A Dictionary of Modern English Usage

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A Dictionary of Modern English Usage (1926), by Henry W. Fowler, is a style guide to British English usage, pronunciation, and writing. Ranging from plurals and literary technique to the distinctions among like words (homonyms, synonyms, etc.), to foreign-term use, it became the standard for most style guides that followed — thus, the 1926 first edition remains in print despite the existence of the 1965 second edition, and the 1996 and 2004 printings of the third edition. Moreover, the third edition was mostly rewritten as a usage dictionary incorporating corpus data.^[1] To its users, the Dictionary is informally known by the names Fowler’s Modern English Usage, Fowler, and Fowler’s.

Contents 1 Approach 2 Editions 3 Quotations 4 Footnotes 5 See also 6 Similar works 7 References

[edit] Approach

Henry W. Fowler’s general approach to English usage was to encourage a direct, vigorous writing style, and to oppose all artificiality — firmly advising against unnecessary, convoluted sentence construction, foreign words and phrases, and archaisms. He opposed all pedantry, and notably ridiculed artificial grammatical rules without warrant in natural English usage — such as bans on split infinitives and ending a sentence with a preposition, rules on the placement of the word only, and distinctions between which and that. He also condemned every cliché, and, in classifying them, coined and popularised the terms battered ornament, Wardour Street, vogue words, and worn-out humour, whilst simultaneously defending useful distinctions between words whose meanings were coalescing in practice, and guiding the user away from errors of word misuse, and illogical sentence construction. Like most practical guides, its linguistics is a mixture of the prescriptive and the descriptive — thus allowing extremists of either camp to place Fowler in the other.

[edit] Editions

Before writing this dictionary, Henry Fowler and his younger brother, Francis George Fowler (1871–1918), wrote and revised The King's English (1906), a grammar and usage guide later superseded by A Dictionary of Modern English Usage in the 1930s. Moreover, he researched A Dictionary of Modern English Usage assisted by F. G., who died in 1918 of tuberculosis, contracted whilst serving with the BEF during the First World War, and dedicated the book to him, it begins: “I think of it as it should have been, with its prolixities docked, its dullnesses enlivened, its fads eliminated, its truths multiplied. . . .”

The first edition of A Dictionary of Modern English Usage was much reprinted — thus, a reprint whose copyright page mentions “1954” as the most-recent reprint year, also notes that the 1930 and 1937 reprintings were “with corrections. . . .” The second edition, Fowler’s Modern English Usage, published in 1965, was lightly revised by Sir Ernest Gowers, who updated and contributed to the text, and removed articles deemed “no longer relevant to [current] literary fashions.” The third edition of the Dictionary, published as The New Fowler’s Modern English Usage in 1996, and revised as Fowler’s Modern English Usage in 2004, was edited by Robert Burchfield, whose preface says that, while “Fowler’s name remains on the title-page . . . his book has been largely rewritten.”

The editorial difference between the first and third editions of the dictionary is that A Dictionary of Modern English Usage (1926) is a prescriptive style guide for writing clearly and expressively, whilst The New Fowler's Modern English Usage (1996) and Fowler’s Modern English Usage (2004) are descriptive usage guides to spoken and written English. The 2009 reprinting of the first edition, contains an introduction and entries updated by David Crystal.

• Fowler, Henry Watson (1926). A Dictionary of Modern English Usage (1st ed.). Oxford: Clarendon Press. OCLC 318492.
• Fowler, Henry Watson (1965). Fowler's Modern English Usage. Edited by Sir Ernest Gowers (2nd ed.). Great Britain: Oxford University Press. OCLC 318483.
• Burchfield, Robert William (1996). The New Fowler's Modern English Usage (3rd ed.). Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-869126-2. OCLC 36063311.
• Burchfield, Robert William (2004). Fowler's Modern English Usage (Revised 3rd ed.). Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-861021-2. OCLC 56767410.
• Fowler, Henry Watson (2009). A Dictionary of Modern English Usage. with a new introduction and notes by David Crystal. Great Britain: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-953534-7.

[edit] Quotations

A Dictionary of Modern English Usage is renowned for its witty passages, many of which have been widely cited: ^{[2] [3]}

Didacticism

The speaker who has discovered that Juan and Quixote are not pronounced in Spain as he used to pronounce them as a boy is not content to keep so important a piece of information to himself; he must have the rest of us call them Hwan and Keehotay; at any rate he will give us the chance of mending our ignorant ways by doing so.

French Words

Display of superior knowledge is as great a vulgarity as display of superior wealth — greater indeed, inasmuch as knowledge should tend more definitely than wealth towards discretion and good manners.

Inversion

Writers who observe the poignancy sometimes given by inversion, but fail to observe that 'sometimes' means 'when exclamation is appropriate', adopt inversion as an infallible enlivener; they aim at freshness and attain frigidity.

Split Infinitive

The English-speaking world may be divided into (1) those who neither know nor care what a split infinitive is; (2) those who do not know, but care very much; (3) those who know and condemn; (4) those who know and approve; and (5) those who know and distinguish.

Terribly

It is strange that a people with such a fondness for understatement as the British should have felt the need to keep changing the adverbs by which they hope to convince listeners of the intensity of their feelings.

[edit] Footnotes

[edit] See also

• Corpus linguistics
• Disputes in English grammar
• Elegant variation
• False scent

[edit] Similar works

• The Elements of Style, by Strunk and White
• The Chicago Manual of Style, a widely used guide to American English publishing style and markup
• The Complete Plain Words by Sir Ernest Gowers
• Practical English Usage by Michael Swan, a guide to grammar aimed at non-native English speakers.
• Merriam Webster's Dictionary of English Usage
• The Cambridge Guide to English Usage

[edit] References

• Fowler, Henry; Winchester, Simon (introduction) (2003 reprint). A Dictionary of Modern English Usage (Oxford Language Classics Series). Oxford Press. ISBN 0-19-860506-4.
• Nicholson, Margaret (1957). A Dictionary of American-English Usage Based on Fowler's Modern English Usage. Signet, by arrangement with Oxford University Press.