SCHOOL HOWLERS

King Country Chronicle, Volume XXVII, Issue 4460, 21 October 1933, Page 6

SCHOOL HOWLERS

A GENUINE LIST. SECONDARY PUPILS’ EFFORTS. The school “howler” blooms periodically producing its most prolific crop during the coming examination months. Many folks doubt the authenticity of some of the best “howlers” but the latest Education Gazette departs refreshingly from its usual strain in publishing a genuine list supplied by the principal of. a secondary school. He explains that, after giving lessons on the construction and meaning of words of foreign words he has found it a good test of pupils’ knowledge and vocabulary to ask for the meanings of a number of words. Here are some of the remarkable answers given, the most fascinating part about them being the reader’s endeavour to trace the association of word with meaning. It must be borne in mind that these answers are supplied by children in the third or fourth year of a secondary course. One pupil must be assumed to be the descendant of a draper. He explains “mesmerise” as “to put a silk finish on an article,” and states that the adjective for Ceylon is Celanese. The associations are obvious, as they are also where “albino’ ’is referred to as “a bred of sheep reared in Spain,” and “polyglot” as “a man with more than one wife.’ How “decade” can be assumed to mean “a side walk” is rather more of a puzzle, but “gusto,” “a joking remark,” and “quota,” “a piece of prose taken from a book” seem much more natural. The Proletariat. One lad defined “proletariat” as “a man who can speak many languages”; another asserts the word to mean “one who does not agree with the Government” —he is perhaps wiser than he imagines. Surely it could not have been an agricultural student who declared that “wiseacre” meant “anything derived from the tilling of the soil.” Most of our farming wiseacres, surveying their bank balances to-day, will declare that nothing is derived from such an occupation. Common abbreviations are often a puzzle to youth. One pays a strange tribute to the medical profession when he interprets “M.D.” as “Member of the Denizens,” while another has an unconscious humour in declaring that “1.L.0.” stands for “the Institute of the Lower Orders”—a distinction that could be very widely claimed. But the wildest effort is recorded in explaining the wellknown “i.e.” —“an Ilictrical engineer.” It is difficult to follow the reasoning which he explains “topee” as the best obtainable,” unless to the young mind flashed the expression “tophole,” but one can observe in “jargon,” “a spearlike weapon,” and “peccadillo”—“a certain type of animal,” distinct connection with child literature. Was it film influence, or the novel so popular some years ago which prompted “divan” to be recognised as “the home of a sheik?” The youth who wrote that “finesse”' meant “the girl you are engaged to marry,” could hardly have come from a home where either “contract” or “auction” is a pastime, but what of the boy who declared that “brogue” means “a person who gets money out of others by fraud?” Either he neglected altogether the initial letter, or dissociated it from the other five.