Page:America Today, Observations and Reflections.djvu/205

 than the root of the word, we lose a certain amount of force. "Con′template," for instance, is not nearly so strong a word as "contem′plate." We says an "il′lustrated" book or the "Il′lustrated London News" because we do not require any particular force in the epithet; but when the sense demands a word with colour and emotion in it, we say the "illus′trious" statesman, the "illus′trious" poet, throwing into relief the essential element in the word, the "lustre." What a paltry word would "tri′umphant" be in comparison with "trium′phant"! But the larger our list of examples, the more capricious does our accentuation seem, the more evidently subject to mere accidents of fashion. There is scarcely a trace of consistent or rational principle in the matter. To make a merit of one practice, and find in the other a subject for contemptuous criticism, is simply childish.

Mere slovenliness of pronunciation is a totally different matter. For instance, the use of "most" for "almost" is distinctly, if not a vulgarism, at least a colloquialism. It may be of ancient origin; it may have crossed in the Mayflower for aught I know; but the overwhelming preponderance of ancient and modern usage is certainly in favour of prefixing the "al," and there is a clear advantage in having a special word for this special idea. If American writers tried to make "most" supplant "almost" in the literary language, we should have a right to remonstrate; the two forms would fight it