_Rôle_. The italics and accent may be due to consciousness of _roll_. The
French word will never make itself comfortable in English if it is
homophonous with _roll_.
_Timbre_. This word is in a peculiar condition. In the French it has very
various significations, but has come to be adopted in music and acoustics
to connote the quality of a musical sound independent of its pitch and
loudness, a quality derived from the harmonics which the fundamental note
intensifies, and that depends on the special form of the instrument. The
article _Clang_ in the Oxford Dictionary quotes Professor Tyndall
regretting that we have no word for this meaning, and suggesting that we
should imitate the awkward German _klang-farbe_. We have no word unless we
forcibly deprive _clangour_ of its noisy associations. We generally use
_timbre_ in italics and pronounce it as French; and since the word is used
only by musicians this does not cause much inconvenience to them, but it
is because of its being an unenglish word that it is confined to
specialists: and truly if it were an English word the quality which it
denotes would be spoken of more frequently, and perhaps be even more
differentiated and recognized, though it is well known to every child. Now
how should this word be Englished? Is the spelling or the pronunciation to
stand? The English pronunciation of the letters of _timbre_ is forbidden
by its homophone--a French girl collecting postage-stamps in England
explained that she collected _timberposts_--, whereas our English form of
the French sound of the word would be approximately _tamber_; and this
would be not only a good English-sounding word like _amber_ and _clamber_,
but would be like our _tambour_, which is _tympanum_, which again IS
_timbre_. So that if our professors and doctors of music were brave, they
would speak and write _tamber_, which would be not only English but
perfectly correct etymologically.
But this is just where what is called 'the rub' comes in. It would, for a
month or two, look so peculiar a word that it might require something like
a _coup d'état_ to introduce it. And yet the schools of music in London
could work the miracle without difficulty or delay.
_Swine_. Americans still use the word _pig_ in its original sense of the
young of the hog and sow; though they will say _chickens_ for _poultry_.
In England we talk of pigs and chickens when we mean swine and poultry.
Chaucer has
His swyn his hors his stoor and his pultreye.
The verb _to pig_ has kept to its meaning, though it has developed
another: the substantive probably got loose through its generic employment
in composite words, e.g. guinea-pig, sea-pig, &c.; and having acquired a
generic use cannot lose it again. But it might perhaps be worth while to
distinguish strictly between the generic and the special use of the word
_pig_, and not call a sow a pig, nor a hen a chicken. So _hog_ and _sow_
might still have their _pigs_ and be all of them _swine_.
_Swift_. Perhaps it is going too far to say that 'swift' is colloquial
only in metaphorical applications, we might speak of 'a swift bowler'
without exciting surprise; but it is expedient to restore this word to
general use, and avoid the use of _fast_ for denotation of speed. 'To
stand fast' is very well, but 'to run fast' is thoroughly objectionable.
Such a use destroys the sense of firmness which the word is needed and
well qualified to denote.
_Chide_. This word probably needs its past tense and participle to be
securely fixed before it will be used. It is perhaps wholly the
uncertainty of these that has made the word to be avoided. _Chid_ and
_chidden_ should be taught, and _chode_ and _chided_ condemned as
illiterate.