The Arkansaw traveler., 1885-08-22
SOME LANGUAGE NEEDS.

oOM E LA U ALI N EDS,
 iGibert M. Tucker in New Engander.l
 Our list of words, numerous as it is, is yet not comprehensive enough to fulfil the highest ideal of perfect tongue. We need more tools, a good m any of them and 1t sometimes seems a pity rather that we cannot manufacture and intro duce them when the need is perceived. We badly need, tor instance, epicene pronouns in the singular an ;wering to Hey, Mem and fheiv in the plural True 1t is, one can often use he, him and hfs, expecting hearers or read CTS to remember that "the brethren embrace the sis,ern." True it also is, one can often get around the difficulty by rearauging sentence; but there fs a difficulty, for all that. A man wishes to say that each ot his two children, boy and a girl, has the exclusive use of bed room. He naturally begins: Each of my children has a room to-" how shall he finish! It is not quite right to say that each has room to himself, or to her self, and it is certainly far from grammat- ical or pleasing to say themselves. What shall he do! fhe problem is of daily oc- currence, as any one will find who will take pains to watch for it.
 We need, too, preterite for the verb 0HghL We are compelled to say, You ought to bave done such and such things"-which is by no means what we really mean. One cannot possibly be under obligation to have dose anything the phrase is absurd. All obligation is 10 do, and 1t would be an important gain n inc dIrArfinn Af 1lA ness 1t we might say, when speaking of past time, "you oughted."
 We need, again, q word almost synon- ymous with maHy, but having slightly different shade of meaning-a lack which is often supplied, awkwardly and incor- rectly, by the use of nEMtrons with plural noun. People say, There are numerous books on that subect"-which IS clearly ungrGmmatical there may be a numerous list of books, but that ex- pression, correct in synt&x, does not seem quite to express the idea; and to say there are many books may be rather too strong statement.
 We need, once more, a verb for which rtp|aee IS commonly substituted, there being nothing better at hand. One re- moves painting from his wall and hangs up an engraving iR its stead For brief statement Of this action, we have at pres. ent nothing better than to say that the painting was replaced by the engraving Yet this IS really nonsense. To replace a thing is to put it back where it was be- fore.
 Then there are not few adverbs which one meets in foreign tongues and finds so useful that he wonders at himself tor never having noticed the absence of cor responding words in English. Familiar examples are /reHndHch and hofesf!ieh in German. One cannot say in English He received ne friendlily," convenient as 1t would be sometimes to do so, neither @f"dly nor cordially quite answering the purpose. Nor can we say: " The doctor has hopeably given the right medicine" If you presume he has done so, you may say presHma6ly ify you are sure of it, you have Hrdoa6iedly; but if you only desire to express pretty strong hope, you must cast your sentence in another mold.
 At the same time, we have certainly bad words ensugh-bad, not because they are irregular in form or composed of incongruous elements, but because they are for some other reason (adopting Noah Wcbsters contentious expressionl nonsensical. HeLbMeet is one of these monsters. The result of stupid blunder Tn running together a noun and an ad- Jec,ive that stand separate in the famil- lar verse in Genesis, it can hardly be called d word at all it means nothing in particular and is worse than useless. Equally useless for the most part is the school-ma 'amish insistence upon indicat- ing, py the addition of eSs, the feminine gender in number of nouns indicative of occupation or position. Sometimes, of course, the sex of the person referred to mas direct bearing upon her relations to her calling, as in the case of an actress, whom 1t ls often doubtless well to dis eliminate, in speech as in thought, from an actor. But 1t can hardly be main tained that any such necessity exists in the case of woman who may happen to be an editor, postmaster, a manager or poet. Yet we read not unfrequently of addresses and postmistresses; the dieni- hed Westminstey Reviezv finds boet not sufficiently distinct when the poe, is a woman, and gives its sanction to bo<tess and the Masfyated Lonaon Mevs. which often devotes considerable portion of one of its most entertaining departments to discussions of colloquial English, its meaning, and its prophecies, is actually guilty of manageress! Here as before the extra syllable is merely an encum- brance we could not only get along just as well without it; we should actually do better.
 But by far the most important sugges- tion offered by the analogies of the little shop relates to the folly of misxsng our verbal tools. We speak, for instance, of preposker0Hs statements, meaning only that they arc incorrect or a6sxyd. Now Preposte,oHs is not properly synonymous with either of these adjectives, but has a definite meaning of its own, which can be expressed by no other word, signifying as 1t does the putting of something first which ought to be last-the getting of the cart before the horse, as it were. We are A~L l-