progress of society." The word synonym is loosely used to designate words with the same general significance, fine distinctions in meaning and usage being ignored. But the best writers choose carefully among the words loosely listed as synonyms, knowing that each has its individual shade of meaning or its peculiar association, and that accurate selection is therefore necessary.

We need not estimate for most authors, as has been done for Shakespeare and Milton, the exact size of the vocabulary, but we may observe by careful reading whether a writer is able to express his thought without monotonous repetition of words whether he seems to have at his command all the words he needs, and whether he makes fine distinctions in the use of them. If he is satisfactory in these respects, we may say that he has a copious vocabulary, and is precise in his diction.

2. GENERAL AND SPECIFIC TERMS

General terms name classes; Specific terms name individuals under classes. The following sentences are sometimes given in rhetorics as containing examples of general (1) and specific (2) terms.

1. Consider the flowers. No king was ever arrayed like one of these. 2. Consider the lilies, how they grow. . . I say unto you that Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.

The following paragraph from C. D. Warner's My Summer in a Garden contains other examples. Find them.

I left my garden for a week, just at the close of a dry spell. A season of rain immediately set in, and when I returned the transformation was wonderful. In one week every vegetable had fairly jumped

forward. The tomatoes, which I had left slender plants, eaten of bugs and debating whether they would go backward or forward, had become stout and lusty, with thick stems and dark leaves, and some of them had blossomed. The corn waved like that which grows so rank out of the French-English mixture at Waterloo. The squashes I will not speak of the squashes. The most remarkable growth was the asparagus. There was not a spear above the ground when I went away; and now it had sprung up and gone to seed, and there were stalks higher than my head.*

Why do the specific terms impress the mind so much more strongly than the general terms in these sentences? Because the specific terms bring to the mind definite pictures, and the general terms do not. The word lily calls up the image of a beautiful blossom, whiter and purer than any shining, royal robe. The name Solomon calls to mind the splendor of a rich Oriental monarch, beside whom George V and Alphonso XIII are quite like plain, ordinary mortals. A writer will do well, then, to use specific terms when he wishes to produce images in the minds of his readers. In descriptive and narrative writing, specific words are particularly useful. Bryant appeals to the imagination (suggests pictures to the reader) chiefly by means of specific nouns modified by epithets. Any of his poems describing Nature will furnish excellent examples of the power of specific terms in description.

Nouns are not the only words that may be classed as general or specific. In the following sentences (quoted from Wendell's English Composition) the verbs are progressively more specific, and the sentences become more forcible as the manner of death is more exactly told.

Major André died.

Major André was killed.

* Used by permission of Messrs. Houghton Mifflin Company.

Major André was executed.

Major André was hanged.*

The following paragraph shows very well the descriptive power of specific verbs.

Every country has its own rivers, and every river has its own quality; and it is the part of wisdom to know and love as many as you can, receiving from each the best it has to give. The torrents of Norway leap down from their mountain homes with plentiful cataracts, and run brief but glorious races to the sea. The streams of England move smoothly through green fields and beside ancient, sleepy towns. The Scotch rivers brawl through the open moorland and flash along steep Highland glens. The rivers of the Alps are born in icy caves, from which they issue forth with furious, turbid waters; but when their anger has been forgotten in the slumber of some blue lake, they flow down more softly to see the vineyards of France and Italy, the gray castles of Germany, and the verdant meadows of Holland. The mighty rivers of the West roll their yellow floods through broad valleys, or plunge down dark canyons. The rivers of the South creep under dim arboreal archways heavy with banners of waving moss.*

But general terms, too, have their use. They are better than specific terms - better because broader - in making summaries and general statements regarding classes. They are better when the writer desires, not to call up an image to the imagination, but to express an abstract notion. General terms are, therefore, particularly useful in some sorts of expository writing.

3. LONG AND SHORT WORDS

There is no virtue in words because of their length or their shortness. That word is, in general, best which is familiar to *The quotations from Wendell and Van Dyke are used by kind permission of Messrs. Charles Scribner's Sons, publishers of the books quoted.

the reader and best expresses the author's meaning. Short words are more apt to be familiar than their longer synonyms, and are often preferable for that reason. They lend an air of simplicity to the style. Long words, on the other hand, give dignity to the style, and are sometimes to be preferred for that reason. You will notice the long words in Bryant's fine blank-verse poems. And you have observed the use of some long words in Poe's Bells for musical and metrical effect.

It is usually unnecessary to comment on the length of an author's words, but occasionally one shows a decided preference for long or short words, apparently merely because of their length. Bunyan, in his Pilgrim's Progress, uses a great proportion of words of one syllable; perhaps because he was an unlettered man. Dr. Samuel Johnson seems to have delighted in ponderous words; Goldsmith said of him that, if he were to write a fable about little fishes, he would make them all talk like whales.

Perhaps "popular" (or "familiar ") and "learned" would be a better classification of words than "short" and "long." Roughly the two divisions coincide, though there are exceptional words.

4. DENOTATION AND CONNOTATION

The Denotation of a word is its actual meaning - its dictionary definition. Its Connotation is the association it suggests to us, over and above its actual meaning and definition. Home may be defined as "one's dwelling-place or residence." But the mere definition would never explain the happy anticipations with which we exclaim, after an absence of a few days, "I am going home to-morrow!" We do not think merely of going to the house whose roof shelters

parents,

us; we think of all that the word home connotes brothers, sisters, affection, happiness. It is the connotation of the word associations that no dictionary can enumerate that makes us love it.

that

The connotation of a word may, in time, become so prominent that it actually becomes its commonest meaning, and is turned into a real definition. Angel at first meant "a messenger." The word was often used in speaking of a messenger of God. A messenger of God would naturally be a pure, holy, radiant, beautiful being. It is this derived meaning - this suggestion or connotation we have most often in mind now when we use the word angel, as in saying of some one whom we greatly admire, "She is a perfect angel!" And this connotation has finally become the meaning of the word, i. e., the word has come to denote what it once only connoted. (See the Century Dictionary, under angel.)

Since connotation depends on the association suggested, a word may connote different things to different persons. Home to most of us connotes love and happiness. But we have all read of unfortunate children that have grown up in the "slums" of our great cities, in the midst of vice and wretchedness, without the love of parents and family. For them there is no such pleasant connotation in the word home. There may be a connotation of an opposite kind, if home is the place where they receive the least kindness and the most ill-treatment. But for every person that uses the English language, home has the same denotation-"one's dwellingplace, or residence."

It is as important for an author to consider the connotation of his words as to consider the denotation. If a word has pleasant associations, he ennobles the person or thing that he applies it to; if it has unpleasant associations, he degrades the person or thing that he applies it to. It is as bad to call a