A Dictionary of Cont..

lawyer. In England lawyers are today classified
as barristers and solicitors. A barrister is a
counselor admitted to plead at the bar in any
court. A solicitor is a lawyer who advises
clients, represents them before the lower courts
and prepares cases for the barristers to try
in the higher courts. An attorney in England
is a lawyer considerably beneath a barrister in
dignity. For some reason the name became
tainted with opprobrium and is rarely used,
solicitor being preferred. Samuel Johnson’s
remark, of one who had just left the room,
that he did not care to speak ill of any man
behind his back, but he believed the gentleman
was an attorney would strike an American as
a gratuitous insult. An English lawyer, on the
other hand, would be taken aback at the sign
in many American office buildings, even in the
courts, Solicitors not allowed, for solicitor in
America does not mean a lawyer at all but one
who solicits, usually for charities.
attract. See allure.
attributive, as a grammatical term, means expressing
an attribute and is applied especially
to adjectives and adverbs preceding the words
which they modify. Thus funeral, most
commonly now thought of as a noun, is also
an adjective. But it has been used as a noun
so long that it can now be used as an adjective
only attributively (funeral director,
funeral hymns). Any noun may be used as an
adjective attributively and the custom of so
using nouns is growing.
attributive adjectives. See position of adjectives.
audience; spectators. Literally an audience is
composed of those who listen. There is no
question that those who attend a concert
comprise an audience, But do those who attend
a moving picture? Purists have insisted that
where looking is the sole or chief activity of
those being instructed or amused they should
be called spectators, and it’s no crime to make
the distinction. But it is a waste of time and
energy to try to make others make it. Those
extraordinary people who attended the studios
to watch the production of radio shows were
called the studio audience as those who were
listening elsewhere were called the radio audience.
Television has taken over the term and
an audience they will be, collectively, whether
hearing or seeing.
Sports have kept, at least for those attending
in person, the homely term crowd, though
those who watch and listen over television and
radio are an audience.
auditorium. The plural is auditoriums or auditoria.
aught; naught. Originally these words meant, respectively,
“anything” and “nothing,” as in if
aught but death part thee and me and she
naught esteems my aged eloquence. In these
senses they have a decidedly archaic tone and
are not used in natural speech today except in
a few set phrases, such as for aught I care and
it came to naught. Our common word not is
a modern form of naught.
Both aught and naught are used today to
4 17 author
mean a cipher, or zero. This is understandable
for naught, which means “nothing,” and the
form aught is supposed to have grown out of
pronouncing a naught as an aught. Literary
people sometimes object to the use of nught
for zero, because they consider it a corruption.
People who work with figures often prefer
aught, because it seems to them to suggest the
symbol 0. In the United States today, both
forms are acceptable. Aught is generally
preferred.
Both words, aught and naught, may be
spelled with an ou instead of au, as in ought
and nought. The au forms are preferred in
the United States.
aura. The plural is auras or aurae. The essential
thing about an aura is that it is an emanation,
a “flowing out from.” In the setting sun cast
u golden aura upon her head, the word is misused,
being confused, apparently, with aureole.
If there is a proper aura of mystery about a
man, it will have to proceed from him, not
from what others think about him.
aural; oral. Aural means of or pertaining to the
ear. An aural aid would be a hearing device.
Oral means of or pertaining to the mouth. It
can refer to the mouth as a part of the body,
as oral hygiene or medicine taken orally, or
it may refer to spoken words in distinction
to written, as oral testimony. See also oral;
verbal.
aurora borealis is singular, though the English
name for the phenomenon, the northern lights,
is, of course, plural.
auspices. A singular form of this word, auspice,
exists. It is not used as much today as formerly
but it is still accentable Enrrlish. Under the
auspice of the Student Council would be unusual
but still standard. The plural auspices is
generally preferred.
authentic and genuine are synonymous in many
uses, both meaning reliable or trustworthy.
But in specific uses they are different.
Authentic means not fictitious, corresponding
to the known facts. Genuine means sincere,
not spurious. An authentic historical novel
would be one that truthfully portrayed the
manners, customs, personages and scenery of
the age it was concerned with. A genuine
diamond is one that is a true diamond, not a
zircon or a cleverly mounted piece of glass.
Perhaps the essential difference is that in
authentic there is a sense of correspondence;
in genuine, a sense of actual being.
To use authentic as meaning good or admirable
(He has an authentic style) is undesirable.
author; authoress. It has now been almost a
century since a literate woman was sufficiently
a curiosity to have the fact of her sex noted
every time her literary activities were mentioned,
and so authoress is obsolescent. Fowler
thought it “a useful word” and thought the
public would “keep it in existence,” but no one
could have foreseen, fifty years ago, that
women were soon to do so much that men