A Dictionary of Cont..

ently the latest translators felt a little uneasy at
letting Joseph invoke God to support him in a
deception, however well intentioned.
far from the madding crowd. One reason that
the crowd is madding is that its members are
addicted to clichCs, of which this (often misquoted
as maddening) is one.
fascination. To fascinate is to hold by enchantment
(The fascination of her charms held him
a happy slave). As a term of exaggerated compliment
it is applied to pleasant things and often
has no more meaning than attractive (My dear,
what a perfectly fascinating bracelet!). As SO
often when exaggeration has defeated itself, a
last desperate attempt to give the term meaning
is made by accenting the word shrilly. When the
word is used seriously and literally, it more
often applies to unpleasant things, to extreme
terror (Helpless with fear, the rabbit stared,
fascinated, at the approuching stoat).
Something has a fascination for one. One is
fascinated by a person and with an inanimate
object. Fascination of by itself is ambiguous. If
one speaks of the fascination of X by Y, the
meaning is plain, but if one speaks merely of
the fascination of X it is not always clear whether
it means that X was fascinated or fascinating.
fashion; manner. Fashion is prevailing custom or
style, conventional usage or conformity to it. It
was also used formerly to mean manner and
method (He huth importun’d me with love,/ In
honourable fashion) but this use is now obsolescent
or out of fashion. Manner is now used
in reference to individuals and fashion reserved
for the custom prevailing among people in general
(He had a strange manner of speaking. It
was the fashion to prolong the vowels and swullow
the consonants).
fast is as truly an adverb as it is an adjective. The
specifically adverbial form fustly is now obsolete.
fastidious; finical; squeamish. Fastidious means
hard to please, excessively critical, over-nice
(The lute nineteenth century was in many ways
a fastidious age, full of false refinement. I must
say he’s not at all fastidious about what he piles
on his plate). Though its proper sense is pejorative,
it is a point-of-view word; what seems excessively
critical to one man may seem justly
appraising to another. So that we sometimes
find it used in an approving way (She’s very
dainty and fastidious).
Finical or more commonly finicky is never
used praisingly. There is a connotation of contempt
in it. The one who uses the word feels
that there is no justification for the finicky one’s
distaste (Yet after all that finicky revising there
isn’t a well-written sentence in the book!).
Squeamish is the strongest word of the three,
for it means one whose repugnance to the improper
or the distasteful is great enough to
induce nausea. It is still used in its original
sense (The very sight of a safety belt makes me
squeamish) but chiefly employed figuratively
(trijZes magnified into importance by a squeam-
173
ish conscience. I’ll warrant it’s some squeamish
minx as my wife, that’s grown so dainty of lute,
she finds fault even with a dirty shirt). See also
nice.
fat; corpulent; stout; plump. Fat is the informal,
everyday word. It formerly connoted a good
deal of jolliness, and still does to some extent,
but increasingly it is coming to have unpleasant
implications (Nobody loves a fat man. She’s too
fat, she’s too jut, she’s too fat for me). Corpulent
suggests fleshly bulk. It’s rather a stilted
word. Falstaff calls himself a good portly man i’
faith, and a corpulent, but he is burlesquing the
sonorous dignity of Henry IV’s speech at the
time. Stout, now a euphemism for fat, especially
in reference to ladies and in the garment industry,
suggests a heavily built but usually strong
and healthy body. It was used much formerly
to mean vigorous, brave, undismayed, of great
staying power. Keats’s tribute to stout Cortes
would be ludicrous if the modern meaning were
read into it. Plump, also a euphemism for jut,
connotes a pleasing roundness, an attractive
fulness of flesh.
fatal; fateful. The primary meaning of fateful is
“involving momentous consequences.” The day
on which a man began something of great import
to him, whether of good or ill, would be a
fateful day for him. That is fatal which causes
or initiates death or ruin. A fatal day could only
be one on which some disaster occurred or had
its inception. Fateful may mean fatal; fatal
cannot always be used for fateful.
Father Time with his beard. bald head. scvthe I
and hourglass, has been around a long time. He
was apparently a venerable personification as
long ago as 1594 when Sheakespeare alluded to
him in The Comedy of Errors. The cartoonists
cannot let him go, because at the end of every
Old and the beginning of every New Year, he
is their means of livelihood. But in writing and
speaking, where he is a tired cliche, he may be
allowed to settle in threadbare dustiness into the
oblivion he has so long typified.
fathom. Only the singular form fathom can be
used as part of a compound adjective qualifying
a following noun, as in a ten fathom cable.
A ten fathoms cable is not standard English.
Except in this construction, the plural form
fathoms is preferred in this country when speaking
of more than one.
In English literature the singular form fathom
is used whenever the word occurs with a numeral,
whether it qualifies a following noun or not,
as in full fathom jive thy father lies and under
the keel nine fathom deep. This is still the usual
practice in Great Britain, but not in the United
States.
fatigued. See tired.
faucet; tap. The American faucet is the British
tap.
fault; failing; foible; weakness; vice. Fault is the
common, everyday word for a moral shortcoming
or imperfection. When applied to animals
and inanimate things there is, of course, no