Many Words Being Lost By Non-use

Chronicle (Levin), 7 July 1948, Page 5

Many Words Being Lost By Non-use

Received Tuesdav, 7 p.m. LONDON, July 6. ' Dorothy Savers, the novelist, told the English Association in Londcui that she felt the English language to be in some peril both as regards precision and the fnll use of its enormous varied vocabulary. The danger did not come from the iinportation of neologisms from other langauges or even from civii service English. A much more rfeal danger was twot'old. More and more people were using fewer and fewer words and such words as they did use they used in a slip-shod way. She gave two rules, firstly, to resist the use of any word when that involved the loss of any valuable distinction of .meaning; secondly to welcome any little stranger, no matter how illegitimate or foreign its birth, if it established a new distinction of meaning. She recommended that every writer should resolvm regularly to try either to re-establish some old words of value or to find a place for something new and good. Of one word she said: "You probably won't know it and I didn't until I found it when going through a dictionary for a crossword puzzle. This word is 'morlop. ' It means* a small monkey with a singularly re pulsively ugly face. This word de serves more xise — for example 'the bazaar was open,ed by the usual elderly morlop. ' "