PROVINCE

of the examples, will compel their rejection: A clause introduced by provided must express a stipulation (i.e. a demand for the prior fulfilment of a condition) made by the person who in the main sentence gives a conditional undertaking or vouches conditionally for a fact.

province. For synonyms, see FIELD. proviso. Pl. -os; see -o(e)s 6. provoke. For the adjective provocable (pro'vokabl) is recommended in preference to provokable (provō'kabl).

provost. In the names of militarypolice officials, pronounce provo', elsewhere pro'vost. proxime accessit.

Pl., used in

naming more than one, proxime accesserunt (ǎksĕser'ŭnt). prox(imo). See INSTANT.

prude makes -dish; see Mute e. prudent makes -est; -ER & -EST 4. prudent(ial). While -ent means having or showing prudence, -ial means pertaining to, or considered from the point of view of, or dictated by, prudence. To call an act -ent is normally to commend it; to call it -ial is more often than not to disparage it. A prisoner's refusal to go into the witness-box is prudential but not prudent if he refuses for fear of giving himself away but actually creates prejudice against himself, prudent but not prudential if it deprives the prosecution of a necessary link in the evidence but is dictated merely by bravado, & both or neither in conditions as easy to invent. But the difference is sometimes neglected, & -ial preferred merely as a LONG VARIANT. prud'homme. See FRENCH Words. prune, vb, makes -nable; MUTE E. prunella. For the meaning of leather or (usually misquoted &) p., see LEATHER 2.

prunello. Pl. -os; see -0(E)s 6. prurience, -cy. There is no differentiation; -ence is recommended; see -CE, -CY.

prurigo. Pronounce proori'go ; pl. -08; see -0(E)s 6.

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

PS-. With the advance of literacy the pronunciation of the p in words beginning thus is likely to be restored except in psalm & its family, e.g. in the compounds of pseud(o)- & such important words as psychical & psychology. The OED describes the dropping of the p sound as an unscholarly practice often leading to ambiguity or to a disguising of the composition of the word '.

pseud(o)-. For the sound, see rs-. pseudonym. See NOM-DE-Guerre,

PS-.

Psyche. Pronounce psi'ki; see PS-. psychic(al). Both forms have been & are in common use in all senses, & differentiation has not yet started; but al is, partly perhaps as corresponding in form to the frequent antithesis physical, tending to prevail; see -IC(AL). The spiritualists have indeed taken possession of ic as a noun (= medium ?), & the rest of us might without much loss let them have it to themselves. Pronounce psikik-; see ps-.

psychological moment. The original German phrase, misinterpreted by the French & imported together with its false sense into English, meant the psychic factor, the mental effect, the influence exerted by a state of mind, & not a point of time at all, das Moment in German corresponding to our momentum, not our moment. Mistake & all, however, it did for a time express a useful notion, that of the moment at which a person is in a favourable state of mind (such as a skilled psychologist could choose) for one's dealings with him to produce the effect one desires. But, like other POPULARIZED TECHNICALITIES, it has lost its special sense & been widened till it means nothing more definite than the nick of time, to which as an expression of the same notion it is plainly inferior. It should be avoided in the extended sense as a

PSYCHOSIS

see

HACKNEYED PHRASE, & at least restricted to contexts in which psychological is appropriate ; also IRRELEVANT ALLUSION. Three examples follow, going from bad to worse-It is difficult to believe that grievances which have been spread over many years have suddenly reached the breaking-point at the precise p. m. when the Franco-German settlement was reaching its conclusion./There is a feeling that the p. m. has come to fight with some hope of success against la vie chère./Everything goes right, no sleeping calf or loud-crowing cock grouse is disturbed at the p. m., the wind holds fair. psychosis. Pl. -oses (-ēz); see LATIN PLURALS 2.

PT-. In ptarmigan, & in Ptolemy & its derivatives, the p is always silent. In other words the OED favours its being sounded; cf. PS-. But ptomaine is perhaps the only one sufficiently common in talk for the pronunciation to matter.

ptomaine. The OED stigmatizes tomā'n as an illiterate pronunciation; but, as with cocaine, it is impracticable to maintain the threesyllable (p)tō'main.

pub. See Curtailed words. pucka, pakka, pucca, pukka, &c. The OED gives precedence to the first spelling.

pucker makes -cred &c.; -R-, -RR-. pudenda, -dum, are used indifferently with the same sense, but the first with plural, the second with singular, construction.

puggree, puggaree. The OED treats the first as the standard form. puisne. Pronounce pū'ni.

puissant. The disyllabic pwi'sant, the older pronunciation, is recommended, the word itself being archaic. P. makes -est; -ER & -EST 4.

pulley. Pl. -eys; for verb inflexions see VERBS IN IE &c., 2. pullulate. Pronounce pu'lûlāt. pulpify. For inflexions see VERBS IN -IE &c., 6.

pulse (heart-beat). The OED says 'Formerly sometimes construed erroneously as a plural'. The mistake is still made.

pulverize makes -zable; see MUTEE. pummel. See POMMEL.

pun. The assumption that puns are per se contemptible betrayed by the habit of describing every pun not as a pun, but as a bad pun or a feeble pun, is a sign at once of sheepish docility & desire to seem superior. Puns are good, bad, & indifferent, & only those who lack the wit to make them are unaware of the fact.

Punchinello. Plural -os; -0(E)s 3. punctilio. Pl. -os; see -0(E)S 4. punctuate makes -uable, -tor; see -ABLE 1, -OR.

punctum. Pl. -ta.

puncture, vb, makes -rable; see MUTE E.

pundit. For the correction of this into pandit, see DIDACTICISM. pupa. Pl. -ae.

pupil. For the derivatives pupil(1)age, pupil(l)ary, pupil(l)ate, pupil(1)ed, pupil(l)ize, &c., the double l is recommended; see -LL-, -L-.

purchase, vb, makes -sable; see MUTE E. As a substitute for buy (goods for money), p. is to be classed among FORMAL WORDS; but in figurative use (p. victory by sacrifice &c.) it is not open to the same objection.

purée. See French words.

purge makes -geable; see -ABLE 1. purify. For inflexions see VERBS IN IE &c., 6.

PURISM

enough for us. It is in that disparaging sense that the words are used in this book; by purism is to be understood a needless & irritating insistence on purity or correctness of speech. Pure English, however, even apart from the great number of elements (vocabulary, grammar, idiom, pronunciation, & so forth) that go to make it up, is so relative a term that almost every man is potentially a purist & a sloven at once to persons looking at him from a lower & a higher position in the scale than his own. The words have therefore not been very freely used; that they should be renounced altogether would be too much to expect considering the subject of the book. But readers who find a usage stigmatized as purism have a right to know the stigmatizer's place in the purist scale, if his stigma is not to be valueless. Accordingly, under headings of various matters with which purism is concerned, a few articles are now mentioned illustrating the kind of view that may be expected in other articles of a similar nature:

Word-formation: amoral, coastal, funniment, Hybrid derivatives, pleistocene.

New words : tality, protagonist. Old words: howbeit. Foreign words: French words, Gallicisms.

happenings, men

Foreign senses : intrigue, meti

culous.

Distinctions of sense: apt, definitive, masterful, one.

Precision of sense: ago, because, England, Haziness, only, Pleonasm. Popular misuses: aggravate, asset, dastard, idiosyncrasy, journal,_optimism, otherwise, percentage, Popularized technicalities.

Corrections: bar sinister, Mahomet, morale, naïf, plain sailing.

Bad constructions: avail, different, Double passive, due, Fused participle, infringe, Object-shuffling, oblivious.

Idiom: first, follow, Idiom, like.

Framework: and, between, neither, of, or, Position of adverbs, Preposition at end.

Pronunciation: apophthegm, False quantity, often, philharmonic, Pronunciation, Ps-.

Spelling: gypsy, Mute e.
Sound: Jingles.

puritanic(al). The long form is commoner, & there is no perceptible difference in meaning. The existence of a third adjective puritan, which suffices for the mere labelling function (of the puritans), makes the -ic form even less useful than it might otherwise be, & it will probably be squeezed out; see -IC(AL).

purple makes -lish, -ly; see MUTE E. purport. 1. Noun per'port, verb perpor't; see NOUN & VERB ACCENT.

2. Meaning. The word is one that, whether as noun or as verb, requires cautious handling. The noun may be said to mean what appears to be the significance' (of a document, an action, &c.); its special value is that it is non-committal, & abstains from either endorsing or denying, but lightly questions, the truth of the appearance. When such an implication is not useful, the word is out of place, & tenor, substance, pith, gist, or other synonym, should be preferred. But NOVELTY-HUNTING discovers p. sometimes in place of scope or purview, & even of purpose. Read purview or scope in : In A Note on Robert Fergusson' he touches a theme outside the general purport of the book.

As to the verb, there are certain well-defined idiomatic limitations on its use, one of which, in an ugly recent development, is beginning to be neglected. This development is the use of the passive, as in :-Professor Henslow compiles from published works the information as to the other world, Christian life & doctrines, the nature of man, &c., purported to be conveyed in communications from the other side './Many extracts from speeches purported to have been made by Mr Redmond

PURPOSE

are pure fabrications./An alternative, briefer, & much more probable account of the Controversial Parts of the Dialogue Purported to be Recorded in the Republic of Plato./He had no information of a Treaty between Japan & Germany purported to have been made during the war. Though the verb is an old one, there is in the OED quotations only one passive use, & that dated 1894. The above extracts are doubtless due to the corrupting influence of the DOUBLE PASSIVE; that construction is especially gratuitous with p., the sense of which fits it to serve, in the active, as a passive to suppose, represent, &c. In all the extracts supposed would stand; pretentiousness has suggested purport as a less familiar & therefore more imposing verb, & ignorance has chosen the wrong part of it (purported) instead of the right (purporting).

The first idiomatic limitation, then, is that the verb, though not strictly intransitive only (It purports, i. e. it is to the effect, that someone from Oxfordshire applied), should never be used in the passive. The second is that the subject, which is seldom a person at all, should at any rate not be a person as such-only a person viewed as a phenomenon of which the nature is indicated by speech, actions, &c., as the nature of a document is indicated by its wording. Normal subject: The story purports to be an autobiography. Legitimate personal subject: The Gibeonites sent men to Joshua purporting to be ambassadors from a far country. Illegitimate personal subject: She purports to find a close parallel between the Aeschylean Trilogy & The Ring, but she does it by leaving out Siegfried altogether./Sir Henry is purported to have said "The F.A. are responsible for everything inside the Stadium './Ïts genuineness is denied by Rakovsky & by both Zinoviev & McManus, who are purported to have signed it.

purpose, n. It serves very little

purpose to ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer to give a little more in this direction or in that. There are three idioms: Be to the, to (very) little, to no, p.; Do something to some, to much, to no, to (very) little, p.; Serve the, my &c., no, p. These should not (see CAST-IRON IDIOM) be confused. Serve very little purpose is a mixture of the third with one of the others.

purpose, vb., has -sable; MUTE E. purposive ( an anomalous form OED) is one of the HYBRID DERIVATIVES described in the article of that name as spurious; the Latin suffix -ive is unsuited to the delatinized & anglogallicized pur-, which represents but conceals the Latin pro. Purposeful in some contexts, & purposed in others, will meet most needs, & there are deliberate, designed, adaptive, teleological, & many more synonyms. In the first of the following extracts purposeful, & in the second adaptive, would enable p. to be dispensed with :-The tendency is all in the direction of what Mr Masterman calls national self-consciousness; progress, steady & purposive, by the means of social science./The material origin of all purposive reactions would be adequately explained by the theory of natural selection.

purr. For purring see PRONUNCIATION S.f.

pur sang. See FRENCH WORDS. The men who direct it are pur-sang mandarins, trained in all the traditions of a bureaucracy which lives not for, but on, the people. If one is brave enough to use the French words, one should be brave enough to place them as such-are mandarins pur sang.

purse, vb, makes -sable; MUTE E. purseful. Pl. -ls; see -FUL. pursuant(ly). See QUASI-ADVERBS. pursue makes -uable; see MUTE E. pursuivant. Pron. per'swivant. pursy, not -sey; see -EY & -Y. purulent. Pronounce pur'oolent.

PURVEY

purvey makes -or. For inflexions see VERBS IN IE &c., 2.

purview. For synonyms see FIELD. Pushtoo. Pronounce pů-, not poo-. pussy. So spelt; see -EY, -IE, -Y. put(t). According to the OED the pronunciation put, with or without the additional -t, & with verbal forms putted instead of put, is universal in golf, but only Scotch in weight-putting.

putrefy. For inflexions see VERBS IN IE &c., 6.

putrid makes -est; see -ER & -EST 4. puttee. Pronounce pǎ'ti, not putē'. putty. For verb inflexions see VERBS IN -IE &c., 6.

The first is re

pyaemia. See Æ, Œ. pygmean, -aean. commended; see pigmē'an.

E, CE. Pron.

pygmy, pi-. For the reason why py- is the better, see GYPSY.

pyjamas, pa-. Spell py-, & pronounce pijah'maz. The adjective should be pyjama'd; see -ED & 'D. pylon. Pl. -s; see -ON 3.

pyorrhoea. Write so; see Æ, œ. pyramidal. Pronounce piră'midl, not pirami'dl.

pyrites. Pronounce piri'tēz. pyrrhic. See TECHNICAL TERMS.

qua is sometimes misused like other Latin words; see E. G., I. E., PACÈ, RE, Vide. The real occasion for the use of q. occurs when a person or thing spoken of can be regarded from more than one point of view or as the holder of various coexistent functions, & a statement about him (or it) is to be limited to him in one of these aspects: Qua lover he must be condemned for doing what qua citizen he would be condemned for not doing; the lover aspect is distinguished from another aspect in which he may be regarded. The two nouns (or pronouns) must be present, one denoting the person or thing in all aspects (he), & the other singling out one of his or its aspects (lover, or citizen). In the first ex

tract below, a gross misuse, Great Britain, & Ireland, are not aspects of the conviction, but things as different from a conviction as an hour from a walking-stick. In the second, a much less definite offence, financier &c. do not give aspects of the man to be distinguished from other coexistent aspects, but merely successive occupations; the fault is that the occasion does not justify the substitution of the very precise qua for the here quite sufficient as. The root of this conviction, qua Great Britain, is the preposterous fiction of the military value of the Ulster volunteers; & the root of this conviction, qua Ireland, is the shameful & cruel bamboozling of a section of my unfortunate fellow-Provincials into the delusion that few soldiers & no artillery will be available against them./The familiar gentleman burglar who, having played wolf to his fellows qua financier, journalist, & barrister, undertakes to raise burglary from being a trade at least to the lupine level of those professions.

quad. See Curtailed words.

quadrate. The verb kwadra't, the adjective & noun kwo'drat ; see PARTICIPLES 5 A.

quadr(i)ennium, -ial. Quadriennium is true Latin, & the -i- should not be, but usually is, dropped in the English words.

quadriga. Pron. kwadri'ga; pl. -gae. quadrille. Pronounce ka- or kwa-. quadrillion. See BILLION. quadroon. See MULATTO 2. quadruplicate. Verb -āt, adj. & n. -at; see PARTICIPLES 5 B.

quaere, the original of query, is now little used, & nothing is gained by keeping it in being.

quaestor. See Æ, œ.

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

quality. 1. For has the defects of his qq.' see HACKNEYED PHRASES. 2. The adj. is -itative, not -itive; see QUANTITATIVE.

qualm. The OED puts first the pronunciation kwahm.