A Dictionary of Cont..

Cons with all other nations. he was rabid on
the subject).
free and easy. As an adjectival phrase meaning
unconstrained, unaffected, or careless, free and
easy, even though it may sometimes be used
effectively, is hackneyed.
free for nothing and often free, gratis, for nothing
are once-humorous tautologies that have long
ago lost their humor and should be avoided.
free will; freewill. Free will is the term for voluntary
decision or for the doctrine that the conduct
of human beings is not utterly determined by
physical or divine forces (He did it of his own
free will. Nobody forced him to do it). Freewill
is the adjective (n freewill ofiering). It
also applies to the doctrine of freedom of the
will (The freewill controversy has long been
agitated).
freeze. The past tense is froze. The participle is
frozen.
freight; cargo; shipment. Freight means the ordinary
conveyance of goods by common carriers, as
opposed to express. Or the goods so carried. In
English usage freight is applied only to goods
transported by water. But in American usage,
though this meaning would certainly be understood,
the term is restricted almost entirely to
goods carried on land or in the air (The amount
of freight carried by the railroads and trucks. . .
Air freight is becoming increasingly popular).
Cargo is the term for goods carried by ship and
a shipment is a quantity of goods destined for
a particular place, no matter how sent (The
Nancy’s cargo consisted of potatoes and sugar
beets. We are sending you a shipment by air
express tomorrow morning).
frequent; common. Frequent now means occurring
at short intervals of time (He made frequent
trips to New York that winter) or of space
(Burr oaks were frequent in the park). It also
means constant or regular (William Jennings
Bryan was a frequent visitor in my grandfather’s
house). In the sense of common (in such a
sentence as It is a frequent practice to speak of
socialism and communism as if they were the
same thing), however, frequent is now quite
rare. See also recurring.
frequently. See often.
fresh. In the sense of forward, impudent, conceitedly
intrusive or familiar, fresh is purely
American slang, probably the German frech
(impudent, saucy) adapted to English pronunciation.
At one time it was so common tbat it
looked as though it were going to become
standard but it is now a little outdated and
though universally understood in the United
States not so often heard. This may have been
due to the fact that at its height it acquired so
strong a connotation of unwanted sexual
advances (Don’t get fresh with me or I’ll slap
your face) that it became slightly indelicate.
See also breezy.
fresh as a daisy is a wilted metaphor.
fret and fume. Fret is an intensive form of eat
(cf: German fressen). It means to devour and,
applied chiefly to the manner in which animals
eat, came also to mean to gnaw. The thought of
Freudian
worry, impatience, and frustration as eating one
internally is, apparently, a natural thought. We
have not only such poetic thoughts as “eating
one’s heart out” but the slang term “What’s
eating you?” or “What’s eating on you?” In
addition to the idea of chafing (Falstaff frets like
gummed velvet), there is in the word fret a
connotation of querulous complaining.
To fume is to smoke, and the idea of heat
also seems to be naturally associated with chafing,
probably as a metaphorical carryover from
the physical heat that accompanies physical
chafing. And here again the idea is expressed in
slang (Boy, was he burned up when he heard
what she’d done! A slow burn) as well as in
standard English, showing that it is still a vital
idea.
To fret and fume, to gnaw one’s own inwards
with such fury that they smoke, was once, therefore,
a powerful metaphor. But the alliteration
that probably suggested the phrase in the first
place has kept it, as alliteration often does, in
use long after its vigor has been exhausted.
Freudian. See Rabelaisian.
Freudian English. The effect of Freud on the
English language has been profound, farreaching
and, it would seem, enduring. His
impact was first felt shortly after World War I
when the avant-garde began using his special
nomenclature and such words and terms as id,
libido, superego, subconscious, Oedipus complex
and inferiority complex became familiar. As
time went on and more people acquired a
knowledge of Freud’s principles and methods,
words like hallucination, fixation and compulsion,
which had formerly been confined to rather
restricted and often technical use, found their
way into common speech. In a generation there
has been such a complete acceptance of these
and other psychiatric terms, especially in relation
to education, that any suburban PTA meeting
would sound to our fathers like a psychiatric
clinic.
What is more, many words of general meaning
have become so endowed with psychiatric
connotations that the newer overtones have supplanted
the older ones in many professional and
social circles. In such groups words like anxiety,
hostility, dependency, aggressive and insecure
are now more often used for their psychological
import than for their original meanings.
Along with use has gone misuse. As the
terminology seeps down to the less educated, by
way of Sunday supplements, digested articles,
slick fiction and TV iokes. there is still some
I I
cachet to be derived from the use of psychiatric
terms. There is always somebody, seemingly, on
the next level lower down to be impressed. It
is possibly this that has been responsible for the
common misuse of phobia for obsession and
moron for psychopath. In 1951 it was suggested
at a meeting of the American Psychiatric Association
that neurosis, psychosis and psychoneurosis
be dropped as diagnostic terms because
their original meaning [whatever that may have
been] had been obscured through excessive and
careless use.