Evening capital and Maryland gazette. (Annapolis, Md.) 1910-1922, 1919-12-04

moves. He also used the verb 'Chin2fy
in a similar connection, Shortly these
words were seized upon by the whole
country, until now they have become
entirely legitimate and are in common
usage. They sprang from the concep-
tion of China as a symbol Of strength
and unpreparedness.
Another OF Mr.. Roosevelt's coin
ages is the 'lunatic fringe Every
great movement said the Colonel.
has about it lunatic fringe b. this
he meant that when a movement in the
world arouses any great amount of en-
thusiasm there is on the borders of It's
enthusiastic supporters a certain ele-
ment which is carried on by the color
and the excitement of the crowd with
out really knowing what ii is all about
They are caught by the movement and
yell as loudly as anybody.
Il think that this phrase has come
to the language to stay. 1t IS char
acteristic Of the incisiveness of Mr.
Rossevelt's language.
"'Pussyfoot' is also word from the
same source. and it explains itself by
its sound. 1t is used as either a noun,
and adjective, or a verb. a phrase
similar TO this is weasel words which
is particularly applicable in some con
nections, though ! disagree with the
first application of Mr. Roosevelt. who
said that Mr. Wilson used weasel
words When he was asked how the
phrase ever occurred to him he ex-
planned that a hunter had once told
him that if eggs were placed in a line
animal would suck them without dis
turbing their positions This, he said,
was true of Mr. Wilson's statements,
which seemed strong at first and in
good order but were later qualified
until their force was gone.
Mr.. Roosevelt coined the expression
$3.50 in his statement that This
country is no place for $3.50 loyalty.
II is worthy of note that with Mr..
Wilson the sentence and the para
graph are perfect. ! think that his
compositions are superior TO those OF
Mr. Roosevelt. The latter was never
content in his writings or speech until
he had coined some particular word or
phrase that expressed his meaning in
an acute manner.
another source of words which
brought about many new ones during
the war was actually an old method Of
coming 1t was this: When a man
becomes so famous, or infamous, that
his very name suggests an idea Ii has
been a common thing that the word
grows from the name to express that
particular thought. 'MesmeriZe' and
boycott came into the language in
this way, at first using the capital, hui
later dropping it when they had be-
come fixed. In the past five years we
have had number of examples Of this
sort, among them being Hooyerize
which ! do not doubt Will eventually
be used commonly to denote conserva
ton of food.
THE latest example of this kind was
born about two weeks ago
Il am sure that you must all have
been interested in the election of Lady
Aston to Parliament In her few po-
litical speeches she showed an Ameri-
can wit. which Immediately gained
great popularity. and these witticisms
have already come to be known as AS
torisms'
THE telescope word is a combina-
ton of two words made by running
them into each other to form one new
word. and this constitutes the third
method of coming words. An instance
of the kind is 'Amerind.' which has
come into recent use to designate the
American Indian.
Only one entirely new method of
forming words. however was devel-
oped by the war. 1t is the formation
of words by combining the initial let
tiers of the words making up long
and unhandy phrase. Absolutely the
first use of this method is found in the
use of Amaze, which came from the
long term 'Australian-New Zealand
Army Corps After the Gallipoli cam
paign this corps was very much talked
of, bat its name was too long for use
in either speech or writing. The one
word resulted Others that have come
into use by this way are Wac from
'Woman's Auxiliary Army Corps AMI
'Wrens.' formed from 'Woman's Royal
Navy Service by the introduction Of
an 'e'
Thus the war has brought about a
number of additions to the wonderful
language which is ours. using the
three old methods for coming words
and one method which is entirely new,