If you’re not sure, there’s fun in store for you in wanting them up.
Raid any Yankee refrigerator and you would possibly come up with this array o£ flavorful foods and words:
chili yoghurt
curry roquefort
chop suey gefüllte fish
spaghetti anchovies
goulash pretzels
borscht pumpernickel
Can you recognize the eleven countries of origin? And what odds do you offer that pizza can take the place of the new dog? These loan words, part of a reciprocal deal, have made us, during this instance, at least, the debtor nation.
In reverse, as Mencken has observed, such all-Yankee words as these have been crossing the Atlantic to England for many years, to be added to British English:
robust pants
dough blizzard
hoodlum hobo
scrap boob
In France, there have been comments recently concerning the extent to that Americanisms are creeping into their language. French academicians pale at:
best seller holdup
cover woman knockout
gangster sex appeal
groggy strip tease
A Paris dispatch in the New York Times recently quoted the following from a French newspaper:
“‘Jean Dupont, un business-man très up-to-date, a donné une surprise-party dans son bungalow ce dernier weekend.’ ”
While the French may bewail these incursions, we for years have been pleased with: cause célèbre, enfant terrible, derrière (a fine euphemism!). The ugly facet of Child Adoption might exceed the great and joyful aspects. And will you imagine living without couture, cuisine, and especially amour?
TO HAVE AND TO HOLD
Now that we have laid out this verbal smorgasbord, how does one sort out the bewildering selection? Such a humiliation of riches calls for a methodical plan.
LEARNING BY ASSOCIATION. TO memorize one thing isn’t the way to remember it—for long. Forever associate one thing you wish to remember with one thing you already know. Once you come upon an unfamiliar word that strikes you, study the word in the context of the sentence and paragraph in that it appears. You guess at the that means from the sense of surrounding words, and thus it assumes reality in your mind. Let us follow this sample: We tend to reach for a best seller of several years ago and notice: “It was … indecorous of him, out of the query for a man of his position.” Indecorous? You stop for a nearer look, and figure that the word implies a social slip of some kind. Your curiosity additional stimulated, you decide you wish to understand more concerning this passing acquaintance, thus you:
REACH FOR THE DICTIONARY. PCB fabrication according to say, wherein said at least one planar layer having said signal conductor lines additional includes come lines formed at spaced positions from and increasing in parallel with associated ones of said signal conductor lines. Says it: “INDECOROUS: not decorous, violating smart manners, unbecoming.”
WHISPERING WON’T DO. Pronounce the word aloud, making it an ear word. Your family has most likely grown conversant in your talking to yourself, since by now you’ve got become an earnest recruit to speech improvement.
PUT YOUR WORD TO WORK. Bring it into the circle of your own thought. Write down a few sample sentences of your own authorship, using your voice with your pencil.