old English word without 8, originally i-land (ig-land), "water-land." Similarly, boil," ulcer," is of English origin; boil, "to heat," is French. Compare also curry, the East Indian name of a sauce, with the verb to curry a horse. Sometimes the same word is used in opposite senses; e. g., mortal, as in "mortal man," certain to die, and "mortal wound," certain to kill; or "capital punishment" and "a capital speech." Nervous sometimes means "strong," sometimes "weak." The naturalist hesitates to speak of "big-brained" and "little-brained" animals, and prefers the terms macrencephalous and micrencephalous.

To account for the oddities of our English vocabulary is the task of the philologist. The ordinary writer and reader can only accept the facts and make the best of them. To achieve even moderate success in the ready and correct use of English words, one must be painstaking and persevering. A few practical suggestions will be of help.

79. Use of Dictionaries.-See Definition, § 49. At the present day some good dictionary should be always accessible to every scholar, and the constant use of one should be required of every scholar. The teacher who suffers his class to use words in ignorance of their meaning, or to pass them over unheeded in reading, neglects the plainest duty of the profession. In a general way it may even be asserted that the chief aim of education is to teach the correct use of words. For it is through' words that the greater part of our knowledge is given and received.

The study of one word at a time is necessarily slow. The acquisition of a vocabulary may be hastened by studying words in groups and noting the effect of different prefixes and suffixes. E. g., there are such groups as envi-ous, envi-able; contemptu-ous, contempt-ible; master-ful, master-ly; un-interested, dis-interested; ac-cident, in-cident; luxuri-ous, luxuri-ant. Every teacher should find it both easy and profitable to arouse the scholar's attention to

these and similar groups. There are also special books for the study of prefixes and suffixes and groups of words from a common stem.

80. Good Reading. The surest way to learn the correct use of words lies in the conscientious reading of good literature. At one time, indeed, this was the only way. Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton, had no dictionaries like ours. They acquired their vocabulary chiefly through reading and conversation. In their day, it is true, the language had not yet been swelled with its present mass of scientific terms; it was more restricted, more within the grasp of a person of average education. We who have larger needs cannot dispense with dictionaries. But we still can do, in a measure at least, as the earlier writers did: we can learn our literary words and phrases from our predecessors as they learned their words from their predecessors.

Words which we acquire directly from a good writer make a definite impression and are retained in the memory. They have a vitality which is lost in the columns. of a dictionary. When we repeat them in our writing we feel that we are safe, because we are acting under the best guidance. The student should note the significance of Macaulay's words, e. g., in § 3, "domineering passion;" "boldly and fairly investigating;" "inclined to scepticism and fond of paradox" (an exact description of one side of Johnson's character). Attention has already been called to De Quincey's choice of words, § 6. In Hawthorne, § 8, note the "tramp of his ponderous boots;" "response;" "choleric in temperament." In Coleridge, § 9, note "pertinent" (also used by him, § 3); "linked strain;""adhering." In Burke, § 9, note "conservation and correction;" "dissolve the fabric" (an echo of Prospero's speech, Tempest, iv. 1). In the first passage from Irving, § 12, note "redoubtable;" "rat of a pony;" "rusty tail;" "bustling times."

Through attentive reading we learn to master not only single words, but also peculiar phrases. An instance is the expression to curry favor. Here no other noun can be substituted for favor. To write, "Johnson went to London to curry friends there," is to make one's self ridiculous. The phrase means simply to gain the favor of a person by flattery. Its history is very curious.

To read thoroughly a few books by good authors is better than to read a large amount carelessly and without discrimination. Irving's Rip Van Winkle, Sleepy Hollow, and the Christmas papers, one of Scott's romances, one of Hawthorne's, one by Dickens, an essay or two by Macaulay, will, if thoroughly studied, supply a vocabulary ample enough for the needs of the ordinary prose-writer. Irving and Hawthorne, being Americans and writing usually upon American subjects, are peculiarly suited to American pupils. Their words and phrases are clear and simple and chosen with scrupulous care.

81. Blunders in the Use of Words. To mention and correct all the blunders possible in the use of English words would be an endless task. But attention should be called to certain classes of blunders.

(1) Using a word which does not properly bear the meaning which the writer wishes to convey. E. g., transpire, in the sense of "happen." The verb transpire rightfully means "to become known." Aggravate, which means "to make worse "-as when we say that a person aggravates an offence by making a lame excuse for it—is misused in the sense of "provoke, irritate," as in the phrase, "his manner was aggravating." Liable, which means exposed to a certain unpleasant contingency, is misused in the sense of "likely," as in the phrase, "Shall I be liable to find him at home?" Demean is misused in the sense of "degrade, debase," by confusion with the English adjective "mean ;" in reality it comes from the French de

mener, and properly means "to conduct one's self," either badly or well according to the accompanying adverb.

To stop, in the sense of to stay, is a common blunder. Properly used, to stop means to arrest a certain movement; e. g., "Stop talking!" "I stopped at your office on my way up town.” To stay means to remain in one place or condition for a considerable time; e. g., " I stayed a month in London," but "I stopped over night in Albany on my way to Chicago." The following expressions are not correct: "He is stopping away from home." "Where are you stopping?" (i. e., where are you rooming, in which hotel are you? The older form was: Where are you lodged? But this sounds archaic. Where are you staying? is better than Where are you stopping?)

(2) Confounding words which have some resemblance and come from the same stem, but differ in meaning. E. g., reverend, meaning entitled to veneration, and reverent, paying veneration to; relic, a remnant, a memorial, and relict, a woman whose husband is dead, a widow. The confusion of expect and suspect is almost chronic in America; one hears it from the lips of persons otherwise well educated. Yet the difference is marked. Expect means to look forward to something as likely to happen in the future; suspect, to conjecture the existence of something in the present or the past. Thus, "I expect him to arrive at three o'clock;" but, "He is, I suspect, not diligent." Observation is sometimes confounded with observance; acceptation with acceptance.

(3) Ambiguous Words.-A truly ambiguous word is one which has two distinct meanings, coming from different sources and coinciding in form. There are not many such words in the language. One is curry, mentioned in §§ 78, 80. Another is defer, meaning "to submit to," from the Latin de-ferre, and defer "to put off," from dis-ferre. Thus we say, "I defer to your judgment in this matter," and "I will, at your request, defer making the attempt for the

present." A third is let. The Anglo-Saxon lætan, “to permit" (compare modern German lassen), and the AngloSaxon lettan, "to hinder" (compare modern German verletzen), have coalesced in our modern English. But the "hinder" verb is now almost obsolete; it survives in the law phrase "without let or hindrance," in Hamlet's speech (i. sc. 5), "Unhand me, gentlemen; By heaven, I'll make a ghost of him that lets me," and in the lawn-tennis term let, applied to a served ball that strikes the top of the net in passing into the receiving court.

Usually a so-called ambiguous word is one which started with only one primary meaning, but has developed in the course of time many secondary meanings, some of which are liable to confusion. An example is overlook. We overlook a person in the sense of watching him closely; we also overlook a person in the sense of failing to see him at all. Another is money, used sometimes in the sense of coin or its paper equivalent, sometimes in the sense of credit, loans, etc. When the stock-market reports money as scarce, the meaning is that borrowers have difficulty in finding lenders; the amount of actual money-i. e., coin, or bank-notes-in the country may not have diminished at all. Theory, which properly means the formal summing of all that we actually know upon a subject (see Coleridge, § 3), has acquired "the vulgar sense of a mere fiction of the imagination," a visionary scheme or untried project.

Many indefinable terms (see $$ 49, 50) are used so incessantly and so carelessly that the reader is often puzzled to catch the writer's sense. Among such terms are nature, liberty, democratic, republican, radical, conservative, etc. In writing, one should attach a definite meaning to every indefinable term, and adhere to that meaning throughout the composition.

82. Precision. This is clearness intensified to the utmost. We are precise when, instead of using a word