ing tie" is quite common.
Expressions like a "ripping time" are even more objectionable, because
they are even more meaningless.

Then, besides the slang use of terms of praise, there are also many
superlatives expressing disgust which the slangmongers use instead of
ordinary mild expressions of displeasure. To such people it is not
simply "annoying" to have to wait for a lift on the underground
railways; for them it is "perfectly sickening."

_Horrid_, a word which means so much if used properly, is applied to
all sorts of slightly unpleasant things and people. When one thinks of
the literal Latin meaning of this word ("so dreadful as to cause us to
shudder"), the foolishness of using it so lightly is plain. People
frequently now declare that they have a "shocking cold"--a
description which, again, is too violent for the subject.

Another form of slang is to combine a word which generally expresses
unpleasant with one which expresses pleasant ideas. So we get such
expressions as "awfully nice" and "frightfully pleased," which are
actually contradictions in terms.

This kind of slang is the worst kind of all. It soon loses any spice
of novelty. It is not really expressive, like some of the quaint terms
of school or university slang, and it does a great deal of harm by
tending to spoil the full force of some of our best and finest words.
It is very difficult to avoid the use of slang if one is constantly
hearing it, but, at any rate, any one who feels the beauty of language
must soon be disgusted by this particular kind of slang.

CHAPTER XVI.

WORDS WHICH HAVE CHANGED THEIR MEANING.

We have seen in the chapter on "slang" how people are continually
using old words in new ways, and how, through this, slang often
becomes good English and good English becomes slang. The same thing
has been going on all through the history of language. Other words
besides those used as slang have been constantly getting new uses.
Many English words to-day have quite different meanings from those
which they had in the Middle Ages; some even have exactly opposite
meanings to their original sense. Sometimes words keep both the old
meaning and the new.

In this matter the English language is very different from the German.
The English language has many words which the Germans have too, but
their meanings are different. The Germans have kept the original
meanings which these words had hundreds of years ago; but the
thousands o