After I use a phrase . . . Linguistic barbarisms in drugs

H W Fowler

Henry Watson Fowler (1858–1933) was a schoolmaster who turned to journalism after which turned a lexicographer. And it’s for lexicography that he’s justifiably well-known.

Fowler began his lexicographical profession in collaboration with one in all his youthful brothers, Francis George Fowler (1871–1918). Having beforehand printed a translation of the works of Lucian of Samosata (1905), in 1906 they printed The King’s English, a quantity for which that they had initially urged the title The brand new solecist for literary tiros.1 This was adopted, in 1911, by the Concise Oxford Dictionary of Present English, an abridged model of the Oxford English Dictionary, or as a lot of it as had been printed by then (A–Sc), supplementing it utilizing entries from different dictionaries.

They then started work on a e book on English utilization, however the first world struggle intervened, and when Francis died from tuberculosis in 1918, Henry continued the work alone. The primary version of A Dictionary of Trendy English Utilization, devoted to Francis (“who shared with me the planning of this e book, however didn’t reside to share the writing”), was printed in 1926.

Wilson Follett

Roy Wilson Follett (1887–1963) was an American author, educated at Harvard College. He wrote a number of books and articles of literary criticism in The Atlantic, together with: Joseph Conrad: A Brief Research (1915); Henry James (1916), Up to date Novelists: John Galsworthy (1916), Up to date Novelists: Joseph Conrad (1917), The Historian of Wessex (1917), and Some Trendy Novelists: Appreciations and Estimates (1918), all co-written together with his spouse Helen Thomas Follett; and The Trendy Novel: A Research of the Function and the That means of Fiction (1918, revised 1923). He edited the primary collected version of the works of Stephen Crane in 12 volumes (1925–7), Crane’s Collected Poems (1930), and the collected tales of Thomas Beer (1947). Follett’s novel No Extra Sea (1934) was shortlisted for the 1934 Pulitzer Prize.

Fowler had statedly reserved his pronouncements for an English viewers. As he wrote in a letter to his publishers, “We’ve got our eyes not on the foreigner, however on the half-educated Englishman of literary proclivities who needs to know Can I say so-&-so? … Is that this use English?”1

Follett subsequently perceived a spot that he would possibly fill. “It’s time,” he wrote in 1958, “we had an American e book of utilization grounded within the philosophy that the perfect in language—which is commonly the only—shouldn’t be too good to be aspired to.” He labored on such a e book till his loss of life in 1963, when it was nonetheless incomplete. The duty of modifying and finishing it was undertaken by his colleague Jacques Barzun, Seth Low professor of historical past at Columbia College, in collaboration with six different editors: Carlos Baker, Woodrow Wilson professor of literature at Princeton College; Frederick W Dupee, professor of English at Columbia College; Dudley Fitts, poet, critic, and translator; James D Hart, professor of English on the College of California, Berkeley; Phyllis McGinley, poet; and Lionel Trilling, Woodberry professor of literature and criticism at Columbia College.

The e book, printed in 1966, was favourably in contrast with Fowler’s, and a revised model appeared in 1976, edited by Erik Wensberg.

Barbarisms

Each Fowler and Follett included entries on barbarisms of their guides to English utilization.

Fowler first distinguished between barbarism, barbarity, and barbarousness: “Barbarism means uncivilized situation, grossly uncultivated style, or an illiterate expression; barbarity means grossly merciless conduct or therapy, or a grossly merciless act; barbarousness could also be substituted for both of the others the place the sense high quality or diploma is to be given unmistakably.”

What precisely Fowler meant by a barbarism shouldn’t be clear from his entry on the topic: “Barbarisms is a tough phrase to fling about, apt to wound emotions, although it might break no bones; maybe it might be higher abstained from, however so too would the barbarisms themselves.” The revised textual content within the second version (1968), edited by Sir Ernest Gowers, makes issues clearer: “[Barbarism] has the that means the Greeks gave it, of a phrase shaped in an unorthodox manner.” And Gowers’s cross reference to hybridsandmalformations sends us again to the primary version, during which Fowler described barbarisms in an entry on hybrid derivatives.

“Hybridderivatives are phrases shaped from a stem or phrase belonging to at least one language by making use of to it a suffix or prefix belonging to a different [and] phrases … during which all the weather belong certainly to at least one language, however are so put collectively as to outrage that language’s rules of formation.” I name these Kind 1 and Kind 2 barbarisms respectively.

Fowler thought that almost all hybrids had been unobjectionable, referring to Greek or Latin phrases to which a easy English suffix had been added (e.g. plainness and sympathizer) and people during which an English phrase has had a international prefix or suffix added (e.g. disbelieve, readable, and breakage). I name these Kind 0 barbarisms. Fowler described them as “hybrids technically, however not for sensible functions.”

The primary definition of barbarism within the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) accords with Fowler’s descriptions: “The usage of phrases or expressions not in accordance with the classical customary of a language, particularly akin to are of international origin; initially the blending of international phrases or phrases in Latin or Greek.”2

Though Follett clearly took his cue from Fowler in together with the time period “barbarism” in his information, he provided a distinct definition: “A barbarism is an expression within the mouth of an informed speaker which is so at variance with good sense and good utilization that it startles the hearer.” He urged that barbarisms come up although “a complete blindness to logic and to what the Germans name Sprachgefühl, the sense of language.” Among the many examples he gave, he included the form of hybrids to which Fowler referred, akin to “obliviate,” however he additionally included what we’d higher name malapropisms, akin to confusion between “mitigate” and “militate,” in addition to mispronunciations, and quite a lot of malformations, such because the non-words “irregardless,” “beneficient,” “portentious,” “somewheres,” “anywheres,” and “everywheres,” misuse of “aegis,” as in “by means of the aegis of the Basis,” and neologistic phrases akin to “steering counselor,” “enjoyable actions,” and “leisure-time preoccupations.” In brief, something that’s linguistically improper, otiose, or self-contradictory. “All these,” he wrote, “are in numerous levels barbarisms.” I name these Kind 3 barbarisms.

Kind 0 medical barbarisms

I believe that below this heading Fowler would have included many medical phrases, akin to “aspirin,” initially a model identify. It has three parts: <a >, brief for “acetyl,” itself a mixture of Latin and Greek, <spir >, which is brief for Spiraea ulmaria, the meadow-sweet, and <in >a meaningless suffix, akin to -ine, typically used within the names of medication (heroin, insulin, penicillin, warfarin), plant extracts (alizarin, aloin, coumarin, curcumin, dextrin, inulin, lignin, palmitin, pectin, salicin, vanillin), proteins and their derivatives (albumin, casein, chondrin, fibrin, gelatin, globulin, myosin, pepsin, plasmin), and different substances (allantoin, chitin, chromatin, lecithin, prostaglandin, purpurin).3

Kind 1 medical barbarisms

“Bureaucrat” is an effective instance of a Kind 1 barbarism, the formation of a phrase by mixture of two phrases from totally different languages. It comes from the French phrase bureau, an workplace, and the Greek phrase κράτησις, energy.

Many phrases of this kind are nicely shaped, every a part of the phrase coming from a Greek root. Examples embody aristocrat, autocrat, democrat, gerontocrat, kleptocrat, ochlocrat, phallocrat, plutocrat, pornocrat, technocrat, thalassocrat, and theocrat. Barbarisms of this kind embody educrat, mediacrat, meritocrat, mobocrat, all from Latin+Greek, and quangocrat. Mobocrat shouldn’t be clearly Latin, however “mob” is brief for the Latin phrase “cell” (pronounce the ultimate <e >), itself a shortening of the unique phrase “cell vulgus,” a typical crowd. “Quangocrat” is a very barbaric coinage; it’s an acronym from Quasi-Non-Governmental Organisation. NHS England has been described as “the world’s greatest quango.”4

Fowler cites “cablegram” as a barbarism, cable coming from a Teutonic root and -gram from the Greek phrase for one thing written, akin to a letter, γράμμα. In the present day we even have strippergrams, kissograms, gorillagrams, and even Rambograms, the final being delivered by Sylvester Stallone look-alikes. Medication has many -grams, a few of that are barbarisms. Take electrocardiogram; it comes from the Latin phrase for amber, electrum, and a Greek phrase for the center, καρδία. Different Latin+Greek examples embody interferogram, mammogram, milligram, radiogram, and spectrogram; and roentgenogram is from the identify of the German discoverer of x-rays.

Tv is an instance of a barbarism that mixes a Greek phrase with a Latin one—Greek τῆλε, afar, and Latin videre, to see (supine visum). One among a number of Greek phrases that means to see, σκοπειν, had already been taken for phrases akin to “telescope” when “tv” was first named. Many medical phrases prefixed with tele- are nicely shaped, akin to telecardiography, telegony, telekinesis, telemetry, teleology, and telepathy. Barbarisms embody teleceptors, teleconference, and telemedicine. Of two hybrids that contain individuals’s names, teleroentgenography remains to be alive and nicely,5 however the OED’s most up-to-date reference to telecurietherapy is from 1996.6

Kind 2 medical barbarisms

The particular Kind 2 barbarisms to which Fowler took exception included Pleistocene, Pliocene, and Miocene (respectively from the Greek phrases πλεῖστος, most or fullest, πλείων, extra, and μείων, lesser, plus καινός, new or current) as a result of he thought that they weren’t shaped by correct strategies of phrase formation—although the 2 components in every phrase are Greek, the Greeks wouldn’t have mixed two adjectives on this manner.

After I beforehand wrote about utopian literature,7 I discussed that Sir Thomas Extra’s selection of the phrase he had invented, “utopia” (no place), was a deliberate pun, coming as it would from Greek phrases for both “no place” (οὔ τόπος) or “a goodly place” (εὐ τόπος). Later, the time period “dystopia” was coined as an antonym, in etymological distinction to “eutopia” reasonably than “outopia.” Later, others urged that “cacotopia,” a foul place, is perhaps a greater antonym, and different phrases have included “agathotopia” and “kalotopia,” respectively a superb place and a wonderful place.

In an essay on dystopia, Philip Howard wrote that “Eu-topia is, if not a barbarism, at any fee odd, as a result of it makes use of the adverb Eu (nicely) to qualify a noun ‘topos’ (place).”8 And later within the piece he wrote that “Eu was a jack-of-all-trades prefix in Greek. It might imply plain good (eueides: handsome), noble (eugenes: of noble race or excessive descent), courageous (euenor: abounding in courageous males), auspicious (euphemia: the usage of phrases of excellent omen), simple (euphoros: simple to bear or affected person), or fairly (euthumos: in fairly good spirits).”

Nevertheless, there’s a paradox right here. In accordance with Liddell and Scott’s Greek-English Lexicon, εὐ was all the time used adverbially. Alternatively, Howard was proper—the phrase, because the Greek-English Lexicon particularly confirms, was typically used to prefix not solely verbs and adjectives or adjectival types of verbs, the place an adverb is perhaps anticipated, but in addition nouns, the place it might not. To resolve this, I flip to the phrase “goodly,” which in English can function each an adjective and an adverb. Maybe εὐ truly served the same twin objective in classical Greek.

In that case, we should always not regard all of the medical phrases which can be shaped from eu+a Greek noun—eubacteria, eucapnia, eudipsia, euthanasia, euxanthon, and all the various others—as barbarisms in spite of everything.

Kind 3 medical barbarisms

Of the opposite examples I’ve cited above, one stands out: the frequent misuse of the phrase “mitigate,” when individuals speak about mitigating towards one thing, complicated it with militate. To mitigate is to alleviate or reduce one thing; you simply mitigate it, not towards it. You’ll be able to, nevertheless, militate towards one thing, and once you hear “mitigate towards” you don’t know which of the 2 meanings was meant. Fowler mentions this, however he classifies it as a malapropism, whereas Follett calls it a barbarism.

Medical publications are stuffed with this, and never solely from authors whose first language shouldn’t be English. In a Pubmed seek for “mitigate towards” in titles and abstracts I discovered over 2000 examples. Right here is the latest instance: “On condition that mind modifications have been noticed in athletes following repetitive head influence publicity, it is very important perceive higher and mitigate towards this phenomenon.”9 Mitigate? Militate towards?

A remaining thought

As of late we don’t agonise over linguistic medical barbarisms, and possibly most of those that use them don’t even realise that the phenomenon exists nor that the phrases they’re utilizing could possibly be described as such. In lots of circumstances there may be little different when a brand new time period is being created however to create a barbarism. However often it might be satisfying if consideration had been paid to the linguistic origins of the phrases we use.

For instance, in 1937 Nymphus Frederick Hicken wrote that “The process makes use of distinction fluids that are injected straight into the milk ducts, thus giving an correct roentgenographic sample of the ductal and secretory system of the mammary gland. The phrases ‘mammography’ and ‘mammograms’ have been coined to explain these examinations.”10 Hicken’s use of the passive temper conceals the id of the person who first urged these phrases, though he was most likely the one. However “mammography” for instance, might simply have been “mastography” (from the Greek phrase for a breast, μαστός), as in mastalgia and mastitis, and would have gained the admiration of those that are delicate to linguistic origins.

So, when subsequent you determine to coin a brand new biomedical time period, do attempt to match its a number of parts utilizing the identical language, Greek+Greek, Latin+Latin, Hittite+Hittite. No matter.