Barbour County index. [volume] (Medicine Lodge, Kan.) 1880-current, 1890-09-17
EFFECTS OF SLANG.
Only Q Few Thousand Words Employed In
Ordinary American speech.

Only Q Few Thousand Words Employed In
Ordinary American speech.
A writer who has made the use Of
words a thoughtful study estimates that
the ordinary American employs from
5000 to 4, 900 English words in ordinary
speech. When it is considered how
numerous are the things in the house,
store, in the street. in church, and all
about us. all of which have names which
we make use of continually, and what
perpetual motion we see and speak Of
in the form of verbs, and the PROPOSE
tions and conjunctions we have to use
to make the things properly related,
and the qualities we have to describe
with adjectives and adverbs, and other
parts of speech necessary to complete
sentences, we behold how limited is the
general acquaintanceship with the
language of which the root-words alone,
as compiled by Webster, number ia, 600
irrespective Of proper nouns or names of
persons.
And it is one of the noticeable feat
ures of fancy. habit fad" or fashion
Of our civilization, existing as we'll in
the fairly educated as among the litter
ate and ignorant, that the popular
spoken vocabulary is growing continu-
ally less on account Of an increas ng
tendency to generalize qualities and
characteristics in pat or pet words which
are among stylish" men and women
considered en- regle, and among the no
less ambitious but not so we'll educated
classes deemed evidence of proper IA
mfliarity with the daily march Of events
and the customs of speech, the continual
use and reiteration of slangy words that
are all the CO. and constitute the
badge OF proper rapid tendencies.
With the smart young misses every
thing that is beautiful, sweet, delicious,
melodious, resplendent soft and win
ming, whatever pleases to excess the
eyes, ears, taste, touch or smell, is
"lovely." Whatever is ugly, distorted,
jarring, unsymmetrical. uncouth, dis
cordant, and general ly unpleasant to the
eye, ear, taste, touch or smell, is ''hor-
rid" The man about town, the swell
OF the parlor, the clerk in the store, the
alert man of business, the critical at
tendant on the art gallery, and the
hab1tual theater-goer, characterize
equally the slow, the deliberate, the
careful, the plainly-dressed, the pious,
the plain-spoken, the steady-going, the
painstaking individuals as ''fresh,"
while the quick-witted, the alert,
the tricky, the volatile, the
gaseous, the oratorical, the romancer,
and the jocose are alike spoken
of-in sort of deprecatory sarcasm-as
funny" So also man who has audac-
ity, as we'll as one who is self-assertive
and strenuous for his rights, is equally
said to be possessed of gall" And
thus isolated words used frequently to
express the widest range of qualities,
habits, or characteristics have come into
vogue as necessary essentials or creden-
tials to admission into the vanguard of
progressive American SIN, to the curtail-
ment of the talking vocabulary and the
narrowing of ideas.
The difference in the meaning of
words Is thus lost or becomes obsolete,
and with the disappearance of the word
to express exactly the quality or charac-
teristic intended there follows an OBJ
tuseness of discernment, a confusion of
thought, and an obvious paucity and
shrinkage Of ideas. Independently,
therefore, Of the bad taste of using
slang words and expressions, they are
making our people poor intellectually
and less able colloquially to hold their
own among the other English-speaking
people of the globe.-Philadelphia Bull
letin