TO THE MEMORY OF MY BROTHER FRANCIS GEORGE FOWLER, M.A. CANTAB. WHO SHARED WITH ME THE PLANNING OF THIS BOOK, BUT DID NOT LIVE TO SHARE THE WRITING. I think of it as it should have been, with its prolixities docked, its dullnesses enlivened, its fads eliminated, its truths multiplied. He had a nimbler wit, a better sense of proportion, and a more open mind, than his twelve-yearolder partner; and it is matter of regret that we had not, at a certain point, arranged our undertakings otherwise than we did. The one In 1911 we started work simultaneously on The Pocket Oxford Dictionary and this book; living close together, we could, and did, compare notes; but each was to get one book into shape by writing its first quarter or half ; and so much only had been done before the war. in which, as the less mechanical, his ideas and contributions would have had much the greater value had been assigned, by ill chance, to me. In 1918 he died, aged 47, of tuberculosis contracted during service with the B.E.F. in 1915-16. The present book accordingly contains none of his actual writing; but, having been designed in consultation with him, it is the last fruit of a partnership that began in 1903 with our translation of Lucian. H. W. F. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I cannot deny myself the pleasure of publicly thanking Lt-Col. H. G. Le Mesurier, C.I.E., who not only read and criticized in detail the whole MS. of this book, but devised, at my request, a scheme for considerably reducing its bulk. That it was not necessary to adopt this scheme is due to the generosity of the Clarendon Press in consenting to publish, at no high price, an amount much greater than that originally sanctioned. On behalf of the Press, Mr. Frederick Page and Mr. C. T. Onions have made valuable corrections and comments. The article on morale has appeared previously in the Times Literary Supplement, that on only in the Westminster Gazette, and those on Hyphens, Inversion, Metaphor, Split infinitive, Subjunctives, and other matters, in S.P.E. KEY TO PRONUNCIATION VOWELS ā ēið úōō (mate, mete, mite, mote, mule, moot) H. W. F. a e io u ar er or These italic letters stand for light vague ar er ir or ur (mare, mere, mire, more, mure) ar er or (part, pert, port) ah aw oi oor ow owr (bah, bawl, boil, boor, brow, bower) LIST OF GENERAL ARTICLES as distinguished from those on individual words. In the dictionary, the titles of most such articles are printed in small capitals. Those of which the titles are bracketed in this list contain only cross references to others in which their subjects are dealt with. A few individual words such as and, do, each, that, important rather as framework than for themselves, are also included; the articles upon these, dealing with points of grammar or idiom that arise every day, are in effect of the general kind; but they are here distinguished from the others by italics (as, not As). |