Folk-Usage

— Thirty years ago we were a dictionary-ridden people. Webster and Worcester, though often conflicting, were recognized law-givers on pronunciation, and decided questions of orthoepy as arbitrarily as the commentators on the Bible settled questions of morals. Nowadays we are disposed to look behind books for final authorities on vowel sounds and on conduct, in the “general sense of the people.” The study of folk-lore and of ancient institutions has resulted in a recognition of the shadowy somethings we call the race imagination and the race consciousness, the workings of which Solon and Homer merely codify. There seems, too, to be such a thing as race pronunciation, which works out its own salvation or its own condemnation by its own laws, and changes d’s into t’s and c’s into g’ s, and moves aspirates hitlier and thither, or expunges them altogether, without fear or favor. If we have not reached the point where we are willing to allow questions of pronunciation to be settled by a sort of manhood suffrage, at least we no longer consider the dictionaries final arbiters. In minor matters, for instance, every man is allowed to regulate the pronunciation of his own name, and the chemists and zoölogists fix the usage in their own departments.

Carrying out this enlarged liberality of interpreting “ usage,” ought not the pronunciation of boys to be taken as the standard for words that are exclusively boys’ words ? New England boys have pitched quoits ever since New England fathers first landed in America, and they have universally spoken of the game as “ pitching kwaits.” With cynical indifference to this ancient orthoepy, our dictionary-makers have persistently marked the word kwoits. A more high-handed endeavor to override a genuine folk-usage cannot be instanced, and can be explained only by saying of the compilers of dictionaries, as Macduff said of Macbeth, they “have no children.” The boys meekly submit to the spelling of the dictionary as a matter beyond their jurisdiction. Ought not the dictionaries to take the pronunciation from them, the sole users of the word, and the arbitres elegantium in their own world? Might they not, in this case, refer to the “ bright lexicon of youth,” in which “there is no such word as” kwoits ? Certainly, grown - up people of kindly dispositions and modern breadth of thought should regard the amenities of life and the sacred nature of boy tradition by being very careful not to say kwoits in a boy’s hearing, however they may pronounce the word when alone. It would be but imitating the courtesy of the Speaker of the House who used to recognize one Representative as “the member from Arkansas,” and another as “ the member from Arkansaw” with a high-bred deference to individual pronunciation.

Probably very few people would have the hardihood to call Pint Judy “ Point Judith” in the presence of the skipper of a coasting schooner, though to speak of “ Pint-Judy-pint ” is a refinement not to be expected from any one not to the manner born. But very likely many of the Club would unblushingly offer to buy whortleberries of a New Hampshire lad, because the word is so marked in the dictionary. Strictly speaking, there is no such fruit as a whortleberry. It is as fabulous as the apples of the Hesperides, as juiceless as the apples of Sodom. The edible berry that grows on real bushes is a huckleberry. Of course it is spelled whortleberry in recognition of the fact that it grows on a whortle, or little shrub ; but when we speak of it, why should we not mention the real thing, and not a shadowy orthoepic abstraction as dry and lifeless as sprays of fern pressed between the leaves of an old book ? The consensus of those on whose land a thing grows must fix the name of a thing, especially if it be a wild thing. Botanists or orthoepists may fasten a ticket on it, but that does not become the name. As the White Knight pointed out to Alice, there is a wide distinction between “ what the name is called ” and “ what the name is.”