A Dictionary of Cont..

peevish 362
few others as good, but he never met his peer).
The error stems from the fact that peer in English
usage describes a nobleman--a duke, a marquis,
an earl, a viscount, or a baron. The holders
of such titles are each other’s peers. When they
are tried by a jury of their peers, they are tried
not by a jury of commoners but by the House of
Lords or, as it is sometimes called, the House of
Peers, or the Peers. Though they are each other’s
peers, they are not, legally, on a level with common
citizens. Very few distinctions are now
made, though formerly there were many and
they were important, and it is only natural
(linguistically) that the word which signified
equality in the higher rank should signify superiority
in the lower rank. But it is ironic that the
error should be so persistent in the country
which abrogated all distinctions of rank and
reduced (or exalted) all to a peerage.
peevish. See petulant.
pejorative means depreciative, having a disparaging
force. In grammar it is used of words which
through certain uses and associations have come
to have a worse meaning than the one they
originally had and convey contempt or condemnation
of that to which they are applied. Thus
knave once meant a boy, a boor was only a
farmer, and a villain a serf or peasant. Certain
suffixes have a pejorative effect; -ster is one of
these, though it does not invariably suggest
disparagement. A poetaster is not a true poet
but a mere versifier or dabbler in rime. In
punster there is a suggestion of contempt for one
who is addicted to punning.
pence; penny. Pence is a peculiarly British term
to denote the collective plural of penny. The
distributive plural of penny is pennies; that is,
the word which describes the number of coins,
in distinction from the sum indicating value (I
gave him three pennies to pay my threepence
fare). Since it is used collectively, pence is treated
as singular (Fourpence is the usual fee). Pence
is not used of American sums. Penny and pennies
are used loosely, for cent and cents, a folk
memory, perhaps, of the days before and the
generation or so after the Revolution when the
penny was a part of our currency.
penetrate; pervade. To penetrate is to pierce into
or through, to enter the interior of (Only heavy
slugs will penetrate the armor. No one seems
able to penetrate his reserve). To pervade is to
diffuse throughout, to extend activities and influence
throughout (Goodwill pervaded the conference).
If we say, for example, The smell of ether
penetrated the doctor’s office, we mean that the
smell reached that far and entered. If we say
The smell of ether pervaded the doctor’s ofice,
we mean that it was everywhere throughout the
office. The difficulty lies in the fact that the two
effects are not always clearly distinguishable.
Oils and heat, liniments, and even ideas, can
penetrate and pervade. This has led to the
meaning of pervading often being expressed as
penetrating, and where the two actions are inseparable
the usage must be acceptable. But
where they are distinguishable it is well to use
the proper verb. See also pervade.
penmanship. Pride in handwriting as expression
of character is no longer cultivated. In fact, it
seems to have been replaced by the notion that
illegibility in itself reflects certain admired traits
-such as dash, authority and savoir-faire. Perhaps
our great-grandfathers spent too much time
on penmanship, as they did on spelling, learning
more to form attractive, readable characters
than to express themselves in meaningful language.
In the late nineteenth century the approved
style of penmanship was the Spencerian, recognizable
by its light upstrokes, heavy downstrokes
and elaborate curlicues. The twentieth century
saw this superseded by the Palmer method,
whose watchword was “free arm-movement.”
The decorative style of the Spencerian method
was replaced by a simpler, more graceful script
which sought only to be legible.
In most moderately progressive schools today,
cursive writing is not taught until the third grade
-and typing is usually offered as an elective in
the eighth grade. It is claimed that small muscles
are not sufficiently coordinated to make the fine
movements necessary for handwriting; whereas
printing is much less demanding. Many children
continue to print as long as it is acceptable at
school, or develop a combination of printing
and cursive styles. If legibility is the aim there
can be no objection to this, for it serves that end
very well, and it may be that we have now
waded so far into illegibility of script that the
easiest way out is to go ahead with printing.
Certainly something will have to be done, unless
we become complete artifacts and have
typewriters built into us, for most handwritings
now are almost entirely illegible. Much of everyday
business still depends on written communications
and memoranda and these must be legible.
The Illinois Bell Telephone Company has
stated that it loses $50,000 a year because
operators can’t write call tickets plainly, and
probably every other large business suffers a
similar loss, a loss which in the aggregate must
run into many millions. Post offices across the
country are full of dead letters, most of which
are dead because they are illegible, illegible even
to the staff of experts in illegibility which the
Post Office has to maintain.
pen name. See nom de plume.
penniless. See poor.
penult, penultimate; antepenult, autepenultimate.
Penult and penultimate are the short and long
forms of a noun meaning the last syllable but
one of a word. Of the two, penult is preferable
(The penult in American is i). Similarly, both
antepenult and antepenultimate are forms of a
noun meaning the last syllable but two in a word
(The antepenult of American is er). Again, the
shorter form is preferable in the noun. In the
adjective, penultimute and. antepenultimate are
preferred.
penurious. See poor.