A Dictionary of Cont..

consume 116
A consul was at one time either of the two
chief magistrates of the ancient Roman republic.
The emperors did not abolish the (consulships,
but placed themselves in power over the
consuls and from that moment the dignity and
greatness of the name began to decline until
now it stands for merely a minor commercial
agent. Almost all titles depreciate in v,alue in
time. A prince was once the principal man, a
duke was the leader, a count ruled a county, a
marquis guarded the marches, or borders. The
American custom of bestowing many alf these
titles (especially Earl and Duke) as first names
will no doubt greatly speed the process of devaluation.
consume is to use up, to destroy (The fire consumed
the house), to eat or drink up (He consumed
n large menl), to spend money or time
wastefully, or to absorb or engross (Football
consumed his energy. The book consumed his
time). The economists have made it a synonym
for use and in their world it probably must be
so accepted as standard, but in ordinary use the
careful speaker or writer will reserve it. for its
special meaning.
contact. In the sense of to get in touch with a
person (I’ll contact Jones and get his reaction)
contact was once a fighting word. The purists,
particularly English purists, made an issue of it.
Here was an abomination, an Americanism
hideously repugnant. But it was a useful figure
(after all, get in touch with is also a metaphor
and several times as long) and very few business
men even knew that the purists existed. Its fault
was not so much its impropriety as that it was
for a while grossly overworked. It is certainly
accepted in spoken English today and will probably
become the usual term in written English
as well.
The noun contact, in the sense of one with
whom one is in touch (The F.B.I. has its contacts
in the Communist Party) is now on the
threshold of becoming standard.
contagious; infectious. In medical usage, an infectious
disease is one communicable by infection,
a contagious disease one that is spread by
physical contact. In popular usage the words are
interchangeable, in their metaphorical uses,
though contagious has come to have a slight
connotation of rapidity in spreading (The luughter
was contagious. Mistrust is infectious and
once started may weaken an entire nation).
contain; include. To contain is to have within itself.
To include is to contain as a part or member,
or among the parts and members, of a
whole. A whole contains its parts and includes
any or all of its parts. Thus one might say of a
certain package that it contained six reams of
paper and that among these six reams were included
two of blue paper and one of yellow.
contemplate; meditate; premeditate. In the sense
of considering in the mind as something to be
done, contemplate, meditate, and premeditate
imply different degrees of intention. One contemplates
many things that one has no serious
purpose of doing, but they still have to be more
likely to happen than those things which we
merely imagine. One meditates more seriously.
The word suggests deeper absorption in the possibility,
a more searching examination of ways
and means (meditating revenge, under brows of
dauntless courage). Both contemplate and meditate
apply to stages of consideration in which a
decision to act or not to act is possible, but
premeditate is used now exclusively to refer to
cogitations preceding something that actually
did happen (His crime was premeditated: he
cannot pretend that it was done on thoughtless
impulse). In the law premeditation implies sufficient
forethought to impute deliberation and
intent to commit the act.
contemporary; contemporaneous; coeval. Contemporary
and contemporaneous both refer to
things that exist or occur at the same time, but
contemporary is applied more to people and
contemporaneous to objects (Keats was a contemporary
of Shelley’s. The first volume of
Gibbon’s Decline and Fall and the first volume
of Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations were contemporaneorts).
Where contemporary is used
without any comparison being made, it refers
to the present time (Contemporary styles in
women’s clothing permit great freedom of movement)
.
Coeval also means existing at the same time,
but it implies that the contemporaneousness has
gone on for a long time or existed in times of
the remote past (Tyranny is coeval with servility.
Rome and Greece were coeval). Where
coeval is used of a person, it is usually humorous,
implying a contemporaneousness of such
duration that it must be measured in terms of
history or geology. Lamb says of a superannuated
man: He is forlorn among his coevals; his
funiors cannot be his friends.
Cotemporary and cotemporaneous, by the
way, are permissible variants, not misspellings.
See also synchronous.
contemptible; contemptuous. When Pedro, in Much
Ado About Nothing, says of Benedick that the
man hath a contemptible spirit, it is apparent
from the context that he does not mean that
Benedick had a spirit deserving of contempt but
one manifesting contempt, a haughty and disdainful
spirit. But contemptible is no longer
synonymous with contemptuous. It now means
deserving of contempt and contemptuous means
bestowing of contempt (It is true that his attitude
towards the project is contemptuous, but
it must be granted that many of those engaged
in it are contemptible).
content; contented. These adjectives can both follow
a linking verb, as in the man was content
and the man was contented. But only the form
contented can stand before the noun it qualifies.
We can say the contented man but not the content
man.
It may be hair-splitting, but in common use
content suggests more of the meaning of satisfied
and contented more of pleased in sntisfaction.
content; contents. In current English, the singular
word content is used in speaking of the significant
material contained in a piece of work, and