boycott bowie-knife badminton gothic herculean protean china india-rubber ampere
Have our correspondents ever noticed these words in books? The writer of this answer has no hesitation in asserting that “italics” and “italicize,” which have far more literary use than “roman,” will be found with a lower-case initial much more frequently than otherwise; and the same is true of “roman” in printers’ use, which must be looked for mainly in printers’ books. What is here said, however, should not be applied too strictly; the word in question should be capitalized in special work such as that of our correspondents, where probably all similar words have capitals, as Gothic, Doric, Ionic, etc.
=Kindly permit me to make a few comments. As to “honour, fervour, ardour,” etc., you say that “undoubtedly the American way (_i. e._, honor, etc.) is better than the other, historically as well as economically.” I suppose that “economically” means the saving of one letter; that I do not consider as worthy of note at all. As to the historical point, the words in Latin are all “honor, ardor, fervor, labor, color,” etc.; but then in French, through which they came into English, they are “honneur, couleur,” etc., so that it seems to me that the _u_ is historically defensible.
“Sceptical” or “skeptical”--a matter of indifference; the hard _c_ represents the Greek kappa in any case. I suppose you spell “speculator,” yet the Greek is σπεκουλάτωρ; so “sceptre” is the Greek σκήπτρον. So we might write “spektakle” if we cared to do so; indeed, many Greek scholars do use _k_ where ordinary people would use _c_, as “Asklepiad, Korkyra,” etc.
“Ascendant, ascendancy”--the usual plan is to take the letter found in the supine of the Latin verb; thus, “dependent,” from Latin “dependens,” “intermittent,” from Latin “intermittens,” “dominant,” from Latin “dominans,” and so on. On this plan “ascendent” and “ascendency” would be right, as “scando” and “ascendo” make “scandens” and “ascendens.”
You say, “Each of the large dictionaries is worthy of acceptance as final authority in every instance.” Not by everybody, by any manner of means. There are many better scholars than the dictionary-makers. Would you expect Mr. Gladstone, John Ruskin, Andrew Lang, Archbishop Temple, Bishops Lightfoot and Westcott, Dean Farrar, and many others to accept the dictum of a dictionary man in every instance? Why, I do not do it myself. Indeed, though I possess Greek, Latin, and French dictionaries, I have never possessed an English one, and do not much regard them or the people who think them infallible. Educated people in England have no such opinion about dictionaries; in fact, they consider _themselves_ the source of authority in matters of usage and pronunciation. Oxford and Cambridge men and members of the educated classes in England are the sole arbiters in such matters; there is no appeal against them. Richard Grant White thoroughly grasped this and expressed it very well. Just as all classical scholars try to write Attic Greek, _i. e._, the Greek of the inhabitants of one Greek city, and entirely disregard the millions of other Greeks (even though so eminent as Homer and Herodotus), so all English-speaking people should model their language on that of the educated classes of Great Britain.=