We have no single word having the general yet limited meaning that this is sometimes used to express – a meaning corresponding to that of the word animals, as the word men would if it included women and children. But there is time enough to use two words.
A bell, or a curtain, is hung, but a man is hanged. Hung is the junior form of the participle, and is now used for everything but man. Perhaps it is our reverence for the custom of hanging men that sacredly preserves the elder form – as some, even, of the most zealous American spelling reformers still respect the u in Saviour.
To hurry is to hasten in a more or less disorderly manner. Hurry is misused, also, in another sense: 'There is no hurry' – meaning, There is no reason for haste.
'It does no hurt.' To be hurt is to feel pain, but one may be harmed without knowing it. To spank a child, or flout a fool, hurts without harming.
'I had no idea that it was so cold.' 'When he went abroad it was with no idea of remaining.'
'He is closely identified with the temperance movement.' Say, connected.
'Men of that ilk.' This Scotch word has a narrowly limited and specific meaning. It relates to an ancestral estate having the same name as the person spoken of. Macdonald of that ilk means, Macdonald of Macdonald. The phrase quoted above is without meaning.
There is no such word as illy, for ill itself is an adverb.
The adjective is needless. Geometrically, every line is imaginary; its graphic representation is a mark. True the text-books say, draw a line, but in a mathematical sense the line already exists; the drawing only makes its course visible.
'He was put in jail.' 'He went in the house.' A man may be in jail, or be in a house, but when the act of entrance – the movement of something from the outside to the inside of another thing – is related the correct word is into if the latter thing is named.
Inauguration implies some degree of formality and ceremony.
'It was incumbent upon me to relieve him.' Infelicitous and work-worn. Say, It was my duty, or, if enamored of that particular metaphor, It lay upon me.
As a noun, this word means something that cannot be considered as divided, a unit. But it is incorrect to call a man, woman or child an individual, except with reference to mankind, to society or to a class of persons. It will not do to say, 'An individual stood in the street,' when no mention nor allusion has been made, nor is going to be made, to some aggregate of individuals considered as a whole.
See
Obviously an asylum cannot be unsound in mind. Say, asylum for the insane.
In most instances it is better to say despite.
Omit the preposition.
Insignificant means not signifying anything, and should be used only in contrast, expressed or implied, with something that is important for what it implies. The bear's tail may be insignificant to a naturalist tracing the animal's descent from an earlier species, but to the rest of us, not concerned with the matter, it is merely small.
Use the former word for material substances, the latter for problems.
These abbreviations of
The word means entireness, wholeness. It may be rightly used to affirm possession of all the virtues, that is, unity of moral character.
'Proof of the charges will involve his dismissal.' Not at all; it will entail it. To involve is, literally, to infold, not to bring about, nor cause to ensue. An unofficial investigation, for example, may involve character and reputation, but the ultimate consequence is entailed. A question, in the parliamentary sense, may involve a principle; its settlement one way or another may entail expense, or injury to interests. An act may involve one's honor and entail disgrace.
'Going into the lion's cage is dangerous; you should not do it.' Do so is the better expression, as a rule, for the word it is a pronoun, meaning a thing, or object, and therefore incapable of being done. Colloquially we may say do it, or do this, or do that, but in serious written discourse greater precision is desirable, and is better obtained, in most cases, by use of the adverb.
