THE KING'S ENGLISH
Sir,-"‘Standard VI" seems troubled by the new transitive verb "contact." The NZBS, civil servants, also leading schoolmasters, he says,4use it; a New Zealand judge, however, has expressed distaste for it. He himself seems disposed to side with his Honour. So would conservative I at first have done. I think, however, that "contact" is here to stay; it has now been admitted to the goodly fellowship of the verbs because not a single one of them expressed just what "contact" does. We had to say: "maké contact with," or "get into touch with," or "seek out and then interview," or other such’ product of the Circumlocution Office. The neat little graceful "contact" satisfactorily replaces all these phrases. Who it was that in this century first verbalised the noun "contact" I do not know, but he was surely a minor verbal genius, for he gave us a new, short, graceful, useful transitive verb that does instead. of three or four words. This is surely a noble reversal of our more usual way of going about things: making "try out" short for "try"; "give consideration o" short for "consider"; "job of work" as a very graceful abbreviation of "job." If your’ yoting correspondent should ever take up the fascinating study of words and their history, he will find many a "contact" in our language-co!d-shouldered at first by conservatives and pedants, then tolerated de facto, and finally entering into the very stuff of the language.
F. K.
TUCKER
(Gisborne).
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 28, Issue 726, 12 June 1953, Page 5
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248THE KING'S ENGLISH New Zealand Listener, Volume 28, Issue 726, 12 June 1953, Page 5
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