The Language Zoo
Media
Part of Panorama
- Title
- The Language Zoo
- Language
- English
- Year
- 1939
- Rights
-
- Fulltext
- f;Do not abuse words. THE LANGUAGE ZOO FIRST borne by the stork. man in his early stages creeps and crawls and squawks and sqeaks until he becomes a little p_ig. Later in life he is a poor fish and a sucker, but often acquires horse sense. Road hogs flourish. and the early bird gets the worm. Some people look sheepish. act like craw:fish, or they grouse and growl, or snap like turtles. Some men are bullheaded; others are cow-licked. Husbands have lived to be mere insects. Occasionally one meets a consummate ass. We have wise old owls and sly old foxes. The eagle-eyed prey upon their fellow men. Sometimes a dirty dog runs amuck. Kangaroocourts are common. Clodhoppers hop and jaywalkers walk. But most of us get stung without a bee in sight. The female of the species is more deadly than the male. Old maids get cattish, and maids that are not so old, kittenish. Men are sharks, old bears, or wolves in sheep's clothing, and pull the wool over our eyes. We lionize heroes, and everybody knows some old crab, some dumb cow, or some silly goose. Men are lobsters; the wise ones shut up in season like oysters or clams; or, like MARCH, 1939 snails, they draw back into their shells. Every country-seat has its courthouse rats; everytown has its chickens and old hens. The whole human world is infested with parasites. We develop elephantiasis, horse's neck, Charlie horse, and a whale of a lot of other things. We are land-lubbers and seadogs, turtle-doves and otherwise fine birds, such as lame ducks or early birds. We are dark horses, hunks of cheese, little shrimps, and mites, so often wiggle out of things. We do the goose-step, the turkeytrot, and the camel-walk while we get a hump on ourselves. We have our bear-cats, hamactors, and jackleg lawyers. We sing like canaries. laugh like hyenas, grin like Cheshire cats, shed crocodile tears, and hound and buffalo one another. We are stubborn as . mules, slick as eels, but often have to pony up. We are the biggest toad in the puddle or the smallest tadpole m the pond. We make 'em pigeon-toed, walrus-toothed, pugnosed, monkey-faced, chickenhearted, and cock-eyed; and all of us are more or less cuckoo. Finally, we sing our swan sonR and croak. Isn't the science of words wonderful? 29 Some people work words to death. Nowadays one never devises a plan; it is al ways evolved. Among many overused words is proposition. Not content with using it to drive proposal into oblivion, its devotees employ it to identify anything from a condition to a person. "He's a difficult proposition" is actually said by persons who regard their English as passable, while its substitution for "problem," "situation," "matter," and even "prospect," is common. Here's the latest gem that has been left at my door-"! contacted Jones and propositioned him, but he suspicioned me of trying to douQle-cross him." First the people focused their attention on the important subject of immigration when they might have concentrated it and have been better understood. Next they toyed with the word mobilize, and they mobilized credit, mobilized gold, mobilized bank reserves, and on the mobilization established a Central Reserve Bank. A few years ago, the term intrigue was mistreated by writers of English prose. Dozens of the b u d d i n g novelists thought they were wanting in literary style if they did not crowd in somewhere that they \Vere intrigued by a thought, an 30 action, a spectacle, or some dubious behavior. T b i s w a s followed by emerge. Once a man used to come out of a room. He rarely does so nowadays; be emerges. He emerges from a train; from a plane, and even from a parachute. One amateur got him even to emerge into a room. Among the other words that have been "done almost to death" with us are alibi and sophisticated. The man who remembers bis Latin resents alibi when used as if it meant "excuse," for it means "otberor else-where," and in law is the plea of being somewhere else. The absurd length to which some persons will go is best il1 ustra ted by the ridiculous associations in which the word sophisticated is found. To speak or write of sophisticated furniture, calories, or peppermints is foolish even as it is to do so of a sophisticated .countryside. In fact, to use the word sophisticated in any sense but relation to an individual is silly. If words are what the poet Donne once described them to be, "the subtlest and most delicate outward creatures composed of thoughts and breaths," we should remember that they are our best means with which to win our way in life.Dr. Frank Vizetelly, cond6118ed from a public address.