Plain Words Page 7
It would yield economies that would far outweigh the diseconomies that are the inevitable price of public ownership and giant size.
Some 13.4 million of the 22 million income earners … kept their spending in such exact step with their incomes that they saved or dissaved less than £25 in that year.
Will these be accepted also on the ground that in the first, no positive word—neither extravagance nor waste nor wastefulness—would express the writer’s meaning so well as ‘diseconomies’, and that in the second, ‘dissaved’ is the only way of expressing the opposite of saved without a clumsy periphrasis that would destroy the nice balance of the sentence? Perhaps; it is at least certain that these words spring from deliberate and provocative choice and not from mental indolence. What is deplorable is that so many of those who go in for the invention of opposites by means of ‘living prefixes with privative force’ do not know when to stop. It becomes a disease. ‘Disincentive’ replaces deterrent, then ‘undisincentive’ ousts incentive, and then disincentive itself has to yield to ‘non-undisincentive’. In George Orwell’s ‘newspeak’, which he pictured as the language of 1984, ‘very bad’ has become ‘doubleplusungood’.
The same warning is needed about the prefix non. To put non in front of a word is a well-established way of creating a word with the opposite meaning. Non-appearance, non-combatant, non-conformist and non-existent are common examples. But the lazy habit of using non to turn any word upside down, so as not to have the trouble of thinking of its opposite, is becoming sadly common. ‘Institutions for the care of the non-sick’ presumably means something different from ‘institutions for the care of the healthy’, but the difference is not apparent. I should have said that this trick was of recent origin if Mr G. M. Young had not sent me an early example of it that would hold against any modern rival. Sir John Simon, an eminent surgeon who later became a government official, giving evidence in 1869 before a Royal Commission on Sanitary Laws, referred to ‘a disease hereditarily transmissible and spreading among the non-fornicative part of the population’. Mr Young says he was surprised to come across this, because Simon was a man of culture and a friend of Ruskin. ‘It just shows’, he adds unkindly, ‘what Whitehall can do.’
Yet another favourite device for making new words is the suffix ee. This is an erratic suffix, not conforming wholly to any rule. But in its main type it serves to denote the object of a verb, generally the indirect object, as in assignee, referee and trustee, but sometimes the direct object, as in examinee, trainee and evacuee. It therefore makes for confusion of language if the suffix is used to form a word meaning the subject of a verb. Escapee is worse than useless; we already have escaper. When unskilled labour is used to ‘dilute’ skilled labour, the unskilled ought to be called not dilutees, as they are officially termed, but dilutors. The skilled are the dilutees. Apart from misuse such as this, we are getting too many ee words. They are springing up like weeds. Their purpose seems to be the same as that of many of our new verbs: to enable us to use one word instead of several. But we have got on very well for quite a long time without such words as expellee and persecutee.
While the age-long practice of creating new words has quickened its tempo, so has the no less ancient habit of extending the meaning of established words. Here again we ought to examine the novelties on their merits, without bias. The main test for both is whether the new word, or the new meaning, fills a need in the vocabulary. If it is trying to take a seat already occupied—as the new verbs decision and suspicion are squatting in the places of decide and suspect, and the enlarged meanings of anticipate and claim in those of expect and assert—they are clearly harming the language by ‘blurring hard-won distinctions’. Still more are words like overall and involve open to that charge: they are claiming the seats of half a dozen or more honest words. But those that claim seats hitherto empty may deserve to be admitted. Stagger, for example, has recently enlarged its meaning logically and usefully in such a phrase as ‘staggered holidays’.
Nor do I see why purists should condemn the use of nostalgic not only for a feeling of homesickness but also for the emotion aroused by thinking of the days that are no more. An appeal to etymology is not conclusive. When a word starts to stray from its derivative meaning it may often be proper, and sometimes even useful, to try to restrain it. There are many now who would like to restrain the wanderlust of alibi and shambles. The ignorant misuse of technical terms excites violent reactions in those who know their true meanings. The popular use of to the nth degree in the sense of ‘to the utmost’ exasperates the mathematician, who knows that strictly the notion of largeness is not inherent in to the nth degree at all. The use of by and large in the sense of ‘broadly speaking’ exasperates the sailor, who knows that the true meaning of the phrase—alternately close to the wind and with the wind abeam or aft—has not the faintest relation to the meaning given to its present usage. But there is a point when it becomes idle pedantry to try to put back into their etymological cages words and phrases that escaped from them many years ago, and that are now settled down firmly elsewhere. To do so is to start on a path on which there is no logical stopping point short of such absurdities as insisting that muscle means nothing but ‘little mouse’, or that the word anecdote can only be applied to a story never told before, whereas we all know that now it generally means one told too often.
Sometimes words appear to have changed their meanings when the real change is in the popular estimate of the value of the ideas they stand for. So imperialism, which in 1881 Lord Rosebery, the future Liberal Prime Minister, could define as ‘the greater pride in Empire … a larger patriotism’, has fallen from its pedestal. And academic is suffering a similar debasement owing to the waning of love of learning for its own sake and the growth of mistrust of intellectual activities that have no immediate utilitarian results. In music, according to the music critic of The Times, academic ‘has descended from the imputation of high esteem to being a withering term of polite abuse’, in spite of an attempt by Stanford, the composer, to stop the rot by describing it as ‘a term of opprobrium applied by those who do not know their business to those who do’.
Public opinion decides all these questions in the long run. There is little individuals can do about them. Our national vocabulary is a democratic institution, and what is generally accepted will ultimately be correct. I have no doubt that anyone happening to read this book in fifty years’ time would find current objections to the use of certain words in certain senses as curious as we now find Swift’s denunciation of the word mob. Lexicographers soon find this out. I have quoted Dr Johnson. Some seventy years later, Noah Webster was reported by the traveller Basil Hall to have said much the same thing in different words:
It is quite impossible to stop the progress of language—it is like the course of the Mississippi, the motion of which, at times, is scarcely perceptible; yet even then it possesses a momentum quite irresistible … Words and expressions will be forced into use, in spite of all the exertions of all the writers in the world.
The duty of the official is, however, clear. Just as it has long been recognised that, in salaries and wages, the Civil Service must neither walk ahead of public opinion nor lag behind it, but, in the old phrase, be ‘in the first flight of good employers’, so it is the duty of officials in their use of English neither to perpetuate what is obsolescent nor to give currency to what is novel, but, like good servants, to follow what is generally regarded by their masters as the best practice for the time being. Among an official’s readers will be vigilant guardians of the purity of English prose, and they must not be offended. So the official’s vocabulary must contain only words that by general consent have passed the barrier; and no helping hand should be given to any that are still trying to get through, even if they appear deserving.
For last year’s words belong to last year’s language
And next year’s words await another voice.
Mr Eliot adds to these lines from ‘Little Gidd
ing’, that in the sentence that is ‘right’,
every word is at home,
Taking its place to support the others,
The word neither diffident nor ostentatious
An easy commerce of the old and new,
The common word exact without vulgarity,
The formal word precise but not pedantic,
The complete consort dancing together …
Note. Gowers remarked in the middle of this chapter, ‘There is no saying how things will go’. But after more than half a century, it is at least possible to say what happened next to some of the new or ‘loathsome’ words that he discussed in 1954.
The verb to signature, for example, has failed to stick, but to underground survives in the jargon of the National Grid, and to contact has become entirely unremarkable. To service, which he thought a useful newcomer, almost immediately expanded its meaning into the unhappy realm of the utilitarian sex act. Dissave (to spend savings), diseconomy and derestrict persist as jargon, as does derequisition, though liberated from its narrow, post-war meaning. Dehumidify, another verb Gowers hoped would disappear completely, has now entered ordinary speech. To reaccession is still in use, but he was right that in general we should not be disposed to welcome it; and sadly, since the 1970s to deaccession has also found a place, ‘deaccessioning’, selling off exhibits, being the last resort of the impoverished gallery or museum. Purists still fume when they find mutual and aggravate given the senses of ‘common’ and ‘annoy’ (making mutual mean ‘common’ seems to have started with Shakespeare); however, a further word Gowers listed with those two, phenomenal, surely now means ‘prodigious’ in anyone’s vocabulary. As a poor reflection of modern politics, expellee and persecutee, after something of a lull, are coming back into ever greater use; and amputee, another word Gowers thought superfluous, is now unexceptionable. (Some people argue that amputee should refer not to the person who has endured surgery but to the bits that got taken off: to Nelson’s arm, so to speak, and not the rest of him. At least one might agree that the word itself has been lopped, and should really be ‘amputatee’.)
The habit of making adjectives out of other words by adding the suffix able continues apace. Those who once protested that reliable should be reli-on-able would presumably also argue that today’s relatable should be relate-to-able. (According to the Daily Mail, the Duchess of Cambridge is ‘relatable’ because she makes a habit of wearing the same garment twice.) Another adjective of this kind is scalable as it is now used in commercial English, where a ‘scalable’ business is always ‘scale-up-able’, or one that has the potential to be made larger.
Not all verbs created by means of ise are inexpedient, as Gowers conceded. Not all are necessary either. ‘Reliableise’ and ‘deinsectize’ may have died a quick death, but initialise has jumped the bounds of computer jargon and is now being used in the most general sense of to ‘begin’. Again, though to decision and to suspicion may not have lasted as examples of a form Gowers deplored, modern instances proliferate: to solution is creeping into the language in place of to solve (‘Prior to starting, you need to be able to solution these kinds of questions’); to action is used for to put in action or simply do, to transition is made to take the place of move, shift, switch, adapt, change—even, now, of to transit.
There are still writers who have what Gowers called ‘the lazy habit of using non to turn any word upside down’. A recent statistical report for the Department for Work and Pensions (Research Report No 416) found that men are ‘more disadvantaged by disability’ than women, giving as one reason that ‘a much higher proportion of non-disabled women than non-disabled men are non-employed in any case’. This could perfectly well have been written, ‘Among those adults capable of work, women are much less likely than men to have jobs’.
Gowers ended this chapter on correctness with a list, given below, of words and phrases that he described as ‘often used in senses generally regarded as incorrect’. Also given below are his clarifications of some knotty points of idiom and of spelling. He drew a distinction between the uses ‘generally thought to be incorrect’ marshalled in this chapter, and uses he considered merely ‘unsuitable’, examples of which are given at the end of Chapter VII (‘Seductive Words’) and Chapter VIII (‘Clichés and Overworked Metaphors’). He acknowledged that it was hard to draw a line between the two classes, the ‘incorrect’ and the merely ‘unsuitable’, adding that it was still harder to get others to agree about where this line should fall—if they even agreed that it warranted being drawn in the first place. He concluded, ‘Even if my choice is right now, it will almost certainly be out of date before long’.
It turns out, however, that by the lights of those who continue to care about these things, many of the words and phrases that he placed in the ‘incorrect’ category in 1954 remain there. It is true that a few of his bugbears have become so obscure that there is no longer a pressing need to warn against them. Who these days mistakes a prescriptive right for an indefeasible one, or wrongly uses desiderate to mean ‘desire’? It is not the fashion now to use ‘desiderate’ at all, though this verb enshrines what must be a widespread experience, that of longing with painful regret for something we miss or lack. But these obsolete examples are the minority. The rest of his list is given below, followed by a few examples of comparable incorrect uses too recently popular for him to have warned against them. These may themselves in future come to be universally accepted as correct, and in some cases were correct in the past. But for the time being they can be expected to irritate those whom Gowers called ‘vigilant guardians of the purity of English prose’. ~
WORDS AND PHRASES OFTEN USED INCORRECTLY
Alibi
Alibi is often now used in the sense of ‘excuse’, or of an admission of guilt with a plea of extenuating circumstances, or of throwing the blame on someone else. So we find that ‘Members of the timber trade, like members of any other trade, are glad of any alibi to explain any particular increases in price’. But alibi is the Latin for ‘elsewhere’. To plead an alibi is to rebut a charge by adducing evidence that the person charged was elsewhere at the time the criminal act was committed. The mischief is that if the novel, diluted use establishes itself, the language will lose precision, and we shall be left without a word to signify the true meaning of alibi.
Alternately and Alternatively
These are sometimes confused. Alternately means ‘by turns’. Alternatively means ‘in a way that offers choice’. ‘The journey may be made by rail or alternately by road’ means, if it means anything, that every other journey is made by road. It does not mean, as the writer intended, that for every journey, the traveller has a choice between the two means of transport. Conversely, ‘alternatively they sat and walked by moonlight, talking of this and that’ cannot have been intended to mean that they sat and walked in the moonlight as an alternative to doing something else. What must have been intended is that they sat and walked alternately.
Anticipate
The use of this word as a synonym for expect is now so common that it may be a waste of time to fight it any longer. But I should like even now to put in a plea that the official will set a good example by never using anticipate except in its correct sense, that is to say, to convey the idea of forestalling or acting in advance of an expected event, as in the time-honoured reply of Chancellors of the Exchequer, ‘I cannot anticipate my budget statement’.*
Approximate
This means ‘very close’. An approximate estimate is one that need not be exact, but should be as near as you can conveniently make it. There is no need to use approximately when about or roughly would do as well or even better. Moreover, the habit of using approximately leads to the absurdity of saying ‘very approximately’ when what is meant is very roughly, or in other words, not very approximately.
Note. Gowers caved in on this point when he revised Fowler in 1965, allowing that very approximately was universally understood to mean ‘very roughly’.
It is worth remembering, even so, that because proximate means ‘close’ the phrase close proximity is tautological. ~
A Priori
Do not say a priori when you mean prima facie. In fact you can probably get by without either. It is wrong to say that if many medically advanced countries have done without a certain drug for twenty years, this ‘is sufficient to show that there is an a priori case for its total abolition’. To argue a priori is to argue from assumed axioms and not from experience. (The fact that the argument here rests on the twenty-year experience of several countries makes it an argument a posteriori.)
Prima facie, which is probably what the writer had in mind, means ‘on a first impression’, before hearing fully the evidence for and against.
Beg the Question
To beg the question is to form a conclusion by making an assumption that is as much in need of proof as the conclusion itself. Logicians call this petitio principii. Brewer gives the following example: ‘to say that parallel lines will never meet because they are parallel is simply to assume as a fact the very thing you profess to prove’.
Note. Gowers felt it necessary to add to this explanation that to beg the question did not mean (as was then commonly supposed) to ‘evade a straight answer to a question’. It does not mean that today either, in common or any other use: the error he was resisting has been overwhelmed by another. The phrase to ‘beg the question’ is now so far removed from its original meaning that it is freely used where to ‘raise’ a question would do, though the choice of beg can sometimes imply special urgency. If there is any lingering sense of difficulty attached to ‘begging’ a question, it is perhaps reflected in the peculiar new usage, to ‘beggar the question’. Presumably this mutation has sprung into being as an echo of ‘beggaring’ belief or description (a figurative use introduced into the language by Shakespeare). But though to beggar means to ‘exhaust’ or ‘outdo’, a question supposedly ‘beggared’ is not introduced in this way because it is thought unanswerable. Rather, it has yet to be answered.