A Dictionary of Cont..

of zeal to accomplish some end suggested hy the
vision is not certain.
What is certain, however, is that the passage
has been misread and misquoted for centuries
as that he who runs may read. That is, it is
commonly assumed that the injunction was to
write so plainly that even a running man could
read it. Francis Bacon so interprets it in his
Advancement of Learning (. . . yet nt some
time it pleaseth God, for our better establishment
and the confuting of those which are as
without God in the world, to write it in such
text and Capital letters, that, as the Prophet
saith, He that runneth may read it). And the
pious Keble made the misreading the basis of
one of his hymns (There is a boo&, who runs
may read,/ Which heavenly truth impart.s).
The corrupted form, used as an adjuration to
write clearly and effectively, is now a cl&C.
Sabbath; Sunday. The Sabbath, the day on which
the Commandment bids us to abstain from
work, is the seventh day of the Jewish week.
Sunday, kept as a day of special worship and
rest from business, is the first day of the week.
The word Sabbath has been applied to Sunday
by Protestant religious bodies (My father was
a stern puritanical clergyman, who considered
a smile on the Sabbath CO be a sin). This application
should be restricted to the day as a day
of religious observance.
sabotage, though sometimes used in contexts
where wreck, destroy, or damage would serve
better, is definitely established as a word to
describe malicious injury to work, machinery or
tools, or any underhand interference with production
or business, by enemy agents during
wartime or by hostile employees (The continual
breakdown of the new assembly lines suggested
sabotage). Sabotage is a new word that has
come in with the machine to describe a certain
situation, attitude, and activity peculiar to the
use of the machine, especially in mass production.
It carries a suggestion of malevolence and
secrecy that wreck and destroy do not necessarily
have and it is nonsense to complain about
it. Figuratively, sabotage describes any malicious
attack or undermining of a cause (Certain
Congressmen were quite successful in sabotaging
the President’s civil rights program) and
in figurative uses it is often abused. He ,who
would use it correctly as a figure should be
certain that the opposition he is describing is
malicious and sly and that that which is wrecked
has in some way the characteristics of a
machine.
sacred, sacrosanct. That is sacred which is appropriated
or dedicated to a deity or to some reli-
429 safe
S
msh. In this century of speed and violent haste,
rush seems to be the normal verb of motion.
It is greatly overworked. For instance, it is the
rather imprecise term frequently used to describe
carrying or conveying with haste (He was
rushed CO the hospital), imprecise because rush
properly implies the exercise of force, an exercise
which is rarely necessary in getting the sick
or injured to the hospital.
In American slang rush means to heap attentions
on. One rushes a girl by courting her
favor with numerous and insistent attentions.
College and high-school secret societies rush
prospective members; that is, they cultivate
them assiduously with the view of getting them
to join their organizations. The slang expression
the bum’s rush is a proper use of rush, for one
treated to the bum’s rush is violently propelled
from one place to another.
gious purpose, entitled to veneration or religious
respect because of its association with divinity
or divine things, pertaining to or connected with
religion as opposed to the secular and profane
(He enjoyed both sacred and profane love).
That is sacred which is reverently dedicated to
some person or object (Sacred to the memory
of our mother) or regarded with reverence (The
sacred memory of George Washington) and
hence secure against violation (The sacred rights
embodied in the first Amendments CO the Constitution)
.
Sacrosanct means especially or superlatively
sacred or inviolable. Its use is restricted to those
things that are rendered particularly inviolable
by religious sanction. That is, one may refer to
our sacred political rights or our sacred heritage,
and so on, but sacrosanct should be applied only
to such highly sacred religious articles as the
vessels used at the altar, the relics of a saint,
or the person of an ecclesiastic.
sacrilegious is the proper spelling of the adjective
of sacrilege, the violation or profanation of anything
held sacred. It is often misspelled sacreligious
under the mistaken opinion, apparently,
that the word religious is in it. But there is no
such word as sacreligious.
sadder and a wiser man. It was the luckless wedding
guest in Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient
Mariner who first rose the morrow morn
. . . a sadder and a wiser man. The term is now
a cliche of the jocular.
safe and sane, especially when applied to a celebration
of the Fourth of July unmarred by the
use of dangerous explosives, is a peculiarly
American term, and now a hackneyed one.
safe and sound, as a term to describe persons
(and sometimes, loosely, objects) which having