Western Kansas world. [volume] (WaKeeney, Kan.) 1885-current, 1885-10-03

/ Under two-thirds Of this caption Bro.
Tilton, of the Wa-Keeney WORLD, IN g
running commentary on our mild ob!ec-
! ton, asks: .'Are not you hasty, Brother
iConwayw No the advocates of phonetlcs
are hasty; trying to accomplish IN years
what centuries alone unfold. We are 20
be understood as advocates of reform IN
words or In language. This reform can
never be arbitrary. Seemingly superhn-
Gus letters abound in many words. Mucn
more superhuous words impregnate SEN
fences. To this John Horne Tooke re-
ferred whom YOU quoted: .sThe first ann
OF language was to communicate
thoughts; the second, to do it with de-
spatch.n Pristine simplicity is no longer
elegance. The swelling sentence is now
our ambition with its grandoise exple-
tives and pihouered tropes and meta
.phors. No modern literateur stoOps to
! the carpenter-and-joi work OF words
At one time this was the fashion. At
that time Voltaire twitted us with: "Ihe
English gain two hours day by clipping
words" There is hardly metaphor In
the Greek of Homer, rarely one IN the
precise, concise English of Swift. Every
Kansas newspaper is a compendium OF
flowers and figree, of hiperbaton and
word thunder. Hamlet read swords,
words, words" We read sentences
raised to the third power. This is the
age of imitation, the sophomore epoch OF
mastodons in gigantic words. "Brevlty
is the soul of wit We have abandoned
brevity, lost wit Humor long drawn out
is the rage. A good example we clip
from Bro. Tilton in his present issue.
The Waverly Nesus acknowledged the re-
ceipt of q "peck of delicious pairs turned
on subscription" Our friend responded:
''Now, although we are not interested
further in this transaction than to hope
that our quill-pushing brother has not
been worsted, our curiosity gets the bet
ter of us so far as to make us wonder
what that peck of pairs consisted of"
Very humorous. Had the word fairs
been spelled phonetically, wittily, fars,
the WORLD would lose the benefit of this
sally on the photography of the word
fears.
eff bullwhacker shall be adopted as a
good word, will it have to be spelled
"bullwhacher?"
No; say that in time it undergoes the
following transformations, except the last,
lost: Bulzyhakey, bnl7gakcr, one who wakes
UP the bulls, 6mlater, which the mystified
explains as 6nl from bully
jovial, merry (Webster,) and hcr
from Kerr, humorist named Orpheus G.
Kerr, generally applied to a merry soul.
Not an exaggerated case. This method
Of word history applies to many. Take
hnmb3g. A plain case, bug and him, a
noisy trihe. Yet philologists gravely as
sure us that hum is derived from Hume, a
great liar, Munchausen: and bug from
bog, Doggy territory in Scotland where
he lived, !. e. originally Ru"ae-of-fhe-bes,
a story to be looked upon as very fishy.
Bro. Triton, perhaps few know better
than yourself the superior power of
words historically placed. Speak to
child as child speaks. What you urge
simply curtails the written or printed !
word. Clipping them may gain time to
Use more words. There are too many in
every article Authors are now volumi-
nous. Charles James Fox tried to write
history with short words. The trial was
neither wise nor witty. A novelist de-
sired to stignatize modern men-fashion.
She asked her friend Bismarck to give
ner' an expressive word. He coined for
ler tie DUDE, a word without father, with
out mother, in the speech of man; a.
.hough with beginning OF days, without
End of lie, the high priest OF the order of
'oppish imbecility. Words are dudes;
in styles from Solomon to Beau
Brummel, from Brumlnel to the spindle /
legged ideal of Sam Jones. Each dude
word must run his day, despite the IN
pending edicts of Kansas Journalists In
awful conclave, or their iconoclastic re-
solves, dead-letters in their dictionary.