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

2THE PRZVCE TON RE VIEW.
of language of which I wish specially to speak. The process is
this: Some strictly technical word is taken, some word which, in
some other language, most likely in some distant age and coun try, had a very distinct and technical meaning. It is used per haps, first of all, consciously as a figure, with a direct allusion
to its original meaning. It is applied to something which has
some kind of relation to its original meaning, to something
which the reference to its original meaning really illustrates.
As a figure, used once for all, it is very likely really in place;
its application is very likely both apposite and ingenious. Only
it is safer not to make such applications, unless we are quite sure
that they will never be made again. For the chances are that
the word will be caught up by some one who does not understand the force of the original allusion. It is to him simply
a new word, a foreign word, perhaps a long and grand-sounding
word, which he thinks it fine to drag into his talk, without any
thought whatever of its real meaning. Step by step others
receive the new word as a fine word; it passes into the received
dialect of those who love to use fine words. It is no longer tsed
as a figure or an allusion; all thought of its origin and history
has passed away. The word is used simply as being finer, and
withal vaguer, than the common word to whose meaning it
comes nearest. The common word has a sharp, definite meaning which everybody understands. There is no metaphor, no
vagueness, no haziness, about it; it is simply the name for the
thing, and that is all. The common word is therefore used by
those who know what they mean and who mean what they say,
and who wish every one to know what they do mean. But the
word which once was a metaphor, but which has ceased to be
one, does not in the same way ever become the simple name of
the thing in the same way as the common English word. The
point of the metaphor has wholly passed away, but the once
metaphorical expression still keeps about it a good deal of the
vagueness and haziness of its metaphorical days. It is theref6re used by all those classes of speakers for whose ends fine
words, hazy words, pay. It is used by those who wish to conceal their meaning, by those who know that they have no meaning to conceal, and those who are fumbling about for a meaning
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