rms of the
original names of those articles. The first man who said _bus_ for
"omnibus" must have seemed quite an adventurer. He probably struck
those who heard him as a little vulgar; but hardly any one now uses
the word _omnibus_ (which is in itself an interesting word, being the
Latin word meaning "for all"), except, perhaps, the omnibus companies
in their posters. Again, very few people use the full phrase
"Zoological Gardens" now. Children are taken to the _Zoo_. _Cycle_ for
"bicycle" is quite dignified and proper, though _bike_ is certainly
vulgar. In the hurry of life to-day people more frequently _phone_
than "telephone" to each other, and we can send a wire instead of a
"telegram" without any risk of vulgarity. The word _cab_ replaced the
more magnificent "cabriolet," and then with the progress of invention
we got the "taxicab." It is now the turn of _cab_ to be dropped, and
when we are in haste we hail a _taxi_. No one nowadays, except the
people who sell them, speaks of "pianofortes." They have all become
_pianos_ in ordinary speech.

The way in which good English becomes slang is well illustrated by an
essay of the great English writer Dean Swift, in the famous paper
called "The Tatler," in 1710. He, as a fastidious user of English, was
much vexed by what he called the "continual corruption of the English
tongue." He objected especially to the clipping of words--the use of
the first syllable of a word instead of the whole word. "We cram one
syllable and cut off the rest," he said, "as the owl fattened her mice
after she had cut off their legs to prevent their running away." One
word the Dean seemed especially to hate--_mob_, which, indeed, was
richer by one letter in his day, for he sometimes wrote it _mobb_.
_Mob_ is, of course, quite good English now to describe a disorderly
crowd of people, and we should think it very curious if any one used
the full expression for which it stands. _Mob_ is short for the Latin
phrase _mobile vulgus_, which means "excitable crowd."

Other words to which Swift objected, though most of them are not the
words of one syllable with which he declared we were "overloaded," and
which he considered the "disgrace of our language," were _banter_,
_sham_, _bamboozle_, _bubble_, _bully_, _cutting_, _shuffling_, and
_palming_. We may notice that some of these words, such as _banter_
and _sham_, are now quite good English, and most of the others have at
least passed from the stage of s