Total. “The figures totaled 10,000.” Say, The total of the figures was 10,000.
Transaction for Action, or Incident. “The policeman struck the man with his club, but the transaction was not reported.” “The picking of a pocket is a criminal transaction.” In a transaction two or more persons must have an active or assenting part; as, a business transaction, Transactions of the Geographical Society, etc. The Society’s action would be better called Proceedings.
Transpire for Occur, Happen, etc. “This event transpired in 1906.” Transpire (trans, through, and spirare, to breathe) means leak out, that is, become known. What transpired in 1906 may have occurred long before.
Trifling for Trivial. “A trifling defect”; “a trifling error.”
Trust for Wealthy Corporation. There are few trusts; capitalists have mostly abandoned the trust form of combination.
Try an Experiment. An experiment is a trial; we cannot try a trial. Say, make.
Try and for Try to. “I will try and see him.” This plainly says that my effort to see him will succeed — which I cannot know and do not wish to affirm. “Please try and come.” This colloquial slovenliness of speech is almost universal in this country, but freedom of speech is one of our most precious possessions.
Ugly for Ill-natured, Quarrelsome. What is ugly is the temper, or disposition, not the person having it.
Under-handed and Under-handedly for Under-hand. See Off-handed.
Unique. “This is very unique.” “The most unique house in the city.” There are no degrees of uniqueness: a thing is unique if there is not another like it. The word has nothing to do with oddity, strangeness, nor picturesqueness.
United States as a Singular Noun. “The United States is for peace.” The fact that we are in some ways one nation has nothing to do with it; it is enough to know that the word States is plural — if not, what is State? It would be pretty hard on a foreigner skilled in the English tongue if he could not venture to use our national name without having made a study of the history of our Constitution and political institutions. Grammar has not a speaking acquaintance with politics, and patriotic pride is not schoolmaster to syntax.
Unkempt for Disordered, Untidy, etc. Unkempt means uncombed, and can properly be said of nothing but the hair.
Use for Treat. “The inmates were badly used.” “They use him harshly.”
Utter for Absolute, Entire, etc. Utter has a damnatory signification and is to be used of evil things only. It is correct to say utter misery, but not “utter happiness;” utterly bad, but not “utterly good.”
Various for Several. “Various kinds of men.” Kinds are various of course, for they vary — that is what makes them kinds. Use various only when, in speaking of a number of things, you wish to direct attention to their variety — their difference, one from another. “The dividend was distributed among the various stockholders.” The stockholders vary, as do all persons, but that is irrelevant and was not in mind. “Various persons have spoken to me of you.” Their variation is unimportant; what is meant is that there was a small indefinite number of them; that is, several.
Ventilate for Express, Disclose, etc. “The statesman ventilated his views.” A disagreeable and dog-eared figure of speech.
Verbal for Oral. All language is verbal, whether spoken or written, but audible speech is oral. “He did not write, but communicated his wishes verbally.” It would have been a verbal communication, also, if written.
Vest for Waistcoat. This is American, but as all Americans are not in agreement about it it is better to use the English word.
Vicinity for Vicinage, or Neighborhood. “He lives in this vicinity.” If neither of the other words is desired say, He lives in the vicinity of this place, or, better, He lives near by.
View of. “He invested with the view of immediate profit.” “He enlisted with the view of promotion.” Say, with a view to.
Vulgar for Immodest, Indecent. It is from vulgus, the common people, the mob, and means both common and unrefined, but has no relation to indecency.
Way for Away. “Way out at sea.” “Way down South.”
Ways for Way. “A squirrel ran a little ways along the road.” “The ship looked a long ways off.” This surprising word calls loudly for depluralization.
Wed for Wedded. “They were wed at noon.” “He wed her in Boston.” The word wed in all its forms as a substitute for marry, is pretty hard to bear.
Well. As a mere meaningless prelude to a sentence this word is overtasked. “Well, I don’t know about that.” “Well, you may try.” “Well, have your own way.”
Wet for Wetted. See Bet.
Where for When. “Where there is reason to expect criticism write discreetly.”
Which for That. “The boat which I engaged had a hole in it.” But a parenthetical clause may rightly be introduced by which; as, The boat, which had a hole in it, I nevertheless engaged. Which and that are seldom interchangeable; when they are, use that. It sounds better.
Whip for Chastise, or Defeat. To whip is to beat with a whip. It means nothing else.
Whiskers for Beard. The whisker is that part of the beard that grows on the cheek. See Chin Whiskers.
Who for Whom. “Who do you take me for?”
Whom for Who. “The man whom they thought was dead is living.” Here the needless introduction of was entails the alteration of whom to who. “Remember whom it is that you speak of.” “George Washington, than whom there was no greater man, loved a jest.” The misuse of whom after than is almost universal. Who and whom trip up many a good writer, although, unlike which and who, they require nothing but knowledge of grammar.
Widow Woman. Omit woman.
Will and Shall. Proficiency in the use of these apparently troublesome words must be sought in text-books on grammar and rhetoric, where the subject will be found treated with a more particular attention, and at greater length, than is possible in a book of the character of this. Briefly and generally, in the first person, a mere intention is indicated by shall, as, I shall go; whereas will denotes some degree of compliance or determination, as, I will go — as if my going had been requested or forbidden. In the second and the third person, will merely forecasts, as, You (or he) will go; but shall implies something of promise, permission or compulsion by the speaker, as, You (or he) shall go. Another and less obvious compulsion — that of circumstance — speaks in shall, as sometimes used with good effect: In Germany you shall not turn over a chip without uncovering a philosopher. The sentence is barely more than indicative, shall being almost, but not quite, equivalent to can.
Win out. Like its antithesis, “lose out,” this reasonless phrase is of sport, “sporty.”
Win for Won. “I went to the race and win ten dollars.” This atrocious solecism seems to be unknown outside the world of sport, where may it ever remain.
Without for Unless. “I cannot go without I recover.” Peasantese.
Witness for See. To witness is more than merely to see, or observe; it is to observe, and to tell afterward.
Would-be. “The would-be assassin was arrested.” The word doubtless supplies a want, but we can better endure the want than the word. In the instance of the assassin, it is needless, for he who attempts to murder is an assassin, whether he succeeds or not.
ASHES OF THE BEACON
AN HISTORICAL MONOGRAPH WRITTEN IN 4930
Ashes of the Beacon
Of the many causes that conspired to bring about the lamentable failure of “self-government” in ancient America the most general and comprehensive was, of course, the impracticable nature of the system itself. In the light of modern culture, and instructed by history, we readily discern the folly of those crude ideas upon which the ancient Americans based what they knew as “republican institutions,” and maintained, as long as maintenance was possible, with something of a religious fervor, even when the results were visibly disastrous. To us of to-day it is clear that the word “self-government” involves a contradiction, f
or government means control by something other than the thing to be controlled. When the thing governed is the same as the thing governing there is no government, though for a time there may be, as in the case under consideration there was, a considerable degree of forbearance, giving a misleading appearance of public order. This, however, soon must, as in fact it soon did, pass away with the delusion that gave it birth. The habit of obedience to written law, inculcated by generations of respect for actual government able to enforce its authority, will persist for a long time, with an ever lessening power upon the imagination of the people; but there comes a time when the tradition is forgotten and the delusion exhausted. When men perceive that nothing is restraining them but their consent to be restrained, then at last there is nothing to obstruct the free play of that selfishness which is the dominant characteristic and fundamental motive of human nature and human action respectively. Politics, which may have had something of the character of a contest of principles, becomes a struggle of interests, and its methods are frankly serviceable to personal and class advantage. Patriotism and respect for law pass like a tale that is told. Anarchy, no longer disguised as “government by consent,” reveals his hidden hand, and in the words of our greatest living poet,
lets the curtain fall,
And universal darkness buries all!
The ancient Americans were a composite people; their blood was a blend of all the strains known in their time. Their government, while they had one, being merely a loose and mutable expression of the desires and caprices of the majority — that is to say, of the ignorant, restless and reckless — gave the freest rein and play to all the primal instincts and elemental passions of the race. In so far and for so long as it had any restraining force, it was only the restraint of the present over the power of the past — that of a new habit over an old and insistent tendency ever seeking expression in large liberties and indulgences impatient of control. In the history of that unhappy people, therefore, we see unveiled the workings of the human will in its most lawless state, without fear of authority or care of consequence. Nothing could be more instructive.
Of the American form of government, although itself the greatest of evils afflicting the victims of those that it entailed, but little needs to be said here; it has perished from the earth, a system discredited by an unbroken record of failure in all parts of the world, from the earliest historic times to its final extinction. Of living students of political history not one professes to see in it anything but a mischievous creation of theorists and visionaries — persons whom our gracious sovereign has deigned to brand for the world’s contempt as “dupes of hope purveying to sons of greed.” The political philosopher of to-day is spared the trouble of pointing out the fallacies of republican government, as the mathematician is spared that of demonstrating the absurdity of the convergence of parallel lines; yet the ancient Americans not only clung to their error with a blind, unquestioning faith, even when groaning under its most insupportable burdens, but seem to have believed it of divine origin. It was thought by them to have been established by the god Washington, whose worship, with that of such dii minores as Gufferson, Jaxon and Lincon (identical probably with the Hebru Abrem) runs like a shining thread through all the warp and woof of the stuff that garmented their moral nakedness. Some stones, very curiously inscribed in many tongues, were found by the explorer Droyhors in the wilderness bordering the river Bhitt (supposed by him to be the ancient Potomac) as lately as the reign of Barukam IV. These stones appear to be fragments of a monument or temple erected to the glory of Washington in his divine character of Founder and Preserver of republican institutions. If this tutelary deity of the ancient Americans really invented representative government they were not the first by many to whom he imparted the malign secret of its inauguration and denied that of its maintenance.
Although many of the causes which finally, in combination, brought about the downfall of the great American republic were in operation from the beginning — being, as has been said, inherent in the system — it was not until the year 1995 (as the ancients for some reason not now known reckoned time) that the collapse of the vast, formless fabric was complete. In that year the defeat and massacre of the last army of law and order in the lava beds of California extinguished the final fires of enlightened patriotism and quenched in blood the monarchical revival. Thenceforth armed opposition to anarchy was confined to desultory and insignificant warfare waged by small gangs of mercenaries in the service of wealthy individuals and equally feeble bands of prescripts fighting for their lives. In that year, too, “the Three Presidents” were driven from their capitals, Cincinnati, New Orleans and Duluth, their armies dissolving by desertion and themselves meeting death at the hands of the populace.
The turbulent period between 1920 and 1995, with its incalculable waste of blood and treasure, its dreadful conflicts of armies and more dreadful massacres by passionate mobs, its kaleidoscopic changes of government and incessant effacement and redrawing of boundaries of states, its interminable tale of political assassinations and proscriptions — all the horrors incident to intestinal wars of a naturally lawless race — had so exhausted and dispirited the surviving protagonists of legitimate government that they could make no further head against the inevitable, and were glad indeed and most fortunate to accept life on any terms that they could obtain.
But the purpose of this sketch is not bald narration of historic fact, but examination of antecedent germinal conditions; not to recount calamitous events familiar to students of that faulty civilization, but to trace, as well as the meager record will permit, the genesis and development of the causes that brought them about. Historians in our time have left little undone in the matter of narration of political and military phenomena. In Golpek’s “Decline and Fall of the American Republics,” in Soseby’s “History of Political Fallacies,” in Holobom’s “Monarchical Renasence,” and notably in Gunkux’s immortal work, “The Rise, Progress, Failure and Extinction of The Connected States of America” the fruits of research have been garnered, a considerable harvest. The events are set forth with such conscientiousness and particularity as to have exhausted the possibilities of narration. It remains only to expound causes and point the awful moral.
To a delinquent observation it may seem needless to point out the inherent defects of a system of government which the logic of events has swept like political rubbish from the face of the earth, but we must not forget that ages before the inception of the American republics and that of France and Ireland this form of government had been discredited by emphatic failures among the most enlightened and powerful nations of antiquity: the Greeks, the Romans, and long before them (as we now know) the Egyptians and the Chinese. To the lesson of these failures the founders of the eighteenth and nineteenth century republics were blind and deaf. Have we then reason to believe that our posterity will be wiser because instructed by a greater number of examples? And is the number of examples which they will have in memory really greater? Already the instances of China, Egypt, Greece and Rome are almost lost in the mists of antiquity; they are known, except by infrequent report, to the archæologist only, and but dimly and uncertainly to him. The brief and imperfect record of yesterdays which we call History is like that traveling vine of India which, taking new root as it advances, decays at one end while it grows at the other, and so is constantly perishing and finally lost in all the spaces which it has over-passed.
From the few and precious writings that have descended to us from the early period of the American republic we get a clear if fragmentary view of the disorders and lawlessness affecting that strange and unhappy nation. Leaving the historically famous “labor troubles” for more extended consideration, we may summarize here a few of the results of hardly more than a century and a quarter of “self-government” as it existed on this continent just previously to the awful end. At the beginning of the “twentieth century” a careful study by trustworthy contemporary statisticians of the public records and t
hose apparently private ones known as “newspapers” showed that in a population of about 80,000,000 the annual number of homicides was not less than 10,000; and this continued year after year to increase, not only absolutely, but proportionately, until, in the words of Dumbleshaw, who is thought to have written his famous “Memoirs of a Survivor” in the year 1908 of their era, “it would seem that the practice of suicide is a needless custom, for if a man but have patience his neighbor is sure to put him out of his misery.” Of the 10,000 assassins less than three per cent. were punished, further than by incidental imprisonment if unable to give bail while awaiting trial. If the chief end of government is the citizen’s security of life and his protection from aggression, what kind of government do these appalling figures disclose? Yet so infatuated with their imaginary “liberty” were these singular people that the contemplation of all this crime abated nothing of the volume and persistence of their patriotic ululations, and affected not their faith in the perfection of their system. They were like a man standing on a rock already submerged by the rising tide, and calling to his neighbors on adjacent cliffs to observe his superior security.
When three men engage in an undertaking in which they have an equal interest, and in the direction of which they have equal power, it necessarily results that any action approved by two of them, with or without the assent of the third, will be taken. This is called — or was called when it was an accepted principle in political and other affairs—”the rule of the majority.” Evidently, under the malign conditions supposed, it is the only practicable plan of getting anything done. A and B rule and overrule C, not because they ought, but because they can; not because they are wiser, but because they are stronger. In order to avoid a conflict in which he is sure to be worsted, C submits as soon as the vote is taken. C is as likely to be right as A and B; nay, that eminent ancient philosopher, Professor Richard A. Proctor (or Proroctor, as the learned now spell the name), has clearly shown by the law of probabilities that any one of the three, all being of the same intelligence, is far likelier to be right than the other two.
Complete Works of Ambrose Bierce (Delphi Classics) Page 232