The Mason County journal. [volume] (Shelton, W.T.) 1886-1927, 1890-06-20
WORDS AND THEIR ABUSE
some Of Them Are Pretty Badly Abused
Prof. Ouackenbos Thinks


Prof. Quackenbos Thinks.
Prof. Quackenbos talked of ''Words
and Their Abuses, from Philolopica1
Rhetorical and Moral View Points. :" TO-
lecture-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-rate newspaper writers
or, as he subsequently termed the,S
newspaper fiends," responsible for the
new-fangled enormities, such as sorori.
eide, walkist, stabbist, etc. He de-
nounced the broad "a and the pronun-
citation of either and neither as IL
spelled without the ''e' in the first
syllable as I'M American, saying on this
point:
'The poorest reason an American
can advance for adopting a practice
is that an Englishman has set the ex-
ample"
Speaking of supposed Americanisms.
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-
tured was used in it's Bostonese signif
cation by Shenstone and even Chaucer.
The last, too, also used the familiar COM
mercialism A No. 1, and 81 guess" in
the real Yankee sense, is met with in
writer's from the fourteenth to the six
teenth centuries.
Bounce" and ''fire out" in their col
lege acceptation, the speaker continued,
are also found in the works of the older
comedians. He 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 I neer know, but live in doubt
t my bad angel fire my good one OUT
Some Authorizations, 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 it's
proper form, had degenerated
Its glory" he said. 'has departed,
and it now means merely the man who
drives the fastest horses, wears the big
gest diamonds, buys up the most mem
bers of the legislature, and spends the
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 deplor-
ed this superseding 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.
Quackenbos gave examples of the gross
ignorance and confusion of facts, as we'll
as confusion of words, which he had met
with in the examination papers of Co.
lumbia College and other institutions.
Here are some of them:
The literary language of England in
449 was that of Martin Luther
Marlowe translated Goethes "Faust"
into English, and Goethe was so pleased
with his translation that he thought of
rendering it back into German.
Alfred translated the 'Pettitubes''
and the book of Job.
Christianity was introduced into Eng
land by Roman merchant.
In giving his Marlowe-Goethe exam
pie, Prof. Quaclkenbos thought it neces-
sary to explain that the two writers
we're not contemporaries; and, in regard
to 'Alfred's translation of the Petit
tubes,' he said that the majority of
young people know nothing of the Bible.
They never read it, and they don't listen
20 it when it is read in church He re-
served his browning bull for the last
An answer to the question, "What was
The subject of the first English tragedy,
published in 1862" was ''the assassina-
ton 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.