More stuff about words (Post #2 concerning books)

When I was in grad school, I took a course that should have been called "Methods of Torturing Otherwise Sane People by Making them Look Up Things Like when the First Usage of the Word "Potable" Showed up in British Literature," but was instead called "Methods of Research and Bibliography." Oddly, I got really into using resources such as the OED to track down usages of certain words, and some of that fetish remains with me today. I love to find out what biases and prejudices some words have held in society throughout the last century.

Another book I bought (for around 2 cents probably) at the aforementioned bazaar was the (updated, mind you) 1938 Allen's Synonyms and Antonyms from Harper and Brothers. It is, truly, a goldmine of commentary (though it does not seem to intend to be) on the proper usages and meanings of various words in the American lexicon. My favorite section of the book is the brief preface entitled "How Shall I Say It?", which loftily assures me that, first of all, "...the richness of our English vocabulary betokens richness and variety of thought and experience", and secondly, that "Finding the right word builds vocabulary. The articulate man who is discriminating in his use of language has possessed himself of a valuable kind of power. How shall he say it?" God only knows what was to become of the articulate woman, as she was, in 1938, generally not presumed to need to possess herself of the kind of verbal ammunition referred to here. But I digress.

I also like this section because of the list of "chief explanatory terms" that accompany many of the words in the book--these explanatory terms are meant to let one know the subtleties of when/how a word should be used. And this section explains the explanatory terms. Here are a couple of the more snicker-worthy examples:

Obsolete: Abbreviated as obs. This term denotes a word no longer in common use, like horse-car or cotton for succeed.

Yes, indeed--I often need to be reminded that "horse-car" has fallen out of popular usage, as has "moving picture." I know, I know, it was 1938, but that really is funny to me.

rhetorical: This term indicates words which are characteristically used in language artificially or extravagantly elegant, or that specially seeks to convey an extreme or exaggerated effect, as where marmoreal is used for white, wroth for angry.

Well, shut my mouth.

This conception of the use of "rhetorical," though humorous and possibly somewhat offensive by today's standards (at least to rhetoricians), makes sense in context--in 1938, rhetorical education was still, presumably, in the throes of the belles-lettristic tradition, which in many colleges would have reduced the study and practice of rhetoric to mere ornamentation and style, which, in the eyes of many, came down to flowery or deceptive speech.

At any rate, I'll wrap this up with a lighthearted nod to early 80s era Sesame Street's "Sing Your Synonyms."