Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, February 1900: Vol. 56, November, 1899 to April, 1900Various
Science
Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, February 1900: Vol. 56, November, 1899 to April, 1900
Various
Science -- Periodicals; Technology -- Periodicals
euphony, or for any combination of useful qualities--will survive and
become classic; the expression that has nothing special to commend it,
beyond its novelty and slanginess, will probably pass, after a brief
and partial currency, into the vast limbo of the unfit. All we can say
of a word at a given moment is how far it has actually become current
and what kind of society it keeps. What its fortune will be we can only
guess. Just as in the financial world great fortunes are sometimes
very suddenly made and names before obscure spring into world-wide
notoriety, so, in the realm of language, a word of very uncertain
ancestry and no social repute may assert its right to recognition and
take its place among the best.
It does not follow from this that it can ever be a matter of
indifference what words we use or what tricks we play with language,
any more than it can be a matter of indifference what personal habits
we adopt. Language is the clothing of our thoughts, and as such it may
exhibit the same qualities which attach to the clothing of our bodies.
It may be marked by neatness and propriety, or by slovenliness and
want of taste. Some men are over-dressed, and some affect over-fine
language. Some go after the latest novelties in the tailoring world,
and some after the latest slang, asserting thereby their resolution
to be up to date. It is needless to draw the parallel further, but
it is evident that there is wide scope in the choice of language for
the exhibition of personal preference and personal character. We
think it safe to say that the interests of a language, considered as
an instrument of thought, will be best promoted by those who pay due
respect to its established forms, and only countenance such neologisms
as make good their claim to acceptance by supplying a real want. Mr.
Archer, in the article we have referred to, states, and we do not
doubt with truth, that the English language has been greatly enriched
and strengthened by the fact that it has been spoken and written by
millions of people on this side of the Atlantic, leading an intense and
vigorous life of their own, under conditions very different in many
respects from those prevailing in the mother country. The language
moves with a freer step, beats with a stronger pulse, and assumes a
more imperial bearing from the fact that it expresses the activity and
sums up the life of the foremost communities of the human race in both
hemispheres.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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