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Page 18
[R.B.]
* * * * *
SOME LEXICAL MATTERS
FAST = QUICK OR FIRM
'An Old Cricketer' writes:
'After reading your remarks on the ambiguity of the word _fast_ (Tract
III, p. 12) I read in the report of a Lancashire cricket match that
_Makepeace was the only batsman who was fast-footed_. But for the
context and my knowledge of the game I should have concluded that
Makepeace kept his feet immovably on the crease; but the very opposite
was intended. At school we used to translate [Greek: podas
�kus Achilleus] "swift-footed Achilles", and I took that to mean that
Achilles was a sprinter. I suppose _quick-footed_ would be the epithet
for Makepeace.'
SPRINTER is a good word, though _Sprinting Achilles_ could not be
recommended.
BRATTLE
A correspondent from Newcastle writes advocating the recognition
of the word _brattle_ as descriptive of thunder. It is a good old
echo-word used by Dunbar and Douglas and Burns and by modern English
writers. It is familiar through the first stanza of Burns's poem 'To a
Mouse'.
Wee sleekit cow'rin tim'rous beastie,
O what a panic's in thy breastie.
Thou need na start awa sae hasty
Wi' bickering brattle....
which is not suggestive of thunder. The _N.E.D._ explains this as 'to
run with brattling feet, to scamper'.
In Burns's 'A Winter Night', it is the noisy confusion of _biting
Boreas_ in the bare trees and bushes:
I thought me on the ourie cattle
Or silly sheep, wha bide this brattle
O' winter war.
It is possible that _brattle_ has fallen into disuse through too
indiscriminate application. After Burns's famous poem the word can
establish itself only in the sense of a scurrying dry noise: it is too
small for thunder.
We would call attention to the principle involved in this judgement,
for it is one of the main objects of our society to assist and guide
Englishmen in the use of their language by fully exposing the facts
that should determine their practice. Every word has its history,
and no word can prosper in the speech or writing of those who do not
respect its inherited and unalterable associations; these cannot be
got rid of by ignoring them. Littr� in the preface to his dictionary
claims for it this pre-eminent quality of usefulness, that it will
enable his countrymen to speak and write good French by acquainting
them with historic tradition, and he says that it was enthusiasm for
this one purpose that sustained him in his great work. Its object was
to harmonize the present use of the language with the past usage, in
order that the present usage may possess all the fullness, richness,
and certitude which it can have, and which naturally belong to it. His
words are: 'Avant tout, et pour ramener � une id�e m�re ce qui va �tre
expliqu� dans la _Pr�face_, je dirai, d�finissant ce dictionnaire,
qu'il embrasse et combine l'usage pr�sent de la langue et son usage
pass�, afin de donner � l'usage pr�sent toute la pl�nitude et la
s�ret� qu'il comporte.'
It is the intention of our society to offer only expert and
well-considered opinion on these literary matters, which are often
popularly handled in the newspapers and journals as fit subjects
for private taste and uninformed prejudice: and since the Oxford
Dictionary has done more fully for English what Littr� did for French,
our task is comparatively easy. But experts cannot be expected, all of
them, to have the self-denying zeal of �mile Littr�, and the worth of
our tracts will probably improve with the increase of our subscribers.
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