Democratic Sentinel, Volume 8, Number 1, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 February 1884 — Use of Big Words. [ARTICLE]

Use of Big Words.

“He goes on his own hook” has been rendered more elegantly, in deference toj and in accordance with the spirit of the times, in this manner: “He progresses on his own persona] curveand a barber in London advertises that his “customers are shaved without incision or laceration for the microscopic sum of one-half penny.” “One might have heard a pin fall,” is a proverbial expression of silence; but it has been eclipsed by the French phrase, “You might have heard the unfolding of a lady’s cambric pocket-handkerchief;” and as it is somewhat vulgar to say “pitch darkness,” it has been so improved as to read “bituminous obscurity.” Another polite way of expressing the fact that a man is naturally lazy, is to say that he is “considerably tired;” and “Nominate your poison,” is the poetical way of asking, “What will you drink?” On one occasion, we are told, a doctor of divinity rung the changes on “He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.” “He that is accessible to auricular vibration,” said the doctor, “let him not close the gates of his tympana.” Then, again, we have that old-fashioned saying: “ihe more the merrier,” delightfully translated in this way: “Multudinous assemblages are the most provocative of cachinnatory hilarity.” It is even reported that not very long ago a clergyman spoke of seeing a young lady “with the pearl drops of affection hanging and glistening on her cheek.'” He meant that she was crying. Certain critics, too, occasionally launch out in a similar metaphorical style. Concerning a young and aspiring orator, one wrote: “He broke the ice felicitously, and was immediately drowned with applause.” Quite recently a literary man of some celebrity, in a letter describing the early fall of snow in Switzerland, did not say the storm abated, but “the flakes dwindled to flocculi!” and instead of vulgarly putting it that they melted a potful of snow to obtain water, he said that fire-wood was “expended in rendering its own heat latent in the indispensable fluid.” Equally as good was that which relates to a certain eminent professor, who observed that very wonderful things were discovered nowadays. He had found out lately that “Nystagmus, or oscillation of the eyeballs, is an epileptic affection of the cerebellular oculomotorial centers;” and he added; “Don’t forget in future what sort of a thing a ‘nystagmus’ is.” “You have mentioned several times during the evening,” observed one of the audience to a lecturer, the word * periphrasis;’ would you kindly inform me its precise meaning?” “Certainly,” said he. “It is simply a circumlocutory and pleonastic oircle of oratorical sonorosity, circumscribing an atom of ideality, lost in verbal profundity.” As this explanation was received in solemn silence we trust it was deemed a satisfactory one. It is, however, recorded that tne gifted orator was not called upon again to explain for the rest of the evening.— Chambers’ Journal.