week, and it is a significant
coincidence that ...". / Witness said it was quite feasible that if he
had had night binoculars he would have seen the iceberg earlier. / We
ourselves believe that this is the most feasible explanation of the
tradition. / This would appear to offer a feasible explanation of the
scaffold puzzle.'

PROTAGONIST

Mr. Sargeaunt (on p. 26) suggests that we might do well to keep the
full Greek form of this word, and speak and write _protagonistes_.
Familiarity with _Agonistes_ in the title of Milton's drama, where
it is correctly used as equivalent to 'mighty champion', would be
misleading, and the rejection of the English form 'protagonist' seems
otherwise undesirable. The following remarks by Mr. Fowler show that
popular diction is destroying the word; and if ignorance be allowed
its way we shall have a good word destroyed.

'The word that has so suddenly become a prime favourite with
journalists, who more often than not make it mean champion or advocate
or defender, has no right whatever to any of those meanings, and
almost certainly owes them to the mistaking of the first syllable
(representing Greek [Greek: pr[^o]tos] "first") for [Greek: pro] "on
behalf of"--a mistake made easy by the accidental resemblance to
_antagonist_. "Accidental", since the Greek [Greek: ag[^o]nist[^e]s]
has different meanings in the two words, in one "combatant", but
in the other "play-actor". The Greek [Greek: pr[^o]tag[^o]nist[^e]s]
means the actor who takes the chief part in a play--a sense readily
admitting of figurative application to the most conspicuous personage
in any affair. The deuteragonist and tritagonist take parts of second
and third importance, and to talk of several protagonists, or of a
chief protagonist or the like, is an absurdity. In the newspapers
it is a rarity to meet _protagonist_ in a legitimate sense; but two
examples of it are put first in the following collection. All the
others are outrages on this learned-sounding word, because some of
them distinguish between chief protagonists and others who are not
chief, some state or imply that there are more protagonists than one
in an affair, and the rest use _protagonist_ as a mere synonym for
advocate.

'Legitimate uses: _The "cher Hal['e]vy" who is the protagonist of the
amazing dialogue. / Marco Landi, the protagonist and narrator of a
story which is skilfully contrived and excellently told, is a fairly
familiar type of soldier of for