Suggestions to medical writers / by George M. Gould.

  • George M. Gould
Date:
1900
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Suggestions to medical writers / by George M. Gould. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    19/196 page 15
    the past, is the excision or “ cur-tailing ” of one of the useless tails too many of our adjectives we inherited from France. Somehow or other, can anybody tell us why? we stupidly thought we must put another adjectival tail to the thousands of words already sufficiently adjectived by the capable and most efficient ic of the French. These sensible people said domestique, scientifique, publique, etc., and if we translate, it would seem that domestic, scientific, public, etc., would be a sufficiency of adjectival caudaliza- tion. Our ancestors, strangely enough, did not think so and grafted a second tail to the first, so that the puppies now trot about, or once did so, and according to the stick¬ lers should forever do so, with this duplicating, tautologic al tail springing from the first. It is indeed a sorry tale ! Domestical, scientifical, and publical! Well, there are hun¬ dreds of words in English in which we have already re¬ lieved the poor dogs of the useless tail, and only the worst sticklers now prefer the double tailed pets, even keeping these at home. But there are others in which the surgical operation is sometimes performed and sometimes not. There are a few in which we have become so accustomed to the appearance of two-tailed species that we can laugh at these who grin at us, and wait awhile before demanding the surgeon. Those with a terminal -ic in the root (as medical, surgical, etc.), require the -al, perhaps,—and per¬ haps not. There is one further method of wise shortening in the adverbialization of these -ic adjectives. The spirit of the language has already done it with one word. Everybody says public, not publical, and everybody says publicly, not publically. In exact correspondence why should all the adjectives ending in -ic not form the adverb by a direct attachment of -ly, (dich, or -like) instead of uselessly (not uselessically) adding the al before doing so ? Why not say scicntificly, biologicly, etc. ? Having transverse, we do not say transversic, or transversical, or transversically, but, for the latter, simply transversely. There is no reason ex-
    digitised image 1
    digitised image 2
    digitised image 3