see -EDLY.

advance(ment).

There are no contexts in which advancement can be substituted for advance without damage to or change in the sense; in the following sentence advance should have been written :-It will not be by the setting of class against class that advancement will be made. It is true that both words can be used as verbal nouns of to advance ; but advance represents its intransitive & advancement its transitive sense; the advance of knowledge is the way knowledge is advancing, whereas the advancement of knowledge is action taken to advance knowledge. Apart from this verbalnoun use with of following, & from a technical sense in law, advancement has only the sense of preferment or promotion, never the more general one of progress.

adventurous, venturesome, adventuresome, venturous. Usage has decisively declared for the first two & against the last two. Adventuresome & venturous, when used, are due to either ignorance or avoidance of the normal.

ADVERBS. See POSITION OF ADVERBS.

adverse. Unlike averse, this can be followed only by to; Politicians who had been very adverse from the Suez-Canal scheme is wrong.

advertise. Not -ize; see -ISE)(-IZE. advisedly. Four syllables; see -EDLY. advocate. Unlike recommend, propose, urge, & other verbs, this is not idiomatically followed by a thatclause, but only by an ordinary or a verbal noun. In Dr Felix Adler advocates that close attention shall be paid to any experiments, either urges should be substituted for advocates, or that & shall be paid should be omitted or give place to the paying of.

Æ, E. These ligatures, of which the pronunciation is identical (ē), are also in some founts of type so much alike that compositors often use one for the other & unlearned readers have their difficulties with spelling increased. It seems desirable that in the first place all words in common enough use to have begun to waver between the double letter & the simple e (as phenomenon now rarely phae- or pha-, pedagogy now rarely pae- or pæ-, medieval still usually -aeval or -æval, ecumenical still usually oe- or œ-, penology now rarely poe- or pœ-, Phebe still usually Phoe- or Phoe-) should be written with the e alone; & secondly, in words that have not yet reached or can for special reasons never reach the stage in which the simple e is acceptable, ae & oe should be preferred to æ & œ (Caesar, gynaecocracy, paedobaptism, homoeopathy, diarrhoea, Boeotian, Oedipus; the plurals & genitives of classical firstdeclension nouns, as sequelae, Heraclidae, aqua vitae). It is sometimes argued that if Cæsar & Eneas are to be written Caesar & Aeneas it will become necessary to use the diaeresis (aërial) wherever the a & e are pronounced separately, since the present distinction will be lost; that the present distinction, however, is of little use is shown by the frequency with which arated is printed for aerated; it is not held necessary to write oreäd because read is pronounced red, & the case for aërial is no stronger. In French words like chef-d'œuvre the ligature œ must

-Æ, -AS

obviously be kept; whether it is kept or not in manoeuvre, where the pronunciation is anomalous, is of no great importance.

-AE, -AS, in plurals of nouns in -a. Most English nouns in -a are from Latin (or latinized Greek) nominative feminine singular nouns, which have in Latin the plural ending -ae; but not all; e. g., sofa is from Arabic; stanza & vista are from Italian; subpoena is not nominative; drama & comma are neuter ; stamina & prolegomena are plural ; & with all such words -ae is impossible. Of the majority, again, some retain the Latin -ae in English either as the only or as an alternative plural ending (antennae only, formulae or -las), & some have always -as (ideas, areas, villas). The use of plurals in -ae therefore presents some difficulty to

non

Ïatinists. For most words with which ae is possible or desirable, the information is given in their dictionary places; for the principle of choice when both -ae & -as are current, see LATIN PLURALS 1, 3.

aeon, æon, eon. The first form is recommended; see Æ, Œ. aerate, aĕrate. The first form is recommended; Æ, C. The form ærated is a mere blunder, but very common.

see

aerial, aërial. The first form is recommended; see Æ, C.

aery, aerie, eyry, eyrie. The first two forms are preferable to the others, which according to the OED & Professor Skeat are due to a theory of the derivation (from egg; eyry: eggery) that is known (though the ultimate origin of aery is doubtful) to be wrong.

aesthetic. The word, which means etymologically concerned with sensuous perception, was introduced into English to supply sense of beauty with an adjective. It is in place in such contexts as a. principles, from an a. point of view, an a. revival occurred, a. considerations do

a.

not appeal to him. It is less so in the meanings professing or gifted with this sense (1 am not a.; a. people), dictated by or approved by or evidencing this sense (a very a. combination; aesthetically dressed; chintzes & wallpapers; flowers on a table are not so a. a decoration as a well-filled bookcase); & still less so when it is little more than a pretentious substitute for beautiful (that green is so a.; a not very a. little town).

aetat., aet. The words, being abbreviations of aetatis suae (of his, her, their, age) must be written with the period, & not as in: The Die-Hards had as their leader Lord Halsbury, aetat 86./It was Mr. Chaplin, aetat 70, who./ A manifesto from Lord Roberts, aetat 79. For aet-, at-, see Æ, œ.

affaire de cœur. See FRENCH

AFFIX

are sometimes used instead of with ; this should not be done; in places where with is felt to be inappropriate, the truth is that affinity, which properly describes a reciprocal relationship only, has been used of a one-sided one, & should itself be replaced by another word. Cf. sympathy with & for.

affix, n. See TECHNICAL TERMS.

à fond. See FRENCH WORDS. It should be remembered that à fond & au fond mean different things, à fond to the bottom, i.e. thoroughly, & au fond at bottom, i.e. when one penetrates below the surface.

aforesaid. See PEDANTIC HUMOUR. a fortiori. See TECHNICAL TERMS. afterward(s). Afterward, once the prevalent form, is now obsolete in British use, but survives in U.S. age. For synonymy see TIME.

aged. A. 54 &c., ājd; an a. man &c., ǎ'jid.

agenda. If a singular is required (=one item of the agenda) it is now agendum, the former singular agend being obsolete.

agent provocateur.

WORDS.

aggrandize(ment).

See FRENCH

The accent of

the verb is on the first & of the noun on the second syllable. See RE

CESSIVE ACCENT.

To

aggravate, aggravation. 1. The use of these in the sense annoy, vex, annoyance, vexation, should be left to the uneducated. It is for the most part a feminine or childish colloquialism, but intrudes occasionally into the newspapers. aggravate has properly only one meaning-to make (an evil) worse or more serious. The right & the wrong use are shown in: (right) 4 premature initiative would be calculated rather to a. than to simplify the situation; (wrong) The reopening of the contest by fresh measures that would a. their opponents is the last thing that is desired in Ministerial circles. It is in the participle (and

agio. Pl. -os; see -0(E)9 4.

agitate makes agitable; see -ABLE 1. ago. If ago is used, & the event to be dated is given by a clause, it must be by one beginning with that & not since. The right forms are ‹He died 20 years ago (no clause); It is 20 years since he died (no ago); It was 20 years ago that he died. The following examples are wrong; the tautology ago since is naturally commoner, but is equally wrong, in sentences like the second, where a parenthesis intervenes :—It is barely 150 years ago since it was introduced./ Yet it is only just over sixty years ago, as an article in the new edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica' reminds us, since facilities for cheap_travel were first introduced. For similar mistakes, see HAZINESS.

6

agréments. See FRENCH Words. agricultur(al)ist. See -IST. aide-de-camp. See FRENCH Words. aiguille. See FRENCH WORDS. aim. The verb in the metaphorical sense of purpose or design or endeavour is idiomatically followed by at with the gerund & not by to with the infinitive. Probably no-one will doubt this who sees the two constructions side by side :—he aimed at being, he aimed to be, the power behind the throne; arguments are aimed to produce, arguments are aimed at producing, conviction; what do you aim at doing? what do you aim to do? But the analogy of purpose &c., which take the infinitive & not the gerund, leads unobservant writers wrong. And the infinitive construction, though not good British, appears to be good American, since it is certainly a favourite with Emerson, & is given in Webster's & the Century & Standard Dictionaries as the normal verb-construc

AÎNÉ

tion (at with the gerund not being even mentioned) after aim. aîné. See FRENCH WOrds. aitch, ache. The original spelling is ache, but aitch (drop one's aitches) is now universal.

aitch-bone. H-bone, edge-bone, ashbone, & other forms, are due to random shots at the etymology. Aitch-bone, though it does not reveal the true origin of the word (L natis buttock, with loss of n- as in adder &c.), suggests no false one & corresponds to the pronunciation.

-AL NOUNS. When a noun in -al is given in its alphabetical place with a simple reference to this article, the meaning is that its use is deprecated. There is a tendency to invent or revive unnecessary verbal nouns of this form. The many that have passed into common use (as trial, arrival, refusal, acquittal, proposal) have thereby established their right to exist. But when words of some age (as revisal, refutal, appraisal, accusal) have failed to become really familiar & remained in the stage in which the average man cannot say with confidence off-hand that they exist, the natural conclusion is that there is no work for them that cannot be adequately done by the more ordinary verbal nouns in -ion (revision), -ation (refutation, accusation), & -ment (appraisement). When there is need on an isolated occasion for a verbal noun that shall have a different shade of meaning from those that are current (e. g. accusal may suggest itself as fitter to be followed by an objective genitive than accusation; cf. the accusal of a murderer, the accusation of murder), or that shall serve when none already exists (there is e. g. no noun beheadment), it is better to make shift with the gerund (the accusing, the beheading) than to revive an unfamiliar accusal or invent beheadal. The use of rare or new al nouns, however, is due only in part to a legitimate desire for the exactly appropriate form; to some writers the out-of

the-way word is dear for its own sake, or rather is welcome as giving an air of originality to a sentence that if ordinarily expressed would be detected as commonplace; they are capable of writing bequeathal for bequest, agreeal for agreement, allowal for allowance, or arisal for arising; except for this dislike of the normal word, we should have had account instead of recountal in Of more dramatic interest is the recountal of the mission imposed upon Sir James Lacaita, & to recount these in But this is not the place for a recountal of these thrilling occurrences; cf. retiral in There were many retirals at the dissolution. Carousal, surprisal, supposal, decrial, may be mentioned among the hundreds of needless -al words that have been actually used. à la. The sex of the person whose name is introduced by this does not affect the form, la agreeing not with it but with an omitted mode: à la reine; à la (not au) maître-d'hôtel ; a Home-rule Bill à la (not au) Gladstone. Au with adjectives, as in au naturel, au grand sérieux, (cf. à la française &c.) is not used in English except in phrases borrowed entire from French.

alarm, alarum. Alarum is by origin merely a variant of alarm, & the two nouns were formerly used without distinction in all senses. In poetry alarum may still bear any of the senses except that of fear or apprehension; but in ordinary use it is restricted to the senses of alarmsignal, warning-signal, or clock or other apparatus that gives these. This being a clear & useful differentiation, it is to be regretted that alarm-clock, & alarm in the same sense, should (owing to the trade in alarums from America, where the differentiation has not been made) be reviving.

alarmedly. Four syllables if used;

see -EDLY.

albeit. See ARCHAISM.

albino. Pl. -os; see -0(E)S 6. Fem. albiness.

ALBION

Albion. See SOBRIQUES alcaics. See TECHNICAL TERMS. ale, beer. In the trade, & in statistics & the like, the two words are distinguished in meaning. But in ordinary use, as at table, both denote the same thing, including the pale & excluding the dark varieties of malt liquor; the difference is that beer is the natural current word, & ale is a GENTEELISM.

alexandrine. See TECHNICAL TERMS. alien. The prepositions after the adjective are from & to. From is the earlier usage, & represents the commoner Latin construction, though alienus with the dative is also good Latin. There is perhaps a slight preference for from where mere difference or separation is meant (We are entangling ourselves in matters a. from our subject), & for to when repugnance is suggested (cruelty is a. to his nature). But this distinction is usually difficult to apply, & the truth seems rather that to is getting the upper hand of from in all senses (cf. DIFFERENT, VERSE).

A

alienate makes -nable; see -ABLE 1. alight. The past tense & p.p. are alighted in ordinary use; but in poetry alit has been written by Byron, Shelley, & Poe.

align(ment), aline(ment). The OED pronounces for the spelling with ne & against that with gn. On the verb it says As line is the Eng. spelling of Fr. ligne & ligner, there is no good reason for retaining the unetymological g in the derivative'; & on the noun The Eng. form alinement is preferable to alignment, a bad spelling of the Fr.' Usage as clearly pronounces for the -gn- forms; in the OED quotations gn is just four times as numerous as ne. The claims of usage & etymology are often hard to decide between (cf. RHYME). No-one would propose to correct admiral, aisle, or cretin, back into conformity with Arabic amir, Latin ala, or Greek khristianos, though the insertion of 1 & s, & the

omission of h, are 'unetymological'; & on the other hand unnoticed corrections of words taken from French (as scholastic, respelt on Greek skhole after being taken directly from scolastique) are innumerable. But align is not only the established form; it is also more correct than aline; correction on Latin analogies (adlineare, allineare) could only give alline; & aline regarded as a purely English formation would have no meaning, a- in the sense to not being a recognized formative element. Alline(ment) seems defensible but inexpedient, aline(ment) indefensible, & align(ment) unobjectionable.

-(al)ist. For such alternative forms as agriculturist & agriculturalist, see

-IST.