Page:The Galaxy, Volume 6.djvu/403

 WORDS AND THEIR USES.

F Horace's dictum were unconditional, and common usage were the absolute and rightful arbiter in all questions of language, there would be no hope of improvement in the speech of an ignorant and degraded society, no rightful protest against its mean and monstrous colloquial phrases, which, indeed, would then be neither mean nor monstrous; the fact that they were in use being their full justification. The truth is, however, that the authority of general usage, or even of the usage of great writers, is not absolute in language, but is subject, in a certain degree, to etymological and logical tests; that is, to trial by the standards of history and of reason. There is a misuse of language which no authority, however great, and which no usage, however general, can justify.

—There is hardly another word to the use of which the foregoing remarks will so well apply as they do to the verb get, which, one of the most willing and serviceable of our vocal servants, is one of the most ill-used and imposed upon—which is indeed made a servant of all work, even by those who have the greatest retinue of words at their command. Leaving out of view the ignorant, the coarse, and the careless, men who ought to speak the best English, and who generally do so, use the word get—the radical, essential, and inexpugnable meaning of which is the attainment of possession by voluntary exertion—to express the ideas of possessing, of receiving, of suffering, and even of doing. In all these cases the word is misused. A man gets riches, gets a wife, gets children, gets well (after falling sick), and, figuratively, gets him to bed, gets up, gets to his journey's end—in brief, gets anything that he wants and successfully strives for. But we constantly hear educated people speak of getting crazy, of getting a fever, and even of getting a flea on one. A man hastening to the train will say that he is afraid of getting left, and tell you afterward that he did or did not get left—meaning that he is afraid of being left, and that he was or was not left.

The most common misuse of this word, however, is to express simple possession. It is said of a man that he has got this, that, or the other thing, or that he has not got it; what is meant being simply that he has it, or has it not—the use of the word got, being not only wrong, but needless. If we mean to say that a man is substantially wealthy, our meaning is completely expressed by saying he has a large estate, or he has a handsome property. We do not express that fact a whit better by saying he has got a large estate; we only pervert a word which, in that case, is at least entirely needless, and is probably somewhat more than needless. For it is quite correct to say, in the very same words, that by such and such a business or manœuvre the man has got a large estate. Possession is completely expressed by have; get expresses attainment by exertion. Therefore there is no better English than, Come, let us get home, but to say of a vagrant that he has got no home is bad. So we read,