but hundreds of people who would be horrified by the latter are ready to write the former. The explanation is to be found in confusion between two possible ways of speaking, the modern I should like to say', & the archaic ' I would say '; in the modern form the desire is expressed in the verb like & requires no other expression; in the archaic form the desire had to be given in would because otherwise it was not expressed at all. The roman-type woulds & wills, then, are all wrong:In regard to the general question, I would like to speak today with a certain amount of reserve./The_other argument upon which I would like to comment is as follows./We must shut our ears to the tales of some of the lame dogs we would like to help over a stile./We cannot go into details, & would prefer to postpone criticism until ./Nor has he furnished me with one thing with which I would care to sit down in my little room & think./1, as Chief Liberal Whip, will be very glad to place them in touch with the local secretary./If we should take a wider view, I would be inclined to say that.../In this month of grey rain & silver mist' we will be glad to keep within our average rainfall of a little over 2 in. An example less patently wrong is: We would be the last to argue that publication in this form commits our contemporary to agreement with the views expressed. This is defensible if the writer will assure, us that his meaning was We should wish to be the last, instead of, as it doubtless was, We should be the last.

3. In clauses of indefinite future time, & indefinite relative clauses in future time, will is entirely unidiomatic ; either shall is used, chiefly in formal contexts, or, much more often, futurity is allowed to be inferred from context & a present is used:-Whatever sum & whatever goods will be received from Germany will be shared among the Allies (shall be received)./Germany will have to

SHALL, 4

give back all kinds of property which have been taken from the invaded countries, & which will be traced in German territory (shall be traced)./ ... has now had to go clean out of the county to find employment, leaving his wife with her mother until he will be able to make another home for her (until he can make)./So long as this will not be made clear, the discussion will go on bearing lateral issues (is not made)./When this will be perceived by public opinion the solution will immediately become obvious (is perceived)./When the Irish vote has been reduced by Home Rule, & the remaining Irish members will no longer have any reason to oppose a Suffrage Bill, Votes for Women will once more have a chance (members have no longer any reason).../The farmers were expecting to get increased prices, & they will naturally be considerably annoyed' if they do not get them, especially when they will be called upon to pay increased prices for all that they have to buy (when they are called upon). Here also a less undeniably wrong example may be of service: We have strong faith that a rally to the defence of the Act will be a feature of next year's politics, if the Tory Party will have the courage to come into the open & declare war upon it. An assurance from the writer that by will have the courage he meant chooses to have the courage would be received, indeed, with incredulity, but would secure him a grudging acquittal; has the courage is what he should have written.

4. The time-honoured I will be drowned, no-one shall save me, so much too good to be true, is less convincing as a proof that there are people to whom the English distinctions mean nothing than the discovery that shall & will, should & would, are sometimes regarded as good raw material for elegant variation; I said should in the last clause; the one now to come is sadly similar to it; go to! I will write down would :-If we found the

SHALL, 5

instances invariably in mutual support we would be content with but a few, but if we found even one in contradiction we should require a large body of evidence./We should have been exposed to the full power of his guns, &, while adding to our own losses, would have forgone the advantage of inflaming his./The control of Bessarabia, until such time as Russia shall be restored & the people will be free to pronounce for their return to Russia, by the League of Nations./You shall not find two leaves of a tree exactly alike, nor will you be able to examine two hands that are exactly similar./Words requiring the local authority to see that when vacancies occurred the appointments should be consistent with the terms of the trust & the teachers chosen would be qualified to give the special religious instruction. But the follies to which ELEGANT VARIATION gives rise are without number.

an

5. That-clauses after intend or intention, desire, demand, be anxious, &c., have shall & should for all persons. Among the &c. are not included hope, anticipate, & the like; but the drawing of the line is not easy; roughly, shall & should are used when the word on which the that-clause depends expresses influence that affects the result, as a demand does, but a hope or a fear does not; a serviceable illustration is expect; mistresses expect (i.e. demand) that their maids shall wear caps; but we expect (i.e. are of opinion) that tomorrow will be fine. Examples of the wrong will are :— I am anxious that, when permanently erected, the right site will be selected./ And it is intended that this will be extended to every division & important branch./The strong desire that the relations of the English-speaking peoples will be so consolidated that they may act as one people./One of the conditions of improvement is that the help given to the deserving poor will be removed from the taint of Poor Law associations.

6. The decorative second or third

person shall as in the quotation following is an archaism, before using which, as before using other archaisms, a writer should be very sure that his style in general will stand comparison with that of the few who have archaized to good purpose:- You shall have watched, it may be, the ways of birds & beasts in a garden or wood for half a lifetime; & your friend,the first time that you show him your preserves shall straightway walk up the leverets, or point out the gold crest's nest which you have always wanted to find. No-one will suggest that that is a maliciously chosen specimen; it is better than nine out of ten that one comes upon in the newspapers; but one who has a real right to this shall would have put otherwise the first time that you show him your preserves & the nest which you have always wanted to find'. Distinguished from this, far less conscious & artificial, but also better avoided. is the use of second or third person shall that may be called the oracularprophetic :—It has already found an honoured place in our national collections; there will come a time when collectors shall fight for it.

'he is absolutely unconnected i. a. s. o. f. with the matter'. The verb

makes -pable; see MUTE E. The p.p. is -ed, & -en is archaic.

shapely. For the adv., see -LILY. shard. In the sense fragment of pottery, the OED treats shard as the normal form & sherd as the variant; on the other hand, the greater familiarity of potsherd tends to keep sherd in being. In the well-known phrase 'the shard-borne beetle ', the interpretation borne through the air on shards' (i. e. the wing-cases), which has so far prevailed as to set up shard as an entomological term for wingcase, appears to be an error; the real meaning was born in shard', there being another word shard, now obsolete except in dialects, meaning cowdung.

6

share makes -rable; see MUTE E. sharp, adv. In such phrases as pull up s., turn s. round, at eight o'clock s., sharp is preferable to sharply; see UNIDIOMATIC -LY.

shave makes -vable; see MUTE E. she. 1. For she & her in bad personifications (e.g. The world wants all that America can give her), see PERSONIFICATION 1, 2.

2. Case. A few violations of ordinary grammar rules may be given; cf. HE. I want no angel, only she (read her)./ When such as her die (read she)./She found everyone's attention directed to Mary, & she herself entirely overlooked (omit she)./But to behold her mother— she to whom she owed her being (read her)./It is himself that he cheers rather than her (doubtful; see CASES)./I saw a young girl whom I guessed to be she whom I had come to meet (read her)./ Nothing must remain that will remind us of that hated siren, the visible world, she who by her allurements is always tempting the artist away (read her). sheaf. The noun has pl. -ves. For the verb, -ve or -f, see -VE(D).

SHEER(LY

shear, vb, has past sheared in ordi nary current senses (We sheared ou sheep yesterday; A machine shearea the bar into foot-lengths, the nap quite short; This pressure sheared the rivets), shore in archaic & poetical use (shore through the cuirass, his plume away, &c.). For the p.p.,shorn remains commoner in most senses than sheared, but is not used in the technical sense of distorted by mechanical shear, nor usually in that of divided with metalcutting shears.

shear-hulk, shearlegs, sheer-. The spelling sheer is due to & perpetuates a mistake. Shears or shearlegs are two (or more) poles with tops joined & feet straddled (& so resembling shear-blades), used in hoisting great weights. A shear-hulk is an old ship utilized for hoisting & provided with shearlegs. The spelling sheer hulk results from confusion with the adjective sheer (i.e. mere), & the omission of the hyphen & shifting of the accent from shear to hulk naturally follows, assisted by the rhythm of the line in Tom Bowling. It would be well to restore shear-hulk & make shearlegs (already often so spelt) invariable.

sheath(e). The noun (-th) is pronounced in sing. -th, but in pl. -dhz; see -TH & -DH. For noun (-th, so pronounced) & verb (-the, pron. -dh) see NOUN & VERB 2 E.

sheave, vb. See SHEAF. sheep. Pl. same; see COLLECTIVES. sheer hulk. See SHEAR-HULK.

sheer(ly). They would say the money has, to the present, been sheerly wasted./A collection of brief pieces in which the sheerly poetical quality is seldom looked for & seldom occurs./ The economic condition of the people in Germany is sheerly desperate. Perhaps owing to the adverbial use of sheer (fell sheer down &c.), the adverb sheerly is usually avoided, & always gives the reader a shock; though the OED quotes it from Burns, Scott, & Stevenson, it may fairly be called unidiomatic; possi

bly it is current in Scotland; at anཎཱ

SHEET LIGHTNING

rate the OED quotations include no well-known English writer.

sheet lightning. No hyphen; see HYPHENS 3 B.

sheikh is the OED's spelling, & its preferred pronunciation shak. shekarry. See SHIKAREE. shekinah, -chi-. Pronounce shiki'na. The OED's preferred spelling is the first.

shelf. There are two separate nouns, one meaning ledge, board, &c., & the other sand-bank &c. Each has pl. -ves, verb -ve, adjectives -ved, -fy, & -vy; see -VE(D). Shelf-ful (of books &c.), n., is best written with hyphen; pl. -ls (unless the two words shelves full are suitable & preferred).

shell-less. So written.

shellac, vb, makes -cked, -cking. shelty, -ie. The word meaning Shetland pony is usually -ie; see -EY, IE, -Y. That meaning a hut (which the OED perhaps makes out to be rarer than it is, & condemns as prob. some error ') is usually -y. shereef, sherif, sheriff. The Mohammedan & the English titles are not etymologically connected. For the former the spelling -eef is preferable to -if both as indicating the accent (shere'f) of an unfamiliar word, & as avoiding assimilation to the English -iff.

SHOULDER

shikaree, -i, shekarry. The first is the OED's preferred form. Pronounce shikah'ri.

shillelagh. So spelt. Pron. -ā ́la. shilly-shally, vb. For inflexions see VERBS IN -IE &c., 6.

shingly, shiny. Not -ey; -EY & -Y. shire. The Ss. as the name of a hunt. ing country means Leics., Northants., & Rutland; it is also applied to other parts of England by the inhabitants of East Anglia, Kent, Sussex, Essex, & Surrey '-OED.

shockedly. A bad form; see -EDLY. shoe, vb, makes shoeing (exceptionally; see MUTE E).

shogun. See TYCOON. Pr. shō'goon. shoot, chute, shute. The last is 'app. in part a dial. form of shoot sb. & partly a variant spelling of chute'-OED. Between the English shoot & the French chute (lit. fall) there has been much confusion, & there seems to be no good reason against making shoot the only spelling & allowing it to retain such senses as it has annexed from chute.

shop. For the talk called s., as compared with cant, slang, &c., see

JARGON.

sheriffalty, sheriffdom, shrievalty. All three are four or more centuries old, & all are still current. -dom termination is declining into one of contempt as in bumbledom, flunkeydom; shrievalty has the disadvantage of not instantly announcing its connexion with sheriff; & it is therefore likely that sheriffalty will prevail.

shew, show. The spelling shew, prevalent in the 18th c. & not uncommon in the first half of the 19th c., is now obs. exc. in legal documents '-OED. In shewbread the old spelling naturally persists.

shibboleth. For synonyms, see SIGN.

shot, n. For pl. shot see COLLECTIVES, 2.

should. For s. & would, see SHALL. For S. in inverted conditionals (s. it happen for if it s. happen), see SUBJUNCTIVE.

shoulder. 1. The cold shoulder (no hyphen, see HYPHENS 3 B), but to cold-shoulder. 2. S. arms. The military sense is not to put the rifle across the s.; that is to slope

arms.

SHOVE

shove makes -vable; see MUTE E. shovel. 1. The verb makes -lled, -lling; see -LL-, -L-. 2. Shovel hat, not shovel-hat; see HYPHENS 3 B. show. For spelling see SHEW. The p.p. is usu. shown, rarely showed. shred, vb. In the p.p. shredded & shred are both old & both extant; the longer is recommended. shriek. See SCREAM.

shrievalty. See sheriffalty. shrilly. Pronounce the adjective (poetic by-form of shrill) shri'll, the adverb shri'l-li.

shrink has past shrank (arch. shrunk), p.p. usu. shrunk as verb or pred. adj., & shrunken as attrib. adj. has shrunk, is shrunk or shrunken, her shrunken or shrunk cheeks.

shrivel makes -lled &c.; -LL-, -L-.

shy. The adj. makes shyer, shyest, shyly, shyness, shyish. The vb makes shier (shying horse). See DRY, & VERBS IN IE &c., 6.

sibilant. See TECHNICAL TERMS. sibyl(line). The spelling (not sybi-) should be noted; see y & I.

(sic), Latin for so, is inserted after a quoted word or phrase to confirm its accuracy as a quotation, or occasionally after the writer's own word to emphasize it as giving his deliberate meaning; it amounts to Yes, he did say that, or Yes, I do mean that, in spite of your natural doubts. It should be used only when doubt is natural; but reviewers & controversialists are tempted to pretend that it is, because (sic) provides them with a neat & compendious form of sneer. The industrialist organ is inclined to regret that the league did not fix some definite date such as the year 1910 (sic) or the year 1912. (sic), because the reader might naturally wonder whether 1910 was meant & not rather 1911; a right use./The Boersen Courier maintains that nothing remains for M. Delcassé but to cry Pater peccavi to Germany & to retrieve as quickly as possible his diplomatic mistake (sic)'. Mistake is the natural term

·

for the quoted newspaper to have used; the quoting one very superfluously repudiates it with (sic)./ An Irish peer has issued a circular to members in the House, with an appeal for funds to carry on the work of enlightening (sic) the people of this country as to the condition of Ireland. What impudence! says (sic); but. as no-one would doubt the authenticity of enlightening, the proper appeal to attention was not (sic), but inverted commas./ A junior subaltern, with pronounced military & political views, with no false modesty in expressing them, & who (sic) possesses the ear of the public

The quoter means Observe by the way this fellow's ignorance of grammar; & who without a preceding who!'; as the sentence is one of those in which the &-who rule of thumb is a blind guide (see WHICH), & is in fact blameless, the (sic) recoils, as often, & convicts its user of error.

sice, size, syce. For the six at dice &c., sice is better than size; for the Indian groom, syce is better than sice.

sick. The S. Man; see SOBRIQUETS. sick, ill. The original & more general sense of sick, which has now been transferred for the most part to ill, was suffering from any bodily disorder. That sense remains to it in attributive use (s. people, a s. child, &c.), but is now uncommon in predicative use (be, feel, s.), in which it means vomiting or ready to vomit. In U.S. & Scotch use the wider sense is still common, & cf. go sick as the army phrase for declaring oneself ill. Instead of either iller or sicker, more ill or more s., worse is the comparative wherever it would not be ambiguous.