The aegis & intelligencer. [volume] (Bel Air, Md.) 1864-1923, 1876-03-17
Use Of Foreign Phrases,

An old man once said to young friend,
"lf you want to talk heavy science, say
'protoxide of hydrogen instead of icc.-
1t sounds bigger, and not one man in q
thousand will know what you mean."
1t Is upon this principle, we suspect,
that many persons interlard their writings
with foreign words and phrases, which
perhaps not one reader in a thousand will
understand. The use of foreign words al
ways seems to imply one of two things
that the writer wishes to display his
knowledge of the language from which he
borrows, or that he is ignorant of the cor
responding words in the English language;
in the former case it is pedantry, in the
latter ignorance, and in both cases is de-
parture from true simplicity and elegance.
A few examples gathered by periodical
devoted to educational interests, will il
lustrate our meaning and show the
folly as well as the danger of the prac-
tice:
"An excellent periodical, in q critical no.
tice ofWhttier's Poems, says, THE PHYSIQUE
of the book is charming To the mere
American this conveys the idea, that as a
medicine the book is agreeable. The re-
viewer probably means that the mechanical
execution Of the book is charming, but it
may be doubted whether this is correct
use of the French word.
examples of this useless intrusion of
foreign words abound most in novels and
the light literature of the day. A novel
before us has such expressions as these -
They have just escaped from Paris, where
they had been for some years among the
detenus,' (detained)
"'lf it is religion that does all that for
her, it is religion of schich I can form no
idea i; celia me P0sSe.' Here the French is a
mere paraphrase Of the English words
that are itallcised, and how will the foreign
words help the reader to anything new
but the vanity of the writer
"'She had surrounded herself with vases
of flowers, to give her apartment I'm air de
fete,' IA festive appearance)
"ln such books, medley or mixture is u
metonge-a fray is nothing short of n melee,
and the select are not the chosen but the
elite. Disputants do not differ entirely,
but toto c@lo, and they do not begin aqain
but dc nooo, or as some goslings prefer to
say, ab ooO
"But our newspapers have caught the
disease, and some editors who know too
little of English and nothing of any other
language, allow themselves to use foreign
expressions, and oftentimcs commit eyre
gious blunders without the salutary pain
of knowing it.
"Pcrhaps no foreign word is so frequent
ly spelled wrong as naioete, a word of three
syllabes, meaning atlessaess, ingenatousness.
The common error is to spell it naioette.-
Then the pretty word posy has been super
seeded almost entirely by the French word
bouquet, or as nine-tenths of our editors
spell it, JoQuet.
"Thc most common items of news are
interlardcd with such barbarisms. Thus
the President is never going to Washing.
ton, but lie is en- route for that city. No
remark can be made By the aoay or in pass.
ing, but it must be en- PEASANT. A rising OF
the people is no longer a mob or rebellion,
but an emeute. Our ancestors did without
ennui for many centuries, but their sons
pretend that no English word expresses
the full idea, and even Worcester has been
compelled to give the word place in his
great dictionary. The difficulty of pro-
nouncing the word more than balances any
shade of meaning that it possesses over
liStlessneSs, tedioasneSS, irksOmeness, etc,
which the best dictionaries have always
given as completely synonymous with
ennuio