Morris tribune., 1903-01-31
VERBAL ALIASES.
WORDS THAT GET roo FAMILIAR TO
SUIT SOME TASTES.

1 When Inc report was recently clrcu
lated that a prominent public man hat
1 lost his life through accidentally in
haling a quantity of carbon dioxide
the man in the street began at once in
curing what carbon dioxide was.
4 AS matter of fact, carbon dioxidt
is merely another name for carbonic
acid gas, one of the products of com
bustion and constituent of atmos
! pheric air.
i Carbonic acid gas is known by sew,
\ eraI different names, as, for instance
carbon dioxide, earbonic oxide and car.
bonic anhydride.
Consumption as name for terri
/ BILE and widespread disease is known
and understood by practically every
man, woman and child iii England.
But the medical fraternity, ever on the
lookout for something new in the way
of professional nomenclature, elected
some years back to call it phthisis,
and then just when that unspellable
! word began to be known and recog-
nized they evolved yet another tuber-
! culosis.
| And as with consumption so with
most other complaints. A quarter Of a
| century ago even eminent physicians
| were content to speak of smallpox, of
| typhoid fever, of lockjaw. Today they
are called yariola, enteric and tetanus
respectively.
! A doctor when giving evidence before
an ignorant east end jury the other
day said that the immediate cause of
death was "a violent and prolonged
fit of combined epistaxis and stomator-
! rhagia.'' 1t would, one would think,
have been far easier for him to have
spoken of a bleeding at the nose and
mouth, and he would at all events have
had the satisfaction of making himself
understood.
Most people now living can remem-
Der the time when bacteria were known
generically as animalcula not very
strictly scientific definition, perhaps,
but one easily understandable, and con
yeying, moreover, a distinct idea to
any one of ordinary education and in
telligence.
For that very reason. doubtless, the
title in question was voted out of date
and old fashioned and the word .'bacil-
Ii" was substituted. This means, liter
ally, little sticks" certainly most
novel definition, but one that scarcely
strikes the average lay mind as being
either lucid or suitable. Nevertheless
it was accepted, and at last became
familiar to the man in the street.
That of course could not be tolerat-
ed. Imagine a bacteriologist using a
word which conveyed any meaning to
anybody outside his own charmed cir
Gle! The idea is both degrading and
preposterous: SO he set to work forth
with and invented whole host of ter
rife verbal aliases.
He called them for example, schiz-
omycetes, neuromuske lzellen, megacoc.
ci and polymorpnonuclear leucocytes,
as well as half hundred other things;
while for the chemical substances in
cidental to the science he invented such
delightful terms as '.tetrahy dropara
neutrality-suspicious." and ''tetramethyl-
diamido-trip Observation-Disclosures
The craze, too, is getting commoner
among other than scientists. Take the
word ''reeking," for instance, and ask
your friends what they understand by
it "Reeking?" Jae will say. why,
reeking means dripping with moisture
soaked with wet" You will derive
some amusement from his surprise
when you tell him that reeking means
smoking, steaming" A chimney can
reek. When a horse reeks with mois-
ture, it is because it's TANKS smoke and
steam.
The change from the real meaning to
that given it in popular. present day
phraseology can easily be traced. Any
thing very wet will reek in frosty
weather; so the Metness has been as
sumed to be the real characteristic OF
reek
Then there is "lurid, which nine
people out of ten use in an entirely |
wrong sense. Ask man what color
lurid is and he may answer correctly,
W /
Fred flame, orange or bright yellow, !"
or course. lurid means smoky or dull |
color London fog is lurid. Thick suf-
focating smoke is lurid.
Lurid and liyid are almost synony- /
nous. Lurid flames are flames choked |
and hidden by smoke. a lurid sunset
is not a brilliant one. but one dull and I
gray and cherries.
OF course, the use Of verbal aliases
is not an absolutely new departure. 1t /
is only that we of this generation in I
our wild strivings after novelty have
so enormously increased and multiplied
them. TIE taste of our grandfathers I
and Observation-Disclosures lay rather in
the direction OF using over and over
again two or three long and uncommon
words.
Thus Observation-Disclosures as a
synonym of fame, eminence. occurs
and recurs with almost depressing reg
in the plays Of old pre- ELIZA
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