But there is, it would appear, some obstacle in the way, some hindrance to the teaching of words. Why, every book, every newspaper you pick up would tell the truth, would create beauty. Think what it would mean if you could teach, or if you could learn, the art of writing. How can we combine the old words in new orders so they survive, so that they create beauty, so that they tell the truth? That is the question.Īnd the person who could answer that question would deserve whatever crown of glory the world has to offer. Our business is to see what we can do with the old English language as it is. In order to use new words properly you would have to invent a whole new language and that, though no doubt we shall come to it, is not at the moment our business. Words belong to each other, although, of course, only a great writer knows that the word “incarnadine” belongs to “multitudinous seas.” To combine new words with old words is fatal to the constitution of the sentence.
Indeed it is not a word until it is part of a sentence. You cannot use a brand new word in an old language because of the very obvious yet mysterious fact that a word is not a single and separate entity, but part of other words. Nowadays it is easy enough to invent new words - they spring to the lips whenever we see a new sight or feel a new sensation - but we cannot use them because the English language is old. The splendid word “incarnadine,” for example - who can use it without remembering also “multitudinous seas”? In the old days, of course, when English was a new language, writers could invent new words and use them. And that is one of the chief difficulties in writing them today - they are stored with other meanings, with other memories, and they have contracted so many famous marriages in the past.
They have been out and about, on people’s lips, in their houses, in the streets, in the fields, for so many centuries. Words, English words, are full of echoes, memories, associations.
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