Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1930-11-10
THIS AND THAT
BY CHARLES E. TRACEWELL.

How many words there are few of
us know, except 1t be by running across
them in the dictionary when looking
| up some other word.
We CHANGED to be on the hunt for
that interesting old English word
sough, meaning a moaning, whistling,
rushing sound as Of wind in trees.
Right over in the next column Tin
the Concise Oxford we CHANGED to
see three words which instantly dis
tracted our attention.
They were:
Soricine, sorites, sorn.
Perhaps not one reader in a thou
sand will be able to define these words.
Our personal guess was 100 per cent
failure, and we would be interested to
know the result from others.
Soricine, we might have guessed, had
something to do with witches-but 1t
doesn'tl
Sorites, we imagined. were something
chemical, but We were as far of as
could be. Perhaps we associated iron
pyrites with sorites.
AS for sorn. we had no more idea
what 1t meant than rabbit would.
Had we hazarded guess, we might
have said that it is waterfall or a
gulley in Iceland, or something along
that line.
4
Soricine, an adjective, according to
the oxford, Is defined as follows: "Of,
related to, the shrew-mouse."
So soricine fellow would be a Beau
Brummel Of the fields. a dapper Danny
MeSdowmouse, out for a stroll
1t would be proper, perhaps, to brand
OF a Soricine appearance. Surely it
sounds rather bad
AS for sorites, those who have made
study of logic as taught in formal
courses may know all about it, but the
writer here did not recognize it. The
dictionary says:
"Chain-syllogism (e. g., cat is a
quadruped, quadruped is an animal,
animal is a substance; therefore a cat
is SUBSTANCE; form of sophism lead
ing by gradual steps from truth to abb
surdity and based on the absence of
precise, especially numerical limits to
terms (e. g., a man with only one hair
is bald, therefore man with 2, 8, A.
10000 hairs is BALD. So soritical, ad-
jective."
The word comes through Latin from
the Greek, sorites, literally heaper, In
the instances given above a heaper of
absurdity upon absurdity. Surely every
one, no matter whether familiar with
of these false arguers. You meet them
In discussions of politics. Intuitively
you realize that there is something
wrong in their method, but you cannot
precisely put your finger on the fallacy.
1t is good thing, therefore, If one
happens to know about this old word,
sorites, in itself a striking example of
the BITTERNESS, If one may coin a word,
Of knowledge over ignorance. Think
how easy it is to floor sophist, If one
can swing into play this good dictionary
knowledge! Surely such examples as
given above, even if they do not pre-
cisely fit, would do a great deal, even in
political argument, to keep the other
fellow from carrying his argument too
far.
y \ X \
We have left sorn, an intransitive
verb, which practically nobody uses,
and perhaps few could define, but
which pictures a person, or group of
persons, or happening, with whom or
which almost every one is familiar.
"Sorn," says our dictionary, ''Obtrude
ones self on (person) for bed and
board. Hence Sorner."
"Ah, hal" cried Grandmother Nc
Glink. 81 have been entertaining sorn-
ers all my life, then. People have been
sorning on me ever since set up house.
keeping. When we moved to the big