Read Ebook: The Century Vocabulary Builder by Bachelor Joseph M Joseph Morris Greever Garland

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Ebook has 799 lines and 106245 words, and 16 pages

CHAPTERS

APPENDICES

INDEX

CENTURY VOCABULARY BUILDER

REASONS FOR INCREASING YOUR VOCABULARY

Again, glibness of speech sometimes awakens our distrust. We like actions rather than words; we prefer that character, personality, and kindly feelings should be their own mouthpiece. So be it. But there are thoughts and emotions properly to be shared with other people, yet incapable of being revealed except through language. It is only when language is insincere--when it expresses lofty sentiments or generous sympathies, yet springs from designing selfishness--that it justly arouses misgivings. Power over words, like power of any other sort, is for use, not abuse. That it sometimes is abused must not mislead us into thinking that it should in itself be scorned or neglected.

Our contempt and distrust do not mean that our fundamental ideas about language are unsound. Beneath our wholesome dislike for shallow facility and insincerity of speech, we have a conviction that the mastery of words is a good thing, not a bad. We are therefore unwilling to take the vow of linguistic poverty. If we lack the ability to bend words to our use, it is from laziness, not from scruple. We desire to speak competently, but without affectation. We know that if our diction rises to this dual standard, it silently distinguishes us from the sluggard, the weakling, and the upstart. For such diction is not to be had on sudden notice, like a tailor-made suit. Nor can it, like such a suit, deceive anybody as to our true status. A man's utterance reveals what he is. It is the measure of his inward attainment. The assertion has been made that for a man to express himself freely and well in his native language is the surest proof of his culture. Meditate the saying. Can you think of a proof that is surer?

WORDS IN COMBINATION: SOME PITFALLS

You wish, then, to increase your vocabulary. Of course you must become observant of words and inquisitive about them. For words are like people: they have their own particular characteristics, they do their work well or ill, they are in good odor or bad, and they yield best service to him who loves them and tries to understand them. Your curiosity about them must be burning and insatiable. You must study them when they have withdrawn from the throng of their fellows into the quiescence of their natural selves. You must also see them and study them in action, not only as they are employed in good books and by careful speakers, but likewise as they fall from the lips of unconventional speakers who through them secure vivid and telling effects. In brief, you must learn word nature, as you learn human nature, from a variety of sources.

Now in ordinary speech most of us use words, not as individual things, but as parts of a whole--as cogs in the machine of utterance by which we convey our thoughts and feelings. We do not think of them separately at all. And this instinct is sound. In our expression we are like large-scale manufacturing plants rather than one-man establishments. We have at our disposal, not one worker, but a multitude. Hence we are concerned with our employees collectively and with the total production of which they are capable. To be sure, our understanding of them as individuals will increase the worth and magnitude of our output. But clearly we must have large dealings with them in the aggregate.

This chapter and the following, therefore, are given over to the study of words in combination. As in all matters, there is a negative as well as a positive side to be reckoned with. Let us consider the negative side first.

That is why you should become a disciple of the pithy, everyday conversationalist and of the rough-and-ready master of harangue as well as of the practitioner of precise and scrupulous discourse. Many a speaker or writer has thwarted himself by trying to be "literary." Even Burns when he wrote classic English was somewhat conscious of himself and made, in most instances, no extraordinary impression. But the pieces he impetuously dashed off in his native Scotch dialect can never be forgotten. The man who begins by writing naturally, but as his importance in the publishing world grows, pays more and more attention to felicities--to "style"--and so spoils himself, is known to the editor of every magazine. Any editorial office force can insert missing commas and semicolons, and iron out blunders in the English; but it has not the time, if indeed the ability, to instil life into a lifeless manuscript. A living style is rarer than an inoffensive one, and the road of literary ambition is strewn with failures due to "correctness."

Cultivate readiness, even daring, of utterance. A single turn of expression may be so audacious that it plucks an idea from its shroud or places within us an emotion still quivering and warm. Sustained discourse may unflaggingly clarify or animate. But such triumphs are beyond the reach of those, whether speakers or writers, who are constantly pausing to grope for words. This does not mean that scrutiny of individual words is wasted effort. Such scrutiny becomes the basis indeed of the more venturesome and inspired achievement. We must serve our apprenticeship to language. We must know words as a general knows the men under him--all their ranks, their capabilities, their shortcomings, the details and routine of their daily existence. But the end for which we gain our understanding must be to hurl these words upon the enemy, not as disconnected units, but as battalions, as brigades, as corps, as armies. Dr. Johnson, one of the most effective talkers in all history, resolved early in life that, always, and whatever topic might be broached, he would on the moment express his thoughts and feelings with as much vigor and felicity as if he had unlimited leisure to draw on. And Patrick Henry, one of the few really irresistible orators, was wont to plunge headlong into a sentence and trust to God Almighty to get him out.

EXERCISE - Tameness

Though we are to recognize the advantage of working in the undress of speech rather than in stiffly-laundered literary linens, though we are not to despise the accessions of strength and of charm which we may obtain from the homely and familiar, we must never be careless. The man whose speech is slovenly is like the man who chews gum--unblushingly commonplace.

We must struggle to maintain our individuality. We must not be a mere copy of everybody else. We must put into our words the cordiality we put into our daily demeanor. If we greeted friend or stranger carelessly, conventionally, we should soon be regarded as persons of no force or distinction. So of our speech and our writing. Nothing, to be sure, is more difficult than to give them freshness without robbing them of naturalness and ease. Yet that is what we must learn to do. We shall not acquire the power in a day. We shall acquire it as a chess or a baseball player acquires his skill--by long effort, hard practice.

One thing to avoid is the use of words in loose, or fast-and-loose, senses. Do not say that owning a watch is a fine proposition if you mean that it is advantageous. Do not say that you trembled on the brink of disaster if you were threatened with no more than inconvenience or comparatively slight injury. Do not say you were literally scared to death if you are yet alive to tell the story.

EXERCISE - Slovenliness I

Give moderate or accurate utterance to the following ideas:

The burning of the hen-coop was a mighty conflagration. The fact that the point of the pencil was broken profoundly surprised me. We had a perfectly gorgeous time. It's a beastly shame that I missed my car. It is awfully funny that he should die. The saleslady pulled the washlady's hair. A cold bath is pretty nice of mornings. To go a little late is just the article.

EXERCISE - Slovenliness II

The tramp suicided. She was real excited. He gestured angry. He was some anxious to get to the eats. All of us had an invite. Them boys have sure been teasing the canine.

Replace with more original expressions the trite phrases in the following sentences:

Finally, to the extent that you use slang at all, be its master instead of its slave. You have many times been told that the overuse of slang disfigures one's speech and hampers his standing with cultivated people. You have also been told that slang constantly changes, so that one's accumulations of it today will be a profitless clutter tomorrow. These things are true, but an even more cogent objection remains. Slang is detrimental to the formation of good intellectual habits. From its very nature it cannot be precise, cannot discriminate closely. It is a vehicle for loose-thinking people, it is fraught with unconsidered general meanings, it moves in a region of mental mists. It could not flourish as it does were fewer of us content to express vague thoughts and feelings instead of those which are sharply and specifically ours. Unless, therefore, you wish your intellectual processes to be as hazy and haphazard as those of mental shirkers and loafers, you must eschew, not necessarily all slang, but all heedless, all habitual use of it. Now and then a touch of slang, judiciously chosen, is effective; now and then it fulfils a legitimate purpose of language. But normally you should express yourself as befits one who has at his disposal the rich treasuries of the dictionary instead of a mere stock of greasy counterfeit phrases.

EXERCISE - Slovenliness IV

Replace the following slang with acceptable English:

We pulled a new wrinkle. He's an easy mark. Oh, you're nutty. Beat it. I have all the inside dope. You can't bamboozle me. What a phiz the bloke has! You're talking through your hat. We had a long confab with the gink. He's loony over that chicken. The prof. told us to vamoose. Take a squint at the girl with the specs. Ain't it fierce the way they swipe umbrellas? Goodnight, how she claws the ivory! Nix on the rough stuff. And there I got pinched by a cop for parking my Tin Lizzie.

As a precaution against tameness you should cultivate spontaneity and daring. As a precaution against slovenliness you should cultivate freshness and accuracy. But to display spontaneity, daring, freshness, accuracy you must have or acquire a large stock, a wide range, of words. Now this possession, like any other, brings with it temptation. If we have words, we like to use them. Nor do we wait for an indulgence in this luxury until we have consciously set to work to amass a vocabulary.

Verbosity is, in truth, the besetting linguistic sin. Most people are lavish with words, as most people are lavish with money. This is not to say that in the currency of language they are rich. But even if they lack the means--and the desire--to be extravagant, they yet make their purchases heedlessly or fail to count their linguistic change. The degree of our thrift, not the amount of our income or resources, is what marks us as being or not being verbal spendthrifts. The frugal manager buys his ideas at exactly the purchase price. He does not expend a twenty-dollar bill for a box of matches.

Have words by all means, the more of them the better, but use them temperately, sparingly. Do not think that a passage to be admirable must be studded with ostentatious terms. Consider the Gettysburg Address or the Parable of the Prodigal Son. These convey their thought and feeling perfectly, yet both are simple--exquisitely simple. They strike us indeed as being inevitable--as if their phrasing could not have been other than it is. They have, they are, finality. What could glittering phraseology add to them? Nothing; it could only mar them. Yet Lincoln and the Scriptural writers were not afraid to use big words when occasion required. What they sought was to make their speech adequate without carrying a superfluous syllable.

"The sun set" is more natural and effective than "The celestial orb that blesses our terrestrial globe with its warm and luminous rays sank to its nocturnal repose behind the western horizon." Great writers--the true masters--have often held "fine writing" and pretentious speaking up to ridicule. Thus Shakespeare has Kent, who has been rebuked for his bluntness, indulge in a grandiloquent outburst:

"Sir, in good sooth, in sincere verity, Under the allowance of your grand aspect, Whose influence, like the wreath of radiant fire On flickering Phoebus' front,--"

No wonder Kent is interrupted with a "What meanest by this?" Sometimes great writers use ornate utterance for humorous effects. Thus Dickens again and again has Mr. Micawber express a commonplace idea in sounding terms which at length fail him, so that he must interject an "in short" and summarize his meaning in a phrase amusing through its homely contrast. But humor based on ponderous diction is too often wearisome. Better say simply "He died," or colloquially "He kicked the bucket," than "He propelled his pedal extremities with violence against the wooden pail which is customarily employed in the transportation of the aquatic fluid."

EXERCISE - Wordiness I

Express these ideas in simpler language:

The temperature was excessive. The most youthful of his offspring was not remarkable for personal pulchritude. Henry Clay expressed a preference for being on the right side of public questions to occupying the position of President of the United States of America. He who passes at an accelerated pace may nevertheless be capable of perusing. A masculine member of the human race was mounted on an equine quadruped.

But the number of the terms we employ, as well as their ostentatiousness, must be considered. Most of us blunder around in the neighborhood of our meaning instead of expressing it briefly and clearly. We throw a handful of words at an idea when one word would suffice; we try to bring the idea down with a shotgun instead of a rifle. Of course one means of correction is that we should acquire accuracy, a quality already discussed. Another is that we should practice condensation.

First, let us learn to omit the words which add nothing to the meaning. Thus in the sentence "An important essential in cashing a check is that you should indorse it on the back," several words or groups of words needlessly repeat ideas which are expressed elsewhere. The sentence is as complete in substance, and far terser in form, when it reads "An essential in cashing a check is that you should indorse it."

Next, let us, when we may, reduce phrases and even clauses to a word. Thus the clause at the beginning and the phrase at the close of the following sentence constitute sheer verbiage: "Men who have let their temper get the better of them are often in a mood to do harm to somebody." The sentence tells us nothing that may not be told in five words: "Angry men are often dangerous."

Finally, let us substitute phrases or clauses for unnecessary sentences. The following series of independent assertions contains avoidable repetitions: "One morning I was riding on the subway to my work. It was always my custom to ride to my work on the subway. This morning I met Harry Blake." The full thought may better be embodied in a single sentence: "One morning, while I was, as usual, riding on the subway to my work, I met Harry Blake."

EXERCISE - Wordiness II

A man whose success in life was due solely to his own efforts rose in his place and addressed the man who presided over the meeting.

A girl who sat in the seat behind me giggled in an irritating manner.

We heard the wild shriek of the locomotive. Any sound in that savage region seemed more terrible than it would in civilized surroundings. So as we listened to the shriek of the locomotive, it sounded terrible too.

I heard what kind of chauffeur he was. A former employer of his told me. He was a chauffeur who speeded in reckless fashion because he was fond of having all the excitement possible.

Arrived here in Toledo yesterday morning talked with the directors found them not hostile to us but friendly.

Detectives report they think evidence now points to innocence of man arrested and to former employee as the burglar.

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