WAR AND WORDS

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 173, 16 April 1919, Page 7

WAR AND WORDS

.SCARS IN Oliß VOCABULARY. In his monthly message to tho '''Catholic I'tderauumst," tne J3islicp ot buitord thus deals'with tne lullueuco ot tine war ou the lntruinictiou or now worus into our language. His lordship writes: irike all wars, it has certainly lett its impress on our spuccn, only on a larger seaio than the- comparatively smaller wars which have preceded it. As our English men aud boys liavo come out ot it 'Hearing scars which will mark them lor lite, so our language bears and will continue to bear similar scars in its vocabulary and even in its construction. Take a tew examples. The one word winch more than aii> other has forced its triumphant way definitely into our everyday speech—as well as into those of other nations-is tho French term "camouflage.'' this word -like tho influenza epidemic-may be said to have spread and gained universal citizenship in littlo more than a single week from the time it first appeared m on Amorican telegram. French authorities, like Littre iii his great dictionary, discuss learnedly its origin. They do not appear to have noticed that both tho noun aud its corresponding verb ( camoufler") must almost certainly bo owin" to tho equivalent Italian words "camutfo" and "camuitare," with hlco meanings (said by Italian scholars tobe contracted from "capo militate," • "to muffle tho head"). We have not-only adopted the noun'"camouflage," but in our queer English way liavo turned it into a verb, and say "to camouflage" a ship, a building, an opinion, etc. Another word which has rapidly "conquered tho world" is tho name of an actual' new tiling—l mean tho word "tank," applied to the "laud-ship," as it was first called, which lias done so very much to win the war for us. It has become international: French, Italians, Germans, all use it.

Perhaps the most successful of nil tho terms popularised by tho war Ms been tho ourious noun and adjective "blight}'' —meaning the homeland, home, or belonging to one's home (e.g., a "Mikity wound"). It is a. word originally brought by our soldiers from India. How few oi.flhosc who use it are aware that theyare speaking Arabic, or Persian! Yet as a matter'of. fact "Mighty" is nothing else than a corruption of the Arabic adjective "vilayati," derived from the noun "vilayat," meaning "Europe." Jt passed through Persia into India, where it commonly moans "European"; hence soda; water is called by the natives "vilavati pani"—"European water." To our soldiers in India, "Europe" is, of courso, "home"; and so they adopted the word in that sense, and tho torm "caught on" with our men in France.

There is a very curious alteration to bo observed in tho word ."onerny." Before the- war, it was only a noun substantive, its corresponding adjective was "hostile"; so we talked of n hostile country, a hostile army, =tc. But wo have now borrowed the French usage, and say "enemy countries," "enemy alien*," "enemy troops," etc. Here is on actual alteration in the parts of speech.

It was only natural that niilibir> tcnns should have come to lw generally understood and used in ordinary speech, Such words are "salient," "ban-age," "dumps," "dud" ("a dud shell"), a "stunt," ivhidh before Ihe war would have puzzled the ordinary jiowspaper reader. The Germans have given us the ugly verb "to strafe" and tho inhuman noun "frightfulness"—just corresponding to the Latin "feritas" against which tho Church prays in her war-time Mass!

Aviation has taught us plenty of now teims: I will refer only to tho new uso of the. verb "to crash," now used absolutely. , We now say "his machine crashed"; before the war wo should have had to 6ay more fully that it "crashed down to the ground." "Who would have understood before the war the meaning of a "peaco offensive" ?

Our food troubles have familiarised us with many words, not exactly i.ew, but used in new senses. For a time "queue" (formerly used only in connection with theatres) was perhaps more heard than any other word; it has long since gono! "Coupons," "rationed," or "controlled" (foodstuffs), "offal," "allotments" have literally become "household words."

One French word fares badly—as it did before tho war—in our newspapers. They are constantly talking of the "morale* 1 of the enemy troops; of course, it should 1m "moral." For there are two separate words in French: "la morale," feminine, meaning "morality'"; "le moral," masculine,, meaning "spirit"—i.e., high or low spirits, especially of soldiers.