onary, one will be almost distressed to see how various the
significations are to which it is authoritatively susceptible. A word
seems to behave like an animal that goes skirting about discontentedly, in
search of a more congenial habitation. It is sometimes successful, and
meets with surprising welcome in some strange corner where it establishes
itself, forgetful of its old home: sometimes, like the bad spirit in the
gospel, it will return to the house whence it came forth. It is, of
course, natural and essential to a living language that such shades and
varieties of meaning should evolve themselves, although they are
incidentally a source of ambiguity and subtle traps for careless logic;
but when these varieties so diverge as to arrive ultimately at absurdities
and contradictions, then it is advisable to get rid of them. In such
extreme cases the surgeon's knife may sometimes save life; it is the only
cure; and _to use a word in a deforming or deformed sense should be
condemned as a solecism_. Contributions, stating examples of this with the
proposed taboo, are invited.

7. This last fault, of damaging a word by wrong use, might come under the
general head of 'Abuse of words'. This is a wide and popular topic, as may
be seen by the constant small rain of private protests in the
correspondence columns of the newspapers. The committee of the S.P.E.
would be glad to meet the public taste by expert treatment of offending
words if members would supply their pet abominations. There was a good
letter on the use of _morale_ in the _Times Literary Supplement_ on
February 19. The writer, a member of our Society, permits us to reprint it
here as a sample of sound treatment.

"MORAL(E)

'Tis the sport to have the engineer hoist with his own petard, and the
purizing (so to speak) of the purist has been a tempting game since Lucian
baited Lexiphanes; may I yield to the temptation? During the war our
amateur and other strategists have suppressed the English word _morale_
and combined to force upon us in its stead the French (or Franco-German?)
_moral_. We have submitted, as to Dora, but with the secret hope, as about
Dora, that when the war's tyranny was overpast we might be allowed our
liberty again. Here are two specimens, from your own columns, of the
disciplinary measures to which we have been subject: 'He persistently
spells _moral_ (state of mind of the troops, not their morality) with a
final _e_, a sign of ignorance of Fr