Page:The king's English (IA kingsenglish00fowlrich).pdf/57

Rh to it is obvious: you do not rely a thing; therefore the thing cannot be reliable; it should be rely-on-able (like come-at-able). Some of the analogies pleaded for it are perhaps irrelevant—as laughable, available. For these may be formed from the nouns laugh, avail, since -able is not only gerundival (capable of being laughed at), but also adjectival (connected with a laugh); this has certainly happened with seasonable; but that will not help reliable, which by analogy should be relianceable. It is more to the point to remark that with reliable must go dispensable (with indispensable) and dependable, both quite old words, and disposable (in its commoner sense); no one, as far as we know, objects to these and others like them; reliable is made into a scapegoat. The word itself, moreover, besides its wide popularity, is now of respectable antiquity, dating at least from Coleridge. It may be added that it is probably to the campaign against it that we owe such passive monstrosities as 'ready to be availed of' for available, which is, as we said, possibly not open to the same objection as reliable.

I have heretofore designated the misuse of certain words as Briticisms.— R. G..

Britannic, Britannicism; British, Britishism. Britic?

4. Needless, though correct formations.

The sordor and filths of nature, the sun shall dry up.—.

As candeo candor, ardeo ardor, so—we are to understand——sordeo sordor. The Romans, however, never felt that they needed the word; and it is a roundabout method first to present them with a new word and then to borrow it from them; for it will be observed that we have no living suffix -or in English, nor, if we had, anything nearer than sordid to attach it to. Perhaps Emerson thought sordor was a Latin word.

Merely nodding his head as an enjoinder to be careful.–.

As rejoin rejoinder, so enjoin enjoinder. The word is not given in the Oxford Dictionary, from which it seems likely