Here is one where the phrase “publicans and sinners” has got mixed up
in the child’s mind with politics, and the result is a definition which
takes one in a sudden and unexpected way:
REPUBLICAN, a sinner mentioned in the Bible.
Also in Democratic newspapers now and then. Here are two where the
mistake has resulted from sound assisted by remote fact:
PLAGIARIST, a writer of plays.
DEMAGOGUE, a vessel containing beer and other liquids.
I cannot quite make out what it was that misled the pupil in the
following instances; it would not seem to have been the sound of the
word, nor the look of it in print:
ASPHYXIA, a grumbling, fussy temper.
QUARTERNIONS, a bird with a flat beak and no bill, living in New
Zealand.
QUARTERNIONS, the name given to a style of art practiced by the
Phoenicians.
QUARTERNIONS, a religious convention held every hundred years.
SIBILANT, the state of being idiotic.
CROSIER, a staff carried by the Deity.
In the following sentences the pupil’s ear has been deceiving him
again:
The marriage was illegible.
He was totally dismasted with the whole performance.
He enjoys riding on a philosopher.
She was very quick at repertoire.
He prayed for the waters to subsidize.
The leopard is watching his sheep.
They had a strawberry vestibule.
Here is one which—well, now, how often we do slam right into the truth
without ever suspecting it:
The men employed by the Gas Company go around and speculate the meter.
Indeed they do, dear; and when you grow up, many and many’s the time
you will notice it in the gas bill. In the following sentences the
little people have some information to convey, every time; but in my
case they fail to connect: the light always went out on the keystone
word:
The coercion of some things is remarkable; as bread and molasses.
Her hat is contiguous because she wears it on one side.
He preached to an egregious congregation.
The captain eliminated a bullet through the man’s heart.
You should take caution and be precarious.
The supercilious girl acted with vicissitude when the perennial time
came.
The last is a curiously plausible sentence; one seems to know what it
means, and yet he knows all the time that he doesn’t. Here is an odd
(but entirely proper) use of a word, and a most sudden descent from a
lofty philosophical altitude to a very practical and homely
illustration:
We should endeavor to avoid extremes—like those of wasps and bees.
And here—with “zoological” and “geological” in his mind, but not ready
to his tongue—the small scholar has innocently gone and let out a
couple of secrets which ought never to have been divulged in any
circumstances:
There are a good many donkeys in theological gardens.
Some of the best fossils are found in theological cabinets.
Under the head of “Grammar” the little scholars furnish the following
information:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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