Sharp County record., 1890-06-05
WORDS AND THEIR ABUSE.
Some Of Them Arc Pretty Badly Abused,
Prof Ouackcnbos Thinks.

Some Of Them Are Pretty Badly Abused,
Prof Quackenbos Thinks.
Prof. Quackenbos talked Of Words
and Their Abuses, from Pathological,
Rhetorical and Moral View Points, to a
lecturc-room full Of women and men in
Columbia College the other day.
After speaking Of the new words
which discoveries in science and art
were constantly adding to the language,
he held second-rato newspaper writers,
or, as he subsequently, termed them,
newspaper iiends,' responsible for the
ncw-fanglcd cnormitics, such as sorori-
eide, walkist stabbst, etc. He de-
nounccd the broad "a" and the pronun-
citation Of either and neither as if
spelled without the sc" in the first
syllable as un-American, saying on this
point:
"Tho poorest reason an American
can advance for adopting a practice
is that an Englishman has set the cX-
ample"
Speaking Of supposed Amcricanisms,
which are really survivals Of express
sions obsolete in England, he said that
mad was used in the sense Of angry by
the older English writer's, while cul-
turcd was used in its Bostoncse signif-
cation by Shenstone and even Chauccr
The last, too, alsoused the familiar COM
mercialism No. /, and II guess, in
the real Yankee sense, is met with in
writer's from the fourteenth to the six
tecnth centuries.
Bounce and "hre out in their col
logo acceptation, the speaker continued,
are also found in the works Of the older
comedians lie quoted, as containing
an example Of this use of the second
phrase, the last two lines of Shakes
peare's Hath sonnet:
yet this shall ne or know but live in doubt,
TIL my bad angel fire my good one out
Some abbroyiations, he said, bore the
stamp of vulgarity, such as the use Of
pants for pantaloons, meaning thereby
trousers, and gents for gentlemen. He
thought the word gentleman, even in its
proper form, had dcgcnerated.
Its glory" he said, has departed,
and it now means merely the man who
drives the fastest horses, wears the big
gcst diamonds, buys up the most mcm-
bers of the legislatures and spends tho
most of other peoples money most dis
honestly
The Saxon word lady, he said had
ceased to imply rank or social position,
owing to a snobbish tendency to apply
it to the entire female sex. He dCplor-
ed this superscding OF the better word,
woman. The usual woman's adjective,
nice, originally meant foolish, and now
meant precise, never agreeable, or sat
isfactory; girl, he added, originally
meant young person OF either sex,
Toward the end of his lecture Prof.
Quackcnbos gave examples Of the gross
Ignorance and confusion nt faGte woll
as confusion of words which he had met
with in the examination papG's of Co.
lumbia College and other institutions.
Here are some Of them:
Inc literary language OF England IN
a49 was that Of Martin Luther,
Marlowc translated Gocthe's Faust
into English, and Goethe was so pleased
with his translation that ho thought of
rendering it back into German.
Alfred translated the "Potitubcs"
and the book Of job
Christianity was introduced into Eng.
land by a Roman merchant
In giving his Marlowe-Gootho exam
pie, Prof, Quackcnbos thought il ncccs-
sary to explain that the two writer's
were not contemporaries; and, in regard
TO "Allrcd's translation Of the Petit
tubcs,' he said that the majority of
young people know nothing Of the Bible.
They never read it, and they don listen
to 1t when it is read in church, Fc re-
served his crowning bull for tho last
An answer to the question, "What was
the subject Of the first English tragedy
published in l56l2' was "the assassina.
tion of Lincoln
The lecturer seemed to think these
mistakes were the fault of the teachers
of the persons who made the mistakes,
N, y, sun,