AN OVERWORKED WORD.

North Otago Times, Volume CVII, Issue 17748, 17 March 1927, Page 7

AN OVERWORKED WORD.

Ernesv

Weekley j

(By

professor

Mr W H. Fowler, in tha'G Dictionary of Modem English. Usag© which is now a treasured possession of all educated people, remarks with regard to the word •'slogan," that "tliotigh the great vogue of the word as a siibstitut© for the older 'motto,' 'watchword/ •'rule,' etc, is of the twentieth eentury only, and we old fogies regard it \vith patriotie dislike as a Sooteh xnterloper, it was occasionally so used earlier; the , Oxford English Dictionary 'ha- a quotation from Maoaulay/'* I 'fancy that, if Mi Fowlei1 xrer© rewriting thie note to-day, his tone would be somewhat nxore sardonic. That a "vogue-word" should turn up daily is to he expected, btit when in one issne o four morning paper, we find a Prince of the Chui'ch regretting the modern teudexicy to get drunk on rhetoric, "which usually concludes in a slogaix, which more often curns ont co b© a lie'' ; a Country Directoi of Education stating that the countryman is "not so much under the dominance of catch* words and slngans as the_ towixsrnan'' ; a Midland minei expressing the opinion that it isi better to go back to work than "to starve on a slogan" , and sporadic occurrences of the saxne word in the sporting paragraphs, the letters to the editor the literary and dramatic news, ete., w© begin to he as tired of fche "slogan" as the miners must be. THE REAL SLOGAN. Likt inost other words tha ,p have a vogue, "clogan" is a victim of popular ignorance, Neither "Shoot tbe^-Reds!" lxov "'To Hell with the Capitahsts!" is reaHy a slogan, The headline, "Back to the Slogan," implying that- the miners' case is once more reduced to the formula, "Not a penny off the pay, etc.," is a eomplete misuse of this picturesque word The slogan of the. die-hard strikers should b© "A Ccok! A Coolt!" to which the owners might defiantly answer "A Williams! A Williams!" To imagine a body of moderates intervening to the cry of "A Spencer!" or "A Baldwin!" would involve the mental feat .of pre-supposing the existence in fche mimng industry of a few people dndawsd witft "^Araee scnse.