ABSTRACT
Diction thus mainly refers to the choice of vocabulary in speaking or writing for the purpose of genuine expression. The speaker not only avails himself of words, forms, etc., in their plain workaday use; “next, and above and beyond all this, they have, so to speak, an exciting force, a power of stimulating and reviving in the mind and memory all the associations that cluster around them. Words may be correctly arranged, their inflexion and articulation may be perfect, but the sentence does not necessarily convey the speaker’s thoughts and feelings adequately; nay, it may not convey any meaning at all. Nearly all words carry with them, in vastly varying degrees of course, this power of evocation, so that even commonplace terms, words, and phrases hackneyed and worn thin by unceasing usage, may suddenly be invested with a strange and beautiful suggestiveness when they are pressed into the service of the highest poetic imagination.
