CENTURY VOCABULARY BUILDER (continued 5)

<Pacify, appease, placate, propitiate, conciliate, mollify>.

Sentences: We ____ our hunger when we reached the inn. In olden times men tried to ____ the offended gods by offering human sacrifices. They ____ the angry man by promising to hear his grievances immediately. The premier thought he could ____ this particular faction by offering its leader a seat in the cabinet. "Chiron ____ his cruel mind With art, and taught his warlike hands to wind The silver strings of his melodious lyre." A friendly word will usually ____ one's enemies.

<Part, piece, portion, section, subdivision, fraction, instalment element, component, constituent, ingredient, share, lot, allotment>.

Sentences: One ____ in his success was his courage. She was studying the ____ of the pie; he the chances of getting another ____. Is it ____ and ____ alike? "I live not in myself, but I become ____ of that around me." "Act well your ____; there all the honor lies." He owned a[n] ____ of land near the city limits; a speculator bought a[n] ____ of this and divided it into city lots. "I am a[n] ____ of all that I have met." The purchaser, having only a[n] ____ of this sum in ready money, offered to pay in ____.

<Pay, hire, salary, wages, fee, stipend, honorarium>.

Sentences: Give the manager his ____, the workmen their ____. "The laborer is worthy of his ____." He received his weekly ____ from the parsimonious old man. The ____ for enrolment is ten dollars. "This is ____ and ____, not revenge."

<Polite, civil, obliging, courteous, courtly, urbane, affable, complaisant, gracious>.

Sentences: He was ____ enough, but not definitely ____. "So ____ that he ne'er ____." Though he had never lived in a city, much less in the circle of royalty, his manners were ____, even ____. Your desire to please is shown in your ____ greeting. "Damn with faint praise, assent with ____ leer, And without sneering teach the rest to sneer."

<Quarrel, altercation, disagreement, contention, controversy, breach, rupture, dispute, dissension, bickering, wrangle, broil, squabble, row, rumpus, ruction, spat, tiff, fuss, jar, feud.>

Sentences: It was only a little ____ between lovers. The ____ between the partners was over the right of the senior to make contracts for the firm; it grew into an angry ____. It was a long-drawn political ____. At the meeting of our committee the chairman and one of the members had a sharp ____ over a point of order. A[n] ____ in some minor matters led to a[n] ____ in their friendship. "Thrice is he armed that hath his ____ just." Those chattering, choleric fellows are always engaged in ____; last night they on meeting had a[n] ____ which brought on a long-drawn ____, and when their friends joined in, there was a noisy ____. I have seen all sorts of ____, from a trivial childish ____ to a grim ____ of mountaineers.

<Raise, lift, heave, hoist, erect, rear, elevate, exalt, enhance.>

Sentences: Let the Lord be ____. "As some tall cliff that ____ its awful form." Because of this success his reputation was ____. The horse ____ when the machine began to ____ the huge block of stone by means of a crane. "I will ____ up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help." The load was too heavy for him to carry; in fact he just managed to ____ it into the wagon.

<Relinquish, waive, renounce, surrender, forego, resign, abdicate.>

Sentences: The defense ____ objection to the first of these points. The refugee was willing to ____ his right to resist extradition. The teacher ____ her position at the end of the year. The king ____ when the people rose in revolt. He ____ his command of the army. Do you ____ your claim in this mine? The bankrupt ____ his property to the receiver to help pay his debts.

<Renounce, abjure, forswear, recant, retract, repudiate>.

Sentences: He ____ the statement. Thereupon Henry Esmond ____ his allegiance to the House of Stuart. It is a serious matter for a government to ____ its debts. Did the heretic ____? Do you ____ the devil and all his works? "The wounded gladiator ____ all fighting, but soon forgetting his former wounds resumes his arms." He had broken his solemn oath; he was ____.

<Reprove, rebuke, reprimand, admonish, chide, upbraid, reproach, scold, rate, berate>.

Sentences: "He ____ their wanderings but relieved their pain." "Many a time and oft In the Rialto you have ____ me About my moneys and my usances." They ____ the man who had taken the savings of the poor, and ____ him against such schemes thereafter. The general ____ his subordinate.

<Robber, bandit, brigand, ladrone, desperado, buccaneer, freebooter, pirate, corsair, raider, burglar, footpad, highwayman, depredator, spoiler, despoiler, forager, pillager, plunderer, marauder, myrmidon>. (With this group compare the Steal group, below.)

Sentences: Every boy has his period of wanting to be a ____. Treasure Island is one of the best ____ stories ever written. The ____ lurks in dark passageways and steals upon his victim. The fierce followers of Achilles were called ____. The men sent out by the army as ____ seemed to the people of the countryside more like ____. The fearless ____ had soon gathered about him a band of ____. Robin Hood was no ____ of poor folk. The outcast became a ____ among the mountaineers of northern Italy. Every, boy likes to read of the bold ____ who sailed the Spanish Main. Union plans were often upset by daring Confederate ____, such as Stuart, Morgan, and Forrest.

<Run, scamper, scurry, scuttle, scud, scour, pace, gallop, trot, lope, sprint, sweep>.

Sentences: Swift horsemen ____ the country in search of the fugitive. Wherever they came, the inhabitants ____ for shelter. "The dish ____ away with the spoon." For his horse to ____ made difficult riding, to ____ made comfortable riding, to ____ made exhilarating riding. "He may ____ that readeth it." The old sailing-boat ____ before the wind. "Haste me to know't, that I, with wings as swift As meditation or the thoughts of love, May ____ to my revenge." The rats ____ across the floor. "He who fights and ____ away May live to fight another day."

<Say, utter, pronounce, announce, state, declare, affirm, aver, asseverate, allege, assert, avouch, avow, maintain, claim, depose, predicate, swear, suggest, insinuate, testify>. (With this group compare the Speak and Talk groups, below.)

Sentences: It was something I merely ____ in passing; I would not ____ to it. I could not ____ in court, and therefore had to ____ before a notary. The scientist ____ that a seismograph will infallibly record earthquakes. He solemnly ____ that he would not ____ exemption from the draft.

<Shine, beam, gleam, glisten, glister, glitter, glare, flare, flash, sparkle, twinkle, dazzle, glimmer, glow, radiate, scintillate, coruscate>.

Sentences: The gorgeous parade ____ the boy. "____, ____, little star." He was witty that night; he fairly ____. At this compliment the old lady ____. "Now fades the ____ landscape on the sight." A rocket ____ in the darkness. She ____ her elderly wooer a look of defiance; then her eyes softened and ____ with amusement. "All that ____ is not gold." "How far that little candle throws his beams! So ____ a good deed in a naughty world." The old man ____ into sudden anger.

<Slander, defame, asperse, calumniate, traduce, vilify, malign, libel, backbite>.

Sentences: A newspaper must be careful not to ____ any one. Too many supposedly religious people ____ their fellow believers. I do not ____ your motives. He ____ the character of everybody who chances to possess one.

<Smell, odor, savor, scent, fragrance, aroma, perfume, redolence, tang, stench>.

Sentences: The ____ of the flowers in the vase mingled with the ____ of boiling cabbage in the kitchen. The ____ of spring is on the meadows. So keen was the hound's sense of ____ that he quickly picked up the ____ again. Any smoker likes the ____ of a good cigar. The ____ of the handkerchief was delicate. Though it was a disagreeable ____, I should hardly call it a[n] ____. The ____ of spices told him that his mother was baking his favorite cake, and he also detected the ____ of coffee. The ____ of the ocean was in the air. He sniffed the ____ of frying bacon.

<Song, ballad, ditty, lullaby, hymn, anthem, dirge, chant, paean, lay, carol, lilt>.

Sentences: "They learn in suffering what they teach in ____." The mother crooned a[n] ____ to her babe. The Highland girl sang a moving old ____. The worshipers sang a[n] ____ of praise. Charles Wesley wrote many ____. As I approached the cathedral, I could hear the ____ of larks outside and the ____ of the choir within. "Our sweetest ____ are those that tell of saddest thought." "A[n] ____ for her the doubly dead in that she died so young."

<Speak, discourse, expatiate, descant, comment, argue, persuade, plead, lecture, preach, harangue, rant, roar, spout, thunder, declaim, harp>. (With this group compare the Say group, above, and the Talk group, below.)

Sentences: "His virtues Will ____ like angels trumpet-tongu'd against The deep damnation of his taking-off." "Here, under leave of Brutus and the rest, … Come I to ____ in Caesar's funeral." "Ay me! what act, That ____ so loud and ____ in the index?" "Hadst thou thy wits and didst ____ revenge, It could not move thus." "Thou canst not ____ of that thou dost not feel." "Nay, if thou'lt mouth, I'll ____ as well as thou." While the politician ____ in the senate chamber upon theoretical ills, the agitator outside ____ the mob about actual ones. "For murder, though it have no tongue, will ____ With most miraculous organ."

<Spend, expend, disburse, squander, waste, lavish>.

Sentences: Large sums were ____ in rebuilding the devastated regions of France. ____ your money, but do not ____ it. One should not ____ more than one earns. The king ____ great sums upon his favorites. The political boss ____ the money among his henchmen. "The younger son … ____ his substance with riotous living."

<Spot, blotch, speckle, fleck, dapple, smear, smutch, brand, defacement, blemish, stain, discoloration, speck, mark, smudge, flaw, defect, blot>.

Sentences: A ____ in the crystal. The ____ of Cain. A life free from ____. "Thou turn'st mine eyes into my very soul; And there I see such black and grained ____ As will not leave their tinct." From the standpoint of theatrical effectiveness _A ____ in the 'Scutcheon_ is one of the best of Browning's plays. An eruption of the skin made a yellow ____ on his right hand. Dragging my sleeve across the fresh ink had made a ____ upon the page. The ____ of foam by the roadside proved that his horse had been going fast. The ____ at the end of his fingers told me he was a cigarette-smoker. On the left foreleg of the horse was a slight ____.

<Stay, tarry, linger, stop, sojourn, remain, abide, live, reside, dwell, lodge.>

Sentences: The Israelites ____ in Egypt. He ____ to chat with us, but could not ____ overnight. I ____ in a wretched tavern. "I can ____, I can ____ but a night." "I did love the Moor to ____ with him." "He that shall come will come, and will not ____." "I will ____ in the house of the Lord forever." "If ye ____ in me, and my words ____ in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you." "I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God, than to ____ in the tents of wickedness." The guests ____ in the cheerful drawing-room.

<Steal, abstract, pilfer, filch, purloin, peculate, swindle, plagiarize, poach>. (With this group, which excludes the idea of violence, compare the Robber group, above.)

Sentences: I am afraid that our son ____ the purse from the gentleman. No one knows how long the cashier has been ____ the funds of the bank. To take our money on such unsound security is to ____ us. He slyly ____ a handkerchief or two. This paragraph is clearly ____. "Thou shalt not ____." Many government employees seem to think that to ____ is their privilege and prerogative. The crown jewels have been ____. She ____ a number of petty articles. A well-known detective story by Poe is called _The ____ Letter._ "Who ____ my purse ____ trash…. But he that ____ from me my good name Robs me of that which not enriches him, And makes me poor indeed." "A cut-purse of the empire and the rule, That from a shelf the precious diadem ____, And put it in his pocket!"

<Strike, hit, smite, thump, beat, cuff, buffet, knock, whack, belabor, pommel, pound, cudgel, slap, rap, tap, box.>

Sentences: ____ him into the middle of next week. He ____ and ____ the poor beast unmercifully. "As of some one gently ____, ____ at my chamber door." "Unto him that ____ thee on the one cheek offer also the other." "Bid them come forth and hear me, Or at their chamber door I'll ____ the drum Till it cry sleep to death." "One whom I will ____ into clamorous whining." "____ for your altars and your fires!" By means of heavy stones the squaws ____ the corn into meal.

<Sullen, surly, sulky, crabbed, cross, gruff, grum, glum, morose, dour, crusty, cynical, misanthropic, saturnine, splenetic.>

Sentences: "Between us and our hame [home], Where sits our ____, ____ dame, Gathering her brows like gathering storm, Nursing her wrath to keep it warm." A ____ old bachelor. A ____ Scotchman. He hated all men; he was truly ____. He sat ____ and silent all day; by nightfall he was truly ____.

<Talk, chat, chatter, prate, prattle, babble, gabble, jabber, tattle, twaddle, blab, gossip, palaver, parley, converse, mumble, mutter, stammer, stutter.> (With this group compare the Say and Speak groups, above.)

Sentences: It was a queer assembly, and from it arose a queer medley of sounds: the baby was ____, the old crone ____, the gossip ____, the embarrassed young man ____, the child ____ the tale-bearer ____, the hostess ____ with the most distinguished guest, and the trickster ____ with his intended victim. "Blest with each talent and each art to please, And born to write, ____, and live with ease." "I wonder that you will still be ____, Signor Benedick; nobody marks you."

<Tear, rend, rip, lacerate, mangle.>

Sentences: The explosion of the shell ____ his flesh. The tailor ____ the garment along the seam. I'll ____ this paper into bits. Those savages would ____ you limb from limb. She ____ her dress on a nail. The cogs caught his hand and ____ it. How could such reproaches fail to ____ my feelings?

<Throw, pitch, hurl, dash, fling, cast, toss, flip, chuck, sling, heave, launch, dart, propel, project.>

Sentences: Suddenly he ____ the glittering coins away. Goliath learned to his cost that David could ____ a stone. The explosion of the gunpowder ____ the bullet from the gun. "____ down your cups of Samian wine!" The children amused themselves by ____ the ball back and forth. He ____ himself dejectedly into a seat. The thief ____ a glance beside him. The mischievous boy ____ a stone through the window. They ____ some of the cargo overboard to lighten the boat. The eager fisherman ____ the fly for the trout. The untidy fellow ____ the towel in a corner.

<Whip, chastise, castigate, flagellate, scourge, lash, trounce, thrash, flog, maul, drub, switch, spank, bastinado.> (This group limits the field of the Punish group in Exercise A, and extends the list of synonyms.)

Sentences: The drunken driver ____ the excited horses. The zealot was accustomed to ____ himself. The ruler bade that the Christians be ____. The teacher ____ the small children gently, but he unsparingly ____ the big ones. "My father hath ____ you with whips, but I will ____ you with scorpions." The bully was always ____ men smaller than himself till one of them turned on him and ____ him thoroughly.

<Wicked, sinful, felonious, illegal, immoral, heinous, flagitious, iniquitous, criminal, vicious, vile.>

Sentences: "I am fled From this ____ world, with ____ worms to dwell." A[n] ____ assault. "The ____ prize itself Buys out the law." It was, though not a[n] ____ act, a most ____ one. "There the ____ cease from troubling; and there the weary be at rest."

<Young, youthful, boyish, girlish, juvenile, puerile, immature, callow, adolescent.>

Sentences: The plan had all the faults of ____ judgment. Many great authors have written books of ____ fiction. The bird, which was still ____, was of course unable to fly. "Such sights as ____ poets dream On summer eves by haunted stream." He was in that ____ stage of development when one is neither a boy nor a man. "I was so ____, I loved him so, I had No mother, God forgot me, and I fell." He made a[n] ____ attempt to impress them with his importance. "Bacchus ever fair, and ever ____." A red necktie gave him a more ____ appearance. The self-satisfied air of a[n] ____ youth is often trying to his elders.

EXERCISE D

In this exercise each group of synonyms is followed by quotations from authoritative writers in which the words are discriminatingly employed. Find the meaning of each italicized word in these quotations, and differentiate the word accurately from the others in that group. Substitute for it other words from the group, and observe precisely how the meaning is affected.

(So many of the quotations are from poetry that these will be printed as verse rather than, as in the preceding exercises, in continuous lines like prose.)

<Affront, insult, indignity.>

A moral, sensible, and well-bred man Will not affront me,—and no other can. An old affront will stir the heart Through years of rankling pain.

The way to procure insults is to submit to them. A man meets with no more respect than he exacts.

It is often better not to see an insult than to avenge it.

Even a hare, the weakest of animals, may insult a dead lion.

To a native of rank, arrest was not merely a restraint, but a foul personal indignity.

<Dishonor, disgrace, ignominy, infamy, obloquy, opprobrium>.

His honor rooted in dishonor stood, And faith unfaithful kept him falsely true.

It is hard to say which of the two we ought most to lament,—the unhappy man who sinks under the sense of his dishonor, or him who survives it.

Could he with reason murmur at his case Himself sole author of his own disgrace?

Whatever disgrace we may have deserved, it is almost always in our power to re-establish our character.

When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes I all alone beweep my outcast state.

Their generals have been received with honor after their defeat; yours with ignominy after conquest.

Wilful perpetuations of unworthy actions brand with most indelible characters of infamy the name and memory to posterity.

And when his long public life, so singularly chequered with good and evil, with glory and obloquy, had at length closed forever, it was to Daylesford that he retired to die.

Great opprobrium has been thrown on her name.

<Fame, honor, renown, glory, distinction, reputation, repute, celebrity, eminence, notoriety>.

Let fame, that all hunt after in their lives, Live register'd upon our brazen tombs.

Men have a solicitude about fame; and the greater share they have of it, the more afraid they are of losing it.

Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil, . . . . . . . . But lives and spreads aloft by those pure eyes And perfect witness of all-judging Jove; As he pronounces lastly on each deed, Of so much fame in heaven expect thy meed.

When faith is lost, when honor dies, The man is dead.

Act well your part; there all the honor lies.

The Athenians erected a large statue of Aesop, and placed him, though a slave, on a lasting pedestal, to show that the way to honor lies open indifferently to all.

I could not love thee, dear, so much, Loved I not honor more.

That nation is worthless which does not joyfully stake everything on her honor.

By heaven methinks it were an easy leap To pluck bright honor from the pale-fac'd moon.

That merit which gives greatness and renown diffuses its influence to a wide compass, but acts weakly on every single breast.

Speak no more of his renown, Lay your earthly fancies down, And in the vast cathedral leave him, God accept him, Christ receive him.

The young warrior did not fly; but met death as he went forward in his strength. Happy are they who dies in youth, when their renown is heard!

The paths of glory lead but to the grave.

Glory long has made the sages smile; 'tis something, nothing, words, illusion, wind.

Not once or twice in our rough island-story The path of duty was the way to glory.

He was a charming fellow, clever, urbane, free-handed, with all that fortunate quality in his appearance which is known as distinction.

Never get a reputation for a small perfection if you are trying for fame in a loftier area.

One may be better than his reputation or his conduct, but never better than his principles.

I see my reputation is at stake My fame is shrewdly gor'd.

CASSIO. Reputation, reputation, reputation! O! I have lost my reputation. I have lost the immortal part of myself, and what remains is bestial. My reputation, Iago, my reputation! IAGO. As I am an honest man, I thought you had received some bodily wound.

You have a good repute for gentleness and wisdom. Celebrity sells dearly what we think she gives.

Kings climb to eminence Over men's graves.

Notoriety is short-lived; fame is lasting.

<Hatred, hate, animosity, ill-will, enmity, hostility, bitterness, malice, malevolence, malignity, rancor, resentment, dudgeon, grudge, spite>.

The hatred we bear our enemies injures their happiness less than our own.

Hate is like fire; it makes even light rubbish deadly.

He generously forgot all feeling of animosity, and determined to go in person to his succor.

That thereby he may gather The ground of your ill-will, and so remove it.

No place is so propitious to the formation either of close friendships or of deadly enmities as an Indiaman.

There need be no hostility between evolutionist and theologian.

Shall we be thus afflicted in his wreaks, His fits, his frenzy, and his bitterness?

Speak of me as I am; nothing extenuate, Nor set down aught in malice.

Every obstacle which partisan malevolence could create he has had to encounter.

His flight is occasioned rather by the malignity of his countrymen than by the enmity of the Egyptians.

Where the soul sours, and gradual rancor grows, Imbitter'd more from peevish day to day.

Peace in their mouthes, and all rancor and vengeance in their hartes [hearts].

For them the gracious Duncan have I murder'd; Put rancors in the vessel of my peace Only for them.

Her resentment against the king seems not to have abated.

Mrs. W. was in high dudgeon; her heels clattered on the red-tiled floor, and she whisked about the house like a parched pea upon a drum-head.

If I can catch him once upon the hip, I will feed fat the ancient grudge I bear him.

Men of this character pursue a grudge unceasingly, and never forget or forgive.

And since you ne'er provoked their spite, Depend upon't their judgment's right.

<Marriage, matrimony, wedlock>. (With this group compare the matrimonial group in Exercise C, above.)

Marriages are made in heaven.

Hasty marriage seldom proveth well.

A man finds himself seven years older the day after his marriage.

Let me not to the marriage of true minds Admit impediments.

Marriage is the best state for man in general; and every man is a worse man in proportion as he is unfit for the married state.

Matrimony—the high sea for which no compass has yet been invented.

Wedlock's a lane where there is no turning.

What is wedlock forced, but a hell, An age of discord and continual strife?

<Mercy, clemency, lenity, leniency, lenience, forbearance>.

Teach me to feel another's woe, To hide the fault I see; That mercy I to others show, That mercy show to me.

The quality of mercy is not strain'd, It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven Upon the place beneath: it is twice bless'd; It blesseth him that gives and him that takes; * * * * * And earthly power doth then show likest God's When mercy seasons justice.

Clemency is the surest proof of a true monarch.

Lenity will operate with greater force, in some instances, than vigor.

All the fellows tried to persuade the Master to greater leniency, but in vain.

It will be necessary that this acceptance should be followed up by measures of the utmost lenience.

There is however a limit at which forbearance ceases to be a virtue.

<Pity, sympathy, compassion, commiseration, condolence>.

Careless their merits or their faults to scan, His pity gave ere charity began.

For pity melts the mind to love.

For pitee renneth [runneth] soon in gentle herte [heart].

Our sympathy is cold to the relation of distant misery.

Man may dismiss compassion from his heart, but God will never.

It is unworthy a religious man to view an irreligious one either with alarm or aversion; or with any other feeling than regret, and hope, and brotherly commiseration.

Their congratulations and their condolences are equally words of course.

<Poverty, want, need, destitution, indigence, penury>.

Is there for honest poverty That hings [hangs] his head, and a' that?

Not to be able to bear poverty is a shameful thing, but not to know how to chase it away by work is a more shameful thing yet.

Stitch! stitch! stitch! In poverty, hunger, and dirt, And still with a voice of dolorous pitch, Would that its tone could reach the Rich, She sang this "Song of the Shirt!"

Poverty is dishonorable, not in itself, but when it is a proof of laziness, intemperance, luxury, and carelessness; whereas in a person that is temperate, industrious, just and valiant, and who uses all his virtues for the public good, it shows a great and lofty mind.

Want is a bitter and hateful good, Because its virtues are not understood; Yet many things, impossible to thought, Have been by need to full perfection brought.

Hundreds would never have known want if they had not first known waste.

O! reason not the need; our basest beggars Are in the poorest thing superfluous: Allow not nature more than nature needs, Man's life is cheap as beast's.

The Christian inhabitants of Thessaly would be reduced to destitution.

It is the care of a very great part of mankind to conceal their indigence from the rest.

Chill penury repress'd their noble rage, And froze the genial current of the soul.

Chill penury weighs down the heart itself; and though it sometimes be endured with calmness, it is but the calmness of despair.

Where penury is felt the thought is chain'd, And sweet colloquial pleasures are but few.

<Regret, compunction, remorse, contrition, penitence, repentance>.

Regrets over the past should chasten the future.

He acknowledged his disloyalty to the king with expressions of great compunction.

Through no disturbance of my soul, Or strong compunction in me wrought, I supplicate for thy control.

God speaks to our hearts through the voice of remorse.

To err is human; but contrition felt for the crime distinguishes the virtuous from the wicked.

Christian penitence is something more than a thought or an emotion or a tear; it is action.

Repentance must be something more than mere remorse for sins; it comprehends a change of nature befitting heaven.

<Stubborn, obstinate, pertinacious, intractable, refractory, contumacious>.

For fools are stubborn in their way, As coins are harden'd by th' allay; And obstinacy's ne'er so stiff As when 'tis in a wrong belief.

They may also laugh at their pertinacious and incurable obstinacy.

He who is intractable, he whom nothing can persuade, may boast himself invincible.

There is a law in each well-order'd nation To curb those raging appetites that are Most disobedient and refractory.

He then dissolved Parliament, and sent its most refractory members to the Tower.

If he were contumacious, he might be excommunicated, or, in other words, be deprived of all civil rights and imprisoned for life.

EXERCISE E

The following list of synonyms is given for the convenience of those who wish additional material with which to work. This is a selected list and makes no pretense to completeness. It is suggested that you discriminate the words within each of the following groups, and use each word accurately in a sentence of your own making.

Abettor, accessory, accomplice, confederate, conspirator. Acknowledge, admit, confess, own, avow. Active, agile, nimble, brisk, sprightly, spry, bustling. Advise, counsel, admonish, caution, warn. Affecting, moving, touching, pathetic. Agnostic, skeptic, infidel, unbeliever, disbeliever. Amuse, entertain, divert. Announce, proclaim, promulgate, report, advertise, publish, bruit, blazon, trumpet, herald. Antipathy, aversion, repugnance, disgust, loathing. Artifice, ruse, trick, dodge, manoeuver, wile, stratagem, subterfuge, finesse. Ascend, mount, climb, scale. Associate, colleague, partner, helper, collaborator, coadjutor, companion, helpmate, mate, team-mate, comrade, chum, crony, consort, accomplice, confederate. Attach, affix, annex, append, subjoin. Attack, assail, assault, invade, beset, besiege, bombard, cannonade, storm.

Begin, commence, inaugurate, initiate, institute, originate, start, found. Belief, faith, persuasion, conviction, tenet, creed. Belittle, decry, depreciate, disparage. Bind, secure, fetter, shackle, gyve. Bit, jot, mite, particle, grain, atom, speck, mote, whit, iota, tittle, scintilla. Bluff, blunt, outspoken, downright, brusk, curt, crusty. Boast, brag, vaunt, vapor, gasconade. Body, corpse, remains, relics, carcass, cadaver, corpus. Bombastic, sophomoric, turgid, tumid, grandiose, grandiloquent, magniloquent. Boorish, churlish, loutish, clownish, rustic, ill-bred. Booty, plunder, loot, spoil. Brittle, frangible, friable, fragile, crisp. Building, edifice, structure, house.

Call, clamor, roar, scream, shout, shriek, vociferate, yell, halloo, whoop. Calm, still, motionless, tranquil, serene, placid. Care, concern, solicitude, anxiety. Celebrate, commemorate, observe. Charm, amulet, talisman. Charm, enchant, fascinate, captivate, enrapture, bewitch, infatuate, enamor. Cheat, defraud, swindle, dupe. Choke, strangle, suffocate, stifle, throttle. Choose, pick, select, cull, elect. Coax, wheedle, cajole, tweedle, persuade, inveigle. Color, hue, shade, tint, tinge, tincture. Combine, unite, consolidate, merge, amalgamate, weld, incorporate, confederate. Comfort, console, solace. Complain, grumble, growl, murmur, repine, whine, croak. Confirmed, habitual, inveterate, chronic. Connect, join, link, couple, attach, unite. Continual, continuous, unceasing, incessant, endless, uninterrupted, unremitting, constant, perpetual, perennial. Contract, agreement, bargain, compact, covenant, stipulation. Copy, duplicate, counterpart, likeness, reproduction, replica, facsimile. Corrupt, depraved, perverted, vitiated. Costly, expensive, dear. Coterie, clique, cabal, circle, set, faction, party. Critical, judicial, impartial, carping, caviling, captious, censorious. Crooked, awry, askew. Cross, fretful, peevish, petulant, pettish, irritable, irascible, angry. Crowd, throng, horde, host, mass, multitude, press, jam, concourse. Curious, inquisitive, prying, meddlesome.

Dainty, delicate, exquisite, choice, rare. Danger, peril, jeopardy, hazard, risk. Darken, obscure, bedim, obfuscate. Dead, lifeless, inanimate, deceased, defunct, extinct. Decay, decompose, putrefy, rot, spoil. Deceit, deception, double-dealing, duplicity, chicanery, guile, treachery. Deceptive, deceitful, misleading, fallacious, fraudulent. Decorate, adorn, ornament, embellish, deck, bedeck, garnish, bedizen, beautify. Decorous, demure, sedate, sober, staid, prim, proper. Deface, disfigure, mar, mutilate. Defect, fault, imperfection, disfigurement, blemish, flaw. Delay, defer, postpone, procrastinate. Demoralize, deprave, debase, corrupt, vitiate. Deportment, demeanor, bearing, port, mien. Deprive, divest, dispossess, strip, despoil. Despise, contemn, scorn, disdain. Despondency, despair, desperation. Detach, separate, sunder, sever, disconnect, disjoin, disunite. Determined, persistent, dogged. Devout, religious, pious, godly, saintly. Difficulty, hindrance, obstacle, impediment, encumbrance, handicap. Difficulty, predicament, perplexity, plight, quandary, dilemma, strait. Dirty, filthy, foul, nasty, squalid. Discernment, perception, penetration, insight, acumen. Disgraceful, dishonorable, shameful, disreputable, ignominious, opprobrious, scandalous, infamous. Disgusting, sickening, repulsive, revolting, loathsome, repugnant, abhorrent, noisome, fulsome. Dispel, disperse, dissipate, scatter. Dissatisfied, discontented, displeased, malcontent, disgruntled. Divide, distribute, apportion, allot, allocate, partition. Doctrine, dogma, tenet, precept. Dream, reverie, vision, fantasy. Drip, dribble, trickle. Drunk, drunken, intoxicated, inebriated. Dry, arid, parched, desiccated.

Eat, bolt, gulp, gorge, devour. Encroach, infringe, intrench, trench, intrude, invade, trespass. End, conclude, terminate, finish, discontinue, close. Enemy, foe, adversary, opponent, antagonist, rival. Enough, adequate, sufficient. Entice, inveigle, allure, lure, decoy, seduce. Erase, expunge, cancel, efface, obliterate. Error, mistake, blunder, slip. Estimate, value, appreciate. Eternal, everlasting, endless, deathless, imperishable, immortal. Examination, inquiry, inquisition, investigation, inspection, scrutiny, research, review, audit, inquest, autopsy. Example, sample, specimen, instance. Exceed, excel, surpass, transcend, outdo. Expand, dilate, distend, inflate. Expel, banish, exile, proscribe, ostracize. Experiment, trial, test. Explicit, exact, precise, definite.

Faculty, gift, endowment, aptitude, attribute, talent, predilection, bent. Failing, shortcoming, defect, fault, foible, infirmity. Famous, renowned, celebrated, noted, distinguished, eminent, illustrious. Fashion, mode, style, vogue, rage, fad. Fast, rapid, swift, quick, fleet, speedy, hasty, celeritous, expeditious, instantaneous. Fasten, tie, hitch, moor, tether. Fate, destiny, lot, doom. Fawn, truckle, cringe, crouch. Feign, pretend, dissemble, simulate, counterfeit, affect, assume. Fiendish, devilish, diabolical, demoniacal, demonic, satanic. Fertile, fecund, fruitful, prolific. Fit, suitable, appropriate, proper. Flame, blaze, flare, glare, glow. Flat, level, even, plane, smooth, horizontal. Flatter, blandish, beguile, compliment, praise. Flexible, pliable, pliant, supple, limber, lithe, lissom. Flit, flutter, flicker, hover. Flock, herd, bevy, covey, drove, pack, brood, litter, school. Flow, pour, stream, gush, spout. Follow, pursue, chase. Follower, adherent, disciple, partisan, henchman. Fond, loving, doting, devoted, amorous, enamored. Force, strength, power, energy, vigor, might, potency, cogency, efficacy. Force, compulsion, coercion, constraint, restraint. Free, liberate, emancipate, manumit, release, disengage, disentangle, disembarrass, disencumber, extricate. Freshen, refresh, revive, renovate, renew. Friendly, amicable, companionable, hearty, cordial, neighborly, sociable, genial, complaisant, affable. Frighten, affright, alarm, terrify, terrorize, dismay, appal, daunt, scare. Frown, scowl, glower, lower. Frugal, sparing, saving, economical, chary, thrifty, provident, prudent.

Game, play, amusement, pastime, diversion, fun, sport, entertainment. Gather, accumulate, amass, collect, levy, muster, hoard. Ghost, spirit, specter, phantom, apparition, shade, phantasm. Gift, present, donation, grant, gratuity, bequest, boon, bounty, largess, fee, bribe. Grand, magnificent, gorgeous, splendid, superb, sublime. Greet, hail, salute, address, accost. Grief, sorrow, distress, affliction, trouble, tribulation, woe. Grieve, lament, mourn, bemoan, bewail, deplore, rue. Guard, defend, protect, shield, shelter, screen, preserve.

Habitation, abode, dwelling, residence, domicile, home. Harmful, injurious, detrimental, pernicious, deleterious, baneful, noxious. Have, possess, own, hold. Headstrong, wayward, wilful, perverse, froward. Help (noun), aid, assistance, succor. Help (verb), assist, aid, succor, abet, second, support, befriend. Hesitate, falter, vacillate, waver. Hide, conceal, secrete. High, tall, lofty, elevated, towering. Hint, intimate, insinuate. Hopeful, expectant, sanguine, optimistic, confident. Hopeless, despairing, disconsolate, desperate. Holy, sacred, hallowed, sanctified, consecrated, godly, pious, saintly, blessed.

Impolite, discourteous, inurbane, uncivil, rude, disrespectful, pert, saucy, impertinent, impudent, insolent. Importance, consequence, moment. Impostor, pretender, charlatan, masquerader, mountebank, deceiver, humbug, cheat, quack, shyster, empiric. Imprison, incarcerate, immure. Improper, indecent, indecorous, unseemly, unbecoming, indelicate. Impure, tainted, contaminated, polluted, defiled, vitiated. Inborn, innate, inbred, congenital. Incite, instigate, stimulate, impel, arouse, goad, spur, promote. Inclose, surround, encircle, circumscribe, encompass. Increase, grow, enlarge, magnify, amplify, swell, augment. Indecent, indelicate, immodest, shameless, ribald, lewd, lustful, lascivious, libidinous, obscene. Insane, demented, deranged, crazy, mad. Insanity, dementia, derangement, craziness, madness, lunacy, mania, frenzy, hallucination. Insipid, tasteless, flat, vapid. Intention, intent, purpose, plan, design, aim, object, end. Interpose, intervene, intercede, interfere, mediate. Irreligious, ungodly, impious, godless, sacrilegious, blasphemous, profane. Irritate, exasperate, nettle, incense.

Join, connect, unite, couple, combine, link, annex, append.

Kindle, ignite, inflame, rouse.

Lack, want, need, deficiency, dearth, paucity, scarcity, deficit. Lame, crippled, halt, deformed, maimed, disabled. Large, great, big, huge, immense, colossal, gigantic, extensive, vast, massive, unwieldy, bulky. Laughable, comical, comic, farcical, ludicrous, ridiculous, funny, droll. Lead, guide, conduct, escort, convoy. Lengthen, prolong, protract, extend. Lessen, decrease, diminish, reduce, abate, curtail, moderate, mitigate, palliate. Lie (noun), untruth, falsehood, falsity, fiction, fabrication, mendacity, canard, fib, story. Lie (verb), prevaricate, falsify, equivocate, quibble, shuffle, dodge, fence, fib. Likeness, resemblance, similitude, similarity, semblance, analogy. Limp, flaccid, flabby, flimsy. List, roll, catalogue, register, roster, schedule, inventory. Loud, resonant, clarion, stentorian, sonorous. Low, base, abject, servile, slavish, menial. Loyal, faithful, true, constant, staunch, unwavering, steadfast. Lurk, skulk, slink, sneak, prowl.

Make, create, frame, fashion, mold, shape, form, forge, fabricate, invent, construct, manufacture, concoct. Manifest, plain, obvious, clear, apparent, patent, evident, perceptible, noticeable, open, overt, palpable, tangible, indubitable, unmistakable. Many, various, numerous, divers, manifold, multitudinous, myriad, countless, innumerable. Meaning, significance, signification, import, purport. Meet, encounter, collide, confront, converge. Meeting, assembly, assemblage, congregation, convention, conference, concourse, gathering, mustering. Melt, thaw, fuse, dissolve, liquefy. Memory, remembrance, recollection, reminiscence, retrospection. Misrepresent, misinterpret, falsify, distort, warp. Mix, compound, amalgamate, weld, combine, blend, concoct. Model, pattern, prototype, criterion, standard, exemplar, paragon, archetype, ideal. Motive, incentive, inducement, desire, purpose. Move, actuate, impel, prompt, incite.

Near, nigh, close, neighboring, adjacent, contiguous. Neat, tidy, orderly, spruce, trim, prim. Needful, necessary, requisite, essential, indispensable. Negligence, neglect, inattention, inattentiveness, inadvertence, remissness, oversight. New, novel, fresh, recent, modern, late, innovative, unprecedented. Nice, fastidious, dainty, finical, squeamish. Noisy, clamorous, boisterous, hilarious, turbulent, riotous, obstreperous, uproarious, vociferous, blatant, brawling. Noticeable, prominent, conspicuous, salient, signal.

Order (noun), command, mandate, behest, injunction, decree. Order (verb), command, enjoin, direct, instruct. Oversight, supervision, direction, superintendence, surveillance.

Pale, pallid, wan, colorless, blanched, ghastly, ashen, cadaverous. Patience, forbearance, resignation, longsuffering. Penetrate, pierce, perforate. Place, office, post, position, situation, appointment. Plan, design, project, scheme, plot. Playful, mischievous, roguish, prankish, sportive, arch. Plentiful, plenteous, abundant, bounteous, copious, profuse, exuberant, luxuriant. Plunder, rifle, loot, sack, pillage, devastate, despoil. Pretty, beautiful, comely, handsome, fair. Profitable, remunerative, lucrative, gainful. Prompt, punctual, ready, expeditious. Pull, draw, drag, haul, tug, tow. Push, shove, thrust. Puzzle, perplex, mystify, bewilder.

Queer, odd, curious, quaint, ridiculous, singular, unique, bizarre, fantastic, grotesque.

Rash, incautious, reckless, foolhardy, adventurous, venturous, venturesome. Rebellion, insurrection, revolt, mutiny, riot, revolution, sedition. Recover, regain, retrieve, recoup, rally, recuperate. Reflect, deliberate, ponder, muse, meditate, ruminate. Relate, recount, recite, narrate, tell. Replace, supersede, supplant, succeed. Repulsive, unsightly, loathsome, hideous, grewsome. Requital, retaliation, reprisal, revenge, vengeance, retribution. Responsible, answerable, accountable, amenable, liable. Reveal, disclose, divulge, manifest, show, betray. Reverence, veneration, awe, adoration, worship. Ridicule, deride, mock, taunt, flout, twit, tease. Ripe, mature, mellow. Rise, arise, mount, ascend. Rogue, knave, rascal, miscreant, scamp, sharper, villain. Round, circular, rotund, spherical, globular, orbicular. Rub, polish, burnish, furbish, scour.

Sad, grave, sober, moody, doleful, downcast, dreary, woeful, somber, unhappy, woebegone, mournful, depressed, despondent, gloomy, melancholy, heavy-spirited, sorrowful, dismal, dejected, disconsolate, miserable, lugubrious. Satiate, sate, surfeit, cloy, glut, gorge. Scoff, jeer, gibe, fleer, sneer, mock, taunt. Secret, covert, surreptitious, furtive, clandestine, underhand, stealthy. Seep, ooze, infiltrate, percolate, transude, exude. Sell, barter, vend, trade. Shape, form, figure, outline, conformation, configuration, contour, profile. Share, partake, participate, divide. Sharp, keen, acute, cutting, trenchant, incisive. Shore, coast, littoral, beach, strand, bank. Shorten, abridge, abbreviate, curtail, truncate, syncopate. Show (noun), display, ostentation, parade, pomp, splurge. Show, exhibit, display, expose, manifest, evince. Shrink, flinch, wince, blench, quail. Shun, avoid, eschew. Shy, bashful, diffident, modest, coy, timid, shrinking. Sign, omen, auspice, portent, prognostic, augury, foretoken, adumbration, presage, indication. Simple, innocent, artless, unsophisticated, naive. Skilful, skilled, expert, adept, apt, proficient, adroit, dexterous, deft, clever, ingenious. Skin, hide, pelt, fell. Sleepy, drowsy, slumberous, somnolent, sluggish, torpid, dull, lethargic. Slovenly, slatternly, dowdy, frowsy, blowzy. Sly, crafty, cunning, subtle, wily, artful, politic, designing. Smile, smirk, grin. Solitary, lonely, lone, lonesome, desolate, deserted, uninhabited. Sour, acid, tart, acrid, acidulous, acetose, acerbitous, astringent. Speech, discourse, oration, address, sermon, declamation, dissertation, exhortation, disquisition, harangue, diatribe, tirade, screed, philippic, invective, rhapsody, plea. Spruce, natty, dapper, smart, chic. Stale, musty, frowzy, mildewed, fetid, rancid, rank. Steep, precipitous, abrupt. Stingy, close, miserly, niggardly, parsimonious, penurious, sordid, Storm, tempest, whirlwind, hurricane, tornado, cyclone, typhoon Straight, perpendicular, vertical, plumb, erect, upright. Strange, singular, peculiar, odd, queer, quaint, outlandish. Strong, stout, robust, sturdy, stalwart, powerful. Stupid, dull, obtuse, stolid, doltish, sluggish, brainless, bovine. Succeed, prosper, thrive, flourish, triumph. Succession, sequence, series. Supernatural, preternatural, superhuman, miraculous. Suppose, surmise, conjecture, presume, imagine, fancy, guess, think, believe. Surprise, astonish, amaze, astound. Swearing, cursing, profanity, blasphemy, execration, imprecation.

Teach, instruct, educate, train, discipline, drill, inculcate, instil, indoctrinate. Thoughtful, contemplative, meditative, reflective, pensive, wistful. Tire, weary, fatigue, exhaust, jade, fag. Tool, implement, instrument, utensil. Trifle, dally, dawdle, potter. Try, endeavor, essay, attempt. Trust, confidence, reliance, assurance, faith. Turn, revolve, rotate, spin, whirl, gyrate.

Ugly, homely, uncomely, hideous. Unwilling, reluctant, disinclined, loath, averse.

Watchful, vigilant, alert. Wave (noun), billow, breaker, swell, ripple, undulation. Wave (verb), brandish, flourish, flaunt, wigwag. Weariness, languor, lassitude, enervation, exhaustion. Wearisome, tiresome, irksome, tedious, humdrum. Wet (adjective), humid, moist, damp, dank, sodden, soggy. Wet (verb), moisten, dampen, soak, imbrue, saturate, drench Whim, caprice, vagary, fancy, freak, whimsey, crotchet. Wind, breeze, gust, blast, flaw, gale, squall, flurry. Wind, coil, twist, twine, wreathe. Winding, tortuous, serpentine, sinuous, meandering. Wonderful, marvelous, phenomenal, miraculous. Workman, laborer, artisan, artificer, mechanic, craftsman. Write, inscribe, scribble, scrawl, scratch.

Yearn, long, hanker, pine, crave.

EXERCISE F

Write three synonyms for each of the following words. Discriminate the three, and embody each of them in a sentence.

Accomplish Conduct (noun) Humble Scream Agree Conspicuous Indifferent Shrewd Anger Cringe Misfortune Shudder Attempt Difficult Obey Skill Big Disconnect Object (noun) Soft Brute Erratic Object (verb) Splash Business Flash Obligation Success Careless Fragrant Occupied Sweet Climb Gain Oppose Trick Collect Generous Persist Wash Commanding Grim Revise Worship Compel Groan Room

EXERCISE G

Supply eight or ten intervening words between each of the following pairs. Arrange the intervening words in an ascending scale.

Dark, bright Wet, dry Savage, civilized Beautiful, ugly Friend, enemy Hope, despair Wise, foolish Love, hate Enormous, minute Admirable, abominable Curse, bless Pride, humility

IX

MANY-SIDED WORDS

In Chapter VII you made a study of printed distinctions between synonyms. In Chapter VIII you were given lists of synonyms and made the distinctions yourself. Near the close of Chapter VIII you were given words and discovered for yourself what their synonyms are. This third stage might seem to reveal to you the full joys and benefits of your researches in this subject. Certainly to find a new word for an old one is an exhilarating sort of mental travel. And to find a new word which expresses exactly what an old one expressed but approximately is a real acquisition in living. But you are not yet a perfectly trained hunter of synonyms. Some miscellaneous tasks remain; they will involve hard work and call your utmost powers into play.

Of these tasks the most important is connected with the hint already given that many words, especially if they be generic words, have two or more entirely different meanings. Let us first establish this fact, and afterwards see what bearing it has on our study of synonyms.

My friend says, "I hope you will have a good day." Does he mean an enjoyable one in general? a profitable or lucrative one, in case I have business in hand? a successful one, if I am selling stocks or buying a house? Possibly he means a sunshiny day if I intend to play golf, a snowy day if I plan to go hunting, a rainy day if my crops are drying up. The ideas here are varied, even contradictory, enough; yet good may be used of every one of them. Good is in truth so general a term that we must know the attendant circumstances if we are to attach to it a signification even approximately accurate. This does not at all imply that good is a term we may brand as useless. It implies merely that when our meaning is specific we must set good aside (unless circumstances make its sense unmistakable) in favor of a specific word.

Things is another very general term. In "Let us wash up the things" it likely means dishes or clothes. In "Hang your things in the closet" it likely means clothes. In "Put the things in the tool-box" it likely means tools. In "Put the things in the sewing-basket" it likely means thread, needles, and scissors. In "The trenches are swarming with these things" it likely means cooties. A more accurate word is usually desirable. Yet we may see the value of the generality in the saying "A place for everything, and everything in its place."

Good and things are not alone in having multitudinous meanings. There are in the language numerous many-sided words. These words should be studied carefully. True, they are not always employed in ambiguous ways. For example, right in the sense of correct is seldom likely to be mistaken for right in the sense of not-left, but a reader or hearer may frequently mistake it for right in the sense of just or of honorable. In the use of such words, therefore, we cannot become too discriminating.

EXERCISE H

This exercise concerns itself with common words that have more than one meaning. Make your procedure as follows. First, look up the word itself. Under it you will find a number of defining words. Then look up each of these in turn, until you have the requisite number and kind of synonyms. (The word is sure to have more synonyms than are called for.) You will have to use your dictionary tirelessly.

<Bare.> Find three synonyms for bare as applied to the body; three for it as applied to a room.

<Bear.> Give three other words that might be used instead of bear in the sentence "The pillar bears a heavy weight"; three in the sentence "He bore a heavy load on his back"; three in the sentence "He bore the punishment that was unjustly meted out to him"; three in the sentence "He bore a grudge against his neighbor"; two in the sentence "The field did not bear a crop last year."

<Bold.> Give ten synonyms for bold as applied to a warrior; ten as applied to a young girl. Observe that the synonyms in the first list are favorable in import and suggest the idea of bravery, whereas those in the second list are unfavorable and suggest the idea of brazenness. How do you account for this fact? Can you think of circumstances in which a young girl might be so placed that the favorable synonyms might be applied to her?

<Bright.> Give as many words as you can, at least twelve, that can be used instead of bright as applied to a light, a diamond, a wet pavement, or a live coal. Give three words for bright as applied to a child of unusual intelligence; two as applied to an occasion that promises to turn out well; two as applied to a career that has been signally successful.

<Clear.> Give five synonyms for clear as applied to water; ten as applied to a fact or a statement; three as applied to the sky or atmosphere; three as applied to the voice; two as applied to a passageway or a view; three as applied to one's judgment or thinking.

<Close.> Give three words that could be substituted for close as applied to the atmosphere in a room; four as applied to a person who is uninclined to talk about a matter; three as applied to something not far off; four as applied to a friend; five as applied to a person who is reluctant to spend money; five as applied to a translation; five as applied to attention or endeavor.

<Discharge.> Substitute in turn four words for discharge in the sentence "The judge discharged the prisoner"; two in the sentence "The foreman discharged the workman"; two in the sentence "The hunter discharged the gun"; three in the sentence "The sore discharged pus"; two in the sentence "My neighbor discharged the debt"; two in the sentence "He discharged his duty."

<Dull>. Name three words besides dull that could be applied to a blade or a point; five to a person with slow intellect; three to indifference toward others; two to a color; three to a day that is not cheerful; five to talk or discourse that is not interesting.

<Fair>. Substitute five words for fair in the sentence "He gave a fair judgment in the case"; three in the sentence "The son made a fair showing in his studies"; four in the sentence "She had a fair face"; two in the sentence "Her complexion was fair"; three in the sentence "Let no shame ever fall upon your fair name."

<False>. Find two words that you can substitute for false as applied to a signature, to a report or a piece of news, to jewels or money, to a friend.

<Fast>. Name two words I might substitute for fast in the sentence "Drive the stake until it is fast in the ground"; three in the sentence "He made a fast trip for the doctor"; six in the sentence "By leading a fast life he soon squandered his inheritance."

<Firm>. Substitute four words for firm in the sentence "I made the board firm by nailing it to the wall"; three in the sentence "The water froze into a firm mass"; five in the sentence "He was firm in his determination to proceed."

<Flat>. Instead of flat use in turn four other words in the sentence "This is a flat piece of ground"; five in the sentence "It was as flat a story as ever wearied company"; three in the sentence "The cook having forgotten the salt, the soup was flat"; four in the sentence "I am surprised by your flat refusal."

<Free>. Free may be applied to a person not subject to a tax or a disease, to a person who has been released from confinement or restraint, to a person who is not reserved or formal in his relations to others, to a person who is willing to give. Out of your own resources substitute as many words as you can for free in each of these sentences. Now look up free in a dictionary or book of synonyms. What proportion of its synonyms were you able to think up unaided?

<Great>. Give three synonyms for great as applied to size, to number, to a man widely known for notable achievement, to an error or crime, to price.

<Hard>. Give six synonyms for hard as applied to a rock; six as applied to a task or burden; six as applied to a problem or situation; ten as applied to one's treatment of others.

<Harsh>. Give three words that can be applied instead of harsh to a sound; three that can be applied instead of harsh to the voice; five that can be applied to one's treatment of others; five that can be applied to one's disposition or nature.

<Just>. Substitute five words for just in the sentence "You are just in your dealings with others"; three in the sentence "A just punishment was meted out to him"; three in the sentence "They made a just division of the property"; two in the sentence "He had a just claim to the title."

<Plain>. Give six words that can be substituted for plain, as applied to a fact or statement; four as applied to the decorations of a room; two as applied to the countenance; four as applied to a surface; three as applied to a statement or reply.

<Poor>. Give five words that can be used instead of poor as applied to a person who is without money or resources; ten as applied to a person lacking in flesh; three as applied to clothing that is worn out; five as applied to land that will bear only small crops or no crops at all; two as applied to an occasion that does not promise to turn out well.

<Quick>. Give six words that could be used instead of quick as applied to a train or a horse in travel; six as applied to the movements of a person about a room or to his actions in the performance of his work; four to a disposition or temper that is easily irritated.

<Serious>. Give five synonyms for serious as applied to one's countenance or expression; three as applied to a problem or undertaking; two as applied to a disease or to sickness.

<Sharp>. Give two synonyms for sharp as applied to a blade or a point; six as applied to a pain or to grief; four as applied to a remark or reply; ten as applied to one's mind or intellect; three as applied to temper or disposition; three as applied to an embankment; three as applied to the seasoning of food; three as applied to a cry or scream.

<Stiff>. Give six synonyms for stiff as applied to an iron rod; three as applied to an adversary; six as applied to one's manner or bearing; two as applied to one's style of writing or speaking.

<Strong>. Give three synonyms for strong as applied to a person in regard to his health; ten as applied to him in regard to his muscularity of physique; four as applied to a fortress; three as applied to a plea or assertion; three as applied to an argument or reason; three as applied to determination; two as applied to liquor; three as applied to a light; two as applied to corrective measures; two as applied to an odor.

<Vain>. Give five synonyms for vain as applied to a man who overvalues himself or his accomplishments; six as applied to an attempt that comes to nothing; three as applied to hopes that have little chance of fulfilment.

<Weak>. Substitute five synonyms for weak in the sentence "I was very weak after my illness"; four in the sentence "The fortress was especially weak on the side toward the plain"; three in the sentence "He made a weak attempt to defend his actions"; three in the sentence "Many of these arguments are weak"; three in the sentence "Hamlet is usually interpreted as being weak of will"; three in the sentence "The liquor was so weak it had no taste"; three in the sentence "The lace was weak and soon tore."

<Wild>. Give two words instead of wild as applied to animals; two as applied to land; three as applied to people who have not been civilized; three as applied to a storm, an uncontrolled temper, or a mob; three as applied to a scheme that has no basis in reason or practicality.

EXERCISE I

In Exercise H you started with ideas and objects, and had to find words of a given meaning that could be applied to them. In this exercise you start with the words, and must find the ideas and objects.

<Base>. To what is base applied when inferior, cheap, worthless could be used as its synonyms? To what is it applied when debased, impure, spurious, alloyed, counterfeit could be used? When mean, despicable, contemptible, shameful, disgraceful, dishonorable, discreditable, scandalous, infamous, villainous, low-minded could be used? When ignoble, servile, slavish, groveling, menial could be used? When plebeian, obscure, untitled, vulgar, lowly, nameless, humble, unknown could be used?

<Mortal>. Can you properly contrast mortal with immortal existence? mortal with porcine existence? Is porcine existence also mortal? Is mortal existence also porcine? What adjective pertaining to mankind forms a true contrast to porcine? What is a synonym for mortal in its broad sense? in its narrow sense?

<Severe>. To what is severe applied when harsh, stern, rigorous, drastic, austere, hard could be substituted for it? When plain, unembellished, unadorned, chaste could be substituted? When acute, violent, extreme, intense, sharp, distressing, afflictive could be substituted? When keen, cutting, biting, stinging, caustic, critical, trenchant could be substituted?

EXERCISE J

Reread the discussion of good and things in Many-sided Words. Then for each of the words listed below collect or compose twenty or more sentences in which the word is used. As largely as possible, take them from actual experience. In doing this you must listen to the use of the word in everyday talk. After you have made your list of sentences as varied and extensive as you can, try to substitute synonyms that will express the idea more accurately. Note whether a knowledge of the attendant circumstances is necessary to an understanding of the original word, to an understanding of the word substituted for it.

Bad Fine Matter Affair Nice Common Case Boost

EXERCISE K

Analyze each of the words given below into its various uses or applications. Then for it in each of these applications assemble as many synonyms as you can unaided. Finally, have recourse to a dictionary or book of synonyms for the further extension of your lists.

(By way of illustration, let us take the word quiet. Through meditation and analysis we discover that it may be applied (a) to water or any liquid not in motion, (b) to a place that is without sound, (c) to a place shut off from activity or bustle, (d) to a person who is not demonstrative or forward in manner. We then think of all the words we can that can be substituted for it in each of these uses. No matter how incompletely or unsatisfactorily we feel we are performing this task, we must not give it over until we have found every word we can summon. Then we turn to a dictionary or book of synonyms. Thus for quiet we shall assemble such synonyms as (a) calm, still, motionless, placid, tranquil, serene, smooth, unruffled, undisturbed, pacific, stagnant; (b) silent, still, noiseless, mute, hushed, voiceless; (c) secluded, sequestered, solitary, isolated, unfrequented, unvisited, peaceful, untrodden, retired; (d) demure, sedate, staid, reserved, meek, gentle, retiring, unobtrusive, modest, unassuming, timid, shrinking, shy.)

Barren Keep Pure Solid Certain Liberal Rare Sorry Cold Light (adjective) Rich Spread Cool Light (noun) Right Straight Deep Long Rude Still Dry Low Short Sure Easy Mean Simple Thick Foul Narrow Slow Thin Full New Small Tender Gentle Obscure Smooth True Grand Odd Sober Warm Heavy Particular Soft Yield Keen

<Literal vs. Figurative Applications>

One of the most interesting things to watch in the study of words is their development from a literal to a figurative application. The first man who broke away from the confines of the literal meaning of a word and applied the word to something that only in a figurative sense had qualities analogous to the original meaning, was creating poetry. He was making an imaginative flight comparable in daring to the Wright brothers' first aeronautic flight. But as the word was used over and over in this figurative way the imaginative flight became more and more commonplace. At last it ceased to be imaginative at all; through frequent repetition it had settled into the matter of course. A glance back at the Concise group above will show you that with time the comparison which was once the basis and the life of the figurative use of words is dulled, obscured, even lost.

As a further enforcement of this fact, let us analyze the word rough. In its literal application, it may designate any surface that has ridges, projections, or inequalities and is therefore uneven, jagged, rugged, scraggy, or scabrous. Now frequently a man's face or head is rough because unshaved or uncombed; also the fur of an animal is rough. Hence the term could be used for unkempt, disheveled, shaggy, hairy, coarse, bristly. "The child ran its hand over its father's rough cheek" and "The bear had a rough coat" are sentences that even the most unimaginative mind can understand. We speak of rough timber because its surface has not been planed or made smooth. We speak of a rough diamond because it is unpolished, uncut. Note that all these uses are literal, that in each instance some unevenness of surface is referred to.

But man, urged on by the desire to say what he means with more novelty, strikingness, or force, applied the word to ideas that have no surfaces to be uneven. He imagined what these ideas would be like if they had surfaces. Of course in putting these conceptions into language he was creating figures of speech, some of them startlingly apt, some of them merely far-fetched. He said a man had a rough voice, as though the voice were like a cactus in its prickly irregularities. By rough he meant what his fellows meant when they spoke of the voice as harsh, grating, jarring, discordant, inharmonious, strident, raucous, or unmusical. Going farther, that early poet said the weather was rough. He thought of clement weather as being smooth and even, but of inclement, severe, stormy, tempestuous, or violent weather as being full of projections to rend and harass one. Thus an everyday use of the term today was once wrenched and immoderate speech. Possibly the first man who heard of rough weather was puzzled for a moment, then amused or delighted as he caught the figure. It did not require great originality to think of a crowd as rough in its movements. But our poet applied the idea to an individual. To him a rude, uncivil, impolite, ungracious, uncourteous, unpolished, uncouth, boorish, blunt, bluff, gruff, brusk, or burly person was as the unplaned lumber or the unpolished gem; and we imitative moderns still call such a man rough. But we do not think of the man as covered with projections that need to be taken off, unless forsooth we receive rough treatment at his hands. And note how far we have journeyed from the original idea of the word when we say "I gave the report a rough glance," meaning cursory, hasty, superficial, or incomplete consideration.

Many very simple words, including several of those already treated in this chapter, are two-sided in that they are both literal and figurative.

EXERCISE L

Trace each of the following words from its literal to its figurative applications, giving synonyms for each of its uses.

Open Bright Stiff Hard Low Cool Sharp Flat Keen Strong Dull Raw Small Odd Warm Deep Eccentric

<Imperfectly Understood Facts and Ideas>

Thus far in this chapter we have been considering many-sided words. We must now turn to a certain class of facts and ideas that deserve better understanding and closer analysis than we usually accord them.

These facts and ideas are supposed to be matters of common knowledge. And in their broad scope and purport they are. Because acquaintance with them is taken for granted it behooves us to know them. Yet they are in reality complicated, and when we attempt to deal with them in detail, our assurance forsakes us. All of us have our "blind sides" intellectually— quake to have certain areas of discussion entered, because we foresee that we must sit idly by without power to make sensible comment. Unto as many as possible of these blind sides of ourselves we should pronounce the blessed words, "Let there be light." We have therefore to consider certain matters and topics which are supposed to belong to the common currency of social information, but with which our familiarity is less thoroughgoing than it should be.

What are these facts and topics? Take for illustration the subject of aeronautics. Suppose we have but the vaguest conception of the part played or likely to be played by aircraft in war, commerce, and pleasure. Suppose we are not aware that some craft are made to float and others to be driven by propellers. Suppose such terms as Zeppelin, blimp, monoplane, biplane, hydroplane, dirigible have no definite import for us. Does not our knowledge fall short of that expected of well-informed men in this present age?

Or take military terms. Everybody uses them—clergymen, pacifists, clubmen, social reformers, novelists, tramps, brick-layers, Big-Stickers. We cannot escape them if we would. We ourselves use them. But do we use them with precise and masterly understanding? You call one civilian colonel and another major; which have you paid the higher compliment? You are uncertain whether a given officer is a colonel or a major, and you wish to address him in such fashion as will least offend his sensitiveness as to rank and nomenclature; which title—colonel or major—is the less perilous? You are told that a major has command of a battalion; does that tell you anything about him? You are told that he has command of a squadron, of a brigade, of a platoon; do these changes in circumstances have any import for you? If not, you have too faltering a grasp upon military facts and terminology.

The best remedy for such shortcomings is to be insatiably curious on all subjects. This of course is the ideal; nobody ever fully attains it. Nevertheless Exercise M will set you to groping into certain broad matters relevant to ordinary needs. Thereafter, if your purpose be strong enough, you will carry the same methods there acquired into other fields of knowledge.

You may object that all this is as much mental as linguistic—that what is proposed will result in as large accessions of general information as of vocabulary. Let this be admitted. Deficiencies of language are often, perhaps almost invariably, linked with deficiencies of knowledge. To repair the one we must at the same time repair the other. This may seem a hard saying to those who seek, or would impart, mere glibness of phrase without regard for the substance—who worship "words, words, words" without thought of "the matter." There is such a thing as froth of utterance, but who has respect therefor or is deceived thereby? Speech that is not informed is like a house without a foundation. You should not desire to possess it. Abroad in this world of ours already are too many people who darken counsel by words without knowledge.

EXERCISE M

A second lieutenant is the commissioned officer of lowest grade in the United States army. Name all the grades from second lieutenant to the grade that is highest.

An admiral is the officer of highest grade in the United States navy. Name all the grades down to that which is lowest.

Name as many as possible of the different ranks of the clergy in the Roman Catholic Church, in the Church of England.

Give ascendingly the five titles in the British nobility.

Name the different kinds of vehicles.

Name the different kinds of schools.

Name all the different kinds of boats and ships (both ancient and modern) you can think of.

Give the nautical term for the right side of a ship, for the left side of a ship, for the front, for the rear, for the forward portion, for the rear portion.

Name the various kinds of bodies of water (oceans, rivers, lagoons, etc.)

Give all the terms of relationship of persons, both by blood and by marriage. What relation to you is your grandfather's brother? your cousin's daughter?

Name all the bones of the human head.

Give the names of the different parts of a typical flower.

Name as many elements as you can. What is the number usually given? What was the last element discovered, and by whom?

Name the elements of which water is composed. Name the principal elements in the composition of the air.

Make as long a list as possible (up to thirty) of words that appeal to the sense of sight (especially color words and motion words), to the sense of hearing, of smell, of taste, of touch.

Find words descriptive of various expressions in the human face.

Name all the terms you can associated with law, with medicine, with geology.

Name the planets, the signs of the zodiac, as many constellations as you can.

Name the seven colors of the spectrum, and for each name give all the synonyms you can. What are the primary colors? the secondary colors?

Give the various races into which mankind has been divided, and the color of each.

Name every kind of tree you can think of, every kind of flower, every kind of animal, every kind of bird.

X

SUPPLEMENTARY LIST OF WORDS

You have already mastered many words, but a glance at any page of the dictionary will convince you that you have not mastered all. Nor will you, ever. Their number is too great, and too many of them are abstrusely technical.

Nevertheless there remain many words that you should bring into your vocabulary. Most of them are not extremely usual; on the other hand they are not so unusual that you would encounter them but once in a lifetime. The majority of them are familiar to you, perhaps; that is, you will have a general feeling that you have seen them before. But this is not enough. Do you know exactly what they mean? Can you, when the occasion comes, use them?-use them promptly and well? This is the test.

Many of the words are absolutely new so far as this book is concerned. They have not been discussed or attached to any list. Many are not entirely new. They have appeared, but not received such emphasis that they are sure to stand fast in your memory. Or some cognate form of them may have been mastered, yet they themselves may remain unknown. Thus you may know commendation but not commendatory, credulous but not incredulity, invalid but not invalidate or invalidity. One of the best of all ways to extend your vocabulary is to make each word of your acquaintance introduce you to its immediate kinsmen, those grouped with it on the same page of the dictionary.

This chapter puts you on your mettle. Hitherto you have been given instructions as to the way to proceed, Now you must shift for yourself. The words, to be sure, are corraled for you. But you must tame them and break them, in order that on them you may ride the ranges of human intercourse. If you have not yet learned how to subdue them to your will and use, it would be futile to tell you how. You have been put in the way of mastering words. The task that henceforth confronts you is your own. You must have at it unaided.

It is true that, in the exercise that follows, specific help is given you on a limited number of the words. But this help is only toward discovering the words for yourself before you have seen them in a list. And for most of the words not even this meager assistance is given.

EXERCISE - Supplementary

Each of the following groups of words is preceded by sentences in which blanks should be filled by words from that group. But do your best to fill these blanks properly before you consult the group at all. You must learn to think of, or think up, the right word instead of having it pointed out to you.

These benefits were not inherent in the course he had taken; they were purely ____. Anything which existed before Noah's flood is called ____. His left hand, which had ceased to grow during his childhood, was now withered from its long ____. Certain books once belonging to the Bible have been discarded by the Protestants as ____. When Shakespeare makes Hector quote Aristotle, who lived long after the siege of Troy, he is guilty of an ____. Whatever causes the lips to pucker, as alum or a green persimmon, is spoken of as ____.

Abash, abbreviate, abduct, aberrant, aberration, abeyance, abhorrent, abject, abjure, aboriginal, abortive, abrade, abrasion, abrogate, absolution, abstemious, abstention, abstruse, accelerate, accentuate, acceptation, accessary, accession, accessory, acclamation, acclivity, accolade, accomplice, accost, acerbity, acetic, achromatic, acidulous, acme, acolyte, acoustics, acquiescence, acquisitive, acrimonious, acumen, adage, adamantine, addict, adduce, adhesive, adipose, adjudicate, adolescence, adulation, adulterate, advent, adventitious, aerial, affability, affidavit, affiliate, affinity, agglomerate, agglutinate, aggrandizement, agnostic, alignment, aliment, allegorical, alleviate, altercation, altruistic, amalgamate, amatory, ambiguity, ambrosial, ameliorate, amenable, amenity, amity, amnesty, amulet, anachronism, analytical, anathema, anatomy, animadversion, annotate, anomalous, anonymous, antediluvian, anterior, anthology, anthropology, antinomy, antiquarianism, antiseptic, aphorism, apocryphal, aplomb, apostasy, apparatus, apparition, appellate, appertain, appetency, apposite, approbation, appurtenance, aquatic, aqueous, aquiline, arbitrary, archaic, arduous, aromatic, arrear, articulate, ascetic, asperity, asphyxiate, asseverate, assiduity, assimilate, astringent, astute, atrophy, attenuate, auditory, augury, auscultation, austerity, authenticate, authenticity, auxiliary, avidity.

The man wished to fight; he was in ____ mood. There is only a handful of these things; yes, a mere ____. Slight mishaps like these lead to quips and mutual ____. His conduct is odd, grotesque, ____.

Baccalaureate, badinage, bagatelle, baleful, ballast, banality, baneful, beatitude, bellicose, belligerent, benefaction, beneficent, benison, betide, bibulous, bigotry, bizarre, bombastic, burlesque.

This effect was not obtained all at once; it was ____. These subjects belong to the same general field of knowledge as those; the two sets are ____. He is a skilled judge of art, a ____. The Southern states were unwilling to remain in the Union; they could be kept only by ____. Monks take upon themselves the vow of ____. No, this animal does not live on vegetation; it is a ____ animal.

Cacophonous, cadaverous, cadence, callow, calumny, capillary, captious, cardinal, carnal, carnivorous, castigate, cataclysm, catastrophe, category, causality, cavernous, celebrity, celibacy, censorious, ceramics, cerebration, certitude, cessation, charlatan, chimerical, chronology, circuitous, circumlocution, citation, clandestine, clarify, clemency, coadjutor, coagulate, coalesce, coercion, cogency, cognizant, cohesion, coincidence, collusion, colossal, comatose, combustible, commendatory, commensurate, commiserate, communal, compatibility, compendium, complaisant, comport, composite, compulsive, compulsory, computation, concatenate, concentric, concessive, concomitant, condign, condiment, condolence, confiscatory, confute, congeal, congenital, conglomerate, congruity, connivance, connoisseur, connubial, consensus, consistence, consort, constriction, construe, contentious, context, contiguity, contiguous, contingent, contortion, contravene, contumacious, contumacy, contumelious, convergent, conversant, convivial, correlate, corrigible, corroborate, corrosive, cosmic, covenant, crass, credence, crescent, criterion, critique, crucial, crucible, cryptic, crystalline, culmination, culpable, cumulative, cupidity, cursive, cursory, cutaneous, cynosure.

His course was not prescribed for him by superiors; his powers were ____. The suppression of these anarchistic tendencies has required ____ measures. She was just entering society, and was proving herself a popular ____. Yes, this tree loses its leaves every year; it is a ____ tree. He pretends that his ____ are sound, because he can read the stars.

Debilitate, debonair, debutante, decadence, decapitate, deciduous, declivity, decompose, decorous, dedicatory, deduction, deferential, deficiency, deglutition, dehiscence, delectable, delete, deleterious, delineate, deliquescent, demarcation, demimonde, demoniac, denizen, denouement, deprecate, depreciate, derelict, derogatory, despicable, desuetude, desultory, deteriorate, diacritical, diagnosis, diaphanous, diatribe, didactic, diffusive, dilatory, dilettante, dipsomania, dirigible, discommode, discretionary, discursive, disintegrate, disparity, dispensable, disseminate, dissimulation, dissonant, distain, divagation, divination, divulge, dolor, dorsal, drastic, dubiety, duress, dynamic.

These facts do not circulate except among a limited group of people; they are therefore ____. The departure of the children of Israel from Egypt was a general ____. His philosophy, instead of conforming to a single system, was ____. Lamb wrote admirable letters; he has a delightful ____ style. The period at which our days and nights are of equal length is the ____ period.

Ebullient, ecclesiastical, echelon, eclectic, ecstatic, edict, eerie, effervescent, efficacious, effrontery, effulgence, effusion, egregious, eleemosynary, elicit, elite, elucidate, embellish, embryonic, emendation, emissary, emission, emollient, empiric, empyreal, emulous, encomium, endue, enervate, enfilade, enigmatic, ennui, enunciate, environ, epicure, epigram, episode, epistolary, epitome, equestrian, equilibrium, equinoctial, equity, equivocate, eradicate, erosion, erotic, erudition, eruptive, eschew, esoteric, espousal, estrange, ethereal, eulogistic, euphonious, evanescent, evangelical, evict, exacerbate, excerpt, excommunicate, excoriate, excruciate, execrable, exegesis, exemplary, exhalation, exhilarate, exigency, exodus, exonerate, exorbitant, exotic, expectorate, expeditious, explicable, explicit, expunge, extant, extemporaneous, extrinsic.

He deceives himself by this argument, for the argument is utterly ____. No complicated action can be planned in absolute detail; much must depend on ____ circumstance.

Fabricate, fabulous, facetious, factitious, fallacious, fallible, fastidious, fatuous, feasible, feculence, fecundity, felicitous, felonious, fetid, feudal, fiducial, filament, filtrate, finesse, flaccid, flagitious, floriculture, florid, fluctuate, foible, forfeiture, fortuitous, fractious, franchise, frangible, frontal, froward, furtive.

The advice was both unasked and unwelcome; it was purely ____. Throughout the World War the ____ of Germany over the other Central European powers was unquestioned. Buffaloes naturally go together in herds; they are ____.

Galaxy, galleon, garrulity, gesticulate, gormand, granivorous, grandiloquent, gravamen, gratuitous, gregarious, habitue, hallucination, harbinger, hardihood, heckle, hectic, hedonist, hegemony, heinous, herbivorous, heretic, hermaphrodite, heterodox, heterogeneous, hibernate. histrionic, hoidenism, homiletics, homogeneous, hydraulic, hypothesis.

We cannot understand God's ways; they are ____. Nor need we expect to change them; they are ____. If an animal has no backbone, it is ____. A boy so confirmed in his faults that we cannot correct them is ____.

Idiosyncrasy, illicit, immaculate, immanent, imminent, immobile, immure, immutable, impalpable, impeccable, impecunious, imperturbable, impervious, implacable, implicit, impolitic, imponderable, importunate, imprecation, impromptu, improvise, imputation, inadvertent, inamorata, inanity, incarcerate, inchoate, incidence, incision, incongruent, inconsequential, incontinent, incorporeal, incorrigible, incredulity, incumbent, indecorous, indigenous, indigent, indite, indomitable, ineluctable, inexorable, inexplicable, inferential, infinitesimal, infinitude, infraction, infusion, inhibit, innocuous, innuendo, inopportune, insatiable, inscrutable, insidious, inspissated, insulate, intangible, integral, integument, interdict, internecine, intractable, intransigent, intrinsic, inure, invalidate, inveigh, inveigle, invertebrate, invidious, irrefragable, irrefutable, irrelevant, irreparable, irrevocable, iterate.

He overpraised people; he was always engaged in extravagant ____ of somebody or other. The small man who has written a book becomes pretentious at once and regards himself as one of the ____. Thatcher is always engaged in lawsuits; he is the most ____ man I ever saw.

Jocose, jocund, jurisprudence, juxtaposition, kaleidoscopic, labyrinth, lacerate, lackadaisical, lacrimal, laity, lambent, lampoon, largess, lascivious, laudable, laudation, lavation, legionary, lethargic, licentious, lineal, lingual, literati, litigious, loquacity, lubricity, lucent, lucre, lucubration, lugubrious.

Those soldiers are fighting, not for principle, but for pay; they are ____. Iron that is not heated cannot be hammered into shape; it is not ____.

Machination, macrocosm, magisterial, magniloquent, maladroit, malfeasance, malignity, malleable, mandate, matutinal, medieval, mephitic, mercenary, mercurial, meretricious, metamorphose, meticulous, microcosm, misanthropic, misogyny, misprision, mitigate, monitor, mortuary, mundane, mutable.

It is a government by the few; therefore an ____. All the men of influence in the state give offices to their kinsmen; the system is one of ____. Yes, grandfather is eighty years old today; he has become an ____.

Nebulous, nefarious, negation, neophyte, nepotism, neurotic, noisome, nomenclature, nonchalant, non sequitur, nucleus, nugatory, obdurate, objurgation, obligatory, obloquy, obsequious, obsession, obsolete, obstreperous, obtrusive, obtuse, obverse, obviate, occult, octogenarian, officious, olfactory, oleaginous, oligarchy, ominous, onomatopceia, opacity, opaque, opprobrious, oracular, orthodox, oscillate, osculate, ostensible, ostentation, ostracize, outré, ovation, overture.

In England the eldest son inherits the title and the estate, but Americans do not take to a system of ____. You are always putting off until tomorrow what you could do today; do you think it pays to ____ thus? An ambassador whose powers are unlimited is called an ambassador ____. Beasts or men that are given to plundering are ____.

Pabulum, pageantry, paginate, palatial, palliate, palpable, panacea, panegyric, panorama, paradoxical, paramount, parasite, parochial, paroxysm, parsimonious, parturition, patois, patriarchal, patrician, patrimony, peccadillo, pecuniary, pedantic, pellucid, pendulous, penultimate, penurious, peregrination, perfunctory, peripatetic, periphery, persiflage, perspicacious, perspicuity, pertinacious, pharmaceutic, phenomenal, phlegmatic, phraseology, pictorial, piquant, pique, plagiarize, platitudinous, platonic, plebeian, plenipotentiary, plethora, pneumatic, poignant, polity, poltroon, polyglot, pontifical, portentous, posterior, posthumous, potent, potential, pragmatic, preamble, precarious, precocious, precursor, predatory, predestination, predicament, preemptory, prelate, preliminary, preposterous, prerequisite, prerogative, presentiment, primogeniture, probation, probity, proclivity, procrastinate, prodigal, prodigious, prodigy, profligate, progenitor, proletarian, prolific, prolix, promiscuous, promissory, propaganda, propensity, prophylactic, propinquity, propitiatory, propitious, proprietary, prorogue, proselyte, prototype, protuberant, provender, proximity, prurient, psychical, psychological, puerile, pugnacious, puissant, punctilious, pungent, punitive, pusillanimous, putrescent, pyrotechnics.

The coil of wire, being ____, instantly resumed its original shape. Some one must arrange these papers for publication; will you be their ____? Poe's mind had a bent toward ____: it could reason out a whole chain of circumstances from one or two known facts. He showed a disposition not to comply with these instructions; yes, he was ____.

Rabbinical, rancorous, rapacious, ratiocination, rational, raucous, recalcitrant, recant, recapitulate, recession, reciprocal, reciprocate, recluse, recondite, recreant, recrudescence, rectilinear, rectitude, recumbent, redactor, redress, redound, refractory, refulgent, rejuvenate, relevant, rendezvous, rendition, reparation, repercussion, repertory, replenish, replete, replevin, reprehend, reprobate, repulsive, requisite, rescind, residue, residuum, resilient, resplendent, resurgence, resuscitate, reticulate, retribution, retrograde, retrospect, rigorous, risible, rodomontade, rudimentary, ruminate.

His position carries no responsibility; it is a ____. The moon revolves about the earth, and is therefore the earth's ____. His work keeps him at his desk all day; it is ____ work. Your words incite men to disorder and rebellion; they are ____.

Saccharine, sacerdotal, sacrament, sacrilege, salient, salubrious, sardonic, satellite, saturnine, schism, scurrilous, sectarian, secular, sedative, sedentary, seditious, sedulous, segregate, seismograph, senescent, sententious, septuagenarian, sequester, sibilant, similitude, sinecure, sinuous, solicitous, solstice, somnolent, sophisticated, sophistry, sorcery, spasmodic, specious, spirituelle, splenetic, spontaneity, sporadic, spurious, stipend, stipulate, stoical, stricture, stringency, stultify, stupendous, sublimity, suborn, subpoena, subsidiary, subsidy, substratum, subtend, subterfuge, subterranean, subvention, subvert, sudorific, supercilious, supernal, supervene, supine, supposititious, surreptitious, surrogate, surveillance, susceptible, sustenance, sycophantic, syllogism, sylvan, symmetrical, symposium, synchronize, synonymous, synopsis, synthesis.

The small stream flows into the larger one and is its ____. The thick glass roof lets through sufficient light for us to see by; it is ____. You will not find him hard to manage; he has spirit enough, yet is ____.

Tactile, tangible, tantamount, temerity, tenable, tenacious, tentative, tenuous, termagant, terrestrial, testimentary, thaumaturgic, therapeutic, titular, torso, tortuous, tractable, traduce, transcendent, transfiguration, transient, transitory, translucent, transverse, travesty, tribulation, tributary, truculent, truncate, turbid, turpitude, tyro.

He is so extravagantly fond of his wife that I should call him ____. Christ died for others; it was a ____ death. The most notable quality in Defoe's narrative is its likeness to actual facts, or in a word, its ____.

Ubiquity, ulterior, ululation, umbrage, unanimous, undulate, urbanity, usurious, uxorious, vacillate, vacuous, vandalism, variegate, velocity, venal, venereal, venial, venous, veracious, verdant, verisimilitude, vernacular, versatile, vestal, vibratory, vicarious, vicissitude, virulence, viscid, viscous, vitiate, vitreous, vituperate, vivacious, volatile, volition, voluminous, voluptuary, voluptuous, voracious, votive, vulnerable, whimsical, zealot.

XI

RETROSPECT

DO you never, while occupying a dental chair and deploring the necessity that drives you to that uncomfortable seat, admire the skill of the dentist in the use of his instruments? A great many of these instruments lie at his hand. To you they appear bewildering, so slightly different are they from each other. Yet with unerring readiness the dentist lays hold of the one he needs. Now this facility of his is not a blessing with which a gracious heaven endowed him. It is the consequence and reward of hard study, and above all of work, hard work.

You have been ambitious of like skill in the manipulation of words. Had you not been, you would never have undertaken this study. You have perceived that when you speak or write, words are your instruments. You have wished to learn how to use them. Now for every idea you shall ever have occasion to express await throngs of vocables, each presenting its claims as a fit medium. These you must pass in instantaneous review, these you must expertly appraise, out of these you must choose the words that will best serve your purpose. With practice, you will make your selections unconsciously. You will never, of course, quite attain the infallibility of the dentist; for linguistic instruments are more numerous than dental, and far more complex. But you will more and more nearly approximate the ideal, will more and more nearly find that right expression has become second nature with you.

All this is conditioned upon labor faithful and steadfast. Without labor you will never be adept. At the outset of our study together we warned you that, though we should gather the material and point the way, you yourself must do the work. This book is not one to glance through. It is one to dwell with, to toil with. It exacts much of you—makes you, for each page you turn, pay with the sweat of your brain.

But, assuming that you have done your part, what have you gained? Without answering this question at all fully, we may at this juncture engage in a brief retrospect.

First of all, you have rid yourself of the notion that words are dead things, unrealities worthy of no more than wooden and mechanical employment. As much as anything else in the world, words are alive and responsive, are fraught with unmeasured possibilities of good or ill. You have taken due cognizance of the fact that words must be considered in the aggregate as well as individually, and have reckoned with the pitfalls and dangers as well as with the advantages of their use in combination. But the basis of everything is a keener knowledge of words severally. You have therefore come to study words with the zest and insight you exhibit (or should exhibit) in studying men. Incidentally, you have acquired the habit of looking up dictionary definitions, not merely to satisfy a present need, but also to add permanently to your linguistic resources.

You have carried the study of individuals farther. You have come to know words inside and out. Such knowledge not only assists you in your dealings with your contemporaries; it illuminates for you great literature of the past that otherwise would remain obscure. How much keener, for example, is your understanding of Shakespeare's passage on the Seven Ages of Man because of your thorough acquaintance with the single word pantaloon! How quickly does the awe for big words slip from you when you perceive that precocious is in origin the equivalent of half-baked! What intimacy of insight into words you feel when you find that a companion is a sharer of one's bread! What a linking of language with life you discover when you learn the original signification of presently, of idiot, of rival, of sandwich, of pocket handkerchief! And what revelations as into a mystic fraternalism with words do you obtain when you confront such a phrase as "the bank teller" or "cut to the quick"!

Not only have words become more like living beings to you; you have learned to think of them in relations analogous to the human. You can detect the blood kinship, for example, between prescribe and manuscript, and know that the strain of fact or fie or fy in a word is pretty sure to betoken making or doing. You know that there are elaborate intermarriages among words. You recognize phonograph, for example, as a married couple; you even have confidential word as to the dowry brought by each of the contracting parties to the new verbal household.

You have discovered, further, that the language actually swarms with "pairs"—words joined with each other not in blood or by marriage but through meaning. You have so familiarized yourself with hundreds of these pairs that to think of one word is to call the other to mind.

Finally, and in many respects most important of all, you have acquired a vast stock of synonyms. You have had it brought to your attention that the number of basic ideas in the world is surprisingly small; that for each of these ideas there is in our language one generic word; that most people use this one word constantly instead of seeking the subsidiary term that expresses a particular phase of the idea; and that you as a builder of your vocabulary must, while holding fast to the basic idea with one hand, reach out with the other for the fit, sure material of specific words. Nor have you rested in the mere perception of theory. You have had abundant practice, have yourself covered the ground foot by foot. You can therefore proceed with reasonable freedom from the commoner ideas of the human mind to that expression of definite aspects of them which is anything but common.

You have not, of course, achieved perfection. There still is much for you to do. There always will be. Nevertheless in the ways just reviewed, and in various other ways not mentioned in this chapter, you have made yourself verbally rich. You are one of the millionaires of language. When you speak, it is not with stammering incompetence, but with confident readiness. When you write, it is with energy and assurance in the very flow of the ink. Where you had long been a slave, you have become a freeman and can look your fellows in the eye. You have the best badge of culture a human being can possess. You have power at your tongue's end. You have the proud satisfaction of having wrought well, and the inspiration of knowing that whatever verbal need may arise, you are trained and equipped to grapple with it triumphantly.

APPENDICES

Appendix I

THE DRIFT OF OUR RURAL POPULATION CITYWARD (An editorial)

To an individual who from whatever motives of personal advantage or mere curiosity has made himself an observer of current tendencies, the drift of our rural population cityward gives food for serious reflection. This drift is one of the most pronounced of the social and economic phenomena of the day. Its consequences upon the life, welfare, and future of the great nation to which we are proud to acknowledge our whole-hearted allegiance are matters of such paramount importance to all concerned that we should turn aside more often than we do from the distracting exactions of our ordinary activities to give them prolonged and earnest consideration.

A generation or so ago human beings were content to spend the full term of their earthly existence amid rural surroundings, or if in their declining days they longed for more of the comforts and associations which are among the cravings of mortality, it was an easy proposition to move to the nearest village or, if they were too high and mighty for this simple measure to satisfy them, they could indulge in the more grandiose performance of residing in the county seat. But nowadays our people want more. Rich or poor, tall or dumpy, tottering grandmothers or babies in swaddling-clothes, they long for ampler pastures. Their brawny arms or hoary heads must bedeck nothing less than the metropolis itself, and perchance put shoulders to the wheel in the incessant grind of the urban treadmill. Can you beat it? Unquestioned profit does not attend the migration. It stands to reason that some of the very advantages sought have been sacrificed on the altar of the drift cityward. Let us say you have your individual domicile or the cramped and sunless apartment you dub your habitation within corporate limits. Does that mean that the privileges of the city are at your disposal, so that you have merely to reach forth your hand and pluck them? Well, hardly! You certainly do not reside in the downtown section, or if you do, you wish to heaven you didn't. And you can reach this section only with delay and inconvenience, whether in the hours of business or in the subsequent period devoted to the glitter of nocturnal revelry and amusement.

But whatever the disadvantages of the city, the people who endure them are convinced that to go back to the vines and figtrees of their native heath would be jumping out of the frying pan into the fire. Why? Well, for one thing, there is no such thing as leisure in the areas that lie beyond those vast aggregations of humanity which constitute our cities. Not only are there innumerable and seemingly interminable chores that must follow the regular occupations of the day, but a thousand emergencies due to chance, weather, or the natural cussedness of things must be disposed of as they arise, regardless of what plans the rustic swain cherishes for the use of his spare time. Urban laborers have contrived by one means or another to bring about a limitation of the number of hours per diem they are forced to toil. To the farmers such an alleviation of their hardships is not within the realm of practicability. They kick about it of course. They say it's a blooming nuisance. But neither their heartburnings nor their struggles can efface it as a fact.

Again, the means of entertainment are more limited, and that by a big lot, with the farmer than with those who dwell in the cities. It is all very well to talk about the blessings of the rural telephone, rural free delivery, and the automobile. These things do make communication easier than it used to be, but after all they're only a drop in the bucket and do little to stop the drift cityward. We may remark just here that if you live a thousand miles from nowhere and are willing to drive your Tin Lizzie into town for "the advantages," you aren't likely to get much even along the line of the movies, and you'll get less still if what you're after is an A-1 school for your progeny.

Finally, the widespread impression that the farmer is a bloated and unscrupulous profiteer has done much to disgust him with his station and employment in life. We don't say he's the one and only when it comes to the virtues. Maybe he hasn't sprouted any wings yet. What if he hasn't? The cities, with their brothels, their big business, and their municipal governments—you wouldn't have the face to say that there's anything wrong with them, now would you? Oh, no! Of course not! The farmer pays high for his machinery and goes clear to the bottom of his pocketbook when he has to buy shoes or a sack of flour, but let him have a steer's hide or a wagon load of wheat to sell, and it's somebody else's ox that's gored. Consumers pay big prices for farm products, goodness knows, but they don't pay them to the farmer. Not on your tintype. The middleman gets his, you needn't question that. We beg pardon a thousand times. We mean the middle_men_. There's no end to those human parasites.

And so farmer after farmer breaks up the old homestead and contributes his mite to the drift cityward. What will be the result that comes out of it all? The effect upon the farmer deserves an editorial all to itself. Here we must limit ourselves to the effects on the future of our beloved American nation. And even these we can now do no more than mention; we lack space to elaborate them. One effect, if the tendency continues, will be such a reduction in home-produced foodstuffs that we shall have to import from other countries lying abroad a good portion of the means of our physical sustenance, and shall face such an increase in the cost of the same that thousands and thousands of our people will find it increasingly harder as the years pass by to maintain their relative economic position. Another effect will be that our civilization, which to this point has sprawled over broad acres, will become an urban civilization, penned in amid conditions, restraints, privations, and perhaps also opportunities unprecedented in our past history and unknown to the experience we have had hitherto. A final effect will be that our most conservative class, the rural populace, will no longer present resistance that is formidable to the innovations which those who hold extreme views are forever exhorting us to embrace; and the result may well be that the disintegration of this staying and stabilizing element in our citizenship—one that retards and mollifies if it does not inhibit change—will produce consequences in its train which may be as dire as they are difficult to foretell.

Appendix 2

CAUSES FOR THE AMERICAN SPIRIT OF LIBERTY (From the Speech on Conciliation with the Colonies) By EDMUND BURKE

In this character of the Americans, a love of freedom is the predominating feature which marks and distinguishes the whole; and as an ardent is always a jealous affection, your Colonies become suspicious, restive, and untractable whenever they see the least attempt to wrest from them by force, or shuffle from them by chicane, what they think the only advantage worth living for. This fierce spirit of liberty is stronger in the English Colonies probably than in any other people of the earth, and this from a great variety of powerful causes; which, to understand the true temper of their minds and the direction which this spirit takes, it will not be amiss to lay open somewhat more largely.

First, the people of the Colonies are descendants of Englishmen. England, Sir, is a nation which still, I hope, respects, and formerly adored, her freedom. The Colonists emigrated from you when this part of your character was most predominant; and they took this bias and direction the moment they parted from your hands. They are therefore not only devoted to liherty, but to liberty according to English ideas, and on English principles. Abstract liberty, like other mere abstractions, is not to be found. Liberty inheres in some sensible object; and every nation has formed to itself some favorite point, which by way of eminence becomes the criterion of their happiness. It happened, you know, Sir, that the great contests for freedom in this country were from the earliest times chiefly upon the question of taxing. Most of the contests in the ancient commonwealths turned primarily on the right of election of magistrates; or on the balance among the several orders of the state. The question of money was not with them so immediate. But in England it was otherwise. On this point of taxes the ablest pens, and most eloquent tongues, have been exercised; the greatest spirits have acted and suffered. In order to give the fullest satisfaction concerning the importance of this point, it was not only necessary for those who in argument defended the excellence of the English Constitution to insist on this privilege of granting money as a dry point of fact, and to prove that the right had been acknowledged in ancient parchments and blind usages to reside in a certain body called a House of Commons. They went much farther; they attempted to prove, and they succeeded, that in theory it ought to be so, from the particular nature of a House of Commons as an immediate representative of the people, whether the old records had delivered this oracle or not. They took infinite pains to inculcate, as a fundamental principle, that in all monarchies the people must in effect themselves, mediately or immediately, possess the power of granting their own money, or no shadow of liberty can subsist. The Colonies draw from you, as with their life-blood, these ideas and principles. Their love of liberty, as with you, fixed and attached on this specific point of taxing. Liberty might be safe, or might be endangered, in twenty other particulars, without their being much pleased or alarmed. Here they felt its pulse; and as they found that beat, they thought themselves sick or sound. I do not say whether they were right or wrong in applying your general arguments to their own case. It is not easy, indeed, to make a monopoly of theorems and corollaries. The fact is, that they did thus apply those general arguments; and your mode of governing them, whether through lenity or indolence, through wisdom or mistake, confirmed them in the imagination that they, as well as you, had an interest in these common principles.