FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   131   132   133   134   135   136   137   138   139   140   141   142   143   144   145   146   147   148   149   150   151   152   153   154   155  
156   157   158   159   160   161   162   163   164   165   166   167   168   169   170   171   172   173   174   175   176   177   178   179   180   >>   >|  
onstitute your present available stock; in speaking or writing you could, if you kept yourself mentally alert, summon them on the moment. But the list, as you know, is not exhaustive. Draw a line under it and subjoin such synonyms as come to you after reflection. These constitute a second stock, not instantaneously available, yet to be tagged as among your resources. Next add a list of the synonyms you find through research, through a ransacking of dictionaries and books of synonyms. This third stock, but dimly familiar if familiar at all, is in no practical sense yours. And indeed some of the words are too abstruse, learned, or technical for you to burden your memory with them. But many--most--are worth acquiring. By writing down the words of these three classes you have done something to stamp them upon your memory as associates. You must now make it your business to bring them into use. Never call upon them for volunteers, but like a wise commander summon the individual that can rightly perform a particular service. Thus will your speech, perhaps vague and indolent now, become exact, discriminating, competent, vital. In the second place, you should obtain specific and detailed command of general ideas. Not of out-of-the-way ideas. But of the great basic ideas that are the common possession of all mankind. For through these basic ideas is the most natural and profitable approach to the study of synonyms. Each of them is represented by a generic word. So elementary are idea and word alike that a person cannot have the one in mind without having the other ready and a-quiver on his tongue. Every person is master of both. But it is unsafe to predicate the person's acquaintance with the shades and phases of the idea, or with the corresponding discriminations in language. He may not know them at all, he may know them partially, he may know them through and through. Let us suppose him ignorant of them but determined to learn. His progress, both in the thought and in the language, will be from the general to the specific. His acquaintance with the idea in the large he will gradually extend to an acquaintance with it in detail, and his command of the broad term for it he will little by little supplement with definite terms for its phases. An illustration will make this clear. We are aware that the world is made up of various classes and conditions of men. How did we learn this? Let us go back to the time when our minds were
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   131   132   133   134   135   136   137   138   139   140   141   142   143   144   145   146   147   148   149   150   151   152   153   154   155  
156   157   158   159   160   161   162   163   164   165   166   167   168   169   170   171   172   173   174   175   176   177   178   179   180   >>   >|  



Top keywords:
synonyms
 

acquaintance

 

person

 
specific
 

familiar

 

general

 

command

 

memory

 

classes

 

phases


language

 
summon
 

writing

 
master
 
tongue
 

quiver

 

profitable

 

approach

 

natural

 

possession


mankind

 

represented

 

common

 

generic

 

elementary

 
predicate
 

determined

 

definite

 

ignorant

 

suppose


progress

 

thought

 
gradually
 

extend

 

supplement

 

partially

 

shades

 

conditions

 

unsafe

 

detail


illustration
 
discriminations
 

rightly

 

ransacking

 

dictionaries

 
research
 

resources

 
abstruse
 
learned
 

practical