On Certain Abuses in Language [pp. 248-272]

THE PRINCE TON RE VIE W.
but that they should be avoided wherever they are not really
needed, and should not be used in any but their strict and accu rate sense. A good many, both of the faults in style and of the
graver practical faults of which I have to speak freely, have come
of using what I must call technical terms, words freely to be used
as technical terms, in a lax and inaccurate way. A common pro cess is, first to use a word in some way which is a mere abuse of
language, and then to found a practical argument on the abuse.
Let me, by way of distinction, begin by speaking of a few
words where the question is one of mere style, in many cases a
mere matter of taste and feeling between Teutonic and Romance
words. In my first sentence I quoted the saying about language
being given us to conceal our thoughts. I might, instead of
the Romance word conceal, have used the Teutonic word hide.
Perhaps if I had myself been throwing the thought into words
for the first time, I might have used the word hide. But in
quoting a well-known saying, I quoted it in the shape in which
it is commonly known. Besides, I am not quite sure that hide
and conceal can always be used for one another. Sometimes,
I should say, they can; in other cases there would seem to
be a slight shade of difference in their meaning. We conceal a
thing of which we wish the very being not to be known; we hide
a thing the being of which is known, but of which we wish the
whereabouts not to be known. The man who wished to conceal his thoughts wished nobody to know that he had such
thoughts. According to my rule, I should say,Use hide rather
than conceal whenever the meaning of the two is quite the same.
But in the case of my quotation I am not quite sure that the
meaning is quite the same; so in this particular phrase conceal
may really be the better word. But in the first words of this
article I certainly said that I should begin; I did not say
that I should commence. Here is a clear case where the choice
lies between a Teutonic and a Romance word of exactly the
same meaning. No shadow of difference of meaning can be
discerned between begin and commence. The question between
the two words is purely a question of style. Each might, as
far as its meaning goes, be put instead of the other in any
sentence where either of them is used. I therefore am, accord
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