6 Oct. 1814 Section 1 '.2

Logic or Language

Ch. Qualities

Rules

1. Terms

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Rules for the avoidance of ambiguity, obscurity, and debility, so far as depends upon the choice of words taken singly.

I. When the language affords a word appropriated exclusively to the expression of the import which alone it is your intention to express, avoid employing any word which is alike applicable to the expressing of that import, and a different one which may require to be distinguished from it.

Substantives - adjectives - adverbs - in the instance of all these parts of speech, frequent breaches of this rule may be found.

I. Substantives.

1. The word taste

employed instead of the word relish. To

relish a thing is to taste it with pleasure. Do you relish this peach ? In this question there is no ambiguity, not even for a moment. But instead of this, oftentimes defined - Do you taste this peach ? and so in the case of almost any other source of pleasure; for example, a poem, a sonata, a building, a landscape.

In the French language there exists no appropriate word by which pleasure is represented as an accompaniment of the perception indicated; no word expressive of, I taste with pleasure. Gouter is to taste; and for, to relish, there is again this word and no other. In French, therefore, this imperfection, this ambiguity and inadequacy, this incompleteness, and consequent incorrectness of expression, is the result of necessity. In the word taste, when employed instead of the word relish, this imperfection is needlessly and inelegantly copied. Why ? Answer - from affectation and vain glory, to give the hearer or reader to understand that the speaker or writer is so well acquainted with that foreign language, that it is more readily present to his memory than his own language.

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