Page:Ralcy H. Bell - The Mystery of Words (1924).pdf/201

 usually by a selective intelligence of sufficient power to raise the worthy words to a dignity of usefulness, to a clarity and a strength, which fit them for idiom, and finally for literature; at the same time the unfit are relegated to forgetfulness. Numberless examples may be given. Take the word plant as applied to a place equipped for manufacture. Apparently this word has come to stay. Such words as forestall, fain, embellish, dapper, were admitted despite the protests of well-meaning conservators of our speech. Seventeenth century critics objected to plumage, tapestry, tissue, ledge, trenchant, resource, villainy, strath, thrill, grisly, yelp, dovetail, etc. The Reverend William Fulke was hostile to neophyte, homicide, scandal, destruction, tunic, despicable, rational, etc. To-day taste and scholarship are revolted by many words steadily gaining in public favor. Who shall say what their fate will be? The word negotiate, for example, as applied to the ascent of a difficult hill, or to the hard way over rough ground, or to a