A LITERARY COMPETITION.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1295, 25 November 1911, Page 9

A LITERARY COMPETITION.

It is difficult to strike a really interesting literary competition nowadays, but "Truth" has managed to do so in a form that has aroused middle-class London to a very unusual degree, as every competitor has. succeeded in -attrnctintf the assistance of his- or her friends. The test (so a London correspondent records) was to give four examples of proper names of specified persons that have undergone trausfrrence and become common words, slim? ov otherwise, and four names similarly treated from fiction. From the results now published certain reflections may drawn. One is the remarkable in.vulnerability of the English language to such attacks from fiction. Gamp, Pander, Tarn o , Shanter, Benedick, Philander, and Quixotic seem to be the only ones that will really stand strict scrutiny—the only words, that is to «ay, that are so embedded in the language that they don't betray themselves by a capital letter. Mythology and the classics are barred. Of the examples I imve mentioned it will be scon that Shakespeare yields two, Dickens one. Burns one, and the others are exotics from Ariostn and Cervantes. Buniblo almost (■(imlifies—"Bumbledom" has come to stnv. Don Juan, Shylcck, and Mrs. Grnmlv arc in general acceptance as reprosEnting certain rjiinlitips, but, unlilce Quixote, they have not got so for that l>eopte .have' forgotten their origin anil accept their derivative*. The only modern examples suggested tire "Trilbies," the slang for feet from Du Manner's hwoine Trilby, who Icpt liar feet uncovered, and Mr". Barrio's liro.-ome "Little Alary." It will bo interesting tn sfo if th«y outlast their griu-rrlion. To the*" "Cinderella," a dance Mint <mh!s at twelve o'clock, might he added. IW-al persons, en the other hand, have cu'onised

the lanjTUßge. lioyeott, Burke, Lynch, '■"iiiilotiiio, Hansom, Brougham, S:iudwich. Macinto-h, Bloomers, Gladstone, •u'.ntaldi, I'reler, riuchbrek, Bawdier. I'lifiidaiH, Martinet, ami Che.-lerlield arc a few of the best known. Perhaps the must delightful t-.viiiiiplo is Silhouette. It came from Etienne de Silhouette, n I , rei!ch_ Minister for l-'iminee in 175!), famons for his parisniony Any cheap novelty was styled a la Silhouette, and so the nipt hoi! of portraiture by tracing the shadow of a face on a sheet of white paper received and preserved his name lor a world that never heard of Etienne de Silhouette. Another word with an astonishing pedigree is "Maudlin," which, according to Chambers, means "silly, fuddled, tearful," etc. The origin is the penitent Mary Magdalene. I may add that the easiest way to discover sucii intevestmg things is to be and to know .yourself to b; a bad speller.