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rnold and Lowell, always apt and exact in their use of their own tongue, were careful to prefer the English 'technic' to the French _technique_, which is not in harmony with the adjectives 'technical' and _polytechnic_. So 'clinic' seems at last to have vanquished its French father _clinique_, as 'fillet' has superseded _filet_; and now that 'valet' has become a verb it has taken on an English pronunciation. Then there is _litterateur_. If a synonym for 'man of letters' is demanded why not find it in 'literator', which Lockhart did not hesitate to employ in the _Life of Scott_. It is pleasant to believe that _communard_, which was prevalent fifty years ago after the burning of the Tuileries, has been succeeded by 'communist' and that its twin-brother _dynamitard_ is now rarely seen and even more rarely heard. Perhaps some of the credit may be due to Stevenson, who entitled his tale the _Dynamiter_ and appended a foot-note declaring that 'any writard who writes _dynamitard_ shall find in me a never-resting fightard'. The third question may call for a little more consideration: Has the foreign word been employed so often that it has ceased to be foreign even though it has not been satisfactorily anglicized in spelling and pronunciation? In the _Jungle Book_ Mr. Kipling introduces an official who is in charge of the 'reboisement' of India; and in view of the author's scrupulosity in dealing with professional vocabularies we may assume that this word is a recognized technical term, equivalent to the older word 'afforestation'. What is at once noteworthy and praiseworthy is that in Mr. Kipling's page it does not appear in italics. And in Mr. Pearsall Smith's book on the English language one admiring reader was pleased to find 'debris' also without italics, although with the retention of the French accent. Perhaps the time is not far distant when the best writers will cease to stigmatize a captured word with the italics which are a badge of servitude and which proclaim that it has not yet been enfranchised into our language. The fourth question is the most perplexing: If the formerly foreign word has been taken over and if it can therefore be utilized without hesitancy, can it be made to form its plural in accord with the customs of English. Here those who seek to make the English language truly English and to keep it truly pure, will meet with sturdy resistance. It will not be easy to persuade the literate, the men of c
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