Page:The king's English (IA kingsenglish00fowlrich).pdf/34

20 to admit of. The first two are bad motives, the third a good, and the last a mixed one. But in all cases it may be said that a writer should not indulge in these unless he is quite sure he is a good writer.

The couch-bunk under the window to conceal the summerly recliner.—.

The adjective is a nonce-sense, summerly elsewhere meaning 'such as one expects in summer'; the noun is a nonce-word.

In Christian art we may clearly trace a parallel regenesis.—.

Opposition on the part of the loquently weaker of the pair.—.

Picturesquities.—.

The verberant twang of a musical instrument.—.

A Russian army is a solid machine, as many war-famous generals have found to their cost.—.

Such compounds are of course much used; but they are ugly when they are otiose; it might be worth while to talk of a war-famous brewer, or of a peace-famous general, just as we often have occasion to speak of a carpet-knight, but of a carpet-broom only if it is necessary to guard against mistake.

Russia's disposition is aggressive...Japan may conquer, but she will not aggress.—.

Though aggress is in the dictionary, every one will feel that it is rare enough to be practically a neologism, and here a nonce-word. The mere fact that it has never been brought into common use, though so obvious a form, is sufficient condemnation.

She did not answer at once, for, in her rather super-sensitized mood, it seemed to her...—E. F..

The word is, we imagine, a loan from photography. Expressions so redolent of the laboratory are as well left alone unless the metaphor they suggest is really valuable. Perhaps, if rather and super- were cancelled against each other, sensitive might suffice.

Notoriously and unctuously rectitudinous.—Westminster Gazette.

Some readers will remember the origin of this in Cecil Rhodes's famous remark about the unctuous rectitude of British statesmen, and the curious epidemic of words in