WIND, VB.

trade-wind. The wind that blows constantly towards the equator from about the thirtieth parallels, north & south; its main direction in the northern hemisphere being from the north-east, & in the southern hemisphere from the southeast.

typhoon. a. A violent storm or tempest occurring in India. b. A violent cyclonic storm or hurricane & occurring in the China adjacent regions, chiefly during the period from July to October.

seas

waterspout. a. A gyrating column of mist, spray, & water, produced by the action of a whirlwind on a portion of the sea & the clouds immediately above it. b. A sudden & violent fall of rain; a cloudburst. whiff. A slight puff or gust of wind, a breath.

whirlwind. A body of air moving rapidly in a circular or upward spiral course around a vertical or slightly inclined axis which has also a progressive motion over the surface of land or water.

wind. Air in more or less rapid natural motion, breeze or gale or blast (Concise Oxf. Dict.).

zephyr. A soft mild gentle wind or breeze.

wind, verbs. Wind, wound, to twist &c. Wind, winded (or wound), to blow (a horn). Wind, winded, to give breath to or exhaust the breath of. The two latter are from the noun wind (wound being a natural corruption), & unconnected with the first.

windward(s). See -WARD(s). wine makes winy; see MUTE E. winning makes est; -ER & -EST, 4. winter. W. garden, w. quarters, w. solstice; each should be two words, unhyphened; see HYPHENS 3 B. For the w. of our discontent, see IRRELEVANT ALLUSION.

see

separate noun unhyphened; HYPHENS, Group *From hand to mouth; if in does not precede, there is no objection to any of the three forms no wise, no-wise, nowise.

-WISE,-WAYS. 1. The ending-ways, or occasionally -way, is often used indifferently with wise, & is very seldom the only form without one in -wise by its side-perhaps only in always. 2. In a few established words, -wise is alone, esp. clockwise, coastwise, likewise, otherwise, sunwise. 3. In other established words both forms are used, as breadth-, broad-, end-, least-, length-, long-, no-, side-, slant-. 4. In words made for the occasion from nouns, as in Use it clubwise or pokerwise, Go crabwise or frogwise, Worn cloakwise or broochwise or chainwise, Placed studwise or fencewise, -wise is now much the commoner.

wishful is a word chiefly used by those who disapprove of the phrase ANXIOUS to, & it has consequently a certain taint of purism about it. If it should ever lose that, & come into general use, it would at once relieve anxious of a meaning that is open to exception, & provide desirous with a grammatically convenient synonym; compare desirous of doing with wishful to do. In the mean time, wishful (with its ludicrous suggestion of wistful) gives the reader a slight shock as he comes to it: We should recommend a perusal of the whole article to those wishful to understand the real nature of the conflict.

wistaria. So spelt.

wit, n. See HUMOUR; that the two are different names for the same thing is no doubt still a popular belief; but literary critics at least should not allow themselves to identify the two, as in: It is to be doubted whether the author's gifts really do include that of humour. Two jests do not make a wit.

wit, vb. Pres., wot, wottest; past wist; infin., to wit; part. witting. Sec WARDOUR STREET.

WITCH

witch-. See wych-.

witenagemot. Pron. wi'tenagĭmō't. with. Writers who have become conscious of the ill effect of as to & in the CASE of, casting about for a substitute that shall enable them still to pull something forward to the beginning of a sentence (The modern journalistic craving for immediate intelligibility said Dr Henry Bradley), have lately hit upon with, which is sometimes found displacing of or some really appropriate preposition-atrick that should be avoided :-With pipes, as with tobacco, William Bragge was one of the most successful collectors./ [Collins, Blair, Parnell, Dyer, Green] Collins has had his excellent editors, & we must suppose that the manuscript has finally disappeared; but, with the others, we suspect that the poems are extant./Read of pipes, of tobacco, the poems of the others.

withal. See WARDOUR Street. withe, withy. Both spellings, & the monosyllabic as well as the disyllabic pronunciation, are in use. As against those who condemn the monosyllable as a novelty or an ignorance, there is the plural withs in the A. V. of Judg. xvi. 7. But probably withy, pl. -ies, is the best form for modern purposes, obviating uncertainty.

without. 1. W.- outside. 2. W.= unless. 3. Without or without. 4. Without hardly. 5. Without him being. 6. Negative confusion.

1. W.-outside. Both as adverb (listening to the wind without; clean within & without), & as preposition (is without the pale of civilization), the word retains this meaning; but it is no longer for all styles, having now a literary or archaic sound that may be very incongruous.

2. W. unless. No high efficiency can be secured without we first secure the hearty cooperation of the 30,000,000 or so workers. The use is good old English, but bad modern English—one of the things that many people say, but few write; it should be

left to conscious stylists who can rely on their revivals' not being taken for vulgarisms.

3. Without... or without . . . It can be done without any fear of his knowing it, or without other evil consequences. The well meant repetition of without is not merely needless, but wrong. See or 4.

4. Without hardly. The introduction of the vast new refineries has been brought about quickly, silently, & effectively, & without the surrounding community hardly being aware of what was happening. Again, like 2, a common colloquialism, but, unlike it, one that should never appear outside spoken or printed talk; the English for without hardly is almost without.

5. Without him being. The word is peculiarly apt to usher in a FUSED PARTICIPLE, e. g. The formidable occasion had come & gone without anything dreadful happening. The fused participle is no worse after without than elsewhere, but those who are prepared to eschew it altogether should take warning that without will sometimes try their virtue, so often does the temptation present itself; it is, for instance, a pure accident that the sentence quoted in 4 for a different point contains the fused participle without the community being aware. Escapes are usually not hard to find; here & nothing dreadful had happened', or without any dreadful results', would do, but particular suggestions for a particular case are of little value; the great thing is general readiness to abandon & recast any of one's phrases that one finds faulty. 6. Negative confusion. Like all negative & virtually negative words, without often figures in such_absurdities as-It is not safe for any young lady to walk along the Spaniards-road on a Sunday evening by herself without having unpleasant remarks spoken as she passes along./ Rendering it possible for a Government to accept some at any rate of the recommendations of the Committee

wood. Wood anemone is better as two separate words; also, without question, wood pavement; see HyWoodbine, not -bind, PHENS 3 B. is the established form, esp. with Shakspere & Milton to maintain it. Tomorrow to fresh woods, not fields; a pasture, by the way, is a field; see MISQUOTATION.

wooden makes woodenness.

woof, warp, web, weft. The warp is a set of parallel threads stretched out; the threads woven across & between these are the woof or weft; & the fabric that results is the web. wool makes, in British spelling, woollen, woolly, & in American woolen, woolly; woollen is perhaps anomalous even by British standards (see -LL-, -L-), but is certainly established; &, on its analogy, -woolled should be better than -wooled.

woolly bear. No hyphen; see HYPHENS 3 B.

WORD-PATRONAGE. Under SUPERIORITY, the tendency to take out one's words & look at them, to apologize for expressions that either need no apology or should be quietly refrained from, has been mentioned. To pat oneself on the back, instead of apologizing, for one's word is a contrary manifestation of the same weakness, viz self-consciousness; but it is rare enough to deserve this little article all to itself: ... propose to use their powers to force a dissolution. That is a contingency which has been adumbrated (to revive a word which has been rather neglected of late); but this is one more case in which we must be content to wait & see.

work, vb. The disappearance of the form wrought is so manifest, yet so far from complete, that it is impossible to say from year to year where idiom still requires it & where it is already archaic. A few sentences with blanks for wrought or worked will illustrate. As the direction of progress is clear, prudence counsels falling in with it in good time. A contemporary who -in brass. These things have · together for good. She feelings. This They have science his audience into fury. When they were sufficiently up.

as

upon his infinite mischief. their will. Conwithin him. lle

workaday is now displaced, wholly in the noun use, & for the most part an adjective, by the normal workday, of which it is regarded as a slipshod pronunciation to be used only as a genial unbending; this workaday world' is still usual.

working. W. capital, w. expenses, &c., should have no hyphens; see HYPHENS 3 B.

WORKING & STYLISH WORDS. Anyone who has not happened upon this article at a very early stage of his acquaintance with the book will not suppose that the word stylish is

meant to be laudatory. Nor is it ; but neither is this selection of stylish words to be taken for a blacklist of out-&-out undesirables. Many of them are stylish only when they are used in certain senses, being themselves in other senses working words; e. g., antagonize is a working word for to arouse antagonism in the mind of' or make hostile', though nothing if not stylish for 'to oppose'; category is a working word in the philosopher's sense, though stylish as a mere synonym for class; protagonist a working word for the one person upon whom the interest centres, but aggressively stylish for an advocate; college stylish for school but the working word for-college. Others again, such as bodeful & deem & dwell & maybe, lose their unhappy stylish air when they are in surroundings of their own kind, where they are not conspicuous like an escaped canary among the sparrows.

What is to be deprecated is the notion that one can improve one's style by using stylish words. Those in the list below, like hundreds of others, have, either in certain senses or generally, plain homely natural companions; the writer who prefers to one of these the stylish word for no better reason than that he thinks it stylish, instead of improving his style, makes it stuffy, or pretentious, or incongruous. About the words in small capitals remarks bearing on the present subject will be found in their dictionary places :

STYLISH

CRYPTIC deem

WORN-OUT HUMOUR

DESCRIPTION

DWELL

ENVISAGE

FEASIBLE

FORENOON

MAYBE

WORKING

obscure, mysterious think

kind, sort

live

face, confront

possible

morning

perhaps

china

PROTAGONIST

PORCELAIN

sufficient VIOLIN

champion, advocate

ENOUGH

FIDDLE

workless. In the article 'S INCONGRUOUS Some illustrations have been given of how the newspaper headline is affecting the language; see also WED. Workless gives another example. We have all known the unemployed' as long as we can remember. But unemployed fills up a good deal of headline; something shorter is wanted, & workless is invented for the need. But, secondly, workless by itself is shorter than the workless; so workless is turned from an adjective into an indeclinable plural noun-all to possible such gems as :

make

WORN-OUT HUMOUR

public will not be amused if he serves it up the small facetiae that it remembers long ago to have taken delight in. We recognize this about anecdotes, avoid putting on our friends the depressing duty of simulating surprise, & sort our stock into chestnuts & still possibles. Anecdotes are our pounds, & we take care of them; but of the phrases that are our pence we are more neglectful. Of the specimens of worn-out humour exhibited below nearly all have had point & liveliness in their time; but with every year that they remain current the proportion of readers who are not amused' to those who find them fresh & new inexorably rises.

6

Such grammatical oddities as muchly; such puns as Bedfordshire & the Land of Nod; such allusions as the Chapter on Snakes in Iceland; such parodies as To or not to

-; such quotations as On intent, or single blessedness, or suffer a sea change; such oxymorons as The gentle art of doing something ungentle; such polysyllabic uncouthness as calling a person an individual or an old maid an unappropriated blessing; such needless euphemisms as unmentionables or a table's limbs ; such meioses as the herringpond, or Epithets the reverse of complimentary, or some ' as a superlative; such playful archaisms as hight or yclept; such legalisms as (the) said & the same, & this deponent; such shiftings of application as innocent or guiltless of hs, or of the military persuasion, or to spell ruin or discuss a roast fowl or be too previous; such metonymics as the leather & the ribbons for ball & reins ; such metaphors as timberyard & sky-pilot & priceless; such zeugmas as in topboots & a temper; such happy thoughts as taking in each other's washing-with all these we, i. e. the average adult, not only are not amused; we feel a bitterness, possibly because they remind us of the lost youth in which we could be tickled with a straw, against the

WORTH)(WORTH WHILE

scribbler who has reckoned on our having tastes so primitive.

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

worsen. See -EN VERBS.

worship makes -ipped, -ipper, -ipping; see -p-, -pp-.

worsted. Pronounce woos-. worth)(worth while. In certain uses great confusion prevails, which can be cleared up with the aid of grammar. The important fact is that the adjective worth requires what is most easily described as an object; it is meaningless to say This is worth, but sense to say This is worth sixpence, or This is worth saying (i.e. the necessary expenditure of words), or This is worth while (i.c. the necessary expenditure of time); but one such object satisfies its requirements, so that This is worth while saying, with the separate objects while & saying, is ungrammatical. A less essential point, which must nevertheless be realized if all is to be clear, is the doubtful nature of the It that is often present in sentences containing worth. Though This is worth while saying is wrong, It is worth while saying this is right, but again It (viz whatever has just been said) is worth while saying is wrong; the last It is the ordinary pronoun, & this or that might have stood instead of it, but the It of It is worth while saying this is what is called the anticipatory it (see IT, 1, 2) & means not this or that, but saying this. In the following table, this source of confusion will be avoided, every it used being of the anticipatory kind. A & B are two faultless forms, B usually appearing not in the direct order, but with It; C is another correct form, but slightly less idiomatic than A & B; it, like B, is usually not in direct order, but with It. Of the a, b, c, forms, a is A spoilt by having worth while instead of worth, which means that worth has two objects; bis B spoilt by the verb say's having no object, the cause being, as will