An indubitable connection exists between the melioristic bias and a Latinate vocabulary. Even a moderate sensitivity to the overtones of language will tell one that diction of Latin derivation tends to be euphemistic. For this there seem to be both extrinsic and intrinsic causes. It is a commonplace of historical knowledge that after the Norman Conquest the Anglo-Saxons were forced into a servile role. They were sent into the fields to do chores for the Norman overlords, and Anglo-Saxon names have clung to the things with which they worked. Thus to the Anglo-Saxon in the field the animal was “cow”; to the Norman, when the same animal was served at his table, it was “beef” (L. _bos_, _bovis_). So “calf” is translated “veal”; “thegn” becomes “servant”; “folk” becomes “people,” and so on. This distinction of common and elegant terms persists in an area of our vocabulary today. Another circumstance was that Latin for centuries constituted the language of learning and of the professions throughout Europe, and from the fourteenth century onward, there occurred a large amount of “learned borrowing.”[164] This reflects the fact that those cultures which carried civility and _politesse_ to highest perfection drew from a Latin source. Finally, I would suggest that the greater number of syllables in many Latinate terms is a factor in the effect. Whatever the complete explanation, the truth remains that to give a thing a Latinate name is to couple it with social prestige and with the world of ideas, whereas to give it a name out of Anglo-Saxon is to forgo such dignifying associations. Thus “combat” sounds more dignified than “fight”; “labor” has resonances which “work” does not have; “impecunious” seems to indicate a more hopeful condition than “needy” or “penniless”; “involuntary separation” sounds less painful than “getting fired.” The list could be extended indefinitely. With exceptions too few to make a difference, the Anglo-Saxon word is plain and workaday, whereas the word of Latin derivation seems to invest whatever it describes with a certain upward tendency. Of course, the Anglo-Saxon word has its potencies, but they are not those of the other. It seems to cling to the brute empirical fact, while its Latinate counterpart seems at once to become ideological, with perhaps a slight aura of hortation about it. Whenever one hears the average man condemning a piece of discourse as “flowery,” it is most likely that he is pointing, with the only term at his command, to an excess of Latinate diction.