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2. Illustrate by original sentences the correct use of ten of these words: :

Casualty, definite, definitive, dock, wharf, jewellery, jewels, venal, venial, pell-mell, quantity, number, unique, specialty, series, succession, solicitude, solicitation, adherence, adhesion, complement, compliment, habit, deceit, egotism, enormity, esteem, lot, identity, novice, organism, plenty, recourse, resource.

3. Explain the correct uses of the following words, and use them correctly in sentences of your own:

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4. What does the dictionary tell you about the origin of the following words? What about their development in the language? Does this knowledge help you to use any of the words with greater precision?

(1) Gotham (as humorously applied to New York), meander, naughty, gas, buff, gingham, dandelion, date; (2) civil, dunce, idiot, pagan, villain, volume; (3) Carolina, Delaware, New York; (4) arm, eye, foot, hand, head; (5) awful, fearful, dreadful, terrible, horrible; (6) jet (of water), jet (an ornament); (7) telegraph, telephone, telescope; (8) timely, chronic, temporary, temporal.

5. Make a list of words taken from your past written work which were not precisely used. Rewrite ten of the sentences in which the words originally stood, using all words correctly and fitting them precisely to your thought.

6. Write a paragraph on a subject of your own choosing; revise it with a view to precision in the use of words.

SECTION 45

Vigor in the Use of Words

If you are content merely to be understood, precision, if combined with clearness, is all that is needed to make your writing intelligible. But if you wish to hold the interest of your readers, or if you wish to do even more, to arouse that interest, to convince your readers, and perhaps even to move them to action, you must write with more than mere clearness and precision. You must write with vigor. Putting vigor into words, like a good many other processes of composition, is preeminently a matter of character. No amount of juggling with words, if you are not sincere in your thought, if you are not in earnest as to what you say, if you are not in close sympathy with those you address, if you have not the vigor of thought that comes from vigor of character, and from vigor of character only, will produce effectiveness in writing or give vigor to style.

Aside from this essential matter of character, vigor in the use of words can be traced directly to brevity in the use of words. The problem of brevity is this: How can the most thought be conveyed with the least amount of expression? And the solution of the problem, aside from the matter of character again, is this: Use the smallest possible number of words to express a thought, and do this by choosing only such words as imply the greatest amount of thought. Putting the matter in another light, the problem of vigor has to do both with what words express and with what words imply.1

To use no more words than are needed to express a

1 See Section 31.

thought is to avoid what the books call redundancy. Such expressions as "gaining the universal love and esteem of all men," "We should use a purer diction of speech, ""We tried a number of experiments," "his own autobiography," and other more or less glaring violations of the rule, are not vigorous, and therefore not effective, because they can be put more pointedly.

To choose words that imply the greatest amount of thought is a more difficult matter than to use no more words than are needed to express a thought. In this connection it is worth while to quote what Mr. Wendell says:

1

In the midst of the American Revolution an event occurred familiar to you all. General Arnold betrayed the American cause. A British officer, travelling in disguise with messages of this treason, was arrested by some local patriots, and fell into the hands of Washington. This unhappy officer, Major André, was tried by court-martial and met a tragic fate. Now, how, in a single sentence, should you describe what happened to him? We all know what it was. But here are four separate phrases, each of which accurately tells what happened, yet each of which tells it in a distinctly different way: "Major André died": that is perfectly true; and if we were breaking such news to a relative, that would probably be the wisest form to begin with. "Major André was killed": that is equally true; so are Major André was executed," and "Major André was hanged.” Now, there is little doubt, I think, that each of these phrases would be more apt to hold attention than the preceding. "He was killed" is a more forcible assertion than "he died"; "he was executed," than he was killed"; and most forcible of all is," he was hanged." If we now consider these four phrases together, we shall find that each includes the last. Whoever is killed must die; whoever is executed by any means must be killed; whoever is hanged must probably be executed. In other words, each term, more definite than the last,

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1 English Composition, 240-242. Printed by permission of Charles Scribner's Sons.

suggested or connoted all the preceding ones. Again, to take not single words or phrases, but words in composition, compare these three simple statements: "I found him very agreeable one afternoon;" "I found him very agreeable one wet afternoon; " "I found him very agreeable one wet afternoon in a country house." Now, all that the word wet says is that the afternoon was watery; but it clearly implies that it was an afternoon when you would not care to be out of doors. All that the words in a country house state is the simple fact of locality; but they imply that you were in a place where not to be out of doors was probably a serious trial to the temper. So the last statement as a whole, “I found him very agreeable one wet afternoon in a country house," suggests, though it does not state, that the person spoken of was one whose charms could overcome a pretty bad temper. At the same time, it is a phrase which I fancy anybody would admit to hold the attention more strongly than either of its predecessors; and its superiority in force lies not so much in the bare facts which it adds to the first statement as in the thoughts and emotions it suggests. Still again, take this sentence from one of M. de Maupassant's stories: "It was the 15th of August, the feast of the Holy Virgin, and of the Emperor Napoleon." He states only two facts about the 15th of August, and these in the simplest of words. Neither by itself would hold one's attention enough to remain long in memory. But put them together; think what the Holy Virgin means to Catholic Europe, and what the Emperor Napoleon means to those who are not subdued by the magic genius of Bonaparte, and you have a sentence that when mid-August comes about will hover in your head. Yet the force of this. so greatly superior to the force of either statement by itself — lies not in what is actually said, but wholly in what is implied, suggested, connoted, in this sudden, unexpected antithesis.

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All this means, to use Mr. Wendell's words again, that "a forcible writer knows not only what he wishes to say, but also what he wishes to imply; he understands, it is to be hoped, what he wishes a reader to know, but he understands more profoundly still, and indeed, for his immediate purpose of force he should understand chiefly, into what mood he wishes the reader to be thrown."

SECTION 46

Vigor in the Use of Words

1. BIG WORDS AND LITTLE WORDS

Learn the following paragraph by heart:

LINCOLN'S GETTYSBURG ADDRESS 1

Fourscore and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But in a larger sense we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us, that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion, that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom,— and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

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Now read Lincoln's speech aloud, and follow it with this extract from Webster's The Bunker Hill Monu

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1 At the dedication of the National Cemetery, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, November 19, 1863.

2 An address delivered at the laying of the corner-stone of the Bunker Hill Monument at Charlestown, Massachusetts, June 17, 1825.

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