FEMININE DESIGNATIONS

word that does the work of two or more by packing several notions into one is a gain (the more civilized a language the more such words it possesses), if certain conditions are observed: it must not be cumbersome; it should for choice be correctly formed; & it must express a compound notion that is familiar enough to need a name.

Secondly, with the coming extension of women's vocations, feminines for vocation-words are a special need of the future; everyone knows the inconvenience of being uncertain whether a doctor is a man or a woman; hesitation in establishing the word doctress is amazing in a people regarded as nothing if not practical. Far from needing to reduce the number of our sex-words, we should do well to indulge in real neologisms such as teacheress, singeress, & danceress, the want of which drives us to cantatrice, danseuse, & the like; authoress & poetess & paintress are not neologisms.

But are not the objectors, besides putting their own interests above those of the public, actually misjudging their own? Their view is that the female author is to raise herself to the level of the male author by asserting her right to his name; but if there is one profession in which more than in others the woman is the man's equal it is acting; & the actress is not known to resent the indication of her sex; the proof of real equality will be not the banishment of authoress as a degrading title, but its establishment on a level with author. Nor, after all, does an authoress, a doctress, a lioness, a votaress, a prophetess, or a Jewess, cease to be an author, a doctor, a lion, a votary, a prophet, or a Jew, because she ends in -ess; she should call herself, & still more allow us without protest to call her, by the common or the feminine title according to the requirements of the occasion; but George Eliot the authoress would then be as much more frequent than

FEMININE DESIGNATIONS

G. E. the author as the prophetess Deborah than the prophet D.

It may perhaps aid consideration of the subject if short selections are given, A, of established feminine titles, B, of recent or impugned ones, &, C, of words unfortunately not provided with feminines.

A

Abbess, actress, administratrix, adultress, adventuress, ambassadress, deaconess, duchess, enchantress, executrix, giantess, goddess, governess, horsewoman, hostess, huntress, Jewess, lioness, mother, murderess, priestess, princess, procuress, prophctess, quakeress, queen, shepherdess, songstress, sorceress, stewardess, votaress, waitress, wardress.

B

Authoress, chairwoman, conductress, directress, doctress, draughtswoman, editress, inspectress, jurywoman, manageress, paintress, patroness, poetess, policewoman, protectress, tailoress.

C

Artist, aurist, clerk, cook, councillor, cyclist, lecturer, legatee, martyr, motorist, oculist, palmist, president, pupil, singer, teacher, typist.

Artist, in list C, illustrates well the need of feminines, since ignorant writers are often guilty of artists & artistes, meaning male & female performers.

feminineness, feminism, &c. The words on record in the OED are: feminacy, feminality, femineity, feminicity, feminility, feminineness, femininism, femininity, feminism, feminity. Of these feminacy, feminality, feminicity, & feminility, may be put out of court as mere failed experiments. Femineity, -ineness, -inity, & -ity, remain as competitors for the sense of woman's nature & qualities, none of them perceptibly differentiated in meaning. Feminineness is a word that does not depend on usage or dictionarymakers for its right to exist; it can

FEMME-DE-CHAMBRE

of course be used; -inity & -ity are both as old as the 14th century & have been in use ever since; of the two, -inity is the more correct form, but ity is more euphonious & manageable, & is as justifiable as e. g. virginity; -eity is a 19thcentury formation, needless beside the others. It would be well if feminity could be appointed to the post, with feminineness as deputy, & -inity & -eity dismissed as SUPER

FLUOUS WORDS.

Femininism & feminism should have meanings different both from the above & from each other. Femininism should mean (a) an expression or idiom peculiar to women, & (b) the tendency in a man to feminine habits. Feminism (with feminist attached) should mean faith in woman, advocacy of the rights of women, the prevalence of female influence; it may be worth mention that it, as compared with femininism, is not open to the well-known objections urged against pacifism & pacifist as compared with pacificism; but the proposed sense, now pretty well established, is novel enough not to be recorded in the OED (1901).

femoral. For f. habiliments see PEDANTIC HUMOUR.

femur. Pl. femurs or femora; see LATIN PLURals.

feoff, feoffee, feoffer or feoffor, feoffment. Pronounce fèf-.

ferae naturae. The law applies only to animals f. n.; Rabbits are f. n.; Rabbits are among the f. n. The first two sentences show the correct, & the third the wrong use of the phrase, & the three together reveal the genesis of the misuse. F. n. is not a nominative plural, but a genitive singular, & means not 'wild kinds', but of wild kind', & it must be used only as equivalent to a predicative adjective, & not as a plural noun. See FOREIGN DANGER, & POPULARIZED TECHNICALITIES.

ferret, vb, makes -eted &c; see -T-, -TT-.

fer(r)ule. The cap or ring for a stick has two rs, & is also spelt ferrel; the teacher's implement (now in allusive use only) has one r, & is also spelt ferula. The two words are of separate origins.

ferry, vb. For inflexions see VERBS IN -IE &c., 6.

fertile. The OED gives precedence to -Il; but -il is now usual.

fervour. Keep the -u-; but see -OUR & -OR.

festal, festive. Both words point to feast or festival, but the reference in -al is more direct; a person is in festal mood if there is a festival & he is in tune with it, but he may be in festive mood even if he is merely feeling as he might if it were a festival. A festal day; in festal costume; a festive scene; the festive board. The distinction is not regularly observed, but, such as it is, it accounts for the continued existence of the two words. There is something of the same difference between festival & festivity or festivities. The OED prefers fetid, foetid. fe'tid as spelling & pronunciation. The Latin original is, correctly spelt, fētidus; for ĕ see FALSE QUANTITY.

FETISHES, or current literary rules misapplied or unduly revered. Among the more notable or harmful are: SPLIT INFINITIVE; FALSE QUANTITY; avoidance of repetition (see ELEGANT VARIATION); the rule of thumb for and wHICH; a craze for native English words (see SAXONISM); pedantry on the foreign spelling of foreign words (see MORALE); the notion that RELIABLE, AVERSE to, & DIFFERENT to, are marks of the uneducated; the rule of thumb for and & or in ENUMERATION FORMS; the dread of a PREPOSITION AT END; the idea that successive metaphors are mixed METAPHOR; the belief that common

FETISH

words lack dignity (see FORMAL WORDS).

fetish, fetiche. The modern -ish seems to have superseded the older -iche. The OED gives fět- precedence over fet-. Though it has the air of a mysterious barbarian word, it is in reality the same as factitious, & means (like an idol, the work of men's hands) a made thing.

fetus. See FOETUS. feuilleton. See FRENCH WORDS. feverish, feverous. The differentiation is incomplete. What can be done to help it on is to abstain from feverish in the one sense apt to cause fever (of places, conditions, &c.), & from feverous both in the literal senses suffering from fever, feeling or showing symptoms of fever, & in the metaphorical sense excited or eager or restless. This would be in conformity with the present tendency, which, though often disregarded, is plainly observable

few. 1. Comparatively f. 2. Fewer number. 1. As will be seen from the newspaper extracts below, ugly combinations of comparative(ly) with a few & few are now common. There is no possible objection to putting the adverb comparatively before the adjective few, as in Comparatively few people are in the secret; that is a normal construction not requiring comment; but a comparatively few is quite another matter, & so is the comparative few. The extracts now follow :-The one beneficial treatment for such men could not be obtained excepting for a comparatively few. Its climate is such as to limit the residence of officials to a comparatively few months in the year./The whole area has been drained, levelled, & planned out in a comparatively few weeks./Those who do not marry, you may conclude, are used up by the work in a comparatively few years./Discussion in & out of the IIouse has reduced these to a comparatively few points./The comparative few who take season tickets seldom travel every day.

It is remarkable in the first place that of an idiom now enjoying such a vogue no trace whatever should appear in the OED's quotations either for few or for comparative(ly); the explanation is doubtless that people of literary discernment, & even the writers of books in general, recoil from such a monstrosity, or did twenty years ago. It is, indeed, easier to call or feel it a monstrosity than to prove it one, because a few is itself an anomalous phrase, & therefore analogies for its treatment are not abundant; we must make the best of the few available; the main question is whether the few in a few is a noun or an adjective, & therefore to be qualified by an adjective or an adverb. There is first the familiar a good few, still current though colloquial; next, there are a good many & a great many, extant modifications of the now dialectal a many; thirdly, we know that quite a few & not a few are English, while a quite few & a not few are impossible. These show sufficiently that while a few taken together may be modified by an adverb, a modifying word placed between a & few can only be an adjective; in fact, the few of a few is itself a noun meaning small number. That it can be followed by a plural noun without an intervening of (there are a few exceptions) is nothing against this; it is parallel to dozen, score, & hundred: a dozen eggs, a score years, a hundred men, where, whether of is inserted or not, any modifying word is an adjective after, or an adverb before, the a (a round dozen eggs, a full score of years, a good hundred men, but roughly or fully or quite a dozen &c.). Consequently, if comparative(ly) is to be sandwiched it must be a comparative few, but if it is to precede the whole, or if it is to qualify few without a, it must be comparatively. On this showing all the above examples are wrong, the last as well as the others.

The objection will probably occur

FEW, 2

to some readers: What, then, about a very few? may we not say In a very few years all will be changed? The answer is, first, that a very few is no doubt the origin of the mistaken constructions, & secondly that very is here not an adverb, but an adjective, as in She is a very woman or devil, or in Living on a very minimum of food; just as we can say a poor or a wretched few, so we can say a mere or a very few, with very an adjective; but because very is now more familiar as an adverb, it is wrongly concluded that words that can only be adverbs will do.

It may be added that Very few people were there is better than A very few people were there, because few means some & not many, while a few means some & not none, so that few is better fitted than a few for combination with words expressing degree like very.

2. Fewer number(s) is a solecism, obvious as soon as one thinks, but becoming common; correct to smaller in :-Fortunately the number of persons on board was fewer than usual./The fewer number of days or hours we are the better it will be./ The bird seems to have reached us in fewer numbers this year.

fez. Pl. fezzes, adj. fezzed. fiancé, -ée. See FRENCH WORDS, &

INTENDED.

fiasco. Pl. -os; see -o(E)S 6. fibre, -ber. See -RE & -ER. fibroma. Pl. -omata (-ō'-). fibula. Pl. -lae or -las. Pron. fi'-. fictitious. See FACTIOUS.

fiddle. If the word is, as the OED says, now only in familiar or contemptuous use', it is matter for regret, & those who defy this canon deserve well of the language. We all learn the word fiddle as babies, & at a later age when we find ourselves expected to understand & use another word for it we explain violin to ourselves as 6 the same as fiddle'; it is a case of WORKING & STYLISH WORDS in which, unfortunately, the majority has yielded to

-FIED. The spelling of the jocular compounds in which a verb in -fy hardly exists is unsettled (countrified or countryfied &c.). It seems best to use -- when the noun or adjectiv does not provide a convenient connecting syllable, but, when it does, not to alter it; so cockneyfied, countryfied, dandyfied, Frenchified, ladyfied, townified, yankeefied.

field, in the sense of space proper to something (f. of action, each in his own f., &c.). The synonyms for this are remarkably numerous; the distinctions & points of agreement between these are fortunately obvious enough not to need elaborate setting forth; but a list not pretending to completeness, & a characteristic phrase or so for each word, may be useful.

Area, branch, compass, department, domain, field, gamut, last, limit, line, locale, point, province, purview, question, radius, range, realm, record, reference, region, register, scale, scene, scope, sphere, subject, tether, theme.

Un

A debate covering a wide area. surpassed in his own branch. Expenses beyond my compass. In every department of human activity. Belongs to the domain of philosophy. Distinguished in many fields;

is

FIELD OFFICER

beyond the field of vision. In the whole gamut of crime. Stick to your last. Unconscious of his limits. Casuistry is not in my line. A very unsuitable locale. Talking beside the point. It is not our province to inquire. Comes within the purview of the Act. Constantly straying from the question. Outside the range of practical politics. Operating within a narrow radius. In the whole realm of Medicine. Don't travel outside the record. Such evidence is precluded by our reference. In the region of metaphysics. Any note in the lower register. Whatever the scale of effort required. scene of confusion. A Find scope for one's powers; limit the scope of the inquiry. Useful in his own sphere. Wanders from the subject. Get to the end of one's tether. Has chosen an ill defined theme.

field officer. See OFFICER. fiery. Two syllables (fir'i).

6

fifteen. The '15', the '45'. The Jacobite risings of 1715 & 1745 are so remote that there is now some affectation in speaking of them by these names except in historical novels.

fifth(ly). Both the -f- & the -th should be, but are often not, clearly sounded; cf. apophthegm, diphtheria, diphthong, sixth.

&c.

fifties, 'fif-. See TWENTIES. figure, figurant, figurative, While it is pedantic to pronounce figure otherwise than as fi'ger, it is slovenly to let the natural English laxity go to this extreme with the less familiar figuration, figurative, figurant, figurine, &c. (figūrā'shn &c.); see PRONUNCIATION.

filial. The OED recognizes only fil-; fil- is however often heard, but possibly only from latinists obsessed by the fear of FALSE QUANTITY.

filigree, -agree. The OED gives precedence to the first spelling.

fille de chambre, de joie. See FRENCH WORDS.

fine, n. In fine, a phrase now seldom used except in writing of a rather formal kind, has entirely lost the sense, which it once had, of at last. It is still sometimes used for finally or lastly, i.e. to introduce the last of a series of parallel considerations; but in the interests of clearness it is better that it should be confined to its predominant modern use, in short or in fact or to sum up, introducing a single general statement that wraps up in itself several preceding particular ones.

=

are

now

finger. The fingers usually numbered exclusively of the thumb-first (or index), second (or middle), third (or ring), & fourth (or little); but in the marriage service the third is called the fourth.

fingering, as a name for stockingwool, is not from finger, but represents French fin grain fine grain; see TRUE & FALSE ETYMOLOGY.

finical, finicking, finikin. All that can be said with certainty about the derivation of the words & their mutual relations seems to be that -al is recorded 70 years earlier than the others. As to choice between them, the English termination -cking is best calculated to express a hearty British contempt for the tenuity