|
||
|
|
|
|
|
||
|
|
|
|
|
Astrology
Chat
Cityscape
Classifieds
Entertainment
Health
Matrimonial |
|
  |
We have our weekly doses of corp‘Words are not like counters, complete in themselves and independent of one another, or, like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. They are (it cannot be too often emphasized) living things’, wrote Vallins. He has described in detail the changes words undergo with the passage of time. ‘A condition of survival is that words closely related adjust themselves to one another, so that no two of them have precisely the same nuance or range of meaning’. ‘Precarious’, ‘uncertain’, ‘unsafe’ or ‘shaky’ are related words. But in a given context only one of them is the ‘right’ word. We have seen that the root of ‘precarious’ (adjective) is the Latin ‘precari’/to pray, beg, or entreat. The first (and now obsolete) meaning of the word is ‘granted to entreaty, and hence wholly dependent on the will or favour of another’ Addison uses the word in this sense when he speaks of ‘precarious privileges’. These are privileges enjoyed at the pleasure of another. In time the word has acquired different shades of meaning, the first accretion being the element of high uncertainty or dependence on chance. A precarious truce is a cease-fire of doubtful durability, one exposed to constant risk and affording us no ease or reassurance. The synonyms are ‘uncertain’, ‘unsteady’ and ‘unstable’. Thus we speak of ‘a precarious state of health’ or ‘precarious fortunes’. Example: His position as the captain of the team was precarious and depended on his performance in the remaining one-day international matches. The obvious sense in which the word is used is ‘dangerously lacking in safety/security/stability. Examples: Men who clean the city’s sewers lead precarious lives. The climbers discovered to their horror that they were within yards of a crevasse and clung to their precarious perch on a rock. ‘Precarious’ is a stronger word than ‘uncertain’. A third meaning of ‘precarious’ is ‘based on uncertain, unwarranted, or unproved premises’. The MD shot down Hari’s proposal as a precarious remedy for the ills dogging the company. The transitive verb ‘imprecate’ means ‘to invoke evil upon’/’to wish harm upon’/’to call curses down’ on someone. ‘Imprecate’ and ‘imprecations’ do not call to mind the wide range of meanings a simple word like ‘delicate’ does, including the extended sense science has imparted to it. You may recall that we came across a character in a Wilkie Collins novel displaying ‘a prurient delicacy’, which served as a peg for our discussion on ‘prurient interest’ and ‘prudery’. ‘Gerrymandering’ and ‘sell-by-date’ engaged our attention as much as the expressions ‘read the riot act’ and ‘sell someone down the river’. We took ‘bog’, ‘morass’, and ‘quicksand’ in our stride, examined ‘scruple’, ’qualm’ and ‘compunction’, and zeroed in on phrasal verbs that ‘enhance the power of brief yet adequate expression’. We have been chasing the origins of some words, noticing in passing the changes they have undergone. Our emphasis has always been on the practice of writing, and ‘on that energy which collects, combines, amplifies and animates’. Our appeal to memorable writing of the past has not blinded us to the beauty and vitality of current English. What is aimed at is the disciplining of the mind and the cultivation of the imagination. To quote Johnson, ‘the task of our present writers requires, together with the learning which is to be gained from books, that experience which can never be attained by solitary diligence, but must arise from general converse and accurate observation of the living world’. Hazlitt says as much in his own way: ‘Books are less often made use of as spectacles to look at nature with, than as blinds to keep out its strong light and shifting scenery from weak eyes and indolent dispositions’. I started this column with a Cyril Connolly quote. I shall end with one. He says, ‘Writing is a more impure art than music or painting. It is an art, but it is also a medium in which many millions of inartistic people express themselves, describe their work, sell their goods, justify their conduct, propagate their ideas’. He speaks for the purists. Over a long period the people who use the language fashion it, syntax, vocabulary and idiom. ‘Ordinary people without licence,’ cautions Philip Howard, ‘will carry on inventing words and idioms. The language belongs to them too’. Amen. Published on 29th June 2002 Readers' response/inputs can be e-mailed to mhdevan@chennaionline.com.
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| ||||||
