IS’ IT CORRECT?

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 20105, 26 March 1928, Page 11

IS’ IT CORRECT?

CONSTRUCTION OF WORDS CONCERNING “RELIABLE.” A storm centre was the advent into the language of that convenient and euphonious adjective, il reliable. ” The word came into use about 1850. and, as it was at first more frequently found in American works than in British, it was decried as an Americanism (says the Christian Science Monitor). But. the chief quarrel with “reliable” had to do with its structure.

Formed from the verb “rely” and the suffix “able,” “reliable” was dubbed faulty on the basis that adjectives in “able” or its equivalent, 44 ible,” must be formed either from transitive verbs or from nouns. The suffix “able,” which in Latin is “abilis, ” implies power, capacity, fitness. Thus “lovable” means capable of being loved, whereas “reliable” does no’ mean capable of being relied, but cap able of being relied upon, Ukre-

fore, according to the purists, was n< to be tolerated.

Such words as comfortable, laughable, and available arc formed, it was held, i not from verbs, but from nouns, and ' there was no noun “rely” on which to ' ground such a formation. i A whole book, the work of F. Hay], j was published in 1877 on adjectives in I able with special reference to reliable. 1 Etymologists declare, however, that a ’ whole literature was written on the I subject. In the style-sheet prepared by Wil-

liam Cullen Bryant about the middle of the nineteenth century, when he was editor of the New York Evening Post, the mongrel “reliable” is in bad standing, and not to be used as a substitute for the highly approved “trustworthy.”

One of the most ardent opponents of “reliable” was Richard Grant White. Among the decadent signs of the times he sees the fact that so estimable a publication as “Macmillan’s” should speak of a room as “liveable.” “Let us not,” he says, “through mere sloth and slovenliness give up for such a mess as ‘reliable,’ our birthright in a good word and a good phrase, for a man who is trustworthy and whose word can be relied upon” . . Unless we keep to this law of formation there is no knowing where wo may find ourselves stranded, it may be, on some such rock as a grievable tale, an un- ■ trifleable person, or a wcepable trag i edy.”