ABSTRACT
IF one were high-handed and high-hat, one might dismiss the reason for the long life of some words, the early death of others, with the statement that words live so long as they are useful and viable (able to maintain a separate existence), whereas those words will die which are (more or less) useless-or which are superfluous-or which, through sheer unpronounceability, are phonetically impractical. But usefulness and viability and their opposites are not the only factors : and of these others, fashion is the chief.
