English of the "genteel" sort. See Genteel.
"Rev. Dr. Smith."
On horseback one does drive, and in a vehicle one does ride, but a distinction is needed here, as in England; so, here as there, we may profitably make it, riding in the saddle and driving in the carriage.
See Bedder and Mealer – if you can find them.
"They stood round." See Around.
Questionably derived and problematically needful.
Vulgar – hardly better than slang.
"He had no say in determining the matter." Vulgar.
A scholar is a person who is learned, not a person who is learning.
"He scored an advantage over his opponent." To score is not to win a point, but to record it.
There is no such word.
"He secured a position as book-keeper." "The dwarf secured a stick and guarded the jewels that he had found." Then it was the jewels that were secured.
A most absurd locution.
"A self-confessed assassin." Self is superfluous: one's sins cannot be confessed by another.
"The play caused a great sensation." "A sensational newspaper." A sensation is a physical feeling; an emotion, a mental. Doubtless the one usually accompanies the other, but the good writer will name the one that he has in mind, not the other. There are few errors more common than the one here noted.
"She sensed the fragrance of roses." Society English.
"A setting hen."
This word belongs to the peasantry of speech.
"Settle the bill." "I shall take it now and settle for it later."
"Shades of Noah! how it rained!" "O shades of Caesar!" A shade is a departed soul, as conceived by the ancients; one to each mortal part is the proper allowance.
"He didn't stand a show." Say, He had no chance.
Good usage now limits this word to cases of nausea, but it is still legitimate in sickly, sickness, love-sick, and the like.
"I side with the Democrats." "He always sided with what he thought right."
A form of whiskers named from a noted general of the civil war, Ambrose E. Burnside. It seems to be thought that the word side has something to do with it, and that as an adjective it should come first, according to our idiom.
A reasonless transposition for which it is impossible to assign a cause, unless it is abbreviated from side o' the hill.
See Endways.
"He came here not long since and died."
An Americanism that is dying out. But "smart" has recently come into use for fashionable, which is almost as bad.
"A cold snap." This is a word of incomprehensible origin in that sense; we can know only that its parents were not respectable. "Spell" is itself not very well-born.
See As – as.
"If you see it in the Daily Livercomplaint it is so." "Is that so?" Colloquial and worse.
This word rightly means to make solemn, not to perform, or celebrate, ceremoniously something already solemn, as a marriage, or a mass. We have no exact synonym, but this explains, rather than justifies, its use.
"He was hurt some."
"I would as soon go as stay." "That soldier would sooner eat than fight." Say, rather eat.
"A long space of time." Space is so different a thing from time that the two do not go well together.
"We shall spend the summer in Europe." Spend denotes a voluntary relinquishment, but time goes from us against our will.
"He lives three squares away." A city block is seldom square.
Absurd.
"The patient stands pain well." "He would not stand for misrepresentation."
"He stated that he came from Chicago." "It is stated that the president is angry." We state a proposition, or a principle, but say that we are well. And we say our prayers – some of us.
"The rain still continues." Omit still; it is contained in the other word.
"I take no stock in it." Disagreeably commercial. Say, I have no faith in it. Many such metaphorical expressions were unobjectionable, even pleasing, in the mouth of him who first used them, but by constant repetition by others have become mere slang, with all the offensiveness of plagiarism. The prime objectionableness of slang is its hideous lack of originality. Until mouth-worn it is not slang.