An Outline of English Speech-craft

A thought-wording may have more thing-names and time-words, as ‘The boys and girls read and play.’

Thought-wordings (propositions) may be linked together in sundry ways, though mostly by Link-words (conjunctions). ‘Men walk and birds fly’; ‘I sought him, but I found him not’; ‘I waited at the door while Alfred went into the house.’

Twin Time-takings.

The Hinge Time-taking, on which the other hangs, and the Hank Time-taking which hangs on the Hinge one, as ‘If ye ask (hinge), ye shall receive (hank).’

There are sundry kinds of hinge time-takings, as one or the other or both of the time-takings may or may not be trowed or true or sure.

(1) Hinge and hank, trowed – ‘As ye ask (as I trow you do), so ye receive (I trow).’

(2) Hinge, untrowed; hank, trowed – ‘If ye ask (I trow not whether ye will or no), then ye will receive (I trow).’

The hinge-word put down as trowedly untrue, and the hank one trowed, as ‘If ye asked (as I trow you do not), ye would receive (I trow)’; or ‘If ye had asked (ye have not), ye would have received (I trow).’

The hinge time-taking trowed, and the other untrowed, as ‘Ye ask (I trow), that ye may receive (I trow not that ye will).’

Speech-trimming.

The putting of speech into trim; trim being a truly good form or state. To trim a shrub, a bonnet, or a boat, is to put it into trim.

1. The first care in speech-trimming is that we should use words which give most clearly the meanings and thoughts of our mind, though it is not likely that unclear thought will find a clear outwording; and either of the two, as clear or unclear, helps to clearen or bemuddle the other.

With most English minds, and with all who have not learned the building of Latin and Greek words, English ones may be used with fewer mistakes of meaning than would words from those tongues; though Englishmen should get a clearer insight into English word-building ere they could hope to keep English words to their true sundriness of meaning.

The so-seeming miswordings (solœcisms) of writers in the Latinised and Greekish speech-trimming are not uncommon or unmarkworthy.

One man writes of something which necessitates another, though Latin itself has no necessito to back ‘necessitate’; another gives eliminate as meaning elicit, or outdraw; a third calls a failure of a rule an exception from it. There is no EXCEPTION to a rule but that which is excepted from it at and in the downlaying of it. If a man gives a simple rule ‘that if it rains on St. Swithin’s day it rains forty days after it,’ and it did not so rain last year, the case is a breach or failure of the rule, and not an exception to it. He gave no exception.

Some say ‘Mrs. A. has had twins’ or ‘Alfred was one of twins.’ A twin is a twain, a two, or a couple of things of the same name or kind; and twins of children must be at least four. I should say ‘Alfred was one of a twin.’ In the latter case it would be correct to say ‘There IS one or a twain of fat men,’ &c., in which is would match both.

One has written ‘ideas are manufactured.’ By whose hands? Another talks of ‘a dilapidated dress’; and a third has ‘found the stomach of a big fish dilapidated.’ What are lapides? and what means delapido?

A man has written of an old Tartar that he was ‘a tameless gorilla’ – a gorilla without a tame! as if tame were a thing-name.

Another says ‘It imposed absolute limits upon the choice of positions.’ What are absolute limits if absolute (from absolvo, to offloosen) means offloosened from all check and all limits?

A man writes of ‘a photograph reproduced by a new permanent process.’ Is it the process or the sunprint that is permanent?

Preposterous, foreaft, as when what should be præ, foremost, is put post or behind; whereas a writer gives a structure as ‘preposterously overgrown,’ as if ‘preposterous’ meant only very much, vastly.

One takes irretrievable as nohow amended. If ‘retrieve’ is the French retrouver (to find again), ‘irretrievable’ would mean not to be found again; and ‘the irretrievable defeat of the whole nation’ would be one which they could not find again, as most likely they would not wish to find it.

Twy-meanings.

From want of words in English, or of care, our wording may seem to bear two meanings, as ‘John played with Edwin, and broke his bat.’ The bat of which boy?

‘One Robert Bone of Antony shot at a little bird sitting upon his cow’s back, and killed it – the bird (I mean), not the cowe.’ —Carew.

Word-sameness (Synonyms).

Words of the same meaning are less often so than they are so called; and we sometimes give lists of synonyms showing the differences of their meanings.

A twin of words of one very same meaning is rather evil than good; and if they are not of one very same meaning they should not be given as such.

It may be that from a misunderstanding of the word tautology, as the name of a bad kind of speech-trimming, men have often shunned the good use of words.

The bad tautology from which speakers have been so frayed seems to be the giving twice or many times, within one scope of thought-wording, the same matter of speech in the same words.

It is true that it would not be good wording to say ‘John has sold John’s horse’ for ‘his horse’ since the name-tokens are shapen to stand for foregiven names.

But where the same foreused word would give a very clear – if not the clearest – meaning, there seems to be little ground against the use of it.

‘I bought a horse on Monday and a donkey on Tuesday, and sold the horse again at a gain on Thursday.’ Why should not the word horse take the latter place as well as the word steed, or equine animal, or ‘more worthy beast’ – or why should I not as well say, ‘An ass I want, and an ass I will buy,’ as ‘An ass I want, and a donkey, or it or him, I will buy’?

It seems that much wrong is done to the Greek of the Gospel by the putting, for the same Greek word, sundry English ones at sundry passages; and by what right do we try an Evangelist’s or an Apostle’s wisdom in the use of the same word, by which he must have meant to give the same meaning? or why should we make him to mean by κρίσις, at one time, a trying of a soul, and at another time a fordooming of him?

It is not any tautology to use near to each other a thing-name and a mark-word which are only fellow stem-words, as ‘As free, and not using your freedom for a cloke of wickedness.’

2. Another care in speech-trimming is the choice of words for their sound-sweetness (Gr. euphony) or well-soundingness, or for speech-readiness.

Past, with the hissing s with t, is less sound-good than after; and aqueduct, with ct, is less well-sounding than waterlode; nor is cataract softer than waterfall.

The hereunder given wordings were lately heard in a law court: —

‘I can give you one or two instances of remarkable intelligence in the cases of fat men’; and

A Juror – ‘There are one or two fat men on the jury (laughter).’

Dr. K. – ‘I don’t think there are.’

How should these cases be treated? In the first case, ‘one instances’ is a breach of word-matching, as would be ‘two instance’; and in the latter, the word one calls for man, and two for men. May we not better say, ‘I can give you at least one instance,’ or ‘I believe more instances than one’?

‘A man who has already, and will still, render such services will be,’ &c. Rendered is understood after has; but how may the thought be worded without the two puttings of the word render? Thus: ‘a man who will still be, as he has already been, found to render,’ &c.

Penetrate means insink, inpierce. M. Gambetta writes, ‘After the heroic examples given by open towns, and by villages only guarded by their firemen, it is absolutely necessary that each town, each commune, shall pay its debt to the national defence, and that all alike be penetrated by the task which is imposed upon France.’ It seems a queer speech-wording to take a task as a thing that penetrates, though it might be undertaken.

A bad wording is often found with mark-words of the higher pitch, as ‘Alfred was more clever, but not so good, as John.’ ‘Not so good’ is an inwedged word-cluster, but the word-setting is bad, as ‘more clever’ calls for the word than, not as; and ‘so good’ wants as, not than. It would be better to say ‘Alfred was more clever, but less good, than John.’ To try the word-setting take out the wedge-words (‘but not so good’), and you will have ‘Alfred was more clever as John.’

Dislike seems a bad word-shape. Mislike is the old and true English one. Like is from lic, a shape, as lich, the body of a dead man. ‘It liketh (licað) me well’ is ‘it shapes itself (looketh) to me well.’ ‘It misliketh me’ is ‘it misshapes itself to me’ (looks bad).

To seem is from the thing-name —sam, seam, seem, body or mass – and ‘it seems to me’ is ‘it bodies itself to me.’ ‘That ship seems to be a French one,’ or ‘that man seems to be ill,’ bodies itself or himself to be a French one or ill.

‘The house and the goods were burnt’; but ‘the house with the goods was (not were) burnt,’ since it is only the house that is in the speech-case, as the goods are in the mate-case. ‘The house was burnt with the goods.’

‘One of the children are come.’ No —is come. The one only is come.

We may often hear a man who is careful to speak good English say ‘This rose smells very sweetly,’ for sweet. The rose smells (gives out smell) as being itself very sweet, not as smelling (taking in smell) in a sweet way. To find which to use, the thing-markword or the under-markword, put ‘as being’ after the time-word, as ‘This rose smells (as being itself) sweet,’ not sweetly.