Whether words may, by conscious effort, be preserved in colloquial usage
is an unsolved question, though perhaps our Society may help to solve it;
there is, however, another and more certain benefit which its members, or
at any rate such of them as are writers, may confer upon the language.
There are many excellent words spoken in uneducated speech and dialect all
about us, which would be valuable additions to our standard vocabulary if
they could be given currency in it. Many of these are dying words like
_bide_, _dight_, _blithe_, _malison_, _vengeance_, and since these are
still spoken in other classes, it might be less difficult to restore them
to educated speech. Others are old words like _thole_ and _nesh_ and _lew_
and _mense_ and _foison_ and _fash_ and _douce_, which have never been
accepted into the standard English, or have long since vanished from it,
in spite of their excellence and ancient history, and in spite of the fact
that they have long been in current use in various districts. Others are
new formations, coined in the ever-active mint of uneducated speech, and
many of these, coming as they do full of freshness and vigour out of the
vivid popular imagination--words like _harum-scarum_, _gallivant_,
_cantankerous_, and _pernickety_--or useful monosyllables and penny pieces
of popular speech like _blight_ and _nag_ and _fun_--have already found
their way into standard English. But there are many others which might
with advantage be given a larger currency. This process of dialectal
regeneration, as it is called, has been greatly aided in the past by men
of letters, who have given a literary standing to the useful and
picturesque vocabulary of their unlettered neighbours, and thus helped to
reinforce with vivid terms our somewhat abstract and faded standard
speech. We owe, for instance, words like _lilt_ and _outcome_ to Carlyle;
_croon_, _eerie_, _gloaming_ have become familiar to us from Burns's
poems, and Sir Walter Scott added a large number of vivid local terms both
to our written and our spoken language. In the great enrichment of the
vocabulary of the romantic movement by means of words like _murk_,
_gloaming_, _glamour_, _gruesome_, _eerie_, _eldritch_, _uncanny_,
_warlock_, _wraith_--all of which were dialect or local words, we find a
good example of the expressive power of dialect speech, and see how a
standard language can be enriched by the use of popular sources. All
members of our Society can help this process by collecting words from
popular speech which are in their opinion worthy of a larger currency;
they can use them themselves and call the attention of their friends to
them, and if they are writers, they may be able, like the writers of the
past, to give them a literary standing. If their suggestions are not
accepted, no harm is done; while, if they make a happy hit and bring to
public notice a popular term or idiom which the language needs and
accepts, they have performed a service to our speech of no small
importance.