A Dictionary of Modern English Usage: The Classic First Edition

784 Pages·2009·21.73 MB·english

by  H. W. Fowler

a
MODERN
ENGLISH USAGE
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H. W. FOWLER
A DICTIONARY OF
MODERN
ENGLISH USAGE
Edited with an Introduction and Notes by
DAVID CRYSTAL
OXFORD
UNIVERSITY PRESS
OXPORD
UNIVERSITY PRESS
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A Dictionary of Modern English Usage first published 1926
This edition first published 2009
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ISBN 978-0-19-953534-7
13579 10 8642
CONTENTS
Introduction vii
Note on the Text xxv
Select Bibliography xxvi
A Chronology ofH. W. Fowler xxviii
A DICTIONARY OF MODERN ENGLISH USAGE
Appendix: Fowler's Pronunciation Preferences 743
Notes on the Entries 745
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INTRODUCTION
No book had more influence on twentieth-century attitudes to the
English language in Britain than Henry Fowler's Dictionary of Modern
English Usage. Within a few years, people no longer felt it necessary
even to mention the title and talked simply of 'Fowler'. Adjectives
soon followed—Fowlerian, Fowlerish, Fowleresque—and he eventu-
ally received the ultimate linguistic accolade, of being turned into a
common noun. The practice continues. In February 2008 William F.
Buckley wrote a piece for the United Press Syndicate on the verbal
traps used by Obama and Clinton in the race for the democratic
nomination: it was entitled 'A Fowler's of Polities'.
How did the Dictionary come to be written? The memorial note at
the front of the book tells us that Henry and his brother Frank began
to plan the book together in 1911. It was a curious arrangement. They
were committed to working on The Pocket Oxford Dictionary, the suc-
cessor to the Concise Oxford Dictionary, which they had completed
that year. But Henry was horrified at the thought of the drudgery
involved in compiling another dictionary, and wanted to devote his
linguistic energies to something more creative. The brothers therefore
agreed that Frank would work on the Pocket and Henry on a different
kind of book, and they would exchange roles after each had com-
pleted a quarter or so of their respective texts—that is, if Henry could
bring himself to being a lexicographer again. Henry would often com-
ment on his 'misolexicography', as he put it: T am no true lexicogra-
pher', he wrote in a letter to his Oxford publisher in his seventies,
saying that the only parts of the science of language he cared about
were grammar & idiom'.
In fact, the idea for the book had first come up in 1907, following
the warm reception given to The King's English the year before. The
publishers were interested in a follow-up companion, and Henry
responded with the suggestion that they write something in which
'approval & condemnation [would be] less stingily dealt out than has
been possible in the official atmosphere of a complete dictionary'. They
first proposed a large idioms dictionary, but this was turned down.
They then suggested a shorter book which would warn 'against the
unidiomatic', and this was welcomed. Oxford University Press referred
viii Introduction
to it as the 'Reduced Idioms Dictionary', and later as 'the Perfect
Englishspeaker's Companion'. Following lengthy discussions with
the Press over the kind of information to be included, the scope was
widened to include observations on spelling and pronunciation.
Henry had completed only about a quarter of the book when the
First World War began, and he and Frank—despite their ages—
enlisted. When the War ended, he tried to work on it again, but, fol-
lowing Frank's death in 1918, he found his time totally taken up with
the need to complete the Pocket Dictionary, which he eventually sent
to the Press in 1922. He was relieved then to be able to return to what
he called his general vade-mecum of English writing'. The Society for
Pure English had been established in 1913, but was forced to abandon
its plans until what it called the 'national distraction of the War was
over. When it began publishing its Tracts after the War, the series
contained several of the longer articles Fowler was preparing for his
book. He eventually sent it to press at the end of 1923. A move from
Guernsey to Somerset led to a considerable delay in processing the
proofs, and it took another three years before the Dictionary saw the
light of day. It was published on 22 April 1926.
The Climate of the Time
Fowler's life coincided with a remarkable period in British linguistic
history. The growth of comparative philology in the early nineteenth
century had led to an explosion of interest in the history of language
and languages, and one of the consequences was the increased study
of English and its regional varieties. The Early English Text Society
was founded in 1864. The English Dialect Society began publishing
its regional volumes in 1873. The International Phonetic Association
was formed in France in 1886 and presented its first phonetic alphabet
two years later. Daniel Jones, who would become Britain's best-known
phonetician, published the first edition of his English Pronouncing
Dictionary in 1917. Most importantly, the Philological Society (estab-
lished in the year Fowler was born) was planning its first major
project in lexicography. It was eventually entrusted to James Murray,
who in 1879 began the gargantuan task of compiling the New English
Dictionary—which would appear, over fifty years later, as the Oxford
English Dictionary. Fascicles of different letters were to be published
from 1884, and Fowler kept abreast of them.
Introduction ix
It was also a great age of individualists. In 1873 Isaac Pitman founded
his Phonetic Institute in Bath, advocating the importance of short-
hand and spelling reform. In 1878 the Dorset writer William Barnes
made his case for maintaining the Anglo-Saxon character of English
in his Outline of English Speech-Craft. And a few years later George
Bernard Shaw took up the cudgels on behalf of spelling reform, sim-
plified punctuation, and other language projects, one of which—the
application of phonetics in elocution—received a dramatic interpret-
ation in the form of Pygmalion in 1914 (with Daniel Jones providing
the inspiration for Henry Higgins). In a literary context, several nov-
elists, such as Dickens and Hardy, painted word-pictures full of the
realities of everyday speech. As a lexicographical individualist, Fowler
was in good company.
The focus on everyday speech in all its bewildering diversity was in
sharp contrast to the educational ethos of the period, with its concen-
tration on written texts, Classical languages, formal grammar, and the
combination of prescriptive ('do') and prescriptive ('do not') rules
governing 'correct' usage. There was a concern to maintain the lin-
guistic values that had been established by the language scholars of
the late eighteenth century, such as Bishop Lowth, John Walker, and
Samuel Johnson, as part of a trend to give linguistic identity to an
educated class within Britain. The Society for Pure English (SPE)
made this very clear in its opening Tract (October 1919):
The ideal of the Society is that our language in its future development should
be controlled by the forces and processes which have formed it in the past;
that it should keep its English character, and that the new elements added to
it should be in harmony with the old.
The concern was real. Several other European countries, the SPE
members observed, had men of letters to guide the development of
language, whereas 'the English language, which is now rapidly spread-
ing over the world, is subject to no such guidance, and to very little
intelligent criticism'. Moreover, the old methods of training were
under threat. In 1890, grammar had been dropped as a compulsory
subject in the school curriculum, and in 1921 the Newbolt Report on
the teaching of English went so far as to say that uncertainty about the
facts of usage made it 'impossible to teach English grammar in the
schools'. The SPE nailed its flag to the mast: "The Society, therefore,
will place itself in opposition to certain tendencies of modern taste;