Some Misused Words.

Star (Christchurch), Volume XLIV, Issue 143, 18 June 1931, Page 8

Some Misused Words.

Why not be Right?

GREAT MANY PERSONS will remember some of Lewis Carroll’s nonsense rhymes, in which imaginary, but fine sounding words give some exercise in the principles of pronunciation to those who essay to recite them. But one does not need to go to nonsense rhymes for weird words. “ Put this in your pipe and smoke it,” writes a friend who sends the following sample of what the apostles of simple speech have saved us from:He absterged his glasses with an insouciant air amid the apopemptics of his fellows, and was enough of the sciolist, now that he was manumitted, to enjoy it as he would the sapidity of a ripe peach. What does it all mean? Well, you will not find out without the aid of a good dictionary, and then you will not be much the wiser, unless, indeed, it confirms your determination not to use big words. Goldsmith’s most brilliant bon mot was made at the expense of Dr Johnson, who laughed at his suggestion that in writing a fable it was necessary to make little fishes talk like little fishes. “ Why, Dr Johnson,” he said, “ this is not so easy as you seem to think, for if you were to make little fishes talk they would talk like whales.” TOUCHSTONE.