DICTIONARIES AND INDELICATE WORDS.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 5667, 11 September 1896, Page 3

DICTIONARIES AND INDELICATE WORDS.

When a lady congratulated Dr Johnson on having no improper words in his dictionary, the Doctor administered a colossal snub. " I see, madam, that you have been looking for them." This incident is recalled by the fact that a treniendous " paper war " is just now being waged in America between two rival firms that are bringing out large dictionaries. The American publisher throws his whole soul into his business, with the result that book-selling in the United States has' ceased to be a trade and has attained the proportions of a civil war, iii which armies of canvassers wage hostilities against the general population. By means of newspaper articles and '-uculars the war of the rival dictionaries — which may be called White's and Brown's by 7 Way of distinction — has'become hot attd furious, and the public for a brief spell l^mused at the combat. White attacked BfiSj^n by pointing out that there were in tnd' dictionary of the latter no fewer than eighteen words that were "thought to be indelicate." These, added the attacking party, "have been printed in circular form, and widely distributed among school boards, teachers, preachers, &c, to prejudice the public against the work." This (observes a London contemporary) is harrowing. Let fancy paint the young school marm, the purest lily of Columbia's soil. She is breakfasting on pie, crackers and molasses fixings. Her mail comes in. With taper fingers she opens a ' letter "in circular form " — it is a list of eighteen indelicate words! Fancy drops the curtain on that young girl's anguish. No further can we pursue the odious theme. " This is not business rivalry, it is business infamy," says The Canvasser, the champion of Brown. "The shameless insincerity of these publishers appears in the single fact that their own dictionary contains almost all of these eighteen worfls; some are in the Bible, and many of them are in Shakspere; all but three are in the Century Dictionary, and justly so. These representatives of" White's "dictionary point their finger at the eighteen indelicate words [ in " Brown, " and overlook the 33 equally indelicate words that are to ~be found in " White. This is not all the quarrel. Brown has 175,000 words which White has not got, so White says theso are, as it were, bogus words. Among them are " pseudepigrapha," " pseudocarp," and other derU vatives from the tongue of Plato. But the battle waxes warmest around the question of indelicacy, and each partisan has got the length of accusing his opponent of "corrupting the public." The whole thing may, after all, be a sham fight, designed to arouse the prurient curiosity of the public, and so stimulate the • sale of the dictionaries. For this reason we refrain from giving the dictionaries their respective names. .The question of "the indelicate in" dictionaries, like -that of the nude in art, is. largely -one of taste ; but there is no doubt that both science and art can be used for vile ends. To the enthusiastic student no word is indelicate, but in catering for the general public it is necessary to exclude many that would offend good taste and corrupt ingenuous minds.