A Dictionary of Cont..

On the other hand, the essential meaning of a
verb can always be expressed as a noun. We can
always use a relatively empty verb, which does
little more than show tense, person, and number,
with a noun that carries the meaning of what we
want to say, in place of a meaningful verb. This
practice has become very popular in the last
thirty or forty years. Many people would rather
say there wus (I heavy snow full lust nighr than
it snowed heavily. Some grammarians object to
this. But in spoken English, constructions such as
he took a walk, we had a swim, she gave u sigh,
are heard more often than the direct forms he
walked, we swum, she sighed. The same preference
is seen in technical writing where we find
make an examination and reuch a decision more
often than examine or decide. Obviously, the
professional man sitting down to write an article
and his friends and neighbors in their relaxed
moments all feel that a noun is more forceful
and more concrete than a verb. To call the construction
pompous or stilted in one situation
and careless or colloquial in another is foolish.
It is simply a very powerful trend in present-day
English. If carried through completely, we would
need only the verb ro 6e and the appropriate
nouns to express all our verbal ideas.
For the primary forms of the verb, see principal
parts of a verb and irregular verbs.
veritable, for being truly such, genuine, real (Ii
wus a veritable fairyland, with all the Japanese
lanterns and the colored lights playing on the
fountain), is a little affected. The emphasis that
it hopes to lend is slightly shrill and forced.
vermin. Originally this word was a singular, as in
a suvuge vermin in a trap, and had a regular
plural, as in full of maggots, vermins, and worms.
The singular could also be used, as all singulars
can, to typify the class, as in a vermin in our
pillows which did bite fur worse than fleas. None
of these constructions are in common use today.
In these vermin are driving us oat, the singular
form vermin is being used as a plural. Sixty
years ago this was condemned as ungrammatical.
Today it is standard English, and is practically
the only way in which the word vermin is used.
Vurmit, or varmint, is a variant form of vermin
heard in many parts of the United States.
It has a regular plural vurmits and presents no
grammatical problems. It is not standard English,
but it is a much more useful word than
vermin.
vernacular; language; dialect; jargon. All of these
words refer to patterns of vocabulary, syntax,
and usage characteristic of communities of va,rious
sizes and types. Language is applied to the
general pattern of a people or a race (The English
language is common to the United States and
the United Kingdom). Dinlect is applied to certain
forms or varieties of a language, often those
which provincial communities or special groups
retain or develop even after a standard has been
established (The East Tennessee dialect is ulmost
impossible to imitate accurately). One who
has been reared to speak a certain dialect almost
never loses it entirely. Slight variations in pro-
nunciation, cadence, vocabulary, and so on, will
mark his speech. Sir Walter Raleigh. thouah an
accomplished courtier, spoke with a Somersetshire
accent and Dr. Johnson, though he edited
the greatest dictionary of his century and was
the acknowledged dictator of letters in his time,
kept “a slight Staffordshire burr” in his pronunciation.
Where a dialect is native, there is nothing
wrong in this; indeed, it often confers a
pleasing distinction. But, unfortunately, snobbery
sometimes attaches opprobrium to some
dialects (such as the cockney or that of New
York’s lower East Side). Outside of the community
where such dialects prevail, even a tincture
of them may do a man harm. It’s cruel,
but that is the way of the as-yet-imperfect world.
A jargon is an artificial pattern used by a
particular, usually occupational, group within a
community; or a special pattern created for communication
in business or trade between members
of the groups speaking different languages
(The jargon of sports writers varies from nation
to nation). Special words, of course, must be
used in each trade and profession and the use of
these technical terms to each other by members
of these trades or professions when engaged in
their work or when talking about their work
does not, in the common acceptance of the term,
constitute jargon. It does not become jargon
until it is used outside of the special field in contexts
where standard English words and expressions
are available and would make their
meaning clearer to the ordinary man. Thus if a
doctor says of a patient, after examining him,
that rest “is indicated,” meaning “is needed,” or
“is advisable” or “would do him good,” the layman
is not justified in accusing the physician of
speaking jargon. Other words might do as well,
but the members of the medical profession, in
their inscrutable wisdom and Eleusinian ways,
have decided on the term for the circumstances
and they have the privilege of so deciding. But if
the same physician at the corner filling station
should, when the rod drawn from his engine
shows him to be two quarts low, say that two
quarts “is indicated,” meaning “needed” or “is
advisable,” he would be guilty of speaking jargon;
for the common acceptance of the phrase
would lead the filling station attendant to assume
that only two quarts were indicated on the
rod and, therefore, the supply of oil in this particular
crankcase was dangerously low. Most
jargon does not mislead in this way, but it remains
incomprehensible and therefore defeats
the chief end of speech.
A vernaculur is the authentic natural pattern
of speech used by persons indigenous to a certain
community, large or small (South Boston
vernacular is not, or at least in a happier age
was not, the same us Back Bay vernacular).
versa; stanza. These are terms for metrical groupings
in poetic composition. Verse is often mistakenly
used for stunzu (as in Now read the next
verse, all eight lines, please) but it is properly
only a single metrical line (“Something there is
that doesn’t love a wall” is the opening verse of