UNLUCKY WORDS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 16 April 1941, Page 6

UNLUCKY WORDS

“APPEASERS" NOW SUSPECT. Perhaps there was an age once in which words generally did have the meaning allotted to them by the dici tionaries. Nowadays unfortunate words seem doomed from time to time ' to be stripped bare of their dictionary (meaning and to be reclad in a white sheet and sent to do penance. Enemy Word No. 1. on both sides of the Atlantic at the moment seems to be “appease” and its various derivatives, for it is reported that to call a man sin “appeaser" is to risk assault and battery in the United States. Hero is a perfectly good word which has come respectably down the ages until the last few years and has hardly a friend left today. Years may pass before it is allowed to retire again between the pages of the dictionary, to undergo some kind of purgative process until it smells sweet again in men's nostrils —until, in fact, there is a general appeasement in the world. In war-time it is natural that "pacifist" should become suspect, but one day. “Blessed are the peacemakers" can be said again. Until the last war “queue,” though borrowed, was a respectable word. The sight of a long theatre queue made glad the hearts of managers. But when we use the word queue .today it is generally with the hope that there will be no food queues in this war,