The Century Vocabulary Builder Part 5

"Dawn" and "6 A.M."

"Licked" and "worsted"

"Fat" and "plump"

"Wept" and "blubbered"

"Cheek" and "self-a.s.surance"

"Stinks" and "disagreeable odors"

"Steal" and "embezzle"

"Thievishness" and "kleptomania"

"Educated" and "highbrow"

"Job" and "Position"

"Told a lie" and "fell into verbal inexact.i.tude"

"A drunkard" (a stranger) and "a drunkard" (your father).

2. Make a list of your own similar to that in Exercise 1.

3. Read the sentences listed in EXERCISE - Slovenliness III and IV. What do these sentences suggest to you as to the social and mental qualifications of the person who employs them?

4. Read the second paragraph of Appendix 2. What does it suggest to you as to Burke's social and mental qualifications?

5. Suppose you were told that a pa.s.sage of twenty-eight lines contains the following expressions: "mewling and puking," "whining schoolboy,"

"satchel," "sighing like furnace," "round belly," "spectacles on nose,"

"shrunk shank," "sans [without] teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything." Would you believe the pa.s.sage is poetry?--that its total effect is one of poetic elevation? Read the Seven Ages of Man (Appendix 4). _Is_ it poetry? How does Shakespeare reconcile the general poetic tone with such expressions as those quoted?

6. What is wrong with the connotation of the following?

The servant told us that the young ladies were all in.

All my poor success is due to you.

He insisted on carrying a revolver, and so the college authorities fired him.

The carpenter too had his castles in Spain.

He rested his old bones by the wayside, and his gaunt dog stood sniffing at them.

On the other hand, he had a white elephant to dispose of.

When he came to the forks of the road, he showed he was not on the square.

Body, for funeral purposes, must be sold at once. City Automobile Agency.

7. Can you express the following ideas in other words without sacrifice of emotional suggestion? Try.

The music, yearning like a G.o.d in pain.

Alone, alone, all, all alone, Alone on a wide, wide sea!

But O for the touch of a vanished hand, And the sound of a voice that is still!

Old, unhappy, far-off things, And battles long ago.

It was night in the lonesome October.

How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle, In the icy air of night!

While the stars, that oversprinkle All the heavens, seem to twinkle With a crystalline delight.

The moan of doves in immemorial elms, And murmuring of innumerable bees.

Ay, but to die, and go we know not where; To lie in cold obstruction and to rot.

Merrily, merrily, shall I live now, Under the blossom that hangs on the bough.

'Tis as easy now for the heart to be true As for gra.s.s to be green or skies to be blue,-- 'Tis the natural way of living.

We are such stuff As dreams are made of, and our little life Is rounded with a sleep.

8. With the most connotative words at your command describe the following:

Your first sweetheart A solemn experience A ludicrous experience A terrifying experience A mysterious experience The circus parade you saw in your boyhood A servant girl A dude An odd character you have known The old homestead Your boarding house A scene suggesting the intense heat of a midsummer day Night on the river The rush for the subway car The traffic policeman Your boss Anything listed in the first part of Activity 9 of EXERCISE - Discourse.

III

WORDS IN COMBINATION: HOW MASTERED

The more dangerous pitfalls for those who use words in combination--as all of us do--have been pointed out. The best ways of avoiding these pitfalls have also been indicated. But our work together has thus far been chiefly negative. To be sure, many tasks a.s.signed for your performance have been constructive as well as precautionary; but _the end_ held ever before you has been the avoidance of feeble or ridiculous diction. In the present chapter we must take up those aspects of the mastery of words in combination which are primarily positive.

Before coming to specific aspects and a.s.signments, however, we shall do well to consider certain large general purposes and methods.

First, what kind of vocabulary do we wish to acquire? A facile, readily used one? An accurate one? Or one as nearly as may be comprehensive? The three kinds do not necessarily coexist. The possession of one may even hinder and r.e.t.a.r.d the acquisition of another. Thus if we seek a ready vocabulary, an accurate vocabulary may cause us to halt and hesitate for words which shall correspond with the shadings of our thought and emotion, and a wide vocabulary may embarra.s.s us with the plenitude of our verbal riches.

But _may_ is not _must_. Though the three kinds of vocabulary may interfere with each other, there is no reason, except superficially, why they should. Our purpose should be, therefore, to acquire not a single kind but all three. We should be like the boy who, when asked whether he would have a small slice of apple pie or a small slice of pumpkin pie, replied resolutely, "Thank you, I will take a large piece of both."

That the a.s.signments in this chapter may help you develop a vocabulary which shall be promptly responsive to your needs, you should perform some of them rapidly. Your thoughts and feelings regarding a topic may be anything but clear, but you must not pause to clarify them. The words best suited to the matter may not be instantly available, but you must not tarry for accessions of language. Stumble, flounder if you must, yea, rearrange your ideas even as you present them, but press resolutely ahead, comforting yourself with the a.s.surance that in the heat and stress of circ.u.mstances a man rarely does his work precisely as he wishes. When you have finished the discussion, repeat it immediately--and with no more loitering than before. You will find that your ideas have s.h.i.+fted and enlarged, and that more appropriate words have become available. Further repet.i.tions will a.s.sist you the more. But the goal you should set yourself, as you proceed from topic to topic, is the attainment of the power to be at your best in the first discussion. You may never reach this goal, but at least you may approach it.

That the a.s.signments in this chapter may a.s.sist you in making your vocabulary accurate, you should perform some of them in another way. When you have selected a topic, you should first of all think it through. In doing this, arrange your ideas as consistently and logically as you can, and test them with your reason. Then set them forth in language which shall be lucid and exact. Tolerate no slipshod diction, no vaguely rendered general meanings. Send every sentence, every word like a skilful drop-kick--straight above the crossbar. When you have done your best with the topic, lay it by for a s.p.a.ce. Time is a great revealer of hidden defects, and you must not regard your labors as ended until your achievement is the maturest possible for you. If the quant.i.ty of what you accomplish is meager, suffer no distress on that account. The desideratum now is not quant.i.ty, but quality.

The a.s.signments in this chapter will do less toward making your vocabulary wide than toward making it facile and precise. To be sure, they will now and then set you to hunting for words that are new. Better still, they will give you a mastery over some of your outlying words--words known to your eyes or ears but not to your tongue. But these advantages will be somewhat incidental. Means for the systematic extension of your verbal domain into regions as yet unexplored by you, are reserved for the later chapters of this book.

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In the second place, are we to develop a vocabulary for oral discourse or a vocabulary for writing? It may be that our chief impediment or our chief ambition lies in one field rather than in the other. Nevertheless we should strive for a double mastery; we ought to speak well _and_ write well. Indeed the two powers so react upon each other that we ought to cultivate both for the sake of either. True, some men, though inexpert as writers, have made themselves proficient as speakers; or though shambling and ineffective as speakers, have made themselves proficient as writers. But this is not natural or normal. Moreover these men might have gleaned more abundantly from their chosen field had they not shut it off from the acres adjacent. Fences waste s.p.a.ce and curtail harvests.

The a.s.signments in this chapter are of such a nature that you may perform them either orally or in writing. You should speak and write alternately, sometimes on the same topic, sometimes on topics taken in rotation.

In your oral discussions you should perhaps absent yourself at first from human auditors. A bedstead or a dresser will not make you self-conscious or in any way distract your attention, and it will permit you to sit down afterward and think out the degree of your failure or success. Ultimately, of course, you must speak to human beings--in informal conversations at the outset, in more ambitious ways later as occasion permits.

In your writing you may find it advantageous to make preliminary outlines of what you wish to say. But above all, you must be willing to blot, to revise, to take infinite pains. You should remember the old admonition that easy reading is devilish hard writing.