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Show A Few Questions About Expression. Sometimes one even hears the phrase: "Do you feel like beefsteak" How, pray, does a lieefsteak feel? Why should wo use "ever so much" for "very much," or describe, de-scribe, a man as "perfectly lovely?" In English, the abverb "quite" means "entirely," "completely;" but when we gay that someone is "quite well," we mean not that he la perfectly hut only tolerably well. We eveu see in America the phrase, "quit a numlier of persons," as if one number was not as much of a number as another. We talk of a "prominent" citizen, citi-zen, intending to describe him not as protuberant, pro-tuberant, but simnlv as eminent. Then. I i again, we ask a friend to "come round" to-morrow, though he may have only to come straight across tho street. We say: I "You are hereby notified," instead of: "It ! Is hereby notified to you, "and wo speak of ' a fact "transpiring," as if a fact wero endowed en-dowed with an apparatus for breathing. j Why do we deem it elegant to say that a thing was "intimated," when we mean that it was said? And why do we think it sounds line to speak of a thing being "def- , initely arranged," when we mean that it wasdefinitely orfinallysett.led, Theanswer ; to most of these questions is obviously that such mistakes are made by persons who do not remember or who have not reflected on the etymology of the words mentioned, which, ot course, supplies the key to their i true meaning and right use. New York Ledger. j |