WORDS AND PHRASES.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXI, Issue 18711, 17 May 1924, Page 19 (Supplement)

WORDS AND PHRASES.

CURIOSITIES AND CHANGES.

BY JOHN 1 DO"3.

Hamlet discovered to the inquisitive old Polonius that he was reading words, words, words." And words are very interesting things: perhaps, with the possible exception of women and children, 1 and dogs, words are as interesting, instructive and amusing as anything we can study or have as a hobby or wherewith to pass a pleasant hour. They are like children, so full of 1 life: like a woman, they are for ever changing,. " varium <;t mutabilo semper," and they ■ are as much subject to fashions. 'We have French poodles, German dachshounds. Russian boarhounds, Italian greyhounds, Australian dingoes, and we have words from these and fifty other nations, including Australia, words • that are now good English. Words, like people, have their ups and downs many words have known better days, others now move in good society which once were vulgar and low. In spite of its fleshy origin, anyone nowadays may have pluck, but, like an unfortunate young lady in Hood's song, Jt was never mentioned in polite circles a hundred years ago: nowadays only the vulgar have the "guts" to do certain things: in 50 years it may well be found in a leading article in this paper. Pronunciation and Meaning. Just as the position of a lady's waist may change with changing fashions, from Empire to tango, from tangb to jazz jumper, so the pronunciation of words" will alter, the accent or stress be laid on a different vowel. Balcony, for instance, was once pronounced bal-cony, the accent on the second syllable: the tendency nowadays is to throw the accent back as far. as possible. Suicidal I ; have heard pronounced, by a Cambridge man (Cambridge, England, no't in the Waikato), with the accent oq the first i, the second i short. We accent advertisement on the second, the Americans on the third syllable. .. : _ Words, spoken words, change their meaning: litera scripts manet (our com-positors-are brought up on Latin and werß lulled to sleep with Greek) the written word remains. Some of us know that the word " conversation" had an entirely different connection in 1611 from that it has to-day. v So the word translated "charity" in St. Paul's fine out- * burst of eloquence on the virtues of charity meant to him what love, true affection, means to us: charity in 1611 • | was a different word from its narrow

meaning of to-day. Charity doesn't suffer long; it; sometimes makes others suffer. I once saw a procession of unemployed men in London who carried a banner bearing the words, "Damn your charity: we want work." We have Hospital and Charitable Aid Boards. You could hardly substitute "loveablo" there for charitable, could you 1 Even at the hospital you are, I suppose, hardly loved. New Words and Word Sex.

We hear of the dead languages. There is really no such thing. Greek, for instance. is very much alive. Such -words as telephone, microscope, chiropractor philologicallv a horrid . word—why not hand-worker?), monoplane, are more or less " pure Greek. Scientific men very wisely rase these Greek words for new discoveries and inventions, so that educated . men all over the , world know their

meaning. Medical science especially uses Greek words, often to express quite simple or usual ailments and diseases, and so doctors in any country know what

disease is meant: Dysentery, sarcoma. v tussis (a, cough), pertussis (a had cough) t are just Greek or Latin. But our ordin- ® ary langauge has frequent accretions of y created words, not , scientifically ' formed, \ they just grow, like googly, wangle, r grouse, barrack. Flump is a word I I didn't know, till quite recently. Its mean- J ing is to fall or move, heavily with a dull ( sound. It is a modern word first occur- , ing ; , in 1816. It is what is. termed an ( onomatopoeic word, one which by its i sound seeks to represent its meaning, like 1 boom, ban fizz. For some reason, many 1 onomatopoeic words begin with f, such 1 as flap, flip, flush, fumble, fizz. I wonder i what tho origin of jazz is, During the i war various onomatopoeic words were i coined to express the impression made by i the thing named, : such as whizz-bang, ' crump, possibly dud. - . . I don't. Ijflpw whether in our language words—like thought-* in - one of the new religions- things, but in many tongues words ' have gender. In German the word, weib, wife, woman, is neuter, which is queer. Well, in French, mustard A is feminine, but' salt is masculine. With us, the sun is regarded as masculine, the moon as feminine, like a ship. Foreign languages are dangerous things a lady once told a man some gossip, and remarked that it was of course "couleur de rose." "Oh ye 8 > he said, "but perhaps you mean sub rosa "Yes, how silly ofme. That s what you call a "lapis lazuli, isn t it. Well, sometimes we can put the blame for a "lapsus linguae" on the printer devil, or the proof-reader. Perhaps the psycho-analytic theory regarding errors of . speech . is the correct explanation, which you", will find set forth in Professor Freud's lectures on psychoanalysis: such things as the remark othe candidate for Parliament that.; like Caesar's wife, .he would 'be all things to all men," or the city councillor (not our city) who spoke of . the fl" 1 "thin end of the . white elephant." 1 Dr. Johnson, the dictionary maker, had another explanation of his errors: when a lady pointed out a mistake in his explanation of the hock of a horse, and asked him how it came about, he replied': "Ignorance, madam, sheer 'ignorance." 'I would not, of x course, . suggest that this is the explanation of any of the errors quoted. Foreign Place Names. The English language,' always a • law unto itself, behaves rather curiously regarding; the: names of foreign places and towns; in pronunciation r and spelling. . Paris, j for instance, is an English word. The French spell it the same as do the Germans, but Frenchman, German and Englishman each pronounces it differently from the others. We add an s, in spelling, and speaking, ,to the French Marseille, . Most of the orldei; cjities ' and towns have ' acquired 'on English' ■ name, such as Rome, Florence, Brussels, Geneva, i; but not , the . newer ones, Rio de Janeiro, ; Monte Video, or those known ' later, Cabul, -Celebes,; Ypres, Pau, Tor-, i coing, Iraq, Buitenzorg. - These latter r have really as yet no names which , have . become English, and till they . have, the i correct way to pronounce them would , seem ;to: be the native way, if . you know ■ i it, as Llangollen, Llwynpia, or Przemysl. ' We cannot go by the - spelling to learn ; how to i; pronounce. English correctly. 1 i once heard a - schoolmaster, who should i have known better,': pronounce England i as Eng-land, e not i. The New : English Dictionary, the authority, < says . " England: - the word 7 and its cognates, English, etc:, are the only instances in > which. in the modern standard English I the " letter e stands in an accented syil lable for i. The change of an earlier ■ en into in is strictly normal, and in , 'all other examples the spelling has fol- ! lowed the pronunciation. i Also, usays ii is -to be pronounced sez, not to rhyme . i with days.