ABSTRACT
It will be observed that Mr. Whibley raises no point about any American misuse of any of these "collections of syllables"; his objection is to our using them at all, and rests on his supposing that they are very recently invented (invented by Americans, he seems to think, but that is not material) and that they have no sort of authority in their favor; he questions whether they should be called English words 1 The fact is, everyone of them has been in use in England for decades, all but one of them for centuries. That one is transportation, which may not be older than 1776, but certainly appeared in that year in Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations," Book 1, Chap. 11. Locate occurs in Lord Stair's "Institutions of the Laws of Scotland," 1.15 (1681), antagonize in Sir Thomas Herbert's "Travels," 211 (1634), operate in "Troilus and Cressida," 5.3.108 (1606), commu-
tation in Hawes' "Pastime of Pleasure," 10.5 (1509), proposition in Wydif's "Exodus," 25.30 (1382). They have been used in England, without falling at all into disfavor, ever since the dates given, down to the present time, as quotations of the present century could easily be given to prove. The fact that Mr. Whibley seems to have taken a queer and inexplicable dislike to them, is really of no sort of consequence to anybody but perhaps himself.
