CHAPTER III.

WORDS: VOCABULARY.

But

WE have now learned what kind of words are not English, and we have learned that we should use words in proper accordance with English idiom. other points about words still remain to be considered. Granted that all our words are English and are used in proper English senses, what kinds of words shall we use, of what words shall our vocabularies consist? English has, by the accidents of history, a total vocabulary of one hundred thousand or perhaps one hundred and twenty-five thousand words. To the primitive Anglo-Saxon of our Germanic ancestors were first added, by slow degrees, words from the Celtic, the Danish, and the Latin. Then the conquest of England by the Normans — Scandinavians who spoke French - brought in a language which, by fusion with the Anglo-Saxon, made our English tongue. And then came, with the Renaissance, with new thoughts and arts and sciences, and by intercourse with many different nations, new words from the Latin, and others from the Greek, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Hebrew, Arabic, Hindustani, Persian, Malay, and other

languages.1 With a vocabulary so large and rich as that of English, what are we to do? In this chaos of strange and familiar words, how are we to pick and choose?

When we examine the situation, however, we find that no one knows or uses all these one hundred and twenty-five thousand words, any more than he knows or makes friends with all the people in the city where he lives. Even Shakespeare's vocabulary had not more than fifteen thousand words, and that of Milton, of the English Bible, is each only about six thousand. We need not be ambitious, then, to know or use all the words in the dictionary. What we should try to do is to increase our vocabularies until they are adequate to our needs; and that, I fear, they are not now. The vocabulary of the average Freshman probably consists of scarcely more than fifteen hundred words. Now, communication of some sort can be carried on with even a smaller number than that. A foreigner may manage to make known his ordinary wants with scarcely more than a hundred words; the average vocabulary of an Italian opera is said to be not more than seven hundred. But so small a stock of words as even one thousand is intellectually a cruel limitation on one's thinking, and especially on one's talking or writing. To have only a thousand words at your command means that you have curtailed

1 For a short and thoroughly intelligible historical account of the English vocabulary see Meiklejohn's "The English Language" (D. C. Heath & Co., 1890), pp. 202-238.

CHAP. III.]

Words: Vocabulary.

4I

yourself in much that makes life worth living in freshness, keenness, and richness of sensation, and in the expression of it. The difference between a wideawake, energetic man with an acute, well-disciplined mind, and a dull or stupid man is largely due to a state of mind of which the best sign is a limited or hackneyed vocabulary. Such a man does not discriminate; he lumps a dozen things together under one name: all things which are at all alike are to him exactly alike, and he has not interest enough to distinguish among them. "Nice," "fine," "good," for instance, do duty with him, as other even less commendable epithets with many schoolboys and schoolgirls, for a score of adjectives with a more special meaning.

How, then, can you enlarge your vocabularies?

(1) If possible, get a sound elementary knowledge of Latin at least, if not of Latin and Greek, before you are seventeen or eighteen.1

(2) Use new words, even if it takes an effort to do so, until they become familiar to you.

(3) Read as much as you can in good English

1 Those who believe in abolishing Latin and Greek as a requirement for entrance into colleges and scientific schools should notice the tongue-tied condition of boys entering institutions where at least one of the classical languages is not prescribed for admission. College Freshmen have sometimes more fluency of expression than solidity of mind and thought. Freshmen in scientific schools, on the contrary, frequently express themselves so crudely as not to do justice to their sound and keen intelligence. The difference is largely due to their lack of a linguistic training that it seems at present impossible to secure in any but a classical language.

authors of all kinds. Read broadly and carefully; do not skip or pass lightly over words the meanings of which you only half know or do not know at all.

(4) In all your writing try to express yourselves exactly; realize what it is which you want to express, and do not be satisfied until you have found the word or words that express your meaning adequately.

(5) Avoid, as a rule, bookish words. Write, at first, simply and very much as you would talk.

(6) Beware of using the same words too constantly. A hackneyed vocabulary, or the careless and unnecessary repetition of a word in a single sentence or in several successive sentences, detracts greatly from the force of what you write.1

(7) Write frequently. It is by use that a vocabulary grows rich and keeps vigorous.

(8) Have a good dictionary by you and use it frequently.2

EXERCISE III.

I. In the following extracts are there (1) any words which you do not habitually use in conversation or in writing; (2) any of which you do not know the exact meaning; (3) any about the derivation or history of which you are curious?

1 See the chapter on Force.

2 The dictionaries of Webster, Worcester, Stormonth, and Murray, and the Century Dictionary are all standard and modern works. The careful student should know the excellence of each and how to use them all. Stormonth's Dictionary (Harper & Brothers) is perhaps the most

(a) "I hope, then, that the day will come when a competent professor may lecture here also for three years on the first three vowels of the Romance alphabet, and find fit audience, though few. I hope the day may never come when the weightier matters of a language, namely, such parts of its literature as have overcome death by reason of their wisdom, and of the beauty in which it is incarnated, such parts as are universal by reason of their civilizing properties, their power to elevate and fortify the mind,— I hope the day may never come when these are not predominant in the teaching given here. Let the Humanities be maintained undiminished in their ancient right. Leave in their traditional pre-eminence those arts that were rightly called liberal; those studies that kindle the imagination, and through it irradiate the reason; those studies that manumitted the modern mind; those in which the brains of finest temper have found alike their stimulus and their repose, taught by them that the power of intellect is heightened in proportion as it is made gracious by measure and symmetry. Give us science, too, but give first of all, and last of all, the science that ennobles life and makes it generous. I stand here as a man of letters, and as a man of letters I must speak. But I am speaking with no exclusive intention. No one believes more firmly than I in the usefulness, I might well say the necessity, of variety in study, and of opening the freest scope possible to the prevailing bent of every mind when that bent shows itself to be so predominating as to warrant it. Many-sidedness of culture makes our vision clearer and keener in particulars. For, after all, the noblest definition of science is that breadth and impartiality of view which liberates the

convenient for the ordinary student. Skeat's Etymological Dictionary (Macmillan & Co.) is often of great service in showing the history of English words.