A Dictionary of Cont..

The Drapier Letters (1724), and many counterfeits
passed about under the name of raps.
So the phrase once had meaning; if you were
not concerned even so much as a rap(‘s worth),
you had little concern indeed. But who knows
the meaning now? Or cares a rap for it? It is a
clichC, and should be used with care.
carefree; careless. To be carefree is to be free of
care in an admirable, or at least an enviable, way
(For a carefree vacation, come lo Camp Zdlewild).
To be careless is to be lacking in adequate
care, heedless, negligent, unconcerned about
things which merit concern (Careless people
are exasperating companions). The careless are
rarely carefree, because their carelessness makes
so much trouble for them.
cargo; shipment. Weseen’s joke, that goods sent
by ship are called a cargo and goods sent by car
are called a shipment, will at least serve to taunt
the purists. Shipment has the added suggestion
of goods that are definitely consigned to someone
(Your shipment has definitely been sent off
today. II forms part of the cargo of the steamship
Santa Maria). See also freight.
caricature. See burlesque.
caries. This is a singular noun, equivalent to decay,
and not a plural equivalent to cavities. We
say caries is preventable, not are preventable.
carom, a term from billiards, a shot in which the
ball struck with the cue is made to hit two balls
in succession, is in use in America but is no
longer used in England where it has been replaced
by cannon.
carousal; carousel; carrousel. A carousal, a noisy
or drunken feast, derives from the German
phrase Car aus!, “completely out,” a command,
equivalent to “Bottoms up!” to drinkers to
empty their cups completely in one mighty swill.
A carrousel, in America a merry-go-round,
in most of Europe a tournament, derives from
an Italian word garosella, a tournament, diminutive
of garoso, quarrelsome.
The two words are easily confused because
a carousal could easily include a ride in a
carrousel and both make noise which those involved
regard as music. Then carrousel is often
and legitimately spelled carousel and carou.sal.
In pronunciation, the word for revelry has the
accent on the second syllable, the merry-goround
word on the last.
carry. The use of carry to mean keep in stock
(The new store will carry a full line of merchandise),
to print or to present (The newspapers all
carried the story on the front page), and to sustain
or to bear a leading part in singing (He
curried the melody) is peculiarly American. All
of these uses are standard.
The American mail carrier is the English
postman. A carrier in England is one who conveys
parcels, with us the expressman, though in
legal and business phraseology we use the term
common carrier.
cart before the horse. Anyone who spoke of
some reversal of the usual order of doing thinp;s
8s putting the cart before the horse would, iE It
were the first time the phrase had ever bxn
85
heard, earn for himself the reputation of a.n
earthy fellow, with a gift for homely metaphor.
But since Cicero used the phrase (already a
proverb) in 61 B.C., and since horses and carts
now play very little part in most Americans’
lives, the man who uses the phrase today runs
the risk of seeming unoriginal, repetitious, and
tedious.
carte blanche (literally a white or blank sheet of
paper) is a signed paper left blank for the
person to whom it is given to fill in his own
conditions. By extension, it means unconditional
authority, full power. It is a clichi and, like all
foreign phrases introduced unnecessarily into
English speech, pretentious.
The plural, if anyone is conceivably interested,
is cartes blanches, though the man who
would use that phrase in English speech has
carried affectation almost to splendor.
caryopsis. The plural is caryopsises or caryopsides,
not caryopses.
case has so many uses that it is not surprising that
it also has abuses.
Etymologically, there are two words. There
is the word for a receptacle, from a Norman
French word, ultimately from the Latin word
capl’re, to take hold. From this case are derived
casement, case knife, a tray of wood or metal
for holding types for the use of the compositor,
the contents of a case (I’d like a case of soap
flakes), and a hundred extensions and applications
of the idea of the container. There is very
little confusion in the use of words of this kind.
Then there is the other case, meaning originally
that which befalls, from the French cas and
ultimately the Latin casualis. And this is the
word that has everyone confused, from stenographers
to lexicographers. It means an instance
of the occurrence of something (Zt was a
plain case of premeditated murder), the actual
state of things (That is not the case, and you
know it!), a question or problem of moral conduct
(a case of conscience), a situation, condition,
or plight (His hat was in a sorry case when he
picked it up), a state of things requiring consideration
or decision (This is u case for the
dean), a statement of facts or reasons (He made
a strong case for his side), an instance of disease
requiring medical attention (Zt was apparent the
child had a bad case of measles), and by a
natural extension from this, a patient (The
doctor saw his bed cases in the morning). In law
a case is a suit or action at law (The attorney
said he would take the case), or the facts supporting
a claim or supporting a defense against
a claim (He had a strong case and the attorney
had litrle concern about the decision). In grammar
case denotes a category in the inflection of
nouns, pronouns, and adjectives, establishing the
relation of these words to other words in the
sentence. It also denotes a set of such categories,
or the meaning of, or typical of, such a category,
or such categories or their meaning collectively.
See case in grammar.
Then there are idiomatic phrases containing
case. In any case means under any circum-