Page:The king's English (IA kingsenglish00fowlrich).pdf/58

44 that Dickens invented it, consciously or unconsciously. The only objection to such a word is that its having had to wait so long, in spite of its obviousness, before being made is a strong argument against the necessity of it. We may regret that injunction holds the field, having a much less English appearance; but it does; and in language the old-established that can still do the work is not to be turned out for the new-fangled that might do it a shade better, but must first get itself known and accepted.

Oppositely, the badness of a walk that is shuffling, and an utterance that is indistinct is alleged.—.

This, on the other hand, is an archaism, now obsolete. Why it should not have lived is a mystery; but it has not; and to write it is to give one's sentence the air of an old curiosity shop.

Again, as if to intensate the influences that are not of race, what we think of when we talk of English traits really narrows itself to a small district.—.

A favourite with those allied experimenters in words, Emerson and Carlyle. A word meaning to make intense is necessary; and there are plenty of parallels for this particular form. But Coleridge had already made intensify, introducing it with an elaborate apology in which he confessed that it sounded uncouth. It is uncouth no longer; if it had never existed, perhaps intensate would now have been so no longer, uncouthness being, both etymologically and otherwise, a matter of strangeness as against familiarity. It is better to form words only where there is a clear demand for them.

5. Long and short rivals. The following examples illustrate a foolish tendency. From the adjective perfect we form the verb to perfect, and from that again the noun perfection; to take a further step forward to a verb to perfection instead of returning to the verb to perfect is a superfluity of naughtiness. From the noun sense we make the adjective sensible; it is generally quite needless to go forward to