The principles of good usage are to be learned only from a wide acquaintance with literature. Grammars and dictionaries are helps, of course, but to read well-written books gives a mastery over correct usage, that is unconscious. Cultivate the habit of studying words, consult the dictionary often for accurate definitions, and be sure you select the exact word to express your meaning. Let no new word pass until you have mastered its meaning and used it correctly in expressing your own thoughts.

365. The Effective Word. It is not sufficient that words be correctly used. There remains the question: Is it the best word, the most effective that can be found for the place? This presupposes an extensive vocabulary and affords an additional reason why you should adopt every means possible to increase your vocabulary.

If your language is to be effective, it must be suited to your readers and be appropriate to the subject with which you are dealing. Consider your readers and select your words accordingly, and remember, simple language is the most effective.

Effective words are words, too, that have associations. They call up to the mind ideas, feelings, and experiences, and hence suggest to the reader far more than the simple meaning of the word conveys. (Read again § 309.) The specific word is for this reason more vivid than the general term, and should be used wherever possible in preference to the general.

For example, flower is a general word for which the specific word rose or violet might be substituted. In place of building, the word house, church, or barn would present a more exact image; while for house such specific words as cottage and bungalow would in themselves present a definite picture.

EXERCISE 71

1. Study the words used by Washington (p. 289) and Webster (p. 300), for examples of words used correctly and effectively. Are they long or short for the most part?

2. Study in like manner one of your own paragraphs. Improve your selection of words by studying the synonyms of words used.

3. From a passage read to you by your teacher, make a list of words of which you do not know the exact meaning. After consulting the dictionary, be prepared to use these words in sentences in class.

4. From the selections given in §§ 303, 308 make a list of the specific words used.

5. In the selections quoted in the chapter on description (pp. 239-269), make a list of all the words which imply most to you, words that signify more than their simple meaning.

CHAPTER X

FIGURES OF SPEECH

366. Figures of Speech. When we use words in a sense different from that of ordinary speech, we are using figurative language, or figures of speech. For example, such expressions as, "She made a goose of herself" or " He drove a hard bargain" or "He fought like a lion," are not to be interpreted according to their literal meaning. Their aim is to appeal to the imagination and thus by suggesting images to make language more forceful and effective.

367. Simile and Metaphor. The most important of the figures of speech are the simile and the metaphor. Both of these are based on comparison, expressing a resemblance between two objects belonging to different classes; that is, two objects having one strong point of resemblance, but unlike in all other respects. To compare two persons, two houses, or two natural scenes, is not to use figurative language, for these are alike in most respects; but if we compare a man and a lion, we are comparing objects having only one strong point of resemblance. A simile is an expressed comparison, a metaphor an implied comparison, between such unlike objects. The one figure may be easily changed

to the other. The simile, "The soldier fought like a lion," changed to a metaphor becomes "The soldier was a lion in the contest." The metaphor establishes a complete identity and does not make use of the words like and as, one of which the simile always contains.

EXERCISE 72

In the following examples of figures of speech, state what things are compared, name the figure, and change the metaphors to similes, and the similes to metaphors:

1. The streets are dumb with snow.

2. How far that little candle throws its beams!

So shines a good deed in a naughty world.

3. Silently, one by one, in the infinite meadows of heaven, Blossomed the lovely stars, the forget-me-nots of the angels. 4. The day is done, and the darkness

Falls from the wings of Night,

As a feather is wafted downward

From an eagle in his flight.

5. Your face, my thane, is as a book where men May read strange matters.

6. Lowliness is young Ambition's ladder,

Whereto the climber upward turns his face;
But when he once attains the upmost round,
He then unto the ladder turns his back,
Looks in the clouds, scorning the base degrees
By which he did ascend.

7. There is a tide in the affairs of men,

Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life

Is bound in shallows and in miseries.

368. Personification. Personification is a form of the metaphor in which life is attributed to inanimate objects, and personal characteristics to impersonal things. Thus, we speak of white-handed Hope, gray-hooded Ev'n, murmuring pines, and laughing waves.

369. Allegory and Fable. Allegory is a figure of speech consisting of a continuous personification in story form. A short allegory is called a fable. (See p. 221.)

370. Apostrophe. Apostrophe is a figure of speech in which an absent object is addressed as though present. If the object addressed is inanimate, the figure includes personification. Thus,

Thou hast taught me, Silent River,
Many a lesson, deep and long.

371. Metonomy. Metonomy is a figure of speech by which a thing is named, not with its own name, but with that of something which suggests it because of an association of ideas. (The word metonomy, a Greek word, means change of names.) Thus, we speak of the bench, meaning the judges ; of reading Browning, when we mean his works; of gray hairs, meaning old age.

372. Synecdoche. Synecdoche is a figure of speech which names a part for the whole or the whole for a part. Thus, we say, "The shop turned away two hundred hands," and "We watched all day for a sail."