'The president had every confidence in him.'
'Every now and then.' This is nonsense: there can be no such thing as a now and then, nor, of course, a number of now and thens. Now and then is itself bad enough, reversing as it does the sequence of things, but it is idiomatic and there is no quarreling with it. But 'every' is here a corruption of ever, meaning repeatedly, continually.
'Ex-President,' 'an ex-convict,' and the like. Say, former. In England one may say, Mr. Roosevelt, sometime President; though the usage is a trifle archaic.
A heritage from the text-books. 'An example in arithmetic.' An equally bad word for the same thing is 'sum': 'Do the sum,' for Solve the problem.
'The disease is excessively painful.' 'The weather is excessively cold.' Anything that is painful at all is excessively so. Even a slight degree or small amount of what is disagreeable or injurious is excessive – that is to say, redundant, superfluous, not required.
'The condemned man was executed.' He was hanged, or otherwise put to death; it is the sentence that is executed.
An executive session of a deliberative body is a session for executive business, as distinguished from legislative. It is commonly secret, but a secret session is not necessarily executive.
'I expect he will go.' Say, I believe (
The former word is frequently used, even in laws and ordinances, as a euphemism for the latter. It not only means something entirely different, but to one with a Latin ear is far more offensive.
'The sinner experienced a change of heart.' This will do if said lightly or mockingly. It does not indicate a serious frame of mind in the speaker.
'He extended an invitation.' One does not always hold out an invitation in one's hand; it may be spoken or sent.
'He failed to note the hour.' That implies that he tried to note it, but did not succeed. Failure carries always the sense of endeavor; when there has been no endeavor there is no failure. A falling stone cannot fail to strike you, for it does not try; but a marksman firing at you may fail to hit you; and I hope he always will.
'The child favors its father.'
'The doctor felt of the patient's head.' 'Smell of' and 'taste of' are incorrect too.
'A feminine member of the club.' Feminine refers, not to sex proper, but to gender, which may be defined as the sex of words. The same is true of masculine.
Fetching includes, not only bringing, but going to get – going for and returning with. You may bring what you did not go for.
'His financial reward'; 'he is financially responsible,' and so forth.
If this word could mean anything it would mean firstlike, whatever that might mean. The ordinal numbers should have no adverbial form: 'firstly,' 'secondly,' and the rest are words without meaning.
This is, in America, a word-of-all-work, most frequently meaning repair, or prepare. Do not so use it.
The word is sometimes spelled forbears, a worse spelling than the other, but not much. If used at all it should be spelled
For this abominable word we are indebted to the weather bureau – at least it was not sent upon us until that affliction was with us. Let us hope that it may some day be losted from the language.
Indicating the first and the second of things previously named, these words are unobjectionable if not too far removed from the names that they stand for. If they are they confuse, for the reader has to look back to the names. Use them sparingly.
Tautological. Say, obsequies; the word is now used in none but a funereal sense.
'After many preliminary examinations he was fully committed for trial.' The adverb is meaningless: a defendant is never partly committed for trial. This is a solecism to which lawyers are addicted. And sometimes they
