longed association with educated persons and through habitual reading of standard literature. Nevertheless important assistance may be obtained from dictionaries and from books of synonyms. The usefulness of dictionaries in this regard will presently appear.

3. Use of the Dictionary

Need of Study.-A dictionary is an exceedingly ingenious concentration of facts about words, and in consequence can not be properly used by one who does not know the secrets of its plan. The writer uncertain of possessing these secrets should first of all examine the Introduction or Preface of his dictionary, reading important parts carefully, and familiarizing himself with the abbreviations and symbols employed in the explanations of words, or at the very least with the places where their meaning may be found. In the following paragraphs attention is called to certain of the matters with which the student should obviously be acquainted.

Etymology. All good dictionaries give etymologies. Relatively few people trouble much about the information which is contained in these thorny-looking entries. Yet it is almost always interesting and sometimes_highly profitable.

It is interesting to observe, for example, how considerable a part of our language comes directly or indirectly from the Latin and the Greek, and how almost every language in the world has contributed to our resources. It is often both interesting and profitable to note the component parts of words and the original significance of these parts. Sometimes in this way, better than in any other, one can grasp firmly the meaning of a word and fix it permanently in the memory.

It is not easy to forget, once having learned it, that the word enormous means, literally, outside of the usual rule, norm, or measure; that extravagant means wandering outside; that extraordinary means outside of the common order or method; that exorbitant means going outside of the track

or orbit; that egregious means outside of the herd. One observes that in the original elements of all these adjectives there is the suggestion of passing outside of or beyond what is expected or normal; and that is interesting in itself and aids the memory. A knowledge of the original elements tends, moreover, as one encounters such a word as extravagant or egregious or exorbitant to give it a tangible and imaginative quality and hence a definiteness of application which it would not otherwise possess.

Grammatical Information.-Immediately following the entry of a word there appears an abbreviation indicating the part of speech to which it belongs. Webster's dictionary, for example, uses n. for noun, v.t. for transitive verb, a. for adjective, adv. for adverb, and so on. Sometimes a word is now one part of speech, now another, in which case there will be in the course of its treatment clearly marked grammatical divisions. (See, for example, in any dictionary, the word finger.) The information thus set down may be of the greatest use to the writer who knows it is there and how to employ it.

For example, when about to say that his hero is "medium tall," a writer may doubt whether this use of "medium" is allowed in a formal or literary style. How is he to find out? The dictionary will tell him—not directly but indirectly. He knows, of course, that any word which is thus used to modify the adjective tall must be an adverb. Does the dictionary recognize medium as an adverb? He finds the word discussed as a noun (n.), and as an adjective (a.), but not as an adverb (adv.). He must, therefore, renounce medium as a modifier of tall. Nor should he as a student once did whose use of "medium tall” was questioned—jump rashly to the conclusion that if medium is wrong, mediumly must be right. The supposition is plausible, but the dictionary would save him from the blunder. The careful student, before he uses "mediumly tall" as a revision of "medium tall," will first ascertain whether the word mediumly exists. He will look for it in his dictionary, and he will not find it.

Or, again, a writer is about to say: "All day long the old man sat by the fire, contemplating." He may possibly have a doubt as to whether he is justified in thus using the word contemplating. Perhaps it sounds a little odd to him. Now he is likely to suspect that what is odd, if anything, is the use of the verb contemplate as an intransitive verb. Does the dictionary, then, give contemplate as an intransitive verb? He finds that it does, that his expression is correct; it remains only for him to decide whether he likes its rhetorical or literary effect.

Nor are these the only ways in which the dictionary can answer grammatical questions. It is, for example, the most convenient place to learn the correct parts of difficult verbs and the correct singular and plural forms of irregular

nouns.

Usage. In respect to matters of good usage the dictionary renders important service. It will not always answer one's question; its answer is not infallible (one dictionary will at times be at variance with another); still, even in this respect it is useful. If a writer resorts to it to learn the status of a word and finds it recorded without annotation concerning its standing or its class, he may assume that it satisfies the requirements of formal composition. If he finds it recorded with annotation concerning its standing or its class, he should pause and consider. He may know, if it is marked colloquial, that it is considered appropriate in conversation but unsuited to formal composition; if it is marked obsolete, that it is an old word no longer in use, hence unsuited, without explanation, to formal composition; if it is marked slang, that it is without the dignity appropriate to formal composition, or even, in general, to conversation; similarly with archaic, dialectic, poetic, etc., according to the significance of the particular annotation. When a word is classed as belonging to a science, trade, or profession, such as botany, chemistry, medicine, photography, printing, the writer should consider whether the word is sufficiently well known to the general public to admit of being used without

explanation in ordinary formal composition. Tuberculosis, for example, is classed in a certain dictionary as belonging to medicine, but is unfortunately well known to all the world. Purlieu, in the first meaning, is classed in the same dictionary as belonging to English history, and is obviously in the sense defined "Afforested land disafforested so as to remit to the former owners their rights"-not familiar to the general reader. In this region the writer must often depend upon other books or upon the range and thoroughness of his own reading. It should be carefully observed, that, as in the last case mentioned, an annotation may be applied to one meaning of a word without being applied to all meanings: in the dictionary in question a second meaning of the word purlieu appears without comment.

Through omission also the dictionary passes judgment on many questions of usage. The student who is on the verge of writing "picturize" may doubt whether the invention has as yet attained a respectable status. If the most recent edition of a good dictionary does not record the word, he will infer that he will best please the cultivated reader by finding some other expression for his thought. So in the case of innumerable nice questions which arise in connection with new words, with the attachment to old words of new or vulgar meanings, with violent transfers from one part of speech to another: silence on the part of a good dictionary may be interpreted-and by any but the most experienced writers should be accepted as unfavorable judgment.

Idiom. Every language has its peculiar habits of associating words, habits which often have no basis in logic, which can not therefore be reasoned about, which are ordinarily acquired only by much reading and conversation. Doubts on such matters may sometimes be set at rest by the dictionary. Does one “inveigh upon" or "inveigh against” a thing? The dictionary may give the answer. Similarly one is likely to learn from the dictionary whether to say compare with (in a given instance) or compare to; acquiesce to or acquiesce in; envious of or envious toward. Dictionaries

spacious enough to include quotations from standard authors are of course especially serviceable in determining questions of idiom.

Synonyms. Some modern dictionaries not only define individual words but also carefully discuss numerous groups of words, discriminating among related meanings. The following note from the third edition of Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, under the word belligerent, illustrates a feature of the dictionary to which the student is likely to pay too little attention.

Syn.: Irascible, choleric; disputatious, wrangling, quarrelsome, contentious, litigious; bellicose, pugnacious.-Belligerent, bellicose, pugnacious, quarrelsome, contentious, litigious agree in the idea of aptness to contend. Belligerent implies warlikeness or actual hostilities; bellicose, inclination to fight. Pugnacious differs from bellicose in applying more to disposition; it does not suggest pettiness or ill nature, as does quarrelsome. Contentious often suggests perversity and tiresome persistence in dispute. Litigious implies fondness for legal

contention.

Hyphens. Whether an expression containing two originally separate words (such as football, ground squirrel, well-bred, classmate, class day, floodgate, flood tide, selfdenial hidebound, high-minded, to-morrow, so-called) is to be written "solid," that is, as one unhyphenated word, or as a compound word with a hyphen, or as two separate words, is often a perplexing question. In many instances, moreover, practice varies. An acceptable course in any particular case is to consult a standard dictionary. If the expression does not appear except in the separate entries of its component parts, it is to be written as two separate words. If it does appear as a single entry, the question is settled by the form in which it is printed. In interpreting this form the student should be careful to discriminate between the hyphen which in the main entry of a word and in its respellings is regularly employed to separate two unaccented syllables and the hyphen which is a permanent element in the