A Dictionary of Cont..

noplace 322
that night. The uard is used in this way in the
United States and Scotland and the construction
is standard in those countries, but not in
England. This has been true for at least 150
years. Boswell, using the speech that was
natural to him, wrote: we spoke none. But he
apparently considered this an inferior form of
English, for he later corrected the sentence to
we had no conversation.
noplace. The use of noplace as a substitute for
nowhere, as in I could find it noplace, is condemned
by many grammarians because the
noun place is here being used instead of the
adverb where. This usage is not acceptable in
Great Britain but it occurs too often in the
United States, in written as well as in spoken
English, to be called anything but standard. It
is acceptable English in this country.
nor. See or.
normal; regular; ordinary; natural. That is normal
which conforms to the established standards for
its sort of thing (The normal response to such
a statement would be derision. Anybody with
normal intelligence would have known better).
That is regular which conforms to prescribed
rule, accepted principle, recognized pattern
(The regular thing is to have dinner first. It’s
best to do it the regular way; it will cause less
comment). To say of someone that he is a
regular scoundrel is to say that he conforms, in
every respect, to the recognized pattern of
scoundrelism. The slang commendation, that
so-and-so is a regular guy, carries an interesting
suggestion of the importance of conformity
in achieving popular approbation. That is
ordinary which is opposed to the uncommon, of
the usual kind (The ordinary driver seems to feel
that trafic regulations are meant only for the
other fellow). That is natural which conforms to
the principles of its own nature and since most
normal and ordinary people and things do,
there are many contexts in which the words are
interchangeable. See average, common.
normalcy; normalism; normality; the normal;
Normal. It was in Boston, in 1920, that Senator
Warren G. Harding, moved by alliteration and
the spirit of the times, declared that what
America then needed was not heroics but healing;
not nostrums but normalcy; not revolution
but restoration: . . . not surgery but serenity.
The idea seemed sound to the voters who
elected him president. But the wits, who were
just starting a brilliant decade in the opposition,
seized on the word normalcy and made it a
banner of derision. Without bothering to consult
their dictionaries, they simply assumed
that the Senator meant normality and had
blundered. As late as 1953 even so astute and
literate a man as Frederick Lewis Allen (in
The Big Change, N.Y., Harper) could say of
Harding: He preferred to talk about what he
called “normalcy,” meaning normality.
But normalcy, although until that moment a
rare word, is a perfectly legitimate word, meaning
the character or state of being normal. It
is a complete and acceptable synonym for
normality, and had been in use for at least
seventy years before Mr. Harding’s or his ghost
writer’s lust for alliteration led him to it.
Normality, however, the normal state or
quality, is the common and most readily understood
word, though it is being displaced by the
normal, the standard or type.
Normalism is so rare a word that most
standard dictionaries do not recognize its existence.
Those that do identify it as a theological
term designating an early Buddhistic belief in
a cosmic order, opposed to animism, which is
not subject to the will of a personal deity.
Normal schools (after the French e’cole
normale) are so called because they teach the
norms or rules of teaching.
north; northern. These words have one comparative
form, more northern, and two superlatives,
northmost and northernmost.
nostalgia, derived from Greek words meaning
“return home” and “pain,” originally meant an
aching longing for home, homesickness. Now
a vogue word, nostalgia has come to mean any
vague yearning, especially for the past and especially-as
most yearning for the past iswhen
tinged with tenderness and sadness. It is
so vague and yet so popular that it has become
slightly comic (as in The Night the Old
Nostalgia Burned Down, by Frank Sullivan,
Boston, 1953). Homesickness, yearning, and
longing should all be carefully considered
whenever the impulse to use nostalgia comes
upon us.
not. This word, which is an abbreviated form of
nought, is now the simple adverb of negation.
Until about six hundred years ago, the simple
negative adverb was ne. It stood before the
verb, as in twenty thousand infants that ne wot
the right hand from the left, but could be
strengthened by a following negative, as in ne
doubt ye nought. This gave English a compound
negative ne . . . nought somewhat like
the French ne . . . pus. In time nought became
not and ne disappeared. Although the old construction
was forgotten, not kept its position
after the verb, as in pomp that fades not and
this body dropt not down.
In a normal English sentence a negative adverb
stands immediately before the verb. A
post-placed negative, as in fades not and dropt
not is permissible but unusual. One would therefore
expect to see not brought forward, and this
was occasionally done, as in I not doubt he
came alive to land and they possessed the island
but not enjoyed it. This is the reasonable way
to handle not and if grammar was controlled
by reason this is the way we would now use
the word. But we all feel that this word order
is wrong or “impossible.” That is because.
language is much too big a thing to be altered
at will, even by school teachers or textbook
writers. It is the speech habits of all the people
who use the language, and these in turn depend
upon speech habits handed down from the past.
Language changes as the needs of people
change. But it changes as a living creature does