Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 68.djvu/141

 Rh swampy ground, or melting snow and slush. Later by transferred meaning it came to characterize in the financial world the melting away of prices, as a slump in the market—a vivid picture which is more interesting as a linguistic phenomenon than as an actual fact.

The history of slang teaches that words, like people, may be divided into two general classes, high and low, or refined and uncouth. "In language as in life," as Professor Dowden puts it, "there is, so to speak, an aristocracy and a commonalty, words with a heritage of dignity, words which have been ennobled, and a rabble of words which are excluded from positions of honor and trust." Now, some writers select only the choice and noble words to convey their ideas, leaving the coarse and vulgar words, terms without a pedigree, as it were, in the bottom of the inkhorn, for those who desire them. Other writers again have less cultured tastes and do not scruple to employ now and then plebeian words, to set forth their thoughts and feelings.

One might suppose on first blush that the dictionary ought to be a safe guide in the choice of words. A moment's reflection, however, is sufficient to convince one that the dictionary can not be relied upon always for this desired knowledge. It is the lexicographer's office to make a complete register of the vocabulary of the language; and so, to make his work exhaustive, he frequently records many slang words in his dictionary. Yet the practise of our dictionary-makers, it must be admitted, varies widely in this respect, some being far more exclusive than others. Our former lexicographers, as for instance Doctor Johnson, exercised a stricter censorship than is the custom at present. But it is not correct always to infer, in the case of an unrecorded word of questionable usage, that the author excluded it of set purpose. It may possibly be omitted from oversight. It seems to be the custom of our lexicographers now to make as complete a record as possible of all polite slang, but to brand it 'slang.' This plan is, of course, altogether distasteful to the pedants and pedagogues who make a fruitless effort to curb and check the vocabulary of a language by rejecting all words of questionable usage. Whatever is not in harmony with established usage, whatever is not authorized by standard speech, the pedants and half-educated utterly reject. Now, heretofore our dictionary-makers have not been entirely above and beyond this narrow and circumscribed view. It was this fact that prompted Lowell, in the preface to his famous 'Biglow Papers,' to express himself in these vigorous words: "There is death in the dictionary; and where language is too strictly limited by convention, the ground for expression to grow in is limited also, and we get a potted literature—Chinese dwarfs instead of healthy trees."

The truth is, it does not fall legitimately within the province of the lexicographer to settle the question whether a polite slang term of