certain Avant of plot and excitement about a dictionary Avliicli prevents a man from reading it straight through. I left it to fate. I opened my dictionary with myieyes closed, and put my finger on a Avord. The lvord Avas “polygastric.” It is a 1 nice-sounding Avord. It tempts ‘you to think that you might say, '“Permit me to introduce you to Miss Smith, my polygastric.” If you wish to lcnoAV Avhy you cannot continue to think this, look up the meaning of polygastric in the dictionary. 1 then gaA r e up the attempt.

OPEN TO COMPETITION. Unquestionably puzzle competitions are very popular. One finds them in many periodicals. Cannot the editor of one of those periodicals come to the assistance of the English language here? The prize should be handsome Sample tubes liaA r e only a limited attraction. A prize of one thousand pounds for the most satisfactory Avord by which to designate the person to whom you are engaged Avould probably fill up this distressing gap in our national speech. The editor who offered it and the man who earned it would he national benefactors. Something might even be said for the proprietor who paid it.