Misused Words.

Star (Christchurch), Volume XLIV, Issue 752, 4 May 1933, Page 10

Misused Words.

TN A SPRIGHTLY and gracious letter to-day, the Rev O. W. Williams defends the name Toe H stoutly on well-chosen ground. Dental and guttural and sibilant do rattle and whistle in the name. The very association of such virile words sets the mind running on a passage in which Boswell tells of Bonnell Thornton’s burlesque “ Ode on St Cecilia’s Day, adapted to the ancient British musick, viz., the salt-box, the jew s harp, the marrow-bones and cleaver, the hum-strum or hurdy-gurdy, etc.” Johnson praised its humour and seemed much diverted with it. He repeated the following passage:—

In strains more exalted the salt-bc-x shall Join, And clattering and battering and clapping combine; With a rap and a tap while the hollow side sounds, Up and down leaps the flap, and with rattling rebounds. Here you have words so perfectly imitating sounds that you can almost see and hear the crazy performance. It is a masterpiece of descriptive word-building. But names should fit ideas. In England the Defence of the Realm Act, under which you cannot buy cigarettes after 8 p.m., has been appropriately abbreviated to the grandmotherly D.O.R A. Eccentric words suggest eccentric ideas. Toe H, more power to it, deserves a better name. However, there is much virtue in “ if,” and if this little skirmish leads to ever so slight an expansion of interest in so admirable a movement, nobody 'will be more pleased than TOUCHSTONE.