TABLE II. Percentages of Negro children of various age levels who indicated that they had written poems during the Insufficient number of cases for computation of per cents. Percentages of white children of various age levels who indicated that they had written poems during the course of one week "just for fun" Percentages of white children and of Negro children who indicated that they had engaged in writing poems during the course of one week. Composite results of four different investigations. FIGURE 1. Percentages of white children and of Negro children who reported that they had engaged in writing poems during the course of one week. Composite results of four different studies of play behavior. The Origin of Figurative Speech and Faded Metaphors from the Classics E. SCHULTZ GERHARD, M. A., (Continued from the January number of EDUCATION) ✔ORDS with a more extensive figurativeness and radical transfer of meaning than the words in the sentences just given will now be taken up and dismembered in order to find their real meaning and origin. W We just this moment had occasion to use the word "expression." Of this word the writer has some painful recollections as the result of a somewhat malignant jaw-bone. The surgeon who was in attendance was a bright young Armenian; on occasion he would say that he could or he could not "express" anything from it, or that there was no "expression." At first the writer thought that the young man, being a foreigner who used rather broken English, had misused the word; finally, however, he was agreeably surprised to find that the young surgeon used the word in its original, literal sense; namely, "to squeeze out." The typical American Yankee would have said, "I can't squeeze anything out." The modern use of the word has gone far from its original meaning; for it is now used mainly to manifest our feelings, ideas and sentiments. And really how painful many of our expressions, i. e. "squeezings" are! Whoever deviates from the normal or proper course, quibbles, or acts, or talks evasively, and evades truth or duty, exposes himself to the charge of prevarication, though he does not walk crookedly. Prevarication would imply a straddler with legs distorted; the original significance is, having crooked or bandy legs. From the Latin "prae" for "prae ter," "besides" or "beyond," and "varicare" to "straddle," which in turn comes from "varicus" meaning "with feet wide apart," and this from "varus," "bent inward, awry." The word has been formed into an abstraction to imply a mental or moral shuffling. "The ploughman, unless he stoops to his work, is sure to prevaricate, a word which has been transferred to the Forum, as a censure upon those who transgress."10 We are still hindered, obstructed, or impeded in our various pursuits and endeavors as were people of old, though nothing is thrown in front of our feet to entangle them and to cause us to stumble. We no longer say "impediments" when we mean material obstructions; nay, not even when we speak of a person having an impediment in his speech do we for one moment wish to insinuate that every time he opens his mouth he gets his foot in it! But this is slang, and slang is only "condensed metaphor!" Emolument is a word suggestive of dignity and distinction, but it is a rather uncommon word, though one with an interesting and picturesque history, for it goes way back to the tedious and laborious process of grinding the grain with the handmill. It has lost all its meaning of grinding and is now used entirely in connection with whatever is annexed to the possession of office, as salary, or fees. Just as it at one time meant an allowance of meal-Latin "mola," so it now means salary: as that which is received as a compensation for service, or as that which is gained by labor. Just as "mola" was the slave's allowance for grinding the grist as a recompense for effort exerted, so emolument now signifies a remuneration for service rendered and exertion supposedly expended in connection with some office or position. Really all that emolument at first implied was the "toll," the tithe of the grist the "mola" which went to the miller, perchance the slave, for grinding the grist-this was his emolumentum. It seems as though the underlying idea of the word is exertion and secondly that expended in grinding. 10 Pliny-Natural History. An exceedingly curious history has the word sycophant. In ancient Greece a "sycophantes" meant a "fig-shower"—a person who gave information of people who exported figs from Attica, or who plundered sacred fig-trees. The Athenians had passed a law forbidding the exportation of figs from Attica; and those who informed against these violators of the law were called sycophants-from the Greek sukon "a fig," and phainein "to bring to light." As such an office always carries something opprobrious with it and is easily exposed to abuse, the term soon acquired the signification of an informer, a false accuser, and even a parasite. Modern raiders against the violators of the Volstead Act seemingly perform the same function with the same amount of opprobrium and notoriety. We just happened to use the word "parasite." Well, whoever dines at the table of another and lives at another's expense and repays him with flattery and buffoonery is termed a "parasite." The composition of the word is Greek -"para," beside, and "sitos," food: anything made of cereals rather than of meat and always opposed to drink. Beyond this meaning the origin of the word is not known. The composition of the word would indicate that such a person took his food, his corn, i. e. his "sitos" with another, or at another's table, and in this way lived at the other's expense; it would indicate especially one who frequented the table of the rich and earned his living and his welcome by flattery. But as this privilege was among such characters usually paid for by obsequious flattery and buffoonery the term quite readily acquired the odious meaning in which it is now used -a hanger-on, a flatterer, a sycophant. Its original meaning of feeding upon the livelihood or sustenance of another is seemingly still used in the plant world. There is an apt use of the word in Shakespeare's Richard 2 in which passage the Queen speaking of the Earl of Worcester says "He is a flatterer, A parasite, a keeper back of death."11 11 Richard II, Act 2, 70. |