| Show IOU MEDULLA abl ETC I 1 luw N 4 i DO NN X woo 7 by PROEHL HALLER JAKLON drawing by ray walters OW ov many words do you know 7 shakespeare used about words A six year old child knows nearly a thousand an uneducated person knows to words tho the average person knows 8 to A college graduate knows more than lawyers doctors and ministers know unwar upwards Is ot of words an editor knows 4 0 W W woodrow wilson used more than I 1 in three of lila his books bool cs do words interest you nave have you any idon idea of the number of them in american AmerIc tin speech or in the english language could come along then and have a chat with a word expert dr fran IT II managing editor of funk A nalls new standard dictionary who la Is re sible for tho the figures tn in tho the foregoing paragraph lins bris had brought to ble attention in the last fifteen years more than words ile ho does docs dot cot clatin claim of course to remember the meaning of all of them but it Is probable that lie ho tins lins a fairl fairly v good working vocabulary the range of a mans vocabulary depends on his occupation doctor says A churchman familiar with the bible will know tho the meaning of different hebrew words in the old testament and of greek words in the now new testament or words in all with bome duplicates of course this Is an exceptional case tho the physician or surgeon knows moro more than this number take a rough summary mmary of the matters with which ho be must bo be familiar there are in tho the body of man arteries 71 bones 79 convolutions muscles nerves nerve Fj 85 plexuses plex pix e uses and veins total 1708 in addition to this there bre are 1300 bacteria eponym lc id diseases pigments poisons 88 83 eponym lc alens and symptoms of diseases tests and tumors or a total of WS matters relating to his profession alone then there are the names of about chemicals and drugs of winch which he must have babe more than a passing knowledge total in all and w hove have not referred to the science ot of hygiene or to allied professions as dentistry etc or to his homel homelike hom elife life ills his car or airplane and the world rt at large of which he Is so important a 11 figure these can barely be cov red md by moro more approximately words T the he lawyer also Is an exception he most popular law dictionaries dictionaries list OP approximately proximately terras terms peculiar to tho legal profession and compre 1 enslave as the law itself may inay be it oes not in general embrace tile tho vo 70 ab ary lf cf the home for which odd add words or in all now many words does a newspaper editor know one estimated the tent 09 a ills his vocabulary by tho the aid of 0 0 17 an abridged dictionary under each letter of tho the alphabet a page or more of words word 4 was wag selected at random anil and counted ile he kept a record of primitive and derivative words that Is among the former wa ans 1 put measure among tho the latter measurable measured nicas aurer and unmeasured 11 compound worl words whoso choso were clearly indicated by their component were omitted as clockwork clock work draft horse hard varned earned counting tills this way lie he found an average of 20 primitive words and 35 derivative words worda on each cage page tills this would make there being I 1 pages of vocabulary in this dictionary diction aty y a total of of the former and of the latter or in all next he be took a pago page in each letter and on it lie he counted the words which it seemed tiny any person if average intelligence telli gence would be able to use and understand on 24 pages there were primitive words and derivative or nearly in all or of the former and more than of the latter latier and lastly he made a count of very common words such as aa oven even a poorly educated person could hardly escape knowing and they were found to number primitive and derivative the department of psychology of one of our learned bodies recently investigated vesti gated gatea the matter of vocabulary acquisition and disclosed the tact fact that the average child of from four to five years of age makes use ot of 1700 words in its farst year the child acquired a vocabulary of from 10 to 20 words during its second year this total was waa increased to or words depending entirely upon environment viron ment before the close of tile the third year the larger of these totals was more than doubled so that the vocabulary at co command minand aggregated from GOO to 1000 words Shake vocabulary has been put at 2 or words md and the apologist for a limited vocabulary cab exclaims what did he not achieve with them I 1 had shakes shakespeare peare lived in our time he would have advanced with our progress and the strength of his vocabulary cab ab would have been double the number of words he be used but please remember that many of Shake words tire are now archaic many words fell into disuse when archery gave way to the gun and things which wore were very useful when knighthood was in flower eventually were discarded the passing of the tournament and jousts witnessed tho the large collection of medieval burial of it a terms even as tile the passing of armor did the same when falconry became i a dead sport its specific vocabulary was wag soon forgotten alchemy und and superstition had a n host of friends but with the advance of our culture their lingo has haa boon been driven out of existence every every well read person of education and fair ability Is able to define or understand as used nearly or per haps more than words the same person in conversation and writing will not fewer thim to while a person who cannot read but who has a good degree of native mental ability will command terms but let it be clearly understood that it if a new war breaks out tom tomorrow 0 arow whether it bo be between capital and labor or between races of different hue or between the upper world and the lower world the editors vocabulary will n keep pace with the events as taley develop every social upheaval even na as every social reform brings with it lie means with which to describe 1 ita various phases and our speech Is like the tide ver ever at ebb and how flow what Is the longest word in tho the english language who knows bere are however a few that have posed for the time being as tho the longest words in the language the word anost most frequently cited I 1 la which la Is to bo be found in Shake loves labor lost act 6 5 scene 1 line 44 to the puritan divine byfield we owe incer 1 doctor benson la Is credited with tons lans to william E gladstone we owe I 1 ahmen tart a cism 1 an examination of any treatise on chemistry will reveal several like these t li e s e in lyl benzene find axy quinol lne among modern german words or cumbersome formation Is ile which contains thirty five letters to express what the english indicate by the word tank in its ita military sense there Is also the turkish association of consta bagpipe makers which Is designated in german by A word commonly attributed to bismarck Is said to have been tho the result of his hatred of everything foreign particularly everything french for this reason he offered as it a substitute for the french word colre the term 1 which lie he preferred to apotheker lending them all bo however weier Is a greek word denoting a dish consisting of nil all kinds of dainties flech flesh fowl and sauces take a deep breath and try to pronounce mach a 1 e k t gooel n opt drugon which Ich in the vernacular la Is just plain hash the flemish word for motor car cai Is IB t r 0 1 now aren arent you glad indeed that you dont have to speak german or greek or flemish 7 thieu how much hungrier a man would get while asking for hash bash in a greek restaurant antl 1 |
