THE MIGHTY MONOSYLLABLE.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXIV, Issue 43, 14 October 1912, Page 8

THE MIGHTY MONOSYLLABLE.

“They arc not all mighty. Most of them serve a humble purpose, and are but pawns in the game of language. Auxiliaries; 'prepositions, pronouns, the small change of the word trade, are mostly of one , syllable; in the tongues that have come of age, arid iill'sentences contain less or more of these little link-words that, lie inconspicuous among the greater folk they 'servo. ' “But there are giants, too, among the monosyllables, most of all among the English breed, for we inherit from Saxon fathers short of speech a wealth of words that have great riches in a narrow room. "We would not barter ‘ruth,’ ‘wrath,’ ‘war,’ or ‘the great deep’ for their value in any other tongue. “We use the monosyllable alone, and .Raleigh's great address begins: ‘0 eloquent, just, and mighty Death!’ f ife, death, false, true, fair, foul, lust, bate, these are little words that moan great things, and most of the simple notions and essential qualities may be expressed in English by one syllable. And the oldest things with which man is concerned are called mostly by short names. Sword, wife, house, land, and horse and plough, the ox alive in the, Saxon’s field, and as ‘beef’ on the Norman’s table, wine and bread, friend and grave and God, these are all monosyllables. So when language begins to deal with primitive life or the most essential human tilings, the short words grow in number. “The English Bible and the noblest English hymns are full of monosyllables : f) God, our help in ages past, Our hope for years to come. And modern literary artistry, knowing bow simple things are best expressed with dignity, translates Homer into language nearly Biblical,” writes the Spectator, and closes with this fine passage: “The most of ordinary English speech i« in monosyllables: sermons have been preached in them from English pnlp’ts, our poets use them to give lightness or stateliness to the march of a verse,' and the English Bilde, beyond which no man need go for English style, uses them more than any other great book in the world. Indeed, whenever in English we wish for simplicity or for special dignity we are wont to shorten our words. It is mostly in monosyllables that wo speak to children and to God.”