The History of Earl Pumbles

“The late Earl (Eorl?) Pumbles was of lowly birth. He was born in the thorp of Stoke Parva in 1850, the son of a penniless timber-wright. Outdriven from his first school, he became a fighting-man. He was a dreadless and fearnought wight, and was once left for dead on the field, bleeding at every sweat-hole. The saw-bones brought him through. Coming back to England he saw the haplihood of making a gold-hoard in the soap-trade. He set up a business with the gold of others; got rid of his yoke-mates by sundry under-slinkings, and soon became amazingly wealthy. An earldom followed; though it is markworthy that on the morning after its bestowal a great songsmith wrote to the Daily Score to say: ‘The Gusher of Fair-Name is befouled.’ In 1910 Lord Pumbles went as sendling to the King of Siam, with a bode-word from our King. In the back-end of the next year his health gave out; he became bit-wise worse; and he died last night of belly-ache. Lord Pumbles was often to be seen at Sir Henry Wood’s Out-Road Glee-Motes at Queen’s Hall, but he was almost a comeling at the House of Lords. He was cunning in Kin-lore, and in his fair wonestead at Pumbles wrote a great book on the stem-tree of his kin. By ill hap he was an eat-all and rather soaksome. He will be buried on Wednesday in the bone-yard at Pumbles, in which lich-rest his wife already lies. The earldom goes, by out-of-the-way odd-come-short, to his daughter.”

This little biography may have puzzled those who have got thus far. They may have thought it absurd. I compiled it with the help of “C. L. D.’s” Word-Book of the English Tongue, just published by Routledge. “C. L. D.” (the initials are, I observe, those of the author of Alice in Wonderland) is one of those enthusiasts who long “to shake off the Norman yoke” which lies so heavy on our speech. He follows, that is to say, in the footsteps of the late Rev. William Barnes (of Dorset), who asked his countrymen to call a perambulator a “child-wain” and an omnibus a “folk-wain.” “What many speakers and writers,” he remarks, “even to-day, call English, is no English at all but sheer French. Nevertheless, there are many who feel not a little ashamed of the needless loan-words in which their speech is clothed, and of the borrowed feathers in which they strut. Over and over again it has been said, and most truly, that for liveliness and strength, manliness and fulness of meaning, the olden English Tongue were hard to beat.” “In this little Word-Book, therefore,” he says:

“after having chosen a few thousand stock loan-words, I have striven to set by the side of each, not indeed ‘synonyms,’ but other good English words, which may stand in their stead.”

Which is certainly (or, I think I should say, “ywis” or “in good sooth”) a pure English sentence.

One primary fault “C. L. D.” avoids almost entirely. He does not (as he might have done had he cared to take all the astonishing Latin words from Johnson’s Word-Book) load the dice by including in his list of “loan-words” words which we hardly ever use. There are a few. Only a scientist would say “acephalous” when he meant “headless”; and the general public does not need to be warned to say “grind,” “bristly,” “stalkless,” and “barefooted,” instead of “comminute,” “aristate,” “acaulescent,” and “discalced.” It would never dream of saying acaulescent. Where our author errs is where he would inevitably err: in suggesting to us (1) Saxon words which we simply won’t use, and (2) Saxon words which do not take the place of the Latin words of which he disapproves. Take, for instance, as an instance of the latter category, this very word “disapprove.” All he can give us is a list of “strong” words beginning with “hiss” and “hoot,” none of which gets the exact shade of meaning required. Similarly with “decry,” for which his suggestions are “boo” and “hoot.” In suggesting “clean,” “flat,” etc., for “absolute” he is merely booing and hooting the slang use of that word, but he has not found a Saxon equivalent for the real “absolute.” For “complimentary” he gives “smooth-spoken”; but how would, say, the Archbishop of Canterbury like to get a letter of thanks beginning: “My dear Archbishop,—Many thanks for your very smooth-spoken remarks”? For “uncomfortable” he can only suggest “writhing”—as though we could say that we had spent a fortnight in a most writhing hotel; and for “temporalities” he has nothing but “loaves and fishes”—which is simply offensive. If one began using words like these promiscuously, one would simply (here I consult the Word-Book again) be asking for misluck.

To turn to the other lot, it is altogether too late to ask us to say “rede-craft” for “logic”; “back-jaw” for “retort”; “handmaid” for “servant”; “outganger” for “emigrant”; “wanhope” (a most beautiful word, I admit) for “despair”; “scald” or “songsmith” for “poet”; “hight” or “yclept” for “denominated”; “uplooking” for “aspiring”; “fourwinkled” for “quadrangular”; and, above all, to replace “depilatory” by “hair-bane.” “Ereold” and “foreold” for “ancient” are no longer possible; and the man who should say that the King was crowned and besmeared in Westminster Abbey would be quite unable to persuade people that he wasn’t merely a rather coarse satirist. In cases where both terms are alive, the Latin is often more convenient—because shorter—than the Saxon. If we always used “breach of wedlock” instead of “adultery,” many modern novels, and most Sunday newspapers, would use up twice as much paper and ink. (There was once a half-way word: the mediæval heralds used to say that the leopard was “begotten in spouse-breach between the lion and the pard.”) In proposing “hand-grip” for portmanteau, our wordloresman is doing an audacious thing: adopting a bit of modern American—though, as often as not, the term is shortened, across the water, to “grip” tout court.

There remain, of course, a very large number of words for which “C. L. D.” does provide genuine living synonyms which, in many cases, are stronger and terser than the originals. Even here, of course, there are occasional difficulties; we have, at any rate in print, thrown over “C. L. D.’s” favourites “belly-ache” and “gripes” in favour of “colic” simply because they are what is called “good sturdy Saxon,” altogether too apt and sturdy. As for his proposal of “ropes” and “manifolds” for “intestines,” all I can say is that I much prefer here to remain under the Norman yoke. At the same time, too much Latinity is a nuisance and a danger to the vividness of our tongue; and, whilst refraining from following “C. L. D.” to his thorps or Barnes to his folk-wain, I think I shall sometimes find the Word-Book useful.